She toured the world. The book also created a political anxiety among many women that there was a patriarchal conspiracy operating to restrict their freedom and rights in society, promoting the belligerence that many young women display toward all things male. The worm crusher that turned Faludi made her fortune putting the boot into men and portraying women as their victims. So it may seem surprising to see her reappear today with what appears to be a bright shining new attitude. Faludi has spent the time since writing her last book analysing men and what she finds is not a pretty picture.
Men are in crisis.
To reach this conspectus with a currently popular vision of men as being pervasively confused and screwed up creatures, she had to slip many of her previous feminist attitudes behind the couch. The usual approach taken by feminists when dealing with men as victims, is to lay the blame at male feet. Feminists usually indicate that men are victims of the system that they themselves created. If they are victims, it is of their own patriarchy and therefore again, men have only themselves to blame. And yet Faludi clearly adopts a position toward men that seems positively warm and sympathetic.