"CHRISTINA'S WORLD"

We must admit that we were perplexed by the accusation that someone has stolen the Women's Movement and we were flabbergasted to learn that we are among the accused. How can something be stolen when it is right here?  When it's all around us?  When its reason for being is all around us?

A speaker on C-Span, asserting this theft, caught our attention and we listened enthralled. The mostly young male studio audience was told that the Woman's Movement was abducted and the culprits were nasty women led by even nastier women's studies professors.

These professors were corrupting the young women in their classes by telling them lies; encouraging them to trash males and inciting them to feel victimized when there was no cause.

This speaker claimed that the statistics used by these dreadful people were false or had different meanings that what they attributed to them.

She derided them for male bashing.  She declared that accusing men and a paternalistic society for problems women encountered was specious.  She insisted that there were no such problems generally and allowed that the few that might occur should be blamed on those women who were not being true to their nature.

Insisting that men and women are totally different and are biologically programmed to be that way, she supported this thesis with statistics showing that boys were injured more than girls (boys active, daring; girls passive, scaredycats.)

She attacked a report stating that girls attempt suicide more than boys by gleefully asserting that more boys were successful at it! (So there!)

While acknowledging that there were batters and rapes, she brushed this aside by disparaging the statistics and postulating that these things happened to women who wanted to be victims.

She found the whole idea that anyone might want to encourage children to play with gender-neutral toys hilarious.  She related that a group of children were given a doll house to play with and all the girls played with the dolls nicely, while the boys threw the dolls off the top of the doll house.

"This proved that boys will be boys and girls love babies."  This is their true nature and when they follow it, instead of believing what the rabble rousing women's studies professors say, they are content.  They do not become victims.

With apologies to Andrew Wyeth, we marvel at the limited horizons of Hoff-Sommers and her world.

We respectfully invite her to talk to airline stewardesses. She might even fly along with them and watch the male public grope and pinch them.

Or tag along with women medical students and doctors as they are afflicted by boys just being boys in the serious business of healing the sick.

How about a tour with some women engineers, custodians, lawyers, stock clerks, chemists, athletes, politicians etc?  Something of this kind might broaden her intellectual capacity as well as her horizons.

As for her proof regarding the children and the dollhouse, we suggest that she check out a few basic scientific procedures.  Never once did it occur to her that children are gender-trained by our society.  For any study to be valid, one has to allow for that training and discount its effects.

There are plenty of studies that attempt to do this and the results are most interesting. And what of the boy children that are trained in their own home to be kind and loving individuals? How does one explain their devotion to dolls and teddybears?

Or how about the girls who are trained in their own homes to be strong and active? Dolls as playthings have little meaning for them when they are not restricted in their development. They'd much rather be climbing a tree or building a fort.  And, Christina, watch how these children change when they face the pressures of gender conformity.  Biology counts for sure, but it is not the sum of the entire human being -- that is limitless and is true for girls/women as well as boys/men.

We in the women's movement do not consider women and men as identical.  We see each gender as a continuum of possibilities.  These people you disparage are working to obtain parity between the genders in matters of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

They strive to bring about an enlightened society where girls AND boys are free to develop without the present constraints of culturally induced gender discrimination.

We look forward to the time when a woman can choose an occupation and can thrive and excel without the constant harassment present in so many workplaces.

When you finished your lecture, Christina, one of the few women in the room responded to your request for questions. She asked you, "Since women are biologically attracted to babies, why do some chose to murder their own baby by abortion?"

Tough question and your answer begged it.  You blamed it on the "cultural training" that the woman's movement had introduced. A training that confused women into thinking they would be happier in a job than as a mother.

That was it.  No other questions were asked.  You quickly left the podium and the studio. Whether you can admit to it or not, you're a hypocrite and your young audience, who live in the real world, knew it.

Twanda@ConnRiver.net

1998-025

Copyright 1998 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@ConnRiver.net.

G e n d e r G a p p e r s   ^{T M}   

[liznote: Christina Hoff-Sommers is the woman who has billed herself out as an "equity feminist," deriding feminism as "gender feminism."  This is the propagandist's ploy -- instead of direct confrontation and disagreement with a concept (which would expose the agenda and enable a debate that could counter the propagandist's disinformation), the trick of renaming it ("feminism" becomes "gender feminism") in order to then change the meaning of the original terminology ("feminism.")  This permits the ideology under attack ("feminism") to be destroyed subtlely through confusion, diffusion and alteration.  

Once a propagandist has achieved some success with the re-naming technique, others can claim to be the "real" adherents ("feminists") of the "corrected" ideology, while further attributing all manner of invented hateful attributes to its original followers ("evil man-hating gender feminists.")  Before anyone catches on to what's going on, "everyone" has become a "feminist," but no one knows any more what the heck that is. However, everyone knows all about those bad "gender feminists."  And no one argues, because no one ever identified themselves as "gender feminist" in the first place.  Poof!  WHO stole feminism? Clever, indeed.]