The Compleat Chauvinist: A Survival Guide for the Bedeviled Male

Edgar Berman was a World War II veteran and an esteemed surgeon who performed groundbreaking research in transplant surgery and was appointed by JFK to become chief consultant for health for the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. He was also, by the way, happily married for 35 years until his death in 1989, to a woman who had a successful career before she traded it in for marriage, an exchange she believed was for the better. (His book mentions that male hormones, male hard work and male stress causes men to die younger, and his own death at the age of 68 bears this out.) He was on the Democratic Party's Committee on National Priorities in the 70's when some feminist activists demanded that the committee make feminist goals their highest priority. Dr. Berman dared to say that women were unfit for leadership positions because of their "raging hormonal imbalances". Not surprisingly, the result was a nationwide fit of hysterics, and he was forced to resign. In revenge, he wrote this satirical attack on feminism. The book is a true satire, using exaggeration and humor to make a point that its author believed. "When a few of us objected, we were branded sexist (which we are), fascist, even at times, Republican," Berman, a Democrat, complains of feminist demands. Expressed with many plays on words and sarcastic exaggeration, his points will be familiar to many: Feminism hasn't helped ordinary women who are just trying to pay their bills, while making feminist leaders rich - and how happy is "joining the workforce" really making most women? Feminists can't even agree among themselves as to what feminist goals are; Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer were always at each other's throats. The differences between the sexes are inherent, not "culturally conditioned". Even feminists will hire men when they need serious ability, whether in hairdressing or serving on their cabinets. The women who complain about being exploited as sex objects are in no danger of this ever happening to them. Being a sex object has been good for women; we'd never have survived evolution without it. Feminists constantly attempt to have scientific research that does not serve their purposes censored. He attacks the myth, still circulating today, of Israeli female soldiers; in real life a woman in the Israeli Army is called a "filing clerk". He points out that women do not vote for other women, and that feminists invariably hate those women who make genuine achievements, such as Margaret Thatcher. In discussing female heads of state, he reminds us of the suffragette slogan "Give women the vote and there will be no more wars" and points out that Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka were as hawkish as any male leader. He points out, exhaustively, that male achievement is higher in every area of human endeavour. I have to agree, except in literature; that is the one area in which women have the edge. There has never been, and probably never will