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Let the re-education begin: The cover of Moore's book

A self-help guide that tells women to follow their man’s orders if they want to keep him has become an unlikely hit.

The book, titled The Re-education Of The Female, also says women should wear sexy clothes while doing the cooking and cleaning.

'The Re-Education of the Female', by single father Dante Moore, puts the blame for women being unable to find a good man squarely where he says it belongs: 'On the female'.

Stay skinny, cook, clean, wear sexy clothes, and do whatever he says because men are here to command - that is the way to catch yourself a good man, says Moore.

And with chapter headings like 'Appearance, Appearance, Appearance', 'You Knew He Was a Bum When You Met Him', and 'Are You an Indirect Prostitute?' he aims to force women to re-evaluate themselves and - ahem - clean up their acts.

Why does he feel such an overpowering urge to do this?

Because, Moore writes in his introduction: 'I want to express my anger and frustration as a man with the women I feel are mis-educated, misinformed, and ill-prepared about their responsibilities in getting and maintaining a relationship with a man of quality.'

Indeed.

Moore, a computer engineer and 33-year-old father of an 11-year-old boy, insists he is doing this out of love for women.

Growing up in America he only met his father a handful of times, he told the Washington Post, but was raised by his mother, two sisters, two aunts and two female cousins.

When he was a boy his mother told him he had to treat a woman 'like a queen'.

He tried that, he insists. For two years. And he lost every girlfriend he had.

Author Dante Moore, who claims he wrote the book out of love for women

So, he decided, it was time for a change. 'Once I started being myself and saying, 'look, I'm not going to do this, this, or that for women,' the phone didn't stop ringing,' he said.

It wasn't long before he decided to spread the wealth of his realisation.

Women, he insists, make it 'much harder than it is' to get a man. He distills a man's every desire down to three basic things: food, relaxation, and, of course, sex.

And all a woman has to do to fill those desires is stay skinny and sexy, cook, clean, and do whatever the man says.

'Here's a little secret, ladies,' he writes. 'Men never really ask for anything. They command.'

Echoing the sentiments of Beyonce's hit single 'Irreplaceable', he adds: 'And believe me, what you won't do, ten broads around the corner will.'

Size does matter, he says - very much. 'The fatter you get, the more you decrease your potential single-man pool.

'Let me give you an example. When you go to the grocery store to shop, do you pick out the nastiest-looking, most rotten, smelliest fruit or meat you can find? Oh, you don't? Why not? . . . It's the same with men when they see baby elephant-sized, out-of-shape women.'

As for the idea that men - black men in particular - are intimidated by a powerful, successful, smart single woman, his response is unequivocal: 'Please. That's what you tell yourself to help your self-esteem and justify the fact that you're alone.

'You're alone because you've forgotten the fact that you're a woman.'

The most impressive thing about this book is, of course, the fact that women are reading it.

It could be that feminism has died a violent death. It could be that women are humouring him. (Most of it is indeed laugh-out-loud funny.) Some of it, it is painful to admit, could just hit a true note.

Perhaps it could be something even simpler. Moore was given his big break by Zane, an African-American erotica author who consistently refuses to give her real name.

'There are some men who feel exactly like he does,' she admitted.

'I feel like women should be forewarned.'

But the ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’ advice has not gone down well in some quarters.

‘He’s never found the one, fallen in love and got married, so what makeshim an expert?’ said noted U.S. feminist and TV therapist Dr Gilda Carle.

‘Frankly, I would like to get any woman who has ever dated him on my therapist’s couch.’