cover image Naked at Gender Gap: A Man's View of the War Between the Sexes

Naked at Gender Gap: A Man's View of the War Between the Sexes

Asa Baber. Carol Publishing Corporation, $18.95 (247pp) ISBN 978-1-55972-114-1

Unreconstructed, in-your-face macho journalism, these essays are taken from the author's ``Men'' column in Playboy magazine. Male readers may take heart and female ones might learn something. Baber, self-appointed defender of Naked men (as in vulnerable and/or sexually available), aims his salvos at self-righteous, politically correct feminists who, he complains, have Playboy banned from 7-Eleven stores, attack men on Oprah Winfrey or put blinders on husbands' roving eyes. He advises men how to avoid charges of sexual abuse in a post-Hill-Thomas world and, in an uncharacteristic essay, congratulates feminists for their restraint following the William Kennedy Smith trial verdict. Don't look for subtle portrayals of women here, or of men, for that matter. The genders are stereotyped on either side of the Gap. The picture Baber paints is funny, enraging and/or accurate, depending on where one stands. (May)