Mini Book Review: Who Stole Feminism?

Just finished Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, by Christina Hoff Sommers (1994). Back in the 90's, Sommers (Hoff Sommers?) was an associate professor of philosophy at Clark University who specialized in contemporary moral theory. She now is a resident scholar at American Institute Enterprise (AEI). Her bio says she earned her Ph.D. at Brandeis University, and her research areas are Morality in American Society, Feminism and American Culture, and American Adolescents. Besides Who Stole Feminism?, she wrote The War Against Boys, (2001, but she's now updating), a college textbook on ethics called Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life, and The Science on Women and Science (2009).

So we're dealing with an academic here.

Sommers describes herself as an equity feminist, which she says is different from a gender feminist. Put simply, the equity feminists are continuing their crusade in the spirit of the so-called First Wave of feminism, the chief objective of which was (and is) equity, especially, Sommers writes, in the arenas of politics and education: "A First Wave, 'mainstream,' or 'equity' feminist wants for women what she wants for everyone: fair treatment, without discrimination." This is what was at the heart of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. And Sommers believes that "by any reasonable measure, equity feminism has turned out to be a great American success story."

The gender feminists (aka Second Wave) disagree. According to Sommers, these women espouse a more radical doctrine, "that women, even modern American women, are in thrall to a system of male dominance." 

It's actually kind of bizarre. Here's how it's explained in the book:

"According to one feminist theorist, the sex/gender system is 'that complex process whereby bi-sexual infants are transformed into male and female gender personalities, the one destined to command, the other to obey.' Sex/gender feminism ('gender feminism,' for short) is the prevailing ideology among contemporary feminist philosophers and leaders."

In its early days, this ideology lacked a grass roots constituency, but it has since spread like crabgrass (to build on that metaphor) and is now deeply rooted in society, particularly in academia, and, not incidentally, our political and social landscape. Like crabgrass, their ideology is so firmly entrenched in our way of thinking that it's virtually impossible to root out.

It's the gender feminists and their agenda that Sommers takes on in this book; hence, the "controversy" mentioned on the front cover. She tackles head on many of the now-accepted myths that the gender feminists propagated and which a compliant or intimidated media never challenged.

I love Christina Hoff Sommers. I love how she does her homework. She doesn’t blithely accept claims made by gender feminists at face value simply because they say so. The media didn't question their data. The politicians (useful idiots?) meekly went along with the gender feminists' demands for change, based on their data. Universities stepped aside and allowed the gender feminists to take over every aspect of academia, including hiring and tenure.

But not Christina. There she is, not only ensconced in her ivory tower, examining the studies, reading the original research reports (some of which were difficult to access), doing her own analysis of the numbers and discovering that the numbers didn't add up, but also attending gender feminist conferences, debating gender feminists in formal settings, calling people whom no one else bothered to call, speaking with the original researchers who were often surprised to see their data misinterpreted.

The result of all this is this remarkable book. One by one, she debunks their claims. As one book reviewer wrote, "Christina Hoff Sommers has done something lethally deflating to the pretensions of the shriller sort of feminists: she looked at their evidence, and found it lacking. . . Sommers has painstakingly tracked down the sources of many often-quoted (but untrue) stories used in feminist scriptures to prove to the naive and credulous that American women as a class are oppressed and miserable" (Linda Seebach, June 5, 1994). Some of the myths Sommers debunks (in no particular order):

• Adolescent girls suffer from low self-esteem
• Teachers pay more attention to boys than they do to girls
• One in four women will be raped
• More women are abused on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day in the year
• The "rule of thumb" measure 
• The wage disparity between men and women

Though slightly dated, this book reveals a disturbing trend that seems to be continuing even today: Truth doesn’t matter. Data are irrelevant. More important than facts is the message. In other words, “It’s the narrative, stupid.” 

Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist, but she's also a scholar. More than that, she's intellectually honest. Of course she cares about women. She cares about girls who suffer from anorexia. She cares about victims of domestic violence. She cares about wage disparity. She cares about rape. But it's truth she's after, not hyped, exaggerated, or misinterpreted data. Here's what she wrote in a chapter called "Noble Lies":

"But if the figures are not true, they almost never serve the interests of the victimized women they concern. Anorexia is a disease; blaming men does nothing to help cure it. Battery and rape are crimes that shatter lives; those who suffer must be cared for, and those who cause their suffering must be kept from doing further harm. But in all we do to help, the most loyal ally is truth. Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best intentioned ‘noble lie’ ultimately discredits the finest cause."

I love how she concludes the book. In trying to find some common ground with the gender feminists, who maligned her personally and tried to discredit her professionally, she writes:

". . . I do like the the features they share with classical feminism: a concern for women and a determination to see them fairly treated. We very much need that concern and energy, but we decidedly do not need their militant gynocentrism and misandrism. It's too bad that in the case of the gender feminists we can't have the concern without the rest of the baggage. I believe, however, that once their ideology becomes unfashionable, many a gender feminist will quietly divest herself of the sex/gender lens through which she now views social reality and join the equity feminist mainstream. I do not think this will happen tomorrow, but I am convinced it will happen. Credos and intellectual fashions come and go but feminism itself--the pure and wholesome article first displayed at Seneca Falls in 1848--is as American as apple pie, and it will stay."

Sommers wrote those optimistic words in 1994. Have things changed? I'm not so sure. I just read an article that she wrote November 4, 2012. It was called "Wage Gap Myth Exposed--by Feminists." She cites the same organization that she wrote about in Who Stole Feminism? They're still promoting their false narrative. 

So I'm not sure much has changed. But I'm glad Christina Hoff Sommers is still doing her homework.

Good book.