Who Stole Feminism? PDF
Preview Who Stole Feminism?
FEMINISM HOW WOMEN HAVE BETRAYED WOMEN CHRISTINA HOFF SUMMERS U.S. $23.00 Can. $29.50 Philosophy professor Christina Sommers has exposed a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ide als and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extrem ists have propped up their arguments with highly questionable but well-fund ed research, presenting inflamma tory and often inaccurate information and stifling any sem blance of free and open scrutiny. Trumpeted as orthodoxy, the resulting "findings" on everything from rape to domestic abuse to economic bias to the supposed crisis in girls' self- esteem perpetuate a view of women as victims of the "patriarchy." Moreover, these arguments and the supposed facts on which they are based have had enormous influence beyond the academy, where they have shaken the foundations of our educa tional, scientific, and legal institutions and have fostered resentment and alienation in our private lives. Despite its current dominance, Sommers maintains, such a breed of feminism is at odds with the real aspirations and values of most American women and undermines the cause of true equality. Who Stole Feminism? is a call to arms that will enrage or inspire, but cannot be ignored. CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS is an associ ate professor of philosophy at Clark University who specializes in contem porary moral theory. The editor of two ethics textbooks, she has published numerous professional papers. She has also written articles for The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and The New England Journal of Medicine, among other publications. She lives in the Boston area. Jacket design by Jackie Seow Author photograph by Joyce Ravid Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright © 1994 Simon & Schuster From WHO STOLE FEMINISM? American feminism is currently dominated by a group of women who seek to persuade the public that American women are not the free creatures we think we are. The leaders and theorists of the women's movement believe that our society is best described as a patriarchy, a "male hegemony," a "sex/gender system" in which the dominant gender works to keep women cowering and submissive. The feminists who hold this divisive view of our social and politi cal reality believe that we are in a gender war, and they are eager to disseminate stories of atrocity that are designed to alert women to their plight. The "gender feminists" (as I shall be calling them) believe that all our institutions, from the state to the family to the grade schools, perpetuate male dominance. Believing that women are virtually under siege, gender feminists naturally seek recruits to wage their side of the gender war. They seek support. They seek vindication. They seek ammunition. I have been moved to write this book because I am a feminist who does not like what feminism has become. The new gender feminism is badly in need of scrutiny. Only forthright appraisals can diminish its inordinate and divisive influence. If others will join in a frank and honest critique, before long a more representative and less doctrinaire femi nism will again pick up the reins. But that is not likely to happen without a fight. Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women Christina Hoff Sommer s Simon & S c h u s t e r New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore SIMON & SCHUSTER Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020 Copyright © 1994 by Christina Sommers All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc. Designed by Levavi & Levavi Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who stole feminism? : how women have betrayed women / Christina Hoff Sommers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Feminism—Philosophy. 2. Feminism—United States—History. I. Title. HQ1154.S613 1994 305.42'0973—dc20 94-4734 CIP ISBN: 0671-79424-8 The charts that appear on pages 246 and 247 are reprinted by permission of The Com monwealth Fund, a New York-based national philanthropic organization. Acknowledgments Of the many friends who helped me I single out those who read and criticized the manuscript at various stages: Martin Boer, Robert Costrell, Barbara Ellis, John Ellis, Ronni Gordon, Don Klein, Erika Kors, Evelyn Rich, Gail Savitz, David Stillman, Abigail Thernstrom, and Stephan Thernstrom. I am grateful to Dawn Baker, an undergraduate at Boston University, Peter Welsh, a political science graduate student at Boston College, and Alex Stillman, an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins. They checked facts and looked for primary sources, which were more often than not difficult to trace. Special thanks also to Hilary Olsen for her many hours of proof reading, editing, and retyping. I am obliged to Lynn Chu and Glen Hartley for having urged me to undertake this book. My editor, Rebecca Saletan, has been superb throughout the two years I took in writing it. Denise Roy and Jay Schweitzer ably shepherded the book through the editorial and produc tion processes. 8 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Louise Hoff, my sister, traveled with me to many feminist conferences, into the very dens of the lionesses, providing much needed moral sup port. Our mother, Dolores Hoff, has shown us both that being a feminist has nothing to do with resenting men. It is easy enough to get grants for feminist research aimed at showing how women are being shortchanged and "silenced" by the male establish ment. It is not so easy to receive grants for a study that criticizes the feminist establishment for its errors and excesses. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation believed that what I had to say was important, and I thank them for their gracious and generous support for this project. I could not have written this book without their aid and cooperation, nor without the support of Clark University, which allowed me a two-year leave and awarded me a Mellon Faculty Development Grant and a Higgins Research Grant. Numerous others—too numerous to identify here—supported me morally and intellectually. They know well who they are and know as well how thankful I am. I apologize for not acknowledging them by name. A great deal of what is valuable and right about Who Stole Feminism? is due to the wisdom, encouragement, and unfailing assistance of my hus band, Fred Sommers. My views on feminism are controversial, and when those who do not take well to criticism react by maligning me rather than my argument, Fred helps me stay calm and clear. I am grateful to my stepson, Tamler Sommers, whose twenty-three- year-old perspective saved me more than once from what he assured me were misguided efforts