reading (In Defense of Women)

[eor]

I finished reading H. L. Mencken's "In Defense of Women" on the train on the way north yesterday. It's really mis-titled. Mencken was a true stirrer of mud, he wrote things that would piss people off. In this book he takes swipes at almost everyone. Men, politicians, suffragettes, and modern Christians take the brunt of the criticism, but don't worry, ordinary women get a fair share of insults. He mixes in sharp social criticism with flawed logic and off the cuff assumptions which take a lot of the sting out of his basic criticism.

It's really tough for me to sort out where Mencken is being sincere and where he's propping up a rather silly looking straw man. The attitudes today are so much different than they were at the time of the writing, that even the most progressive sounding passages are tainted with language that today would get an author strung up with a rope made of used pantyhose. There was one chapter that I thought might still fly today, maybe.

Are there things in here that are sage and true? Yes. But Mr. Mencken was a product of his time and this makes him look like a hick in ours. There are a lot of cringe worthy assumptions that you have to get through to see any progressive thought.

3. H. L. Mencken "In Defense of Women"