Just Sayin'

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Of Flags and Mutts

Is this an appropriate use of the U.S. flag? The flag of a nation countless American servicemen have died for? The flag of our country's sovereignty? I would say no.

Do those who denigrate people for honoring Confederate heritage and who think such honor disrespects the USA themselves show little concern about disrespect for their country and its flag?

As we used to say back in high school, is grass green? Is the pope Catholic?









 

Outed and Stung, Simpson Attacks ...

...with Lies 

Posted at X-Roads:

You can see the two lies immediately, if you're fairminded and objective ... and maybe even if you're not.

You can go here: http://mybacksass.blogspot.com/2014/09/advocating-violence-on-social-media.html  and read the post up, down, back and forth, and nine ways to Sundays and not find where I have said, implied, hinted or suggested that it’s just fine to advocate violence against people.

So that's lie number one.

My post simply points out when threats of violence are not credible. It doesn't say it's fine to advocate violence. It doesn't even claim that non-credible threats of violence are just fine ... only that they aren't credible, and that people with common sense can tell the difference. The point is that floggers and their ilk smear and slander Southern heritage folks by pretending that the minute number of  non-credible mentions of violence online are actual, credible threats.

The second lie is that I played the race card. Nope. I simply pointed out flogger hypocrisy on race and violence, to wit, they screech and point when Southern heritage folks post on Facebook non-credible mentions of violence that nobody means or intends to carry out, but then ignore an avalanche of actual violence perpetrated by minorities that is sweeping the country and documented in the alternative media -- and sometimes, when it can't be ignored, in the lamestream dinosaur media.

So the esteemed professor of history at a major state university has compounded his display of pettiness, denigration and questionable ethics on Amazon with two blatant, baldfaced, outright lies on his toxic blog.

Digging himself in deeper and deeper.

________________

(P.S.  I guess this lashing out pretty much confirms that the wish-list Brook Simpson linked to the "None of your business" fake profile is indeed Brooks D. Simpson, professor of history at Arizona State University....)

(P.S.S. Anybody who goes over there to X-roads, please share with me what the reference to The Economist is about. I mean, if you know. I myself have no idea....)

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

 

LOL! Simpson let this post reside at the top of his poison blog page for a WHOLE DAY before superseding it with a ho-hum post about Washington and Lee...  It garnered three equally lack-luster comments from his peanut gallery before being unceremoniously bumped.

Of course, we know why. Any time he mentions my blog -- or even if he just mentions me -- and especially if he posts a link to Backsass, he runs the risk of his floggerettes encountering the truth -- i.e., the whole of what I've written, as opposed to the parts he cherrypicks and then presents as if they're the whole, in order to mislead his readers.

This Quote of the Week post is a superb example ... he edits out the part where I identified the group that these "violent" comments came from. He edits out why I posted about black crime (because they show flogger types to be hypocrites on crime and race)....

He could remove the post altogether, but that would be too blatant; it's already been seen. Best thing to do is post another blog entry to distract from it. LOL.....  So transparent.

Advocating Violence on Social Media?

~I seriously want to string that A-- S-- bitch up by her toenails...seriously.
~Time to take A-- S-- behind the woodshed.
~It kills me! "U--s" need to be shot! Or dragged and beaten at the very least.
~I'll say it again...U--s should be shot. Well, maybe just beaten and dragged!
~We should form an angy mob. Anyone got pitchforks???
~Somebody needs a bitch-slap...

Confederate heritage supporters advocating violence against yankees or scalawags in Richmond or Oxford? White supes advocating violence against minorities of color?

Why, no. These are actual comments taken from folks on mid-century modern furniture/architecture Facebook groups who really, really disapprove of people who "chalk paint" beautiful, vintage wood furniture.

Basically, they hate to see something like this...
  

...ruined like this:
 

"Shabby chic" "distressed" "upcycled" and, for some reason, "coastal" and "beachy" -- these are all terms for beautiful piece of furniture made by craftsmen a half century ago or longer, and deliberately ruined with something called "chalk paint" (or, alternately, "milk paint") that was invented by a British woman named Annie Sloan and popularized by Martha Stewart and others.

Basically, MCM'ers acknowledge that sometimes a piece is too far gone to be stripped and refinished, and don't mind a nice paint job like this:
  

But to nail pallet wood to the top of a beautiful old dresser, remove drawers and call the empty spaces "cubbies" and replace lovely old brass drawer pulls with sailboat cleats, lengths of rope or dressmaker fabric tied into bows.... well, let's say these things try the patience of those who appreciate beauty and craftsmanship.
 

