Customer Reviews
Feminism reduced to a sexual trade union movement 
2008-02-02
'The Decline of Males' is one of those rare books that, if the argument is understood, promises to radically alter your way of looking at the world. That alone should justify it being described as an important work and undoubtedly should be attracting greater and more serious attention than it so far has. Lionel Tiger, a respected professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, applies his discipline as well as the lens of Darwinism, to the massive social and political changes that have occured in the last few decades. In particular, the transformation in the overt political and economic power enjoyed by women, a radical and quite remarkably rapid change in the fumdamental way that men and women had lived unshaken for thousands of years in every corner of the globe and yet which is now beginning to crumble even in such macho refuges of patriarchy as Latin America. Only the Islamic world seems to have the spirit or the will to resist.
Tiger puts most or all of this change down to one event; the innovation and widespread use of the contraceptive pill in the 1960's. For the first time in human history, men have been excluded from the reproductive process, leading to a loss of faith in the paternity of their mate's offspring, a consequent reluctance to 'commit' and therefore a need for women to enter the labour market and political sphere in order to ensure that adequate care for their children is obtained.
Thus Tiger has reduced feminism, that great bedrock of our contemporary assumption to have made social and liberal 'progress', to a sexual trade union movement fighting not for high minded notions of equality or fairness but for the primitive sexual and reproductive interests of women. This is something that I, for one, have believed to be obvious for a long time, yet it is not something I had ever seen explicitly claimed in print before.
Tiger's language is not quite as brutal as mine, but not only does he see feminists and women simply reacting semi-consciously to a technological innovation the consequences of which could not have been foreseen, he sees feminism as something that has almost been forced upon women. The reviewer below writes that the changes in society can be explained by such things as looser morals, decline of religion etc. To be fair, if the book can be faulted, it is that perhaps Tiger does not articulate his argument quite sharply enough. Each step can appear lost amongst all the references and studies and it is not always clear to discern why the loss of male faith in paternity is so obvious or inevitable. It seems to me that the pill has led to women becoming more promiscuous and yet women have found that instead of sexually liberating themselves, it has liberated men from the obligation or desire to commit to any unplanned pregnancy. This has led to the rapid need for women to enjoy political and economic 'equality' with men.
Granting that the 'loss of faith in paternity' part of Tiger's argument is not presented as clearly as it could be, I don't think it degrades the fact that the broad sweep of what he is claiming is not only plausible but of fundamental importance. He has identified the fact that the control of the means of sexual reproducation has shifted from men to women and persuasively claimed that this is a better model for explaining social change than even the Marxist notion of ownership of the means of economic production. Whether or not this change in sexual reproduction is down wholly to the pill, indeed even to be defined in terms of the pill, or rather simply the fact that the sexual mores of the human race are now decided by feminists in actual government or in the lobby groups that they dominate, Tiger's thesis remains a whole new way of looking at contemporary politics and social change, politically incorrect and uncomfortable though it may be.
The book is now nearly a decade old and yet it seems astonishing that there has been no follow up, either from other academics following where Tiger has tread, or by the author himself. I had a thousand questions in my head after finishing it, questions of the type that surely it would be an intellectual crime not to pursue. For example; does the book's thesis explain certain puzzling features of feminism, such as why western feminists are so silent about Islam and the 'subjegation' of their sisters in the Islamic world? Beliving that modern feminism is simply a sexual trade movement borne of an unforeseen necessity, in my opinion, does explain the massively lopsided importance feminists place on such things as banning prostitution and pornography whilst doing absolutely nothing about the daily treatement of women in the Islamic world, for example stoning to death of women for adultory or being whipped for showing an uncovered face. Perhaps women are indeed largely content under Islam because they can be sure that their reproductive needs will be supported, and that is all most women really want.
'The Decline of Males' could be the birth of a much needed men's movement. It surely should at least transform gender studies from it's present role of self-pitying litany of complaints against men into something that tries to honestly apply scientific discipline to the analysis of society. Lionel Tiger's book represents an exemplary model account of social change rooted in the competing sexual interests of male and female that are the undeniable mechanisms that lie behind every other primate society.
