Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise

This book is at least as groundbreaking as Darwin's On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. And like these two books, The Mermaid and the Minotaur is difficult to accept. Human beings did not like the idea that we are related to "lower" species like apes (Darwin) nor did we like to know that our waking consciousness was not necessarily in charge of what we do(Freud). Dinnerstein proposes we now need to look at why we seem to be working so hard to destroy the planet (mother) on which we depend. Whether we repudiate or embrace her findings may well be our defining moment.The Mermaid and the Minotaur

I read this book twenty years ago when I was in college. I found (and still find) Dinnerstein's feminist argument for shared parenting to be one of those books that has the potential to change lives. She employs a variety of intellectual resources to make the case for a feminist social criticism that focuses on the dynamics of the nuclear family as the source of many, if not most, social problems. Her re-interpretation of Freud's work, and of the neo-Freudians who have moved beyond him (particularly Marcuse and Norman O. Brown) is sometimes difficult reading, but can with careful attention be followed even by those who have not waded through the original texts. This is a book that combines crystalline prose and incisive rational argument with passion and emotion. She argues for nothing less than a radical restructuring of the human family, and of the social/economic relationships that undergird family life. The kernel of her argument is that so long as we all are raised (exclusively or predominantly) by our mothers or by female caregivers, children will grow up with a deep-seated resentment of the feminine (since no parent can perfectly anticipate a child's needs, and all children, in growing up, will be conditioned by our infantile rage at our parent's imperfections).There's much more to it than this. I've read dozens of self-help and pop psychology books (think of Deborah Tannen and John Gray) which try to explain why males and females are the way they are; I've never read an analysis which goes as deeply as this one into a powerful and persuasive explanation of the role of sexuality in the formation of human character. If you read this book and pay attention, you will experience multiple shocks of recognition; you will suddenly understand your self and your relationships with the opposite sex in a new light; and you may even be persuaded to change the way you live your life and raise your children.At the age of twenty, I was persuaded by Dinnerstein to be (when I did have kids) an active and equal participant in the raising of my children, from changing diapers to feeding and everything else. I was so convinced of the importance of her analysis, and of its potential to change lives, that I have, in the past few decades, bought and given away as gifts eighty-eight copies to male and female friends. (I figured that if I just told people what a great book it was, few would follow up, but that if I actually bought it and thrust it into their hands, they might be moved to actually read it.) I'm not sure how many of these were actually read by the recipients. But I can report that out of 88 copies given away, eight people came to me afterward and said something to the effect of, "This book changed my life." I think that's not a bad rate of return, especially when you consider that many people probably never got around to looking at it, or never had the patience to follow the argument through to the end.One bit of advice: Dinnerstein frequently int

Dorothy Dinnerstein's brilliant (though somewhat difficult) book has been a very important book for me since it was first published back in the first part of the 1970s.Note that it is not "just another" "feminist " title. Indeed quite a few feminists have objected mightily to it over the years. The big problem, though, it that it has been roundly ignored over the years!Dinnerstein calls for a profound change in our womenmen relationships, maybe the most profound change, beginning at the birth of each child, when she believes we should try to ensure that fathers, males, are known to infants as well as their mothers and other females are.Only by starting kids off early with equal "exposure", and starting adults off with as close to equal responsibility for children as we can get it do we have much of a chance, she thinks, of raising grownups. As I've said already, I find her writing and her thought quite difficult, often, throughout the book: I think that's because what she presents is about as difficult as is gets for both men and women to understand, not to say accept.She wrote the book at a probably more dangerous time, when the cold war was in nearly full force. So the book may seem some apocalyptic to some readers. If so, I think that would be unfortunate. This quiet academic pretty much hidden away at Rutgers (she died in an auto accident in the early 90s) wrote what was and is now the best layout of why Boys Will Be Boys and why girls are almost always second-class citizens - and why both of those, basic as they are (to say the least), are bad things, very bad.Dorothy Dinnerstein had a good sense of humor, but she knew gravitas when she saw it, and she could do it well!

Dinnerstein's thesis is that many of the neurotic features (e.g. sexism, self-hatred, exploitation of nature...) of the present human condition emerge as a direct result of the fact our earliest parent is most often and most consistently female. Drawing on a variety of theories and sources such as psychoanalysis, feminism, and literature, she paints a disconcerting picture of the human present and future; a picture that she hopes will, given its simple and ingenious solution, spur us to change. She lays out her argument lucidly and with brutal thoroughness, coaxing even the most unwiling reader's complete argreement. The implications of this book for humanity are ignored only at our great peril.