Here are some violence-advocating comments with most of my editing removed:

~Time to take Annie Sloan behind the woodshed.
~The perpetrators of these heinous crimes should be beaten with a chain and have the word 'shame' glued to them.
~It kills me! "Upcyclers" need to be shot! Or dragged and beaten at the very least.
~I'll say it again...Upcyclers should be shot. Well, maybe just beaten and dragged!
~Here are a couple of things that made ME cry today...an entire antique mall bursting at the seams with g-- m-- chalk paint. I seriously want to string that Annie Sloan bitch up by her toenails...seriously.
~We should form an angy mob. Anyone got pitchforks???
~Remind me to chalk paint them in their coffin
~Somebody needs a bitch-slap. This is my Sculptra hutch...how it OUGHT to look.
~Like I said you hear of tar & feather ? Only with milk paint
~I would probably have gone up to that booth, asked who painted the chairs, sucker punched them, and spent my flea market money on bail.
~I hope there is a special hell for bored tv watching vandals and their atrocious paint!!!

Members of these groups rarely if ever admonish the posters who advocate such violence. Why? Because they know the poster doesn't mean it. These are not credible threats and most people with common sense realize it. These are simply expressions of anger and frustration about something these folks find distressing.

And so it is with Confederate heritage advocates who post violent comments on Facebook. The floggers try to make some big deal out of it, especially Simpson and the Texas scalawag -- but really, how many times have Southern heritage advocates been in the news for perpetrating violence? And if they DID do so, you can bet it would be smeared all over the dinosaur media from coast to coast for months on end.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media ignores the increasing instances of minority mob violence.


You have to go to alternate sources for information about it. The mainstream media trumpets the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns, but ignores Antonio West, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome, Dillon Taylor, and on and on.

Floggers and floggerettes ignore them, too, in their zeal to paint white folks (no pun intended), especially Southerners, and most especially Southern heritage folks, as violent and dangerous menaces, and minorities as helpless victims. Mention it, and they hide behind, "But we blog about the Civil War!" This, despite the fact that all of them have, at one time or another, blogged about current, non-civil war related topics.

I suppose it's possible we could see headlines like, "Confederate heritage advocate goes on violent rampage" or "Mid-century modern fan shoots up antique mall" -- but I won't hold my breath...

____________________

Left: Beautiful Broyhill Sculptura console as it was meant to be. Right: Awful Broyhill Sculptura console after some paint-happy "improver" finished ruining it and put it on ebay... It's enough to make you cry...

(Note: It appears that the threads with these comments have been removed either by Facebook or group moderators; this has occurred since I compiled this list on August 25th or so. Many had been online for weeks or months but now, suddenly, they're gone. Perhaps somebody complained.)

Brooks Simpson Reviews My Novels

  UPDATE   UPDATE   UPDATE   UPDATE  

As of November 15, Simpson has changed his reviewer name 3 times, from None of your business to One Skeptical Observer, from that to True Confederate Patriot and now Not Connie's Sister. He finally got wise and removed the Wishlist link from his Activity page, as it took the visitor to the wishlist of Brooks Simpson and proved who was leaving the fraudulent reviews.

Also since this post was originally uploaded, he has fraudulent reviews of my other titles, as well.

End of Update

==========

I know y'all are probably tired of the reviews of Southern Man I've been posting lately, but I have one more to feature here, along with a review of Sweet Southern Boys, that Simpson posted at Amazon.com, under the handle "None of your business."

If the screen shots are a little too blurred to read comfortably, here are copy/paste transcripts:

Southern Man
Limp one moment, strident the next
By None of your business on January 7, 2014
Format: Paperback
This novel struck me as rather uneven, even predictable. I found the romantic scenes to be stale and unimaginative rehashs of mediocre bodice-busters. As for the main story, well, that seems contrived. Kudos for the passion and occasional character development.

Sweet Southern Boys
Thinly Disguised Tripe
By None of your business on August 2, 2014
Format: Paperback
Another novel by a southern partisan featuring false accusations of rape ans well as anti-feminist and anti-northern themes. This is not surprising given the author's interests, although googling her name also reveals a rather ugly side to her obsessions. If you share her perspective and can overlook (or embrace) her ugliness, then you'll enjoy the book. 