Who Knows How Things Will Unfold? 
2007-08-02
I have my students read chapters from this book in my class in Biopolitics. Undergraduate men like it--a Men's Bible so to speak. A lot of passions are aroused in classroom conversations.
The "pill" may be the major technological innovation behind expanding female reproductive autonomy, but there's a lot of other stuff too, a lot of it mentioned in the book. What percentage of otherwise fertile women use the pill? Other methods of contraception? My guess is that it is women's increasing education and better health, parcel of modernization, that is driving increased contraception, and reducing the birth rate, as women facultatively shift from r-strategists to K-strategists. So the fertility rate declines generally, especially among women with more education who tend to marry at a later age.
Tiger wrote before the phenomenon of sexually antagonistic coevolution became widely known, but what he writes about seems to amount to the cultural expression of this phenomenon. Look to the promiscuous fruit flies. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sexes from promiscuity. I suppose for the female fruit fly, she gets sexy sons. But there are costs, including the dangers she suffers from intense male-male competition for mates and problems associated with multiple insemination. Human equivalents? Physical and mental abuse due to male sexual jealousy; risk of STDs. For males, there are also pluses and minuses to short term mating, detailed by Buss (1999). Plural marriages and monogamy also have their advantages and disadvantages for both sexes.
Humans are moderately polygynous. That's clear enough from the degree of sexual dimorphism. Promiscuity has been around, but it's not the main thing, as Murdock pointed out long ago.
In may view, Tiger has hit the nail on the head in terms of identifying increases in female reproductive autonomy as being of enormous social significance. Culture plainly changes more rapidly than human biology, so as he notes we can anticipate a bad fit between the former and the latter. How will it all play out?
Don't know! Some reviewers have commented that men seem befuddled by it all. As Henry Ford once remarked, however, Don't complain, don't explain. Men may continue to believe, perhaps correctly, that women's habits don't change that quickly either, and that in the end they will prefer "tough" guys who will give them "sexy" sons. It would be nice if they had a lot of $$$$ too! If women with a lot of education are disappointed, it may be that they cannot have it all--there just aren't that many men who are both r (real handsome, masculine, and sexy) and K (smart with a ton of $$$$). There it is!
Footnote. Spending some time and observing what goes on in lower class neighborhoods in City of Detroit (daughter lives in one, albeit one of the better ones), the average suburbanite would be startled by it all. Young men urinating in the street. Drug dealers pursuing delinquent accounts at 65+ miles per hour down residential streets. Foreclosed houses with stuff piled on the curb. Teens pushing stolen cars down the street to places where they can safely strip them. High decibel rap music. Random gunfire. Pit bulls pulling on their leashes. Bars on windows and doors. Most adult, married, employed, law abiding men would not put up with it, but unfortunately there are just not a lot of them in this part of the City. And like Iraq, a few thugs have taken charge, and the instinct of self-preservation has taken hold. Is something wrong here? Single parenthood isn't all that great, whatever it's causes.
Enough.
Poverty And Age Reduce Women's Options 2007-02-04
Lionel Tiger's c1999 text "The Decline Of Males" is a socioeconomic study of late 20th Century gender roles. The slightly pedantic study is detailed, well referenced and addresses global trends while concentrating on Western society.
Professor Tiger argues that men's aptitudes (hunter/maintainer/heavy lifter) are devalued in post-industrial society. This is true in affluent petroleum-energized society, but men's aptitudes regain value as economic conditions worsen and petroleum prices rise. And senior women (usually) lose physicial stamina earlier than senior men (e.g., osteoporosis). Senior women often need heavy lifters.
