| SPINBUSTERS |
| Hise's The War Against Men |
| The best thing about The War Against Men, Richard Hise�s 2004 contribution to the Men�s Movement, is the bluntness of its title. Merely having a dust-jacket emblazoned with those four Hated and Massively Incorrect words nudges the nation, and the planet, back towards sanity and wholeness. The book's sub-title -- �Why Women are Winning and What Men Must Do If America Is To Survive� -- is likewise stark, openly declaring that the fate of the nation depends not on the "war on terrorism,� nor on economic stability, nor on which of the �two�parties holds power, but on the ability of the American Male to regain his, well, American Maleness. His Root. Chapter One opens with an epigram of Rude Reality: The long-run consequences of the war on males are potentially more injurious than those posed by terrorists. Uhhh . . . yup! Off to a flying start! Published softbound by Oregon�s Red Anvil Press, professionally produced, The War Against Men affirms in nine chapters what non-catatonic American men already know, or at least sense: the nation is infested with, and dominated by, female power, entitlement, and self-awarded "moral" superiority. But Hise is not easily dismissed and marginalized as a �whiner,� "loser," or �misogynist,� like other Men�s Activists. We�re not talking Wild-Eyed-Radical here: Hise is a Professor of Marketing at Texas A&M University, and very conservative in outlook. He'd be right at home at the local Elk's Club fest on Friday night, or as church deacon on Sunday morn. Therefore take note, Men's Advocates: slowly but surely, the Word is finally filtering down to the mainstream, whence it will run through every vale in the land, even to the crack in every stone. Perusing Hise's tome, one gathers he didn�t just fly off handle and blurt out his disgust with FemAmerica during a badhair day. In keeping with the text's common-sense, measured pace and tone, one imagines Hise methodically observing over the decades the injustices and bloodbaths of the American war on masculinity at both the anecdotal and mass levels: in his classrooms, at his faculty meetings, in his church, and amongst his family, colleagues, and friends. One imagines him collating his data, and then, and only then, at last hunkering down in his study with, say, a stack of Statistical Abstracts of the United States, to tackle the Big Picture. Hise�s dust-jacket photo reveals a thoughtful man, likely slow to wrath. Looking more like a Methodist Minister than a professor, one suspects that Hise carefully completed his personal and academic homework before transforming his inner-flame into this book. His effort shows. Text within chapters are footnoted thoroughly, but not excessively, a pretension of many academics. The emphasis is on clarity, not style, as befits a Marketing Professor. His narrative method is reminiscent of Warren Farrell�s seminal The Myth of Male Power: bludgeon the reader into surrender with The Indisputable Facts, interspersing some choice anecdotes and personal observations. In many respects, The War Against Men updates Farrell�s wide-angle view of the male condition since the early 1990s. The news, unsurprisingly, is not good. In the intervening decade, the Male Situation has degenerated from �Uh-Oh� to �Where�s the Ark�? Hise -- an inveterate church-goer and family-man -- waxes indignant concerning his (correct) perception that feminism and women have tsumani-d American religion, turning it into WomanChurch -- the putative and ineffectual �male leadership� of the denominations notwithstanding. Indignantly, Hise quotes Eric Lincoln, a �leading black scholar at Duke Divinity School�: The well-organized black church is an organization of subgroups in which women predominate and wield their own power. Women raise the money and, though men dominate the church board of trustees, it is their wives who effectively determine how it is spent. Among Black Baptists, power belongs to �the mothers,� a group of older women who have been in their congregations for decades and constitute the heart and soul of the church. On Sunday, the Mothers dress distinctively in white and preside from a special section of the church � opposite the �Amen Corner� where the male trustees sit. The minister who has the Mothers on his side is virtually unassailable and woe be it to the minister who doesn�t [obey them]. [brackets added] Hise concludes: For whatever reason -- male lassitude or female zest for control (or both) -- roles usually reserved in churches for men have largely disappeared and are now in the hands of women . . . .� (For expanded context on the above quotes, see my recent essay �The Return of the Ban-She.�) Nor are conditions for males much better elsewhere in the, uh, �civilized world.� In Chapter Four, �Women and Power,� Hise relates: When I was in Russia in October of 2000, CNBC was advertising a special it was going to air on executive women in Europe. Concluding the ad was a shot of a captivating eight or nine year old girl who said, �I want to be the boss of all things.� LOL! Whatta surprise!! And now that She Is, Hise and readers are left to wonder: can the West be yanked-back from the cliff-ledge of matriarchal freefall? Hise�s classic riff on Wonder Woman tells a similar woeful tale, and drops a Spooky bombshell: The creator of Wonder Woman was William Marston, a Harvard-trained psychologist who also had a law degree; Marston was a strong early advocate of the lie-detector and developed a prototype. . . . Marston . . . had a sinister motive, as well, �to circulate radical feminine notions.