Ian Brown, discussing What I Meant to Say: the Private Lives of Men, a book essays written by men for a female audience which he edited: “Women now initiate sex, and they don't want the ordinary, they want the fancy stuff. Now, young men are so concerned about performing for women that they take Viagra. These are big changes for men who used to run the world. At the same time, all these age-old problems and dilemmas that have never changed are still there; the physical danger of being a man, of going to war, of going to work - seldom acknowledged but a real problem; the trenchant loneliness of being a man. The sense of physical pointlessness if you're not having a baby and there's no war on, what the hell do you do, exactly; the unbelievable guilt that all the men in this book seem to notice and feel; the sometimes unstoppably physical nature of male desire, which is, believe me, a problem.”
Cherie Thiessen reviewed the book for January Magazine. No word, at least not in the above article, on what Brown thinks about Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd.