What Do We Need Men For?

It was during a trainjourney that I read E. Jean Carroll’s book What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal. For those who doesn’t know E. Jean Carroll, she is the former author of the Ask E. Jean advice column in Elle Magazine. In this book she describes her road trip on the east coast of the United States, with her poodle, Lewis Carroll, stopping in every town named after a woman between Eden, Vermont and Tallulah, Louisiana to ask women a crucial question: What Do We Need Men For?

If you expect a book just about male bashing, you are mistaken. It’s certainly that, but it’s also so much more. E. Jean Carroll’s style and spirited personality is being reflected in the book. It’s funny, witty, refreshing. But it’s also deadly serious, exhausting and depressing. It’s a testament of sexual violence, it’s about women’s compliance and silence that still allows patriarchy to persist. “Our combined silence becomes complicit in allowing patriarchy to remain the status quo,” said Carol Gilligan. But it is also about women sharing their stories and raising their voices, it’s about solidarity and defiance of moral and social conventions.

E. Jean Carroll does not offer any fixes; She is not concerned about with issues of toxic masculinity or any other issues that explain male behaviour. Her focus here is on the women, their struggles, their expectations, their dreams. She becomes the voice of all the women she meets during her journey, empathetic, angry and determined.

“What do we need men for?” I suppose a typical answer to Carroll’s question is: “Oh gosh, that’s tough. Not much, really.”