Fear and Envy

This book is an exploration of man's fear and deeply repressed envy of woman's power and sexuality. By examining the subordination of women in the United States and three developing areas, conflicting attitudes of purity and pollution are evident. The struggle to be a man and the favoritism of boys are taken into account. The triumphs and surrenders of gender battles around the world are given a new insightful look. A thoughtful and provocative book that questions many assumptions.Fear and Envy is a deeply scholarly and insightful book. Dr. Ransohoff has marshaled an immense amount of data in support of her arguments, and she demonstrates with compelling persuasiveness just how envious, resentful, and fearful men are of women's ability to create life, of her body, and of her sexuality. The fact that this is researched and confirmed across cultures is a vastly important psychological finding. We are not just dealing with anomalous cases. Female procreative dynamism has an ineluctable and unavoidable psychological impact on the human male. Men may differ significantly, but whether we are talking about patients, politicians, or executives, whether dealing with religions, cultures, and popular fantasies, Dr. Ransohoff demonstrates how entrenched and disturbing is this masculine problematic. No longer can machismo, patriarchalism, and Don Juanism be seen as signs of strength of confidence. They reveal our weakness, envy, and fear of the feminine, our needs to disparage what terrifies us, to rationalize and disguise our jealously and anxiety. Dr. Ransohoff is no male-basher, nor is her tendentious, ideological, or hostile. She has shed light on a ubiquitous and cross-cultural human problem.Rita Ransohoff is the author of 'Fear and Envy', published 2001 under ISBN 9781891305641 and ISBN 1891305646.