Man Whisperer?

Sometimes I feel like I spend so much time on this blog attempting to figure out how to make feminism better that I forget to rant against the blatantly sexist ignorance coming from the right wing gender bigots.  Well, now's my chance.
 
Fox News' (that's a good place to start ranting right?) Pop Tarts (even the column's name is offensive) recently reviewed a book called "The Man Whisperer."  (The book title goes on attempting to sound pseudo intellectual by including a colon.)  The basic gist is that women can control men by remembering that men "want nothing more than to be 'the man' in the relationship, the one who provides for and protects his woman."

Pop Tarts makes a point of telling us that the person writing this quote is female because she understands that what they are saying is sexist, she just doesn't understand that it is sexist to both women AND MEN!!!

If men are unable to handle successful women, it is because they themselves are still trapped behind the expectation that they should be 'the man' in the relationship.  Liberated men love powerful women.  Masculinity is enforced partly through alienation.  A man who is insufficiently manly is uncool and undesirable.  Although some women have started to see generosity, kindness and other paternal qualities as attractive, many men and women are still incredibly hostile towards men who are "pussies," "wimps," "pussy whipped," or "weak."

A man who is entrapped is, of course, terrified that his partner will find him weak and feminine.  When a man's partner is more successful than he is, the threat is that he will die alone (although even saying it makes me sound weak and effeminate, which is why most men never admit it).

The answer, of course, is not to perpetuate that fear by playing the damsel in distress to the armor bedecked power lifting white knight.  It is not to "stroke his ego" as the authors of "The Man Whisperer" suggest.  The answer is to liberate your partner from the fear of alienation by exposing masculinity for what it is; a snare entrapping men into being oppressors with fragile egos who need to be broken like horses.