� He stated that the most �constructive comics were those that laid the groundwork for . . . the coming age of �American matriarchy in which women would take over the rule of the country, politically and economically�� [author�s emphasis] Men�s Advocates seeking to backtrack American governmental/elite machinations in establishing, funding, and coercively implementing our Western matriarchies might mine mucho gold from this vein-of-inquiry Hise opens. Most of America�s black-ops and �intelligence� agents are educated in, and culled from, Ivy League schools -- particularly from Psych Departments. Why, it�s enough to make a Woman Wonder: who are the Real Nazis?! Why is it so crucial to our "leaders" to crush the American male spirit? Our Western matriarchies are NOT accidental. American �elites,� especially entrenched right-wing interests, have consolidated power in great measure by destabilizing and fracturing the culture through establishment of legal and cultural Gyneocracy. While demoinizing and disenfranchising boys and men, our matriarchy rewards many special interests: and contrary to popular myth, those interests by no means are limited to left-wingers and the Abuse Industry vampires. The collusion of Western "elites" and feminism is called Divide-and-Conquer, a tactic of propaganda and control that�s as old as the world. We are offered only the illusion of choice, instead getting the Hegelian Dialectic, where the sun don't shine. The inability to understand and confront the connection between the 20th Century�s domination by feminism and American neo-conservatism is the Achilles Heel of men�s advocates and writers; unfortunately, Hise shares this collective blind-spot. Like so many others, he recognizes the leftist/Marxist elements in feminism, but fails to nail the American right-wing for its complicity in degrading masculinity and instituting neo-matriarchy. Hise�s �battlefield solutions� to The War Against Men, therefore, rely on adoption of a retro-agenda, a tactic that has failed dismally in America the past twenty years. Matriarchy IS the Ultimate Conservative Agenda, and both the right and left wings are attached to the Same Chicken. America�s veer to the right over the past two decades has accellerated regression to matriarchy. Matriarchy IS the Center, and despite Yeat's protestations in "The Second Coming," perhaps the Center should not hold, having become Profitprison rather than Temple of Refuge. Politics-as-usual won�t feed the Bitch Bulldog that has America by its shrivelled gonads. Even amidst the healthiness of competition, American men must learn to dissociate from divisive ideo-political entrenchments and pull together. Hise's glorification of hypocritical weaklings like Rush Limbaugh and other neo-con radio demagogues does not further the cause of men. Thus, The War Against Men largely will appeal to the �conservative choir,� who share Hise�s views on God, politics, family, economics, and �morals.� (Like the Left, the Right assumes ownership of morality and God, er . . . I mean Goddess ... uh, well, you get the idea.) As long as men's activists continue to crave solidarity along political and economic lines -- rather than as Western men sharing common oppressions and struggles -- the Big Whuppin' will continue. Group-think websites and radio stations inevitably draw advocates away from confrontation with the true sources of our oppression, hoodwinking us into thinking "leftists" are the Enemy. American men must decide if they are Conservatives or men. To date, they largely have chosen the former, the "smooth road" of mutual back-patting and enabling, the sort of clubbiness one might expect from political conventioneers. Therefore -- properly -- we remain enchained under female dominion. Still, every opponent of feminism -- and every true lover of the liberty and meritocracy that once marked American culture, however imperfectly -- will find much to applaud in The War Against Men. Like Hise, as men and Americans, it is our duty to oppose the destruction of masculinity and of the nation implicate in feminism and in the rise of the Matriarchal-State. The Son is sinking rapidly in the West, and the New World Order is being ushered in under cover of the �equality� and �inclusion� of female supremacy, with those misogynistic falafel-chompers -- oppressing defenseless females at every turn, hey we saw it on T.V.!! -- now wearing the Big Bulls-Eye. Can you say "Abu Ghirab?" Oh yah, baby, I knew you could!! Civilizations deteriorate from within, and the "enemies without" are merely the "plague of locusts" that consumes the rotted fruit of a fallen nation. 'Twas ever thus, read a little history. In order for tyranny to thrive, strong men must be silenced, shamed, imprisoned, and emasculated. The collective castration of American manhood clears the path for petty despots and grandiose powermongers of both genders. And that, boys 'n girls, is where we currently stand. (Make that kneel.) Red Anvil Books is a �vanity press,� though not in the ordinary, dismissive sense of that phrase. Taken on merit, The War Against Men is worthy of publication by a major house. It is not a brilliant book, but it's a necessary book, and is no mere �vanity.� One cannot imagine a major publishing house in FemAmerica releasing any title trumpeting the obvious reality that war has been -- and is being -- waged against maleness itself. That, indeed, might reveal the Empress in all her rage and nekkidness. To Hise�s credit, such conditions didn�t stop him from speaking, and disseminating, his truth. The War Against Men is another brick yanked out of our Wall of collective denial. It'd make a great Christmas present -- Santa would approve and, I daresay, so would Christ, who is ever about his Father's business. Jesus was a social and spiritual rebel. Professor Hise and fellow conservatives, especially those claiming to admire and follow Christ's example, have yet to deal with that. May all Western men throw off the bonds of second-class citizenship, and like Richard Hise, raise their Voices against the blood-tide of entitlement, censorship, vengeance, violence, and mass-misandry that plagues America, and through the vehicle of America, threatens the balance of the world. _______________ Priced at $22.95, The War Against Men is available at bookstores, amazon.com, or through a 24-hour order line at 1-800-431-1579. |