There are no fewer than four books available through Amazon concerned with protecting men from the societal and cultural changes wrought by feminism. Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care (Random House, $30) is merely the latest.

Written by the conservative Kathleen Parker, who is ranked by Media Matters for America as the second-most widely distributed syndicated columnist in the United States, it is a fierce and funny polemic on how "we've managed over the past 20 years or so to create a new generation of child-men, perpetual adolescents who see no point in growing up," and "who feel marginalized by the women whose favours and approval they seek."

She talked to me on the phone from Camden, S.C., where she lives with her husband, her 23-year-old son and, on occasion, her two stepsons.

Q: Would you consider yourself a feminist?

A: I think all women who have their own chequebook are feminists, aren't they? I have been paying my own bills all my life. I have never imagined that somebody was going to take care of me nor have I ever been mistaken for a subservient female.

Q: Hasn't feminism helped you?

A: When I started writing a column 20 years ago, the situation was this: If an op-ed editor already had a woman on his page, then he wasn't going to pick up my column.

Q: But there still isn't much place for women on those pages.

A: Tell me about it. I am syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Of the columnists who run regularly on The Washington Post op-ed pages, 15 of the 17 are men.

Q: So why do men need saving?

A: I think the current crop of men is just fine. What I tried to show is, if we project into the future and continue on this trajectory, then men aren't doing so well. I'm not sure that that's ultimately going to benefit society and particularly women and children because we want good men. My premise is that, in trying to make the world more female friendly, we've actually created a hostile world for men.

And by the way, I am not suggesting we save all men. I am saving men of the West because I think that they are our friends in a world where women have very serious enemies.

Q: You talk about sitcoms and how they portray men as bumblers. But on both the big and small screen, women are marginalized.

A: The mass media messages of males are very negative. Men are depicted as bumbling fools, doofus dads, deadbeats, batterers, incompetent, irresponsible, unreliable and unattractive whereas women are very much the opposite. It's the wife who comes in and saves the day. Even the children are smarter than Dad.

I noticed that my sons have never experienced a culture where men were honoured and admired. And I wonder what kind of effect that has had on children growing up in this sort of marinade of disrespect.

Q: How can you say that when the vast majority of politicians are men, CEOS are men, male athletes dominate the sports pages, airtime and the endorsement deals, when even male celebrities get paid more than women?

A: We're only a couple of generations into this post-feminist world where women have equal opportunities. I think that they will catch up.

If you look at the educational statistics, it's the girls who are doing well at school, scoring higher on tests, participating at a greater rate in extracurricular activities. And when you get to college, girls are leaving boys behind.

Now, obviously, nobody is upset that women are doing well but what we have to look at what is happening to the males. And are these women going to have partners in the future who are comparably educated and accomplished with whom to have families?

Q: You talk about fatherless homes, while citing frightening statistics about African-American males. But doesn't that have more to do with poverty?

A: If you don't have a father, you also have a very high risk for poverty. I also think that that community provides a microcosm of what happens. We have communities where, for generations, there have been no fathers. That's why we see gangs. These are reactions to an absence of the male figure, when boys do not have a real father to be good, positive role models. Then they fantasize about what manhood and masculinity look like. They come up with this hypermacho aggressive model that gets them in trouble and lands them in prison.

Q: You say that men can be forced to be fathers against their will. How is that possible?

A: Women hold all the cards when it comes to procreation. We can decide to have an abortion. We don't have to talk to the guy if we don't want to.

Q: That's if we become pregnant, though. Doesn't a guy have a responsibility to, say, wear a condom?

A: Well, I think so.

Q: Then he has no right to turn around and complain if the woman gets pregnant, right?

A: The point is, the guy does not have any opportunity to have any real input, other than the initial input of course. It's all up the woman. It's not a fair situation because women bear the burden of childbirth and child care. It's not a fair situation any way you look at it.

Q: But we're living in a time when women's reproductive rights are under attack, when so many men are against a woman's right to choose or even getting access to contraception.

A: I have always said that I am not willing to make abortion illegal but I think abortion would eliminate itself if everybody were more aware of what abortion does, what it results in for the woman.

Q: There are lots of men giving us the male point of view. Why do you think you have to?

A: Men are clueless. They don't have any idea that some of these things are going on. I am doing it for my sons. I want to have a discussion about how men and women are not enemies.

If men feel women are hostile to them, they'll be hostile right back.

We have created a culture in which male bashing is a bonding agent for women; boy bashing is considered fun for little girls. That doesn't get us anywhere.

When men lose, women lose – and vice versa. The pendulum has swung too far.