Excerpt from The Wonder of Girls by Michael Gurian, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

As a young feminist, I recall being moved by the victim theory years ago. It filled me with sympathy for the women I cared about, and cautioned me to be the best man I could in their presence. Years later, watching Special Victims Unit, anyone would be prone to agree with the females-are-victims theory.

But mustn't we ask ourselves if victimization by male-dominant society is a predominant factor in the lives of all girls and women? And mustn't we further ask if victim identity is ultimately useful, as a self-image, to our daughters' developing identity? Might there be long-term effects of the girls-are-victims theory on human relationships as a whole, and thus on our civilization?

In the mid 1990s, Christina Crawford, author of Mommie Dearest, told me during a dinner party: "Males destroy, females create. That's just the way it is."

Years ago we might not have noticed that in order for comments like hers to make us more conscious of the abuses of males and the trials faced by girls and women, social thinkers like Crawford made a choice -- to promulgate a universal enemy: destructive masculinity. Thus, the majority of girls and women -- who are not victims of violence, rape, date rape, or harassment -- are nonetheless, in theory, still very much victims, because the enemy does not need to be an individual man; it is "masculinity." As recently as 1998, the feminist Carol Gilligan told me that we could not protect either our girls or our boys until we completely deconstructed masculinity. It is inherently dangerous, in her opinion, and has to go.

In Reviving Ophelia, one of the most effective books to map girls' distresses at the end of the twentieth century, psychologist and author Mary Pipher utilized the female victim/male villain theory. She argued that among the causes of a girl's loss of self during adolescence is that "most fathers received a big dose of misogyny training [training in women-hatred]." In her very powerful and important book, she shows us the many ways that our daughters are potentially victimized by their socialization in this culture: their spirits crushed, their bodies emaciated, their minds manipulated. When I spoke with Mary before a seminar we gave together, she admitted that she thought part of the success of Ophelia was due to its ride on an ideological wave of victim thinking.

She didn't consciously try to exploit this feminist idea, she told me, but it had ended up being very effective.

Mary's book is effective, because, like no other, it tells the story of girls in distress with beauty and grace; it has had a profoundly important impact and is very useful to those people raising daughters who have been hurt and are hurting. At the same time, it participates, like so many other girls' books, in propagating the myth that girls' lives are dominated by distresses predominantly caused by female socialization in a misogynistic male-dominant society.

For my daughters' sake I must ask: What happens to a culture that promotes the idea that males are inherently defective, violent, or women-hating, and females are inherently victims? How will my daughters make the compassionate alliances they need when they are adults if they are trained to believe boys and men are predominantly destructive to them?

Since most boys and men are good people -- according to the FBI, 1 percent of men commit our crimes -- and most girls and women are not born victims of bad men, isn't it my responsibility to help my daughters live, as much as possible, in trust of males? How am I to do this if the voices of female culture condemn men so constantly?

Gail and I, and many like us, strive to protect our daughters' abilities to love, trust, and be compassionate. We hope they trust not only men, but also the highest moral standards of masculinity as well, without acceding to the bad boys and men out there. The Wonder of Girls is written in that spirit of trust. I hope it challenges you to explore where you stand as a parent of daughters, on issues of victimization and masculinity. I hope it challenges you to ask and answer these questions: Do I choose to like boys and men, or not? Do I choose to fear masculinity or do I take the time to guide my daughters through it? Our daughters are making these choices all the time. How will we guide them in our own thinking and living?

Copyright © 2002 by Michael Gurian