Nov 26, 2005 05:38 PM
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(Updated Nov 26, 2005 05:49 PM)
I’d heard so much about this book – touted as one of the best monologues on relationships and a step towards better understanding man-woman interaction, it explains all you wanted to know and never understood about some of the most complex, intriguing, timeless mysteries – love, marriage and yes, the real truth about the birds and the bees – or so claim the hoardings.
After having bought the book with mucho enthusiasm, I attempted to read it. One chapter and I was filled with some vague disquiet - back it went into the book cupboard. I picked it up again a couple of times – trying to make some sense of it – till I finally gave it up.
What does the book say ?
Women are beautiful, ethereal, albeit somewhat empty-headed creatures.
Women are self-obsessed, narcissistic and vain to the point of sounding like dodo birds.
Women are mindless morons who are driven by chemical/biological changes in their bodies due to hormones
Women are doormats who give so much in relationships that they have little left of themselves at the end of their lives – and this is the cause of most relationship failures.
Women are wimps who need to be perennially clingy, weepy, observed sympathetically (somewhat like zoo animals) and most of all Understood or even Heard (tsk, tsk)
Women are neurotic, financially out of control monsters who love to shop, shop and shop. They spend all the money that their husbands earn irresponsibly.
And last but not the least – a woman can neverbe upfront and honest.
Are you ready to scream?
Here’s more.
Men, on the other hand, are silent, uncommunicative creatures who are so clumsy and tangled up in their own emotions that they can’t move a foot without tripping over themselves.
Men are cavemen-like entities who find it difficult to relate to any other being (except cavemen like themselves over rough and tough matters like say, duh, soccer).
Men are also mindless morons who are driven by chemical/biological changes in their bodies due to hormones
Men have little sense of introspection or self-analysis – they merely see themselves as money-making machines and derive their sense of self-worth from this one fact.
It is a man’s inherent nature to listen to a problem and solve it while a woman’s is to go round-and-round in circles talking about it and discussing it to no end.
Men are always upfront and honest – they are incapable of deceit (except of the most harmless kind).
Men can never ask for or accept help as it hurts their massive egoes.
And further such blah….
My thoughts
This book is based on the author, John Gray’s years of experience as a marriage counselor – and that is so obvious. This is somewhat like describing the behavior of all children based on those of a problem child. The book, in fact, is full of gender bias. It promotes the entire mentality that pigeonholes women into “kitchen and bedroom” kind of roles while encouraging chauvinistic attitudes of looking at women like brainless plastic dolls and men as cavemen prototypes.
There was a time when a book such as this would be thrown into the trashcan like so much hogwash – but does this happen today? No, instead our publicity-mongering book-sellers proclaim it as one of the greatest self-help books for couples and troubled relationships. All this in the name of pseudo-psychological babble.
Using this book as a self-help book is like sounding the death knoll on any normal, healthy relationship. If you have read this book and gotten taken in even remotely by the spiel that is being handed out to you in the guise of a description of a relationship, your chances of being human are almost over
As an endnote, the author seems wholly unaware of the millions of women – in medicine, science, business and life – who are paving the way with sheer grit, intelligence and dignity. He seems totally unbelieving of a woman’s role as a financial planner, thinker and doer. And he encourages the reader to believe the same. For all we are led to believe, both men are women are entirely clueless as to where they came from – forget about their partners.
