Why the Modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it
Author: Richard V. Reeves

Many feminists who are still healing from their own traumatic experiences of gender oppression had a hard time accepting this book. I tried to dive into it with no assumptions and I found this book to be of feminist values.

Richard Reeves applauds the work done in honor of equality for womxn and credits popular feminist theory. The book is also broken out into chapters that approach the problems boys are facing in a divide of gender, class, and race. These are the primary values of which popular feminist theory follow. 

There are a lot of great stats that show the progress of womxn in this book! I understand the point is to show that men/boys are lagging behind the work of womxn and I couldn’t help but be proud of how far we have come! 

Womxn are dominating high school, undergrad and masters programs. There are accredited graphs in the book that show the progress of womxn in education, society, and the workforce and Richard Reeves acknowledges the wage gap. 

The overall premise is that Boys/Men don’t have a solid path forward to live in a world based on equality. They are being left behind and perpetuating gender violence, oppression, and many end up incarcerated. 

There is a lot of time dedicated to Black American males in this book and how race, class, and gender issues are holding them back from being successful.

There were some things said in this book I don’t agree with and I think that goes for most books. Richard Reeves is recognizing that the infrastructure put forth by womxn is working, the work is slow but with persistence we see change and he’s pointing out that there isn’t a clear path on how to raise boys with human rights values that are equivalent to the structure of intersectional feminism. This book is an attempt at using intersectional feminism as a base to build on how to raise modern males that have human right/feminist values without saying all men should be feminist. 

If you are a mentor to boys, raising boys, working with boys then this book is for you! If you want to see all the work that feminism has done laid out in a snapshot, then this book is also for you! It surprised me to see the progress, we know there is so much more to do and it was great to take a moment to acknowledge the growth and to notice how male leadership is being affected by feminism.