 I've been debating whether or not I should post these "reviews" here on Backsass. The first one appeared January 7, a day after this Backsass post: http://mybacksass.blogspot.com/2014/01/gar-rawn-teed-to-make-floggerette-heads.html -- the second, posted last month, isn't a book review at all, but a typical Simpson attack on me personally. I decided to post about them here because they just illustrate so clearly the desire to denigrate that has characterized Simpson's attacks on Southern heritage folks for so long.

The interesting thing is that if you do as he suggests and google my name, the ugliness you find in the search index is found mainly in the products of his toxic keyboard, posted at his poison blog (and those of his fellow floggers).

I mean, this is a man who creates fake polls in order to lure people to his malignant blog, to see posts meant to smear innocent people. It isn't hard for me to believe he'd create fake book reviews with advice to "google" a search term that will bring up links to posts he has written, designed to smear me.

Oh, and how do I know that "None of your business" is Brooks Simpson? Amazon told me, in a roundabout way. If you go to either of these reviews at Amazon (Southern Man or Sweet Southern Boys) and click the fraudulent name, None of your business, it takes you to this screen: None of your business's Activity.

At the lower left, you see this:

Click "Public Wish List (1)" and it takes you HERE where you find the wish list for Brooks Simpson, which is empty, at present. (If he's deleted it, you can see a screenshot of it HERE.)

I suppose it's possible somebody made a fake profile at Amazon using the name Brooks Simpson. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have made this second Amazon profile himself, solely for the purpose of attempting to hurt my book sales -- and was unaware that Amazon would tell on him. After all (to use a favorite Simpsonism), fake profiles are a flogger favorite.

Yes there is another Amazon profile for Brooks D. Simpson. But given his well documented desire to denigrate, lust to injure, hurt, harass and persecute with words, and his history of same (see here: http://bashdixie.blogspot.com/, and numerous examples of it at X-roads) I would need proof that someone else is using his name (either with or without his knowledge and permission).

If such proof -- and it has to be incontrovertible -- ever shows up, I will withdraw this post. But I seriously doubt I will have reason to do that.

You have to shake your head, though, don'tcha, that someone with a responsible position teaching and influencing impressionable young college kids, someone who is apparently respected in the civil war history community,  is a man of such pettiness and questionable ethics.

Oh, and for the record, I'm not posting this info out of anger, offendedness or sense of injury -- my books and I will be fine. My stories and my writing are good,  as the other Amazon reviews, and the ones I've recently posted here, attest.

Happy Anniversary, Virginia Flaggers!

   

 Now and then, Southern heritage critic and self-identified liar Corey Meyer (and others) mentions on Facebook and in various flogger comment threads how long the Virginia Flaggers have been flagging without success -- i.e., without persuading the VMFA to put the flags back up on the Pelham Chapel.

Apparently, it escapes Corey's notice just how successful the VaFlaggers have been. In the past three years, they have inspired countless others to step up to the plate and defend Southern heritage all across our Confederacy. They have raised flags in honor of the Confederate soldier's memory beside well-traveled thoroughfares in Virginia. They have done more than any other group in recent memory to raise awareness of the place of Confederate veterans in our history -- and our hearts.

It started three years ago with one person, Susan Hathaway, standing on the sidewalk with a battle flag. Soon she was joined by others. From the start they've said, "All it would take for us to go away is to put the flags back on the chapel."

The video I made for the VaFlaggers gives just the tiniest glimpse of what the VMFA could have prevented by the simple act of restoring two small flags.  Too late now. The genie is out of the bottle...

Or, to use the metaphor literally depicted in the video, Susan was the first pebble dropped into a pond, and by now, the ripples have become a tidal wave...

Congratulations, Virginia Flaggers! You have our honors and gratitude!

The VaFlagger's third memorial battle flag goes up at Cold Harbor, just 

in time for the group's third anniversary. Good job, Flaggers!

'Splaining Things to Ohio Guy

Continuing commentary on the X-roads comment thread about Dunsford's blog post...

Ohio Guy sez, "That there were kind slave owners who interacted with slaves as he describes is well documented. What Jerry does is to buy into the Lost Cause lie that this was the warp and woof of American slavery."

No, he doesn't "buy into" that and he doesn't promote it, either. At least, not in the blog post I saw.

