Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel"

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi first became interested in writing about feminism in the fifth grade, when she polled her classmates to determine their feelings about the Vietnam War and legalized abortion. In the furor that followed Faludi's release of her data showing her peers' liberal attitudes, Faludi came to realize, as she put it in a recent interview, "the power that you could have as a feminist writer. Not being the loudest person on the block, not being one who regularly interrupted in class or caused a scene, I discovered that through writing I could make my views heard, and I could actually create change."

The daughter of a homemaker and a Hungarian holocaust survivor, Faludi was raised in Queens and attended Harvard, where she studied literature and American history. After graduating in 1981, Faludi worked for a number of newspapers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, before devoting her time to writing Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991), a study of the media's assault on feminism. Backlash won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction in 1991 and made Faludi a household name. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine alongside Gloria Steinem and, almost overnight, became a national spokesperson on women's rights and the future of feminism.

While doing research for Backlash, Faludi began to wonder why the men who opposed women's progress were so angry. In setting out to understand this anger, Faludi interviewed a religious brotherhood, the Promise Keepers, sex workers in the pornography industry, union members, the unemployed, and other males who felt disempowered or disenfranchised. "The Citadel," which presents Faludi's investigation into why male cadets were so enraged by the admission of women into the military academy, is one part of this project and has since been incorporated into Faludi's second book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (1999). The surprising thesis of Stiffed is that men, too, have suffered during the recent social upheavals because "working with others anonymously and loyally to build something larger than yourself is no longer seen as glorious." Although Faludi holds out the hope for a society in which men and women can work together cooperatively, she also believes that "[t]o revive a genuine feminism, we must disconnect feminism from the individual pursuit of happiness and reconnect it with the individual desire for social responsibility: the basic human need and joy to be part of a larger, meaningful struggle, which engages the entire society."

Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel", The New Yorker, September 5, 1994, 62-81.
Initial quotation drawn from Brian Lamb's interview with Susan Faludi on Booknotes, October 25, 1992; closing quotation drawn from Kate Melloy's interview with Susan Faludi, "Feminist Author Susan Faludi Preaches Male Inclusion".
Digital Image drawn from Ohio University's Society for Women Students and Supporters.

Links to Explore

Susan Faludi interview: a discussion of Stiffed with New York Times book editor, Bill Goldstein, on Sept. 28, 1999, includes downloadable audio file (requires free registration).

The Citadel's home page: includes links the Department of Cadet Activities, the Citadel Code, and a discussion of the history and symbolism of the Citadel's ring.

Backlash.com: home page for the "equalitarian movement."

Questions for Learning:

• In her interview with Bill Goldstein, Faludi states that, while writing Stiffed, Faludi, she came to understand that male dissatisfaction with feminism is actually evidence of a larger sense of betrayal that men feel--a sense that they have been betrayed by a society that " had made a promise to them and not delivered." Do the young men Faludi discusses in "The Naked Citadel" show this sense of betrayal? Who and what has betrayed them? Have the cadets and Shannon Faulkner both been betrayed by the same forces?

• The Citadel's home page includes a link to the Revised Plan for Assimilation of Female Cadets, which includes eighty action items. This plan was put into effect after the publication of Faludi's article. What do you think she would make of it? What would she want you to notice about the plan? Do you see evidence that the culture she has described at The Citadel is changing?

• In "Is this man the Catherine MacKinnon of the Men's Movement?" backlash.com founder Rob van Mechelen provides his explanation for the necessity of creating a forum where men and women can work together to promote an "equalitarian" society." What do you think of Mechelen's justification for his organization? Is an institution like The Citadel best seen as fighting the "backlash against men"? How can one measure whether a backlash--be it against women or men--is occurring? Where might you turn for evidence?

Questions for Connecting:

• Both Abu-Lughod and Faludi study women and cultural institutions. What do you make of their methods? Do they describe what they see or do they argue for a way of seeing? After reading these two pieces, do you come away with the sense that the challenges that women face are the same the world over or are there important differences between the challenges women in the West face and those faced by women in the Middle East?

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