Women choosing to live without a long-term male partner might require paid assistance during their senior years, a potentially costly lifestyle decision. And children raised without a male parent's guidance must learn some of life's lessons themselves.
whining about loss of privilege 
2006-07-31
this is whining of a group that in the recent past were masters of all they surveyed, and now they have been given a reality check and been deposed from the position of lord and master of the house. now men aren't sure what their "role" is--i guess they can't think of any other way to be men than to financially lord it over their wives and children. the author thinks teenage women should have children and claims that is when they are at the height of their reproductive years. i guess he never saw the study that showed that women are not fully biologically developed, even at 17 and 18, and that having a child while still a teenager is dangerous both to the mother and the baby with an increased risk of miscarriage and infant mortality. my mother grew two inches when she was 18 and pregnant with my older sister--a clear case of two babies trying to grow at the same time. but i don't think mr. tiger thinks in terms of safety for anything but his ego--and keeping women barefoot and pregnant, and unable to go to college and have a career, and dependent on a man for support, keeps women from threatening the male ego. and if the man actually stays and supports his young wife and children, fine and great, but i think it is men that are conflicted about the role of provider and breadwinner. they want to be the big cheese but when the going gets tough they take off and lolita and the baby get to depend on the state for support. i just think that men should walk their masculine talk or shut up and stop whining like sissies. at the end of the book we get a parting jab at feminists-they are "immature" and "paraniod". however nobody sounds more immature and paranoid than these lost confused man-children.
Interesting and thought provoking 2006-07-17
Is an animal a product of nature or nurture? Scientists know that in reality such a question is misleading, an animal is a product of both nature (genetics) AND nurture (environment). However, when discussing men and women, the political class seems to believe that men and women are purely the product of nurture. In this interesting book, author and anthropologist Dr. Lionel Tiger tries to put nature back in.
Moving from topic to interesting topic, Dr. Tiger shows how the male domination of the species could collapse so completely in such a short period of time. Karl Marx suggested that workers were dominated because of their alienation from the means of production, but in this book Dr. Tiger suggests that the invention of the birth control pill has alienated men from the means of reproduction, and has changed the very nature of the male/female interaction.
Overall, I found this to be an interesting book. The author provides some absolutely fascinating insights into human nature the battle of the sexes. What's wrong with this book, though, is that the author moves from topic to topic without ever coming to a definitive conclusion, giving the book an unfinished feel. Also, I must say that I could not understand his seeming defense of single-motherhood, at the same time that he criticizes divorce. I mean, if his "civilized bureaugamy" (unmarried mothers and children supported by taxes on the rest of society, including men who never fathered children) is a good idea, then why is he against governmental collection and disbursement of child support payments (p.257)?
But, that said, I did find this to be an interesting and thought provoking book, and I am glad that I read it.
Portents of Male Apocalypse 
2006-07-16
Why have sexual and family norms of American society changed so dramatically in the last few decades? Lionel Tiger presents a unique perspective, offering arresting evidence that the real issue is reproduction, a biological process. He argues that the spread of effective contraception, controlled by women, gives them the sole power to decide to, or not to, bear children. Removed from the process of reproduction, men have begun to feel obsolete, resulting in their unprecedented withdrawal from family systems.
Revolution By Pill 2005-10-23
Lionel Tiger has written a book about our decline that is sometimes wishy-washy, but with plenty of interesting factoids thrown in. He also likes to wander from sub-topic to sub-topic without ever coming to many bold overriding conclusions to hammer away at. He is cautious and evenhanded, always testing assumptions--a cool objective academic weighing for and against constantly. Sometimes he throws a bone to the left and sometimes to the right, leaving the option open to withdraw it in the future. He treats some the more mentally-ill feminists with the same critical respect that he gives to the family-values preacher. He is not an activist trying to gain recruits, but rather offers a few tentative suggestions on how to survive this "bewildering new world" of male decline and subsequent family break-up.
One of his interesting factoids involves the use of birth control pills, which began in the sixties. He examines a experiment of our monkey cousins in which the pill was used on the female monkeys, which really bothered the head chimp. He would no longer make it with his main squeezes, but moved on to females untainted by the pill. When all the females were put on the pill, the head chimp began behaving abnormally, attempting rape and such. The pill mimics pregnancy, so Tiger speculates that a human male may be able to unconsciously determine which human females are on the pill making him think that his services are redundant because of her fake pregnancy.
Tiger thinks that the pill has had a dramatic effect on the mating lives of humans. The birth rates are plummeting below replacement levels in industrialized countries while the high divorce rates have soared. Women are living like men because they can now control their fertility and sexual morality has been loosened. The reason for these changes are biological at the root, all other explanations such as the rise of feminism or proliferation of sin are superficial explanations for the phenomena, according to Tiger.