The "warp and woof" can mean two things (aside from the literal meaning of the lengthwise or longitudinal threads and the perpendicular transverse threads being woven into fabric on a  loom). It can mean either the foundation, or the totality.

In any case, I could find nothing in Jerry's post claiming that the good relations he described was the totality of slavery, or even the foundation of it. He said he has read many stories about the positive relations beween slaves and their owners. Ohio Guy himself seems to confirm that, saying it's "well documented."

Dunford also mentioned movies that "show the whips and chains," and says that was the exception, not the rule. So he acknowledged the negatives, and certainly claimed nowhere that the positives were the totality, or even the basis ... only that they occurred.

I have never run across this "lost cause" claim Ohio Guy mentions, so maybe HE is the one lying... or let's be generous and say he's mistaken.

Ohio Guy goes on to say, "It was not. In fact, it has been noted by at least one historian that in some ways American slavery was the worst form of slavery that ever existed."

So? It's one historian's opinion -- which I happen to think is complete hooey. Why I think so will become apparent later in this post.

Ohio Guy: This is because in most other societies that practiced slavery there were laws that protected slaves. There were limits placed on what a master could do to punish a slave, and what he could expect of the slave in terms of work and production.  This was not true in the USA. The infamous words of Judge Taney in the Dred Scott case sum it up well: “[The Negro] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect . . .” This means that whippings, beatings, chains, separating families, selling “uppity” slaves “down the river,” etc., were all accepted practices in the antebellum South.

Izzat right?

Contrary to what is commonly believed, slaves did have some legal rights, such as support in age or sickness, a right to limited religious instruction, and the right to bring suit and give evidence in special cases. Custom gave numerous rights also, such as private property, marriage, free time, contractual ability and, to females, domestic or lighter plantation labor, which, however the master was not bound to respect. Barbarities such as mutilation, branding, chaining and murder were regulated or prohibited by law, but instances of cruelty were common before the 19th century."

The above is from a set of encyclopedias that my husband and I purchased early in our marriage, copyrighted 1972 - 1975. That means they are pre-political correctness. Political correctness (especially when coupled with hatred of antebellum white Southerners) demands that slavery be totally defined as "whippings, beatings, chains, separating families, selling “uppity” slaves “down the river" and slave owners totally defined as "whippers, beaters, chainers, family separators and slave sellers."

Ohio Guy concludes, "That, I submit, is the essence of American slavery not the romanticized version that Confederate apologists would like us to believe."

I submit that neither one is the essence of American slavery. Warm familial relationships and physical brutality were the opposite extremes -- the essence lay somewhere in between. I think it weighed more heavily to the negative, but then so did life for a great many free people.

I want to go back to something Ohio Guy said and further address it: "...in most other societies that practiced slavery there were laws that protected slaves. There were limits placed on what a master could do to punish a slave, and what he could expect of the slave in terms of work and production."

Kinda like the laws in ancient Rome that "protected," oh, say, a slave that was a gladiator, sent into the arena to fight to the death? "As a gladiator, a man gained immediate status even though the gladiatorial oath forced him to act as a slave to his master and "to endure branding, chains, flogging, or death by the sword" (Petronius Satyricon, 117.5).  Familiar sounding list, isn't it? Sounds a lot like the way Ohio Guy described American slavery.

Another "society that practiced slavery" was Islam, and if Ohio Guy thinks that was one of the societies that protected slaves, I would urge him to compare Islamic involvement in African slavery to European (and American) involvement in African slavery.

“…the worst, most inhumane and most diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and later aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.” -- John Alembillah Azumah, Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa

While the European involvement in the Trans Atlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day.

A comparison of the Islamic slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts.  While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic slave trade.  Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.

While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%.While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.

While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.

While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.

It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions.  Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).

At least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East.  Since at least 80% of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million.  When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Trans Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people.

 Look at that -- 140 million victims of Arab/Muslim slavery, 112 of them deaths.

While Christian Reformers spearheaded the anti-slavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilised her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no opposition whatsoever to slavery within the Muslim world.

Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans.  This, despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit the Islamic slave trade. 

By some calculations, the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Islamic slave trade could exceed 180 million.

Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalised slavery from their statute books.  And this only after international pressure was brought to bear.  Today numerous international organisations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries.

