Reviewer: Bill McDonald – President of the MWSA (Military Writers Society of America)

Commentary that is Politically Incorrect, has Attitude – and makes no Apology! Author and founding “godfather of the men’s rights movement” of the 1970’s, R. F. Doyle holds nothing back in his newest book attacking gender discrimination and feminism as it relates to “unequal rights.”  His book “Save The Males: Its About Time” has something within its pages to offend most everyone including gays, feminist, politicians, judges, lawyers and the public at large.  Not because what he says is so wrong, or has false information, but that people do not want to hear his side of these issues.  So he throws it out there with an attitude and gives his comments on gender issues as he sees them.  He is not one to shy away from controversy.  He does not mince his words.

He fights a battle for “manhood” and “mens’ rights” is his latest book by looking at what the feminist movement is doing to males in general and to our society – including the weakening of our armed forces, the unfairness of the court system against men, mens’ sport programs in schools and what the “getting in touch with your feminine side” is really doing to males.  His book talks about how the courts work against men and the how divorce destroys men’s way of life while improving the ex-wives’ life style. He comments on child custody and alimony as well as other issues.  It is not a pretty picture he paints of what happens to men.

I think his biggest issues are the differential treatment between the genders and that women have now gotten “unequal” preferential treatment from society.  His battle is with equality for all – including males.  He book is a real education primer for any man facing a divorce, or just thinking of getting married in this country.  He makes no bones about his feelings and perhaps that is the real strength of his writing, since he holds nothing back and states publicly what others might only talk about in private.  He is not concerned with being labeled “politically incorrect,” but focuses on his message to men, whom he sees as victims of gender discrimination.

He has written several other very powerful manifestos dealing with the men’s movement including “The Rape of the Male.”  He is a “street fighter” on male equality issues and his comments and views are not filtered to make them popular or acceptable by all sections of our society.  I think that those who agree with his views will find this to be one of his best books to date, and will gain something from reading it.  Those who hate Mr. Doyle for his outspoken views on the dangers of what the feminist movement has done to males in our society, will still find reasons to throw rocks at him.  He is not writing this book for them,  but for those men out there who truly need his advice.  They will find this book helpful and will appreciate what he has done for them.  The truth of this book is that no one will come away after reading it without an opinion.  It will make you think.

Reviewer: Tom James, Esq.

The book provides a wealth of insights into gender relations, all presented in plain-spoken language. Mr. Doyle describes himself as “a social critic with the indelicacy to be candid, without punches pulled or regard for toes stepped on….” In so stating, he is being too modest. There are places in the book where it might be said that he steps on the entire foot, not merely the toes. Yet, everything in his book is backed up with well-documented research and facts that are impossible to deny. So many, in fact, that a person who has had no real education outside of classrooms and television would no doubt feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information it contains, all directly contradicting the propaganda that that has been regularly dispensed by the media and public schools for the past thirty years.

Describing the feminist men’s movement’s call for men to get in touch with their feminine side “hogwash,” he aptly observes that “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.” Family court judges he describes as “marriage butchers” who “deliver their sentences of death to families, with less time and attention than they devote to contemplating their lunch menu.” One of the keenest observations in the book, though, is the following: “If judges did to women what they routinely do to men—if they deprived them of their children, their homes, their property, their role, and compelled them to work and share their income with their ex-husbands, those judges would be torn to pieces by mobs of frenzied women.”

This dovetails nicely with another of his observations, that feminists demand both equality and inequality, depending on which of those happens to benefit women the most in a given context. Thus, for example, feminists demand equal treatment in the context of employment, but insist that they be treated as superiors to men in the context of child custody proceedings. Similarly, to allow a men-only club to exist is decried as sexist, while women-only clubs are called “empowering.” In short, “Spokeswomen profess to seek equality but demand special privilege.”

Doyle advocates for a fresh approach to gender norms, one based on recognition that “To establish norms based upon exceptions and to refuse to consider exceptions both defy common sense.” That is to say, he urges the use of intelligence in the analysis and resolution of gender issues. That is probably too radical a notion to be very widely accepted just now, but it is an idea whose time inevitably will come.

