"The strongest impulse leading me to write this book is my conviction that the women"s movement is, or should be, just as much a matter for men as for women. I want to react, to respond as one male human, to the discovery -described for the most part by women -that the history of humanity over the past several thousand years has also been a history of the oppression of women by men. From the viewpoint of many feminist authors -among whom I include myself, although with some hesitation -all men are oppressors and exploiters of women, not necessarily because they want to be, but because both men and women have become so used to the collective pattern of the oppressive man and the oppressed woman that they have to follow this schema even against their will. I would have a bad conscience if I did not attempt to voice this conviction. To do this, though, I have to risk such daring undertaking as to say what I understand women to be, and men to be....." -Helmut Barz