This and much more about the Arab/Muslim slave trade can be found here:

http://www.inthenameofallah.org/Islam%20&%20African%20Slave%20Trade.html

I would urge Ohio Guy to watch this video about this Arab/Muslim "other society" that practiced slavery and tell me what kind of brainless dope could know about this and then claim American slavery was the worst form of slavery that ever existed?
http://www.wat.tv/video/muslim-black-slavery-islam-lkvx_2gv9d_.html

Floggasms and Assassination of the Intellect

It's interesting to watch floggers and floggerettes ssassinate their own intellect just for the pleasure of putting down Southern heritage. There's a floggasm underway at X-roads over the opinions about slavery expressed on his blog by one Jerry Dunford.

Mr. Dunford and I have "met" a couple of times online.  I don't know a lot about him. He isn't someone I routinely defend, or on whose behalf I counter-attack. I've visited his blog maybe three times quite some time ago, but I recently went to his blog post about slavery, because it has the X-roads floggosphere in such a tizzy. All I did was skim it, but it appears his subject is the purported relationship between slavery and the circumstances of today's black Americans.

I'll begin with the last X-roads comment in the thread (as of this writing) from one RE Watson, who sez, "My, my ...... Is there a possibility of a Connie/Jerry wedding in the future?"  Afraid not, Mr. Watson. I've been happily married since the waning months of the Nixon Administration.

And, as I said, I don't know much about Mr. Dunford or his beliefs. I do think the relationship between slavery and the circumstances of blacks in America today is greatly exaggerated in some quarters. I know that mistreatment of slaves occurred (just as mistreatment of children by parents, relatives, caregivers, etc., occurs) but I also agree that such mistreatment was not the norm, and certainly not the totality, of slavery.  Yes, it was bad. It was not THAT bad.

Now, on to some other floggerette comments.

seanmunger says, "Wow. Just…wow. ...Would this guy volunteer his children (much less himself) to be sold into slavery? Incredible."

I suppose seanmunger and his fellow travelers see some necessary or logical connection between (a) seeking or presenting a more balanced assessment of historic slavery and (b) volunteering oneself or one's children to be sold into slavery, but frankly, I don't see one and I don't think one exists. In my opinion, this is just an emotion-over-cognition method (typically used by those with a leftist mentality) for concocting a rooster-crow put down...

Makes we wonder.... is what's good for the goose also good for the gander? I mean, if they think people who "defend" slavery (even though that's not really what they're doing) should consider selling themselves or their children into slavery, does that mean that floggers and/or floggerettes who "defend" Islam (by disapproving of my disapproval of the practice of Islamic "religion" by Islamics in this country) should turn themselves over to Islamic jihadists for beheading?

One makes as much sense as the other.

Then, Jimmy Dick, the king of emotion-trumps-cognition, sez, "Isn't it always marvelous how people who have never been slaves can think that slavery was a benign situation or a positive for the enslaved people?"

Well, actually they likely "think" this because of what some slaves themselves said about it. No, not every slave experienced it that way, but then, not every slave lived in total pain and misery, as the Jimmy Dicks of the world would have us all believe.  How honest is it for the Jimmy Dicks to ignore the positives that indeed did occur -- and were recorded -- and impute only the experiences of the badly treated to all slaves? How dishonest is it for him to ignore the human feelings of affection or regard between slaves and their masters, and pretend that because some negative ones existed, they were ALL negative?

I wonder if seanmunger and Jimmy Dick support a "woman's right to choose" and if they do, why haven't they volunteered to have themselves aborted? I mean, just because they're no longer in the womb, that doesn't mean they can't experience what an unborn child experiences when it's being aborted -- burned to death by a saline solution, having its limbs ripped from its body by a suction machine, being chopped to bits -- "born" people can certainly experience all these -- and it makes as much sense to suggest that abortion supporters try it as Dick's and seanmunger's comments make about slavery.

This reminds me of another floggerette from the past who sincerely told me a slave could not tell the difference between being raped and NOT being raped....  The point was to make all slaveowners totally evil, make them all rapists, even those who did not rape, and would be horrified by the thought. The hatred of white Southerners is powerful that way, powerful enough to render one a complete dope.

But back to the X-roads thread.... somebody going by the handle msb says, "Yet violence was essential to the working of the system and slave life expectancy was much shorter than that of the free population, and infant mortality was much higher."

Well, that depends on when and where. Life expectancy for free and slave changed with time and location.