Reviewer: John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X)

I would call Mr. Doyle’s message, not common sense, but deeper wisdom from a hard, life-long fight in a time of social upheaval. His book is an event which future historians will have to study in understanding the generation which lived in the second half of the 20th century in the United States.

Mr. Doyle has provided us with a remarkable commentary on the grave injuries which feminism has caused society in Europe and North America. It is important not to be misled by the multiple meanings associated with a word. For there are different kinds of feminism, which on its face seems to mean simply the philosophy of promoting the well-being of women. In this broad sense, Pope John Paul II and Saint Edith Stein have written profound discourses which can be considered splendid illustrations of feminism. But the feminism to which Mr. Doyle draws attention is the view of such characters as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, – a species of secular humanism which, at bottom, teaches that there is nothing beyond physical reality, hence that there are no moral absolutes, no higher dimensions, no afterlife, and that the meaning of life is making the most of here and now. Feminism in this sense adapts secular humanism to women in particular, and, as such, it is the philosophy of enabling women to dominate and exploit men.

When I was a law professor in the 1970s, I wrote about the impact of the 19th Amendment upon the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, naively believing that I was living at the dawn of a new era in which women generally would become intellectual, responsible, truthful, brave, and strong as has been traditionally expected of men, – no longer protected, fairer, idealized, and gentler creatures of the hearth and home, etc…

My expectations of those blissful days of academic folly were, of course, totally unrealistic. I admit it. My consolation is that so too were the expectations of most men who then welcomed the rise of women with high hopes of a better world. The maturation of women was fine, and important truth was discovered in scholarship, but our surreal hopes were irresponsible. And hard experience taught us the truth, which was eventually articulated by Mr. Doyle’s mentor, the late Professor Daniel Amneus. The driving force behind the popular Friedan-Steinem brand of feminism, as Professor Amneus taught, is nothing other than the desire for unlimited female sexual hedonism, which, in a way, is making the most of here and now, and doing so in a manner designed to assure the capacity of women to dominate and exploit men. And to achieve this objective, radical changes were necessary: first, marriage had to be made meaningless, then destroyed; and, second, every woman had to have the option either to terminate any pregnancy on demand, or to keep her child and turn it into a cash cow.

And lo! Marriage, which has traditionally been considered a contract of great importance to and solemn obligations of both husband and wife, capable of dissolution only for grave cause, including either serious breach or real impossibility, has in recent decades become an arrangement which a woman may terminate on whim often procured by alienation of affections once unlawful but now freely allowed. The process begins by a court order, issued upon affidavit which may be freely perjured without penalty, enforced without notice and hearing, and throwing the man out of his home and on the street. The female is then allowed her freedom and she takes most assets on grounds contrived, all without cause as a practical matter. Abortion has always been a delicate question, and the common law recognized limits on criminalization, although before our time it was never encouraged as it is today. But today we have abortion on demand at practically any stage of pregnancy as a monument deemed more sacred than Magna Carta. And if the female wants to keep the child, she has freely at her disposal the right to demand tribute from her prostrated mate under the guise of child support, but unrelated to the cost of raising children and amounting to tax-free alimony and transfer of wealth, collected in her behalf by huge armies of government bureaucrats virtually unrestrained in their powers and efficiency.

I should add here that, while much bad legislation has been enacted, the real culprits in the final analysis are family court judges with unbridled discretion. And because their power is virtually unchecked in law and practice, family court judges are typically neurotic, cruel, dangerous, predatory, lawless, and tyrannical. The reason was explained by Edmund Burke when he said that “power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.” No branch of the American judiciary has brought so much disgrace to the bench and generated so much hatred for authority, as our family courts, the lawyers who practice before them, and the judges who preside.

As Mr. Doyle points out effectively and clinically, a husband and a father has become a guest in his own home in the United States. He is a beast of prey who may be hunted without license at any time. The unhappy truth is that, unless a man links his destiny with a woman of extraordinary wisdom and virtue, marriage is unsafe and unwise. Many are responsible for this menace to Western civilization, but the most important culprits are divorce racket lawyers and family court judges. I have no apology to offer for my profession. We lawyers are guilty.

It will take time for enough people to understand that the likes of Mr. Doyle are right, and unspeakable casualties will still be suffered in great number, but eventually the time will come.