It used to be so that the 30 to 50 percent of the marriages were "shotgun weddings" in which the groom was expected to marry the woman he had impregnated before marriage. But men have increasingly resisted marrying in such situations and often don't pay their child support for children that they often don't see that much. Tiger explains this occurrence coming about because there is no assurance that the child is his. Men have been liberated, in a sense, because many have been able to escape their responsibilities. The government has often taken the place of the father in providing for children. Cheap DNA tests may change all that, leaving no doubt who the father is.
There has also been a decline of work for males and increase of work for females. Tiger gives his statistics for this assertion, although I was unclear on how male and female work opportunities would be divided up. I thought all opportunities are open to both sexes in theory, at least. Work itself has become feminized with its emphasis on office work, as opposed to manual labor. A lot of work is not a good fit for masculine men. Much like school, it requires sitting in a seat for long periods and communicating cordially with strangers. Pay is also increasing for women and declining for men. One in three wives earn more than their husbands now.
Barbiturates are other pills that may adversely affect pregnancies for male babies. Tiger presents some evidence that taking such pills during pregnancy may feminize males and make them more prone to homosexuality.
Reproducing a male baby is a much more fragile process in which all conditions must be right for maleness to come about. It seems that the female is the basic sex of nature, males are an add-on.
Tiger also mentions the female plight in countries outside the west in which aborting female babies, wife-beating, and arranging marriages are popular. Women in the west don't have as much to worry about.
The Battle Goes On 2005-06-14
Having read Tiger's 'Imperial Animal' and 'Men in groups' (which tried to show how difficult it would be for women to fight back against the domination of male-bonded human societies) I was initially amused at this book and the obvious shock and awe Tiger feels now that life has not turned out as he expected.
Unfortunately, Tiger's work has been based largely on baboons and a lack of knowledge about the relationships and behaviors of the sexes throughout the animal kingdom - especially about natural behaviors of females in all species. Though he rightly wants to bring biology into our understanding he actually overlooks the female nature as it really is - eg in no species is it natural for males to decide who their sister or daughter breeds with nor for a female to have only one father for all her children (except if both male and female are monogamous).
For most of our existence as humans males claimed ownership and control of the females and determined who their females would breed with.
Women reproduce in the tribe of their husband where they have little power and are easily controlled and manipulated. To say how females behaved under this system was 'natural' is to miss the fact that the only thing truly natural was the drive to survive ie comply not die.
The illusion was created that humanity was all about men and the groups they belonged to while females were exchanged between groups where their main purpose was to create the new male members. History is all about the interactions and conflicts between male groups. It is the story of male reproductive competition. Access to wombs is the reward.
In the West in recent years women have had the opportunity to be more than bodies that exist to produce sons. And rightly so. I am sure we are in a period of transition and much that Tiger now writes about is of concern to many of us of both sexes.
Tiger's conclusions miss an important aspect of ancestral mothering - the fact that our ancestral mothers probably were NEVER alone with their children. Their days would be spent in communal productive activity with other women and their collective children. Women need adult company and not merely to be with their offspring - and children were raised in public, not in private.
Husbands and wives would have probably had no deeper a relationship than sex and women would have shared their beds with their children rather than their husband.
Women probably did more productive work than men who, apart from hunting, would be spending their time making weapons, playing at or actually fighting and no doubt sitting around politicking.
It would not be bio-logic, as Tiger proposes, to pay men extra to keep women out of production and isolated in the home. The reason women were forced out of production was the increasingly lengthy period of childhood dependency which also put the burden of provisioning of children and women more exclusively on the male - something never chosen or wanted by women. Women never wanted nor enjoyed isolated sububan dependency. The 50s family set-up was about as unnatural for women as you can get in the modern world.
Tiger also misses the fact that evolution is not fixed but is about change and adaptation.
The main problem we have is that women have been deemed to be insignificant too often. A good reason for female involvement in the public world is to have female anthropologists, biologists, primatologists, sociobiologists etc etc to actually look at female nature so that we can avoid the male-bias that exists everywhere and we cannot see because it has always been there.