Besides, I wonder how he explains those situations where violence was not practiced? How can the system work if violence is essential, but it is not practiced or used? Wouldn't that make the system NOT work? Besides, I wonder if msb realize that violence was not found just in slavery.... violence was widespread during the settling of the colonies, the early ears of the country and especially in the movement west. It has been violent since the beginning, and remains so. I wonder what msb thinks about that.

Then Sandi "The Roanoke.com Queen" Saunders pipes up with, "Slavery apologists are just beyond the pale. If you cannot admit the inherent evil of slavery, you have nothing credible to offer."

How about truth? Is truth not credible? Here's some truth. Many -- in fact, I believe most -- of the critics and enemies of Southern heritage magnify the evil of slavery, magnify it beyond all reality, for the sake of evilizing white Southerners -- certainly those of the past, and many in the present. Is that why Miss Roanoke.com does it? I suspect so.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again -- for floggers, floggerettes and their ilk, white evil exists in exact inverse proportion to black/slave misery, and so black/slave misery must be exaggerated beyond all reason, reality and truth -- because the evilization of white Southerners is their desire ... beyond all reason, reality and truth.

I want to also answer "Ohio Guy" and "Rosemary" but they each deserve a whole blog post. So check back later for more of me showing how willingly these people choke their own intellect for the sake of evilizing those they do not like.

HEY, B. PARKS!

It's September third, and....
 

   I'M STILL HEEEE-ERE!

Many thanks to J. Steven Svoboda ...

... of the National Coalition for Men for this fantastic review of Southern Man. I can't tell you how pleased I am with his comments and insights. I'm not sure when and where the review will be posted, whether the organization's  main website or Transitions, which is a print publication for NCFM members only. However, when a link appears, will post it here and on social media.

Meantime, read the review here:

________

Southern Man: Legacy of Fortitude, A Southern Heroes Novel. By Connie Chastain.  Pensacola, Florida: Great Southern Publishing, 2009.   334 pages. No price given on book but amazon lists for $12.95. www.conniechastain.com, www.brasstownbooks.com. Review by J. Steven Svoboda.

Author, self-proclaimed devotee of the South and preacher’s daughter Connie Chastain has written a novel that greatly broadened my horizons and for which I owe her a substantial debt.  Her novel tells the compelling saga of hardworking family man Troy Stevenson and his adoring, supportive wife Patty.

Chastain throws in passing references to misandry, trusting the reader who may be unaware of the meaning of that word to look it up, wisely avoiding a political digression to explain it. 

The author describes a world relatively unfamiliar to me. I have only spent a few weeks in the South in my life though I have been very favorably impressed by the welcoming people there and the down-to-earth, unpretentious feeling I have gotten when I have visited.  While my mother was a housewife for a while until she took a job when I was about twelve years old, I frankly do not know many women who have chosen to build their lives around nurturing a family and around supporting their wage-earner husbands rather than around their own careers.

The book grew on me tremendously as I continued to read the extremely engaging story.  Chastain has a knack for convincingly, non-judgmentally immersing us in the lives of a very diverse set of characters.  Complications ensue when a young woman, Brooke Emerson, becomes obsessed with Troy and, determined to take him to her bed, begins stalking him.

Brooke’s plot to ensnare Troy goes so far as to encompass a wrongful sexual harassment accusation when he rejects her advances.  Due to some very provident actions, Troy is eventually able to clear his name.  Southern Man brought me face to face with some philosophies quite different from those familiar to me—characters who use Christian scripture as a guide in their daily lives, in some cases going so far as not to engage in premarital sex.

It is refreshing to read an author who unapologetically, unostentatiously yet convincingly paints a world in which men are accepted as different from women (as indeed they are), and the differences are celebrated. Troy and his wife Patty are full equals yet have different roles. And they love each other fiercely and with a commitment and devotion that many married people might well envy.

The family reunion that occurs on pages 226-228 is downright moving and sweet. What a wonderful book. And a true page-turner as well. I couldn’t put it down. Don’t miss it!

________

J. Steven Svoboda is the senior board member of and Public Relations Director for the National Coalition For Men, the world’s oldest and largest non-profit devoted to educating the world about the harm done to men and boys by gender discrimination. Steven is NCFM’s book reviewer and his articles are available through the group's bi-monthly newsletter Transitions.

Read his entire bio here.