David Leser - Women, Men, and the Whole Damn Thing: Feminism, Misogyny, and Where We Go from Here

PRAISE FOR WOMEN, MEN, AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING

I started reading this book with my heart in my mouth and finished it with a sense of profound relief. At last, a man has listened and understood. David Leser has taken women, their lives, their pain, their fears and their desires as seriously as he takes his own. It is all we ask.

JANE CARO, author of Accidental Feminists

One of our finest longform journalistscertainly our deepestdives into the treacherous waters of #MeToo (and then some) and emerges with something so timely, connecting and regularly sublime that it feels like it was written as much for me and my mates as it was for my daughters. Resolutely human. Utterly essential. Wholly unputdownable.

TRENT DALTON, author of Boy Swallows Universe

It takes couragearguably even follyfor a man to explore and interrogate #MeToo. The brilliance of David Leser though, is he never forgets to interrogate himself either. Instead of avoiding the complications, nuances and contradictions of a seismic cultural moment, Women, Men & the Whole Damn Thing leans into them. This clarifying and precise book will leave everyonebut especially fellow mendeeply uncomfortable with the questions posed, and the destabilising answers reached. I want to hire a plane and airdrop this book onto footy ovals, boardrooms, electoral offices and boys schools.

BENJAMIN LAW, author of The Family Law

Staggering in its range and depth. Leser sets out the whole horror story, the shocking scale of centuries of violence to women and girls. But he offers real hope at the same time A landmark book.

STEVE BIDDULPH, psychologist and author of Raising Boys in the Twenty-first Century

David Leser has for years been one of Australias finest long-form journalists, and here he takes on one of the most important subjects of our time. What begins as an examination of the global #MeToo movement turns into a poignant, sometimes personal and often horrifying deep dive into past and present masculinity and the mess of human relations thats left in its wake. In grappling with these monumental themes, Leser is at one point advised by writer Helen Garner to just humbly approach the mountain and go up it. Women, Men & the Whole Damn Thing does reach a summit in this ever-fluid, ongoing debate, and the view it offers forces you to rethink almost everything you thought you knew about female/male relationships, and plants a flag of hope for the future.

MATTHEW CONDON, author of Three Crooked Kings

Brilliantly argued, fiercely lucid, there wont be a more vital book this decade. Nor one to be more widely read, argued with, feltand comprehended. Leser captures our need to wake up finally to the most ancient harming of all: mens conditioned and often dangerously aggressive attitudes towards womenand themselves. Pushing boundaries or leaping them, Women, Men & the Whole Damn Thing illuminates changes every bit as urgent as rescuing the planetwhich is utterly interdependent with them.

STEPHANIE DOWRICK, author of Intimacy and Solitude and Seeking the Sacred

David isnt an ideologue finding evidence to support a conclusion hes already arrived at. As ever hes a fearless searcher after the truth in a complex situation. Hes horrified as he unearths the grim statistics of male violence and mistreatment of women, but at the same time concerned that #MeToo can tip over into lynch mob mentality, condemning lesser crimes with the same ferocity as greater ones. But his final verdict is unequivocal. #MeToo is a necessary clarion call that male/female relationships need urgent restructuring, not just for the good of women, but to benefit us all.

DAVID WILLIAMSON, playwright

As we agonise over the breadth and complexity of the volcanic eruption captured by the #MeToo movement, David Leser has given us a giftthe gift of deeply considered thinking. This book is a triumph of storytelling, painstaking research, personal vulnerability and nuance. I did not really believe anyone could do justice to the size and scope of this topic, and David has proved me mightily wrong. As I pored over every page I variously felt enraged, sorrowful, entertained, respectful and, at the last, hopeful.

AUDETTE EXEL, Founder of the Adara Group, former Telstra NSW Business Woman of the Year and Australian Philanthropist of the Year.

Curiosity, courage and candour are David Lesers great strengths as a journalist. Here, he sets out to understand the explosion of female fury that is the #MeToo movement and ends up asking himself some tough questions. A wistful one too: should he have asked the beautiful stranger on the French train to have a drink with him?

JANE CADZOW, journalist

I am a straight, white, middle-class male who has breathed the untroubled air of privilege all my life.

This, some will arguehave already arguedmakes me spectacularly ill-equipped for the task that lies ahead, which is nothing less than trying to understand the eruptions of female anger and distress that have shaken the world since October 2017, following the New York Times and the New Yorker magazines shocking revelations of alleged sexual abuse by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Certainly, my own daughter Hannah begged me not to wade into this debate when the opportunity first presented itself in the form of a magazine article a few weeks after the Weinstein scandal had blazed across America. It was late 2017 and Katrina Strickland, the new editor of Good Weekend magazine, called to see if I was interested in writing again for the publication. I was, I said, depending on the story.

When we met a few days later to discuss ideas, I kept returning to the news reports filled with the uproar and the seeding of the new social protest movement known as #MeToo.

Theres only one story Id really be interested in doing at the moment, I said, And this is it.

Like almost everyone I knew, I was gripped by what had been unfolding in America. Every day a new name, another industry, another once-darkened corridor of power held up to the blinding light of disgrace.

Names had been falling everywhere, human skyscrapers of celebrity crashing to the earth, and it felt like a 9/11 moment: we knew the world had changed irrevocablyor was in the process of changing irrevocably; we just couldnt grasp quite how, or to what extent.

I actually had no idea how I would approach the story, or, in fact, whether I should. Hannah feltunderstandably, I can see in retrospectthat I didnt truly appreciate what was unfolding, that I had no real moral imagination for the depth of female fury breaking out across the world. That wasnt to say she saw me as a male reactionary, only that she saw me for what I was, and am: a man blessed by all the favours a good life confers.

Dad, we dont want to hear from you right now, she said as we sat on my balcony overlooking the palm-fringed rooftops of Sydney. Not unless youre being totally supportive.

It was our second conversation on the subject in two weeks. The first had roused her indignation. Id said something along the lines of: I worry about where this is heading, whats it going to do for malefemale relationships? How are men and women going to relate now in the workplace? What will be the new rules for courtship? What if men are falsely accused?