If we are going to include biology it has to be insight provided by women as well as men. (See Sara Blaffer Hrdy, Barbara Smuts, Marlene Zuk, Meredith Small to name just a few of the women bringing greater and more balanced insight into what female nature might be.)
A greater understanding of our evolution, right back to the evolution of sex and the sexes, is surely necessary. Today we do not have to produce the maximum number of offspring possible as other animals try to do. The sexes need other things to do. This includes other things for males to do than to bond with each other in competition with other males - behaviors that exist for male reproductive success and lead to violence, anti-social behaviour, war etc.
But we are still biologically driven in our behavior. Males still have brains and behaviors that lead them to compete with males and try to control females and worry about paternity while being promiscuous themselves. Females still have brains and behaviors that seek optimum resources for potential offspring and a fear of being 'parasitized' by genes from a male who then seeks to spread his resources to other females.
Of course it is a battle and only when we see the reasons the sexes battle might we be able to work out a new, workable truce that is different from the 'solution' we previously lived with which was that men own women and decide who uses their wombs - creating an overworked, subservient group of humans little more than wombs on legs.
Only men who want to go back to that need to be afraid.
We need to recognize how hard it is for the sexes to trust each other and get along because we have different biological ancestries. We do need to look at our selfish motives and behaviors and try really hard to imagine ourselves with the womb if we are male or without the womb if we are female - to get into each others evolutionary/reproductive perspective. It could strongly be argued that women are in fact much better at this because we are far more likely to care for all our children - men are still selfishly exploiting, abusing, killing, selling etc etc daughters around the world today.
We all have an equal number of male and female ancestors who have passed their genes down to us - genes that make the body behave differently whether it is male or female. We are all in this together. It is naturally the most emotional aspect of our lives but we need to stay rational about it. It is going to be extremely hard - and most of the world is still very oppressive towards women. But we can only keep trying.
But the first step is to stop confusing the way women have been forced to be during human evolution with female nature which is something quite different and a basic error in Tiger's views.
A very interesting aspect of this is the curious fact that men are very much more happy with male 'nature' than women are with female 'nature'. Even in all the anti-women sentiments throughout these reviews there is no male argument against the way male nature has been presumed to be in human history - more simply a desire for women to return to theirs. This strongly suggests that whatever is being presented as female nature is way off the mark and far more likely a constructed femininity that suits the male self-interest above all else.
Cautious Optimist 
2005-05-15
I'm a man in his late 30's now. I have just read the review my Alex below, and wow, it blew me away. I can sympathize with his sentiments enormously. I recall when I read the Decline of Males and how angry I was, mostly because it was truth. I really hated many females for their actions and indifference to more gender-balanced issues. As a teacher, I see many young men today and even men older than myself with what I feel is a dangerous mindset. This is particularly true of the younger generation. This mindset, coupled with how many men today are not as inclined to be in relationships and see women with the sympathy of the past makes for a dangerous combination for society when you put into the mix the very technologies that developing and rapidly coming that Alex mentioned. There is a worldwide chaos taking place in leaderhip and resources. The primal nature of man often then evidences itself when this happens. I am cautiously optimistic that the future will be a better place than today, but my fear is that there will be a great price we'll all have to pay for it before attaining it. I hope I am happily proven wrong.
More than one possible future awaits... 2005-05-13
Despite being outdated in terms of its dire predictions, this is still a worthwhile read. I am of a generation that Mr. Tiger, however, seems to have little understanding or breath of comprehension. The men of my age grew up on Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, and now see Desperate Housewives. Yes, these shows have been written by men, and even one by an unabashedly unmasculine, effeminate male-homosexual who never knew a father (what the hell would he know about real, heterosexual men then?). Nevertheless, these shows have revealed to us, in the emulating of the female characters on these shows, just how inane, vain, and often times useless and idle women can be are often sadly are. Men today do not aspire to marry as they use to in the past. We no longer see women sympathetically as in the past. What we do see and feel about women is that they have it so incredibly easy, given so much preferential treatment in both school and work. Rules that apply to men suddenly are re-interpreted for women. The bar that is non-negotiable for men is lowered a few pegs down for women too often times to not be noticed. It is true many women work hard and on their own merit exceed. These are real women to me, and they are the ones who command respect. Unfortunately they are rare. It has become fashionable for women today to live in fantasia, deluded more often to believe their biology has created them superior to men (e.g. The First Sex by Helen Fisher, or Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier). Most women do not even recognize their vanity or stupidity, and often are left wondering why they can't keep a decent man or why despite having two advanced degrees aren't ahead. What else do they have in the absence of mature self-introspection but to fall back to their fail-safe position of blaming yet the patriarch for somehow and however subtly of holding them back or undermining their future? And by God, they have the statistics to prove it (think of that classic book How to Lie with Statistics and compare to misadnristic books like Why So Slow by Virginia Valian). Men of my generation are just sick of this nonsense and having seen them in their full spectrum see women as a whole as a horde of conformist morons easily sold on an Oprah-stylized presentation of good-feel sophistry and psychobabble outright lies. The misandrist loves to blame men for all societal ills, citing it is men who are terrorists, rapists, murderers, criminals, and the most exemplary of the world's undeniable scum. But what have these women done other than to point out the obvious and conveniently leave out that women too, despite being statistically less representative, have their hands stained in guilt with such sins as well, including the killing of their own children, the molestation of their students, and the desiring and defending of the very same criminal men presented as grotesque caricatures of mankind? How easy it is to forget that the vast majority of men are inherently good, willing to sacrifice their lives for the liberties so many easily take for granted, and who often are cut down in youth. It is men who have built with their hands, blood, and lives all that is the world around us. From the interstate highways to the information highway, from the airplane to satellites, to medicine and technology, it is men that drive the engines of progress, commerce, and the numerous doors of opportunities that so many women seem to think they've opened for themselves. It is men that have paved the present roads we now walk-and who pave the roads to the future that we shall continue to march toward. Women walk on what man has paved. Women do not own the past or future as men do. All of history, past and present, is proof of this fact, which only the most dimwitted among us would deny. A sexist you say? Yes. But most justifiably a sexist. Like Plato, I too thank the gods that I was born as man. It is in our blood-down to our very DNA-to rule, lead, prevail, conquer, and advance. Women, sadly, are now largely an impediment to progress and it is my sincere hope that just like in ancient times, women's needs, their more numerous desires, and frivolous opinions are vanquished as the superior race of men leads all in the future. And what future shall that be? Dr. Tiger mentions that women have enormous power over men because they control birth control? He puts too much stock on the biology of women being a variable that will continue to shape the politics of tomorrow. Our technology is advancing to make women in this respect a superfluous oddity and render any advantage women may currently have obsolete. In about a decade's time, if not sooner, a safe male contraceptive birth control method will come. Men will soon get over any misgivings of assuming this formerly "female" role of birth prevention. The power they will assume will be too great to ignore and male pride is not anywhere as fragile as women would like to believe in trying to comfort themselves. In a generation's time, it will be the most natural thing for a man to take charge over his own biological and reproductive capacity. Laws will have to change then and the biases toward female rulings will consequently be redressed. Come next stem cell research, which no administration or government can prevent from happening in the long run, will bring cloning technologies and the next eugenics era of breeding superior humans of both genders. With the advent of the artificial womb (already demonstrated in the lab with other animals such as zebras) one has to wonder what use women will serve biologically to either men or the human race? Yes, men do think this way, and more and more are thinking this way. In a final irony, women have helped initiate this new worldview in men who readily adapt and reclaim. When it comes to the raw calculations and limiting predictions that are being all too often made of their future, the soft, sensitive men of the 70's is steadily being replaced by the more realistic, calculating, Logos-orientated men of both intellect and merciless indifference. It is natural for men to then group together in common unity, in the absence of any other viable alternatives, and rebel with hellish delight and obsessive resolve. All of history, too, is proof that this is the far more likely scenario than the bleak alternative that Dr. Tiger predicts. And there are far more men who think this way than you may care to believe. Perhaps you're one already.
