Ego vs. Spirituality
in Spirituality ·
mistywalker16 said:One of the leading critics of feminism, Christina Hoff Sommers, actually took things a step further by arguing that feminists harbor such deep-seated resentment toward men that they end up loathing any woman who refuses to join the fray. Her take? "No group of women can wage a war against men without simultaneously disparaging the women who respect them."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Hoff_Sommers
The book didn't exactly land with everyone—reviews were pretty split. In conservative publications— ...like National Review, People were actually singing the praises of *The War against boys*. It’s being hailed as a stinging indictment of this anti-male movement—you know, the one that’s basically been running wild in our school systems lately. It points out a massive problem that we seriously need to fix, pronto. Writing in The New York Times, Richard Bernstein called it a "thoughtful, provocative book"—basically saying Sommers laid out her arguments persuasively, unflinchingly, and backed them up with actual data instead of just vibes. Then you've got Joy Summers over at The Journal of School Choice, who argued that Sommers’ book and her whole public persona act as a much-needed antidote to the junk science fueling the totally irrational, hyper-ideological national debate over "women’s issues." Even Publishers Weekly suggested her conclusions are compelling and deserve an unbiased hearing, though they did note... Sommers tends to get pretty petty—she really leans into the mudslinging whenever she goes after her critics. It’s similar to what happened in a review from Booklist; they noted that even though she makes some solid points about how boys are struggling in the classroom, nobody is going to be convinced that the blame lies solely with the American Association of University Women, Carol Gilligan, Mary Pipher, or William S. Pollack—all of whom she takes aim at quite harshly. In the end, the review basically argued that Sommers is just as much of a doom-and-gloom alarmist as the people she’s attacking.[66]
Reviewing The War against boys for The New York Times, Child psychiatrist Robert Coles noted that while Sommers talks a big game about our kids, she hasn't actually gone out and met them—instead, she leans on people who have spent real time working with boys and girls. In doing so, she’s pretty quick to dismiss Carol Gilligan's theories on girls and William S. Pollack's work on boys. Much of the book, according to Coles, comes across as Sommers's strongly felt War against those Two prominent psychologists, Who have spent years Trying to learn How Young men and Women grow to adulthood in The United States.Reviewing the book for The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann wrote that Sommers basically sets a much higher bar for the people she’s targeting than she ever does for herself—it’s almost unfair. She uses this weird, ambush-style way of arguing where she corners someone, demanding data and answers on the spot. Then, once they’re left stammering and totally caught off guard, she just turns around and claims a massive victory. It's a classic "gotcha" move. Nicholas Lemann called out Sommers—basically pointing out the hypocrisy in her accusing Gilligan of relying too much on anecdotes when her own work is built on that very same shaky foundation. He also noted a bunch of claims she made that just weren't backed up by her own footnotes.[68]
Writing in The Washington Post, E. Anthony Rotundo stated that Ultimately, Sommers—well, she just doesn't actually prove there's some kind of "war against boys" going on. Her whole argument basically boils down to this: feminists are out to get her "boys will be boys" take on childhood, just like she’s coming for their much more fluid version of growing up. Rotundo argues that Sommers’s title “is not just wrong but inexcusably misleading... a work of neither dispassionate social science nor reflective scholarship; it is a conservative polemic.”[69]
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Christina Hoff Sommers
With a B.A. from NYU and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Brandeis, Sommers calls herself a classical liberal and a Democrat. But let's be real—despite how much she insists otherwise, it’s pretty obvious she’s a conservative anti-feminist. She essentially helped build the modern anti-feminist movement (alongside Warren Farrell) and works for a GOP-leaning think tank that basically serves up pseudo-academic excuses for right-wing policies. It says a lot about her MRA followers that they conveniently ignore any "liberal" label she tries to claim.
Honestly, if you want a masterclass in brilliant propaganda, just look at her entire career following "Who Stole Feminism?" The fact that well-meaning conservatives actually believe she’s a legitimate feminist—rather than someone playing a game of "embrace, extend, and extinguish"—really shows how successful American conservatism has been at undermining American feminism.
TL😁R? She’s basically on the Koch payroll.
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Both "Who Stole Feminism?" and "The War against boys" argue that modern feminism ditched true gender equality in favor of some vague concept of "justice," which supposedly left a whole generation of men being vilified. But Sommers's argument doesn't hold water. She consistently twists scholarly debates, ignores any data that doesn't fit her narrative, and goes after studies she dislikes while giving a total pass to the ones she likes.[13]
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You’re constantly hearing about how C.H. uses lazy, manufactured stats to back her claims. She was called out for this as far back as 1994,[16] but if you want a slam dunk, check out her video on rape statistics.[17] She picked a year with the lowest rape rates of the last decade to cite. Plus, she takes an annual statistic and compares it to lifetime figures without even bothering to explain the jump.
Then there’s her video on women in STEM.[18] Most of her argument is just standard conservative talking points, (check out that condescending video title, "The REAL Reason There Aren't More Female Scientists"). Everything from hinting that women shy away from certain STEM fields due to biology (something Steven Pinker touches on, though not nearly as hard as she does) to assuming that because women *are* present in some STEM areas, discrimination couldn't possibly exist in others. I mean, the tech industry is barely 10% female.[19] That assumption—that gender discrimination is a non-issue—is classic American right-wing logic; admitting otherwise would force them to overhaul their entire worldview.
If you’re anywhere outside the reactionary anti-feminist bubble, it’s becoming glaringly obvious. When someone claims to be a feminist and a gender studies professor, yet engages in this level of blatant lying by omission—which, let's face it, she shouldn't be doing given her philosophy background—it looks like pure political manipulation. At this point, it feels less like she’s just being careless and more like she’s intentionally using sophistry to push a specific agenda.
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"Rape hysteria"
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Views on modern feminism
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Sommers was among the small group of people willing to stick up for Michelle Fields—that Breitbart reporter who got shoved around by a Trump staffer during a campaign rally. Naturally, the reaction from the GamerGate crowd was pretty underwhelming.[42]
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