Are Men Necessary? Audiobook

Four decades after the sexual revolution, nothing has worked out the way it was supposed to. The sexes are circling each other as uneasily and comically as ever, and now the New York Times columnist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for incisive commentary about the mysteries and muddles of sexual combat in America sorts through the confusion.

In a new book filled with chapters that surprise and amuse, Dowd explains why getting ready for a date went from glossing and gargling to Paxiling and Googling; why men may be biologically unsuited to hold higher office, given their diva fits and catfights, teary confessions and fashion obsessions; why women are fixated on their looks more than ever; and why the new definition of “having it all” is less about empowerment and equality than about flirting and getting rescued, downshifting from “You go, girl!” to “You go lie down, girl.”

Women’s liberation has been less a steady trajectory than a confusing zigzag. Feminism lasted for a nanosecond and generated a gender tangle that has bewitched, bothered, and bewildered men and women for 40 years. Now comes a woman to cut through the tangle and tickle Adam’s rib. The battle of the sexes will never be the same.