at humor. This book is dedicated to Fred, to Tamler, and to my nine-year-old son, David Sommers, who is, I suspect, delighted to see the last of its writing. Contents Preface 11 1. Women Under Siege 19 2. Indignation, Resentment, and Collective Guilt 41 3. Transforming the Academy 50 4. New Epistemologies 74 5. The Feminist Classroom 87 6. A Bureaucracy of One's Own 118 7. The Self-Esteem Study 137 8. The Wellesley Report: A Gender at Risk 157 9. Noble Lies 188 10. Rape Research 209 11. The Backlash Myth 227 12. The Gender Wardens 255 Notes 276 Index 307 Preface In Revolution from Within, Gloria Steinem informs her readers that "in this country alone . . . about 150,000 females die of anorexia each year." 1 That is more than three times the annual number of fatalities from car accidents for the total population. Steinem refers readers to another fem inist best-seller, Naomi Wolfs The Beauty Myth. And in Ms. Wolfs book one again finds the statistic, along with the author's outrage. "How," she asks, "would America react to the mass self-immolation by hunger of its favorite sons?" 2 Although "nothing justifies comparison with the Holo caust," she cannot refrain from making one anyway. "When confronted with a vast number of emaciated bodies starved not by nature but by men, one must notice a certain resemblance." 3 Where did Ms. Wolf get her figures? Her source is Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease* by Joan Brumberg, a historian and former director of women's studies at Cornell University. Brumberg, too, is fully aware of the political significance of the startling statistic. She points out that the women who study eating problems "seek 12 P R E F A C E to demonstrate that these disorders are an inevitable consequence of a misogynistic society that demeans w o m e n . . . by objectifying their bodies." 5 Professor Brumberg, in turn, attributes the figure to the Ameri can Anorexia and Bulimia Association. I called the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association and spoke to Dr. Diane Mickley, its president. "We were misquoted," she said. In a 1985 newsletter the association had referred to 150,000 to 200,000 suf ferers (not fatalities) of anorexia nervosa. What is the correct morbidity rate? Most experts are reluctant to give exact figures. One clinician told me that of 1,400 patients she had treated in ten years, four had died—all through suicide. The National Center for Health Statistics reported 101 deaths from anorexia nervosa in 1983 and 67 deaths in 1988. 6 Thomas Dunn of the Division of Vital Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 1991 there were 54 deaths from anorexia nervosa and no deaths from bulimia. The deaths of these young women are a tragedy, certainly, but in a country of one hundred million adult females, such numbers are hardly evidence of a "holocaust." Yet now the false figure, supporting the view that our "sexist society" demeans women by objectifying their bodies, is widely accepted as true. Ann Landers repeated it in her syndicated column in April 1992: "Every year, 150,000 American women die from complications associated with anorexia and bulimia." 7 I sent Naomi Wolf a letter pointing out that Dr. Mickley had said she was mistaken. Wolf sent me word on February 3, 1993, that she intends to revise her figures on anorexia in a later edition of The Beauty Myth. 8 Will she actually state that the correct figure is less than one hundred per year? And will she correct the implications she drew from the false report? For example, will she revise her thesis that masses of young women are being "starved not by nature but by men" and her declaration that "women must claim anorexia as political damage done to us by a social order that considers our destruction insignificant... as Jews identify the death camps"? 9 Will Ms. Steinem advise her readers of the egregious statistical error? Will Ms. Landers? Will it even matter? By now, the 150,000 figure has made it into college textbooks. A recent women's studies text, aptly titled The Knowledge Explosion, contains the erroneous figure in its preface. 1 0 The anorexia "crisis" is only one sample of the kind of provocative but inaccurate information being purveyed by women about "women's issues" these days. On November 4, 1992, Deborah Louis, president of the Na tional Women's Studies Association, sent a message to the Women's Stud- P R E F A C E 13 ies Electronic Bulletin Board: "According to [the] last March of Dimes report, domestic violence (vs. pregnant women) is now responsible for more birth defects than all other causes combined. Personally [this] strikes me as the most disgusting piece of data I've seen in a long while." 1 1 This was, indeed, unsettling news. But it seemed implausible. I asked my neighbor, a pediatric neurologist at Boston's Children's Hospital, about the report. He told me that although severe battery may occasionally cause miscarriage, he had never heard of battery as a significant cause of birth defects. Yet on February 23, 1993, Patricia Ireland, president of the Na tional Organization of Women, made a similar claim during a PBS inter view with Charlie Rose: "Battery of pregnant women is the number one cause of birth defects in this country." I called the March of Dimes to get a copy of the report. Maureen Corry, director of the March's Education and Health Promotion Program, denied any knowledge of it. "We have never seen this research before," she said. I did a search and found that—study or no study—journalists around the country were citing it. Domestic violence is the leading cause of birth defects, more than all other medical causes combined, according to a March of Dimes study. (Boston Globe, September 2, 1991) Especially grotesque is the brutality reserved for pregnant women: the March of Dimes has concluded that the battering of women during pregnancy causes more birth defects than all the diseases put together for which children are usually immunized. (Time magazine, January 18, 1993) The March of Dimes has concluded that the battering of women during pregnancy causes more birth defects than all the diseases put together for which children are usually immunized. (Dallas Morning News, February 7, 1993) The March of Dimes says battering during pregnancy causes more birth defects than all diseases for which children are immunized. (Arizona Republic, March 2 1 , 1993) The March of Dimes estimates that domestic violence is the largest single cause of birth defects. (Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1993) I called the March of Dimes again. Andrea Ziltzer of their media relations department told me that the rumor was spinning out of control. Gover-
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