In which a snarling conservative is surprised to enjoy a New Yorker writer. It would be this one. Sally C. Pipes (of the Pacific Research Institute) writes in theOneRepublic:
On the other hand, as we have recently observed, radical feminists can no longer expect special treatment from critics simply because of their gender and politics. Consider Peggy Drexler Ph. D., a “gender scholar” at Cornell University. Drexler’s new book, Raising Boys Without Men, argues that boys raised by women without men are better off than boys raised by mothers and fathers. As New Yorker staff writer Caitlin Flanagan states in the November Atlantic Monthly, Raising Boys Without Men is a chronicle of bad dads that compares men to “wounded rhinos.” This book, writes Flanagan, is “as much a work of advocacy as objective research.” It also holds consequences for personal responsibility and civil society. As Flanagan puts it, if you “[b]elittle men’s responsibilities to their families [and] raise boys to believe that fatherhood is not a worthy aspiration….the people who will suffer are women and children.” That strikes me as a fair assessment, and it does me good to see Caitlin Flanagan, without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment, demolish what she describes as a “preposterous book.”
Literature, like ideas, has consequences. Nobel Prizes and good reviews should be handed out on the basis of merit, not politics or gender.
As for me, I am often embarrassed by what Caitlin Flanagan chooses to either extol or demolish. I haven’t read Drexel’s book, nor, yet, Flanagan’s whole piece. (I’m waiting for my Atlantic online access to kick in.) Although some of the nicest people I know were raised without men, it would surely be folly to make fatherhood an even more remote idea than it already is for most befuddled chaps. That said, I don’t like agreeing with Flanagan, but I suppose it has to happen from time to time. Actually, I’d like to agree with her all the time, or rather, for her to agree with me. But that means she’ll really have to stop writing about Hawaiian luxury vacations. For instance.