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By J. Steven Svoboda... |
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by Jed Diamond.
Naperville, Illinois: Source Books, 1997.
Jed Diamond has written and Source Books has published an ambitious, very attractively designed book whose very title is likely to provoke skepticism and jokes. Male Menopause?
Diamond is very serious, and he tackles his subject head on. The book opens with a "Hot Flash" section (cute title) which summarizes some of the key points to be addressed. He is not shy to set forth analogies between the male and female experiences of midlife transition even while acknowledging that when he himself started researching the subject he never expected to find such startling parallels. Male Menopause addresses both the physical and emotional changes men undergo as they approach and cross midlife. It also delves into spiritual challenges that men confront as they pass into the second half of their life, such as the maintenance of health and sexual vitality, and the quest for "sex and love on the second mountain."
The reader is likely to find himself or herself experiencing a complex reaction to this work. Certainly it is gratifying to see a personable, dedicated men's activist and author create a work with such high production values which proves so compellingly readable.
Diamond makes adroit use of his courage and talent at introducing pertinent stories from his personal life into a broader narrative. I made particular note of his willingness to share with the reading public his conversations with doctors about his difficulties achieving erection, a subject most men would find hard to discuss even with their partner or best friend. I enjoyed his great skill at weaving personal and general/political information together in a nearly seamless fabric.
He also has some original insights to share. For women, he writes, hormonal shifts have been emphasized at midlife while psychosocial changes have been neglected, while for men the reverse is true. (This is an interesting reversal of our normal tendency to associate psychological/emotional issues with women and physical issues with men.) Later Diamond reexamines our programmed role differentiation as it related to sexual jealousy. His analysis suggests that while evolution selected for women who were more threatened by their mate and another woman having an emotional connection than they were by a sexual connection, it selected for men who are more concerned about sexual fidelity.
I also appreciated the practical tips regarding what men should do to prevent prostate problems: drink lots of water (your urine should be light in color), have an active but moderate sex life, eat plenty of soy foods, reduce saturated fat intake, and eat meals rich in tomatoes. His discussion of the numbness and death he now sees in young men's eyes in place of the confusion and rage he used to see is downright terrifying and brilliant.
Clearly Male Menopause offers much of great value. At the same time, the book is far from perfect. I frequently felt like Diamond strained to shoehorn the broad range of male issues he discusses into his somewhat artificial male menopause theme. He seems to have difficulty finding an authorial voice for the book which he can sustain through the various different topics he addresses. I frankly find it difficult to believe that men's hormonal cycles are comparable in intensity to those of women. Also, the book's presentation and structure would have benefited from more forceful editorial input. At times its tone struck me as overly popularized, apparently slanted to a fairly low common denominator.
More critically, despite his awareness of men's issues, Diamond often shies away from even some obvious points which he really ought to be making. When he writes about domestic violence, he starts by asking, "Why are men so violent against women?" without addressing women's equivalent but far less widely acknowledged domestic violence against men. A few pages later when he gets around to discussing men's victimization by other men, he still fails to mention female-on-male violence. Perhaps even more surprisingly, he fails to address circumcision in the main text of the book despite the fact that it significantly contributes to one of his major topics--American men's loss of sexual sensitivity as we age. And Diamond discusses the theory of evolutionary psychology, which posits a "surplus of redundant males" who "can be assigned to the dangerous, high-casualty 'perimeter' tasks on which physical security and survival are based" but fails to analyze the crisis of the disposable male which has thus been created. We live in a world in which 94% of workplace deaths affect men and only men are considered expendable on the battlefront. Many men don't even make it to male menopause or arrive there as physically wasted hulks due to the sacrifices they have made for family and society. Surely this was worthy of at least a mention.
While Diamond's strategy of avoiding or finessing controversial issues may make his book easier to digest for Americans media-fed with the familiar story of the bad male and the virtuous female, such missed opportunities seem highly regrettable.
Male Menopause succeeds much more completely as a reference book than as a work of art. And yet, partly because of its accessible format and style, it has the potential to be the book that educates many thousands of Americans regarding men's health issues and more general political and emotional crises affecting the male gender.
Just the resources section alone is worth the price of the book. Despite some idiosyncratic choices such as the omission of the National Coalition of Free Men as a men's rights membership organization, and a number of inaccuracies in phone numbers and web site addresses, the range of resources cited is truly invaluable and admirable.
For all its flaws, Jed Diamond's latest book again bears the distinctive stamp of his unique courage, wisdom, and commitment to men's work. With Male Menopause, he has truly put the "men" back in menopause. Male Menopause may prove itself one of the two or three most influential men's books to appear this decade.
©2000 J. Steven Svoboda
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