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SUMMER'S HOT - SOMMER'S NOT!
It
just happened one day last week that we turned on the T.V. in time to watch
and hear Christina Hoff Sommers get her butt kicked big time. "Talkback
Live" (CNN) was discussing Sommers's latest ODE
TO IDIOCY, The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is harming
our Young Men.
For several minutes, the M.C. led Sommers through a synopsis of her book. Leaning into the camera, Sommers insisted that boys in America are doing poorly, feeling terribly, are neglected and unloved. The villain, the cause of this hideous treatment of male children, is MISGUIDED feminism.
Here's her major theme: It's a bad time to be a boy in America. Boys are less likely than girls to go to college or do their homework. They're more likely to cheat on tests, wind up in detention, or drop out of school. Yet it's "the myth of the fragile girl," according to Sommers, "that has received the lion's share of attention recently, in hot-selling books like Mary Pipher's 'Reviving Ophelia'. When boys are discussed at all, it's in the context of how to modify their anti-social behavior -- i.e., how to make them more like girls."
Ye gods and little fishes! Apparently, MISGUIDED means anything people in the woman's movement do or say or believe that supports girls and women. Sommers once again finds herself at the rear of the women's movement, screaming frantically that she is the leader and everyone must stop what they are doing, walk backwards and follow her.
Declaring that parents and educators must "let boys be boys," even though their "very masculinity turns out to be politically incorrect," she clearly shows that she does not understand the difference between maleness and patriarchy. It is PATRIARCHY, with its gender privileges, that women object to.
More women going to college than men? Oh, pshaw! There are also equal numbers of women and men graduating from law schools BUT ONLY ABOUT 13% OF LAW FIRM PARTNERS ARE WOMEN.
The other people on the "Talkback Live" panel generally agreed with Sommers about what she said was happening to boys (..."less likely than girls to go to college or do their homework. They're more likely to cheat on tests, wind up in detention, or drop out of school.) They even added other problems they had identified, BUT THEY DID NOT BLAME THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT.
Dr.
Pollack, (Real Boy's Voices), who has had years of experience
talking to boys, blamed their problems mostly on the male oriented culture
which many boys do not wish to participate in but feel they are under pressure
to conform.
In this book, Sommers continues to pander to the backlash biddies -- Mona Charen and anti-woman woman groups such as the I.W.F. -- as well as to corporate, media, religious and sports America. All will find justification here for the inequities they continue to perpetuate. It's like the bible sez, "it's all about EVE" -- the cause of all man's troubles.
She contends that any evidence showing the harm they are doing to boys is considered a threat to women, and is often silenced before it can be revealed. If this is true, than please explain the plethora of books, articles and speakers that daily contribute to the backlash against women.
And this item takes the proverbial cake: She claims that it's a bad time to be a boy in America because at the end of the last century, the DEFINING EVENT FOR AMERICAN GIRLS WAS THE TRIUMPH OF THE U.S. WOMEN'S SOCCER TEAM AND FOR BOYS, THE SYMBOLIC EVENT WAS THE MASS KILLING AT COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL.
Jump in and help us here, folks. Isn't there baseball, football, basketball, hockey etc. leagues that have been and STILL are composed entirely of males? What gender is Tiger Woods and Harry Potter? Did not and does not the male predominate in our history, government, libraries, media, entertainment, religions, language etc. -- this could go on and on.
Certainly no young or old boy can have any problem finding a male hero or role model or place in the social order. Don't tell us that little boys were pussy-whipped because some remarkable women won a World Soccer Cup last year!
We do not find it at all strange, that once the female spirit was released from the bondage of paternalism, it would expload in the hearts of women everywhere. "Free at last," we just took off running to make up for the eons of time lost. We know that we've only just begun.
But
Sommers is still tilting against the windmills of her own deluded mind.
She wants to put limits on women and a Movement that has left her stumbling
at the starting gate. Her book does have some merit though -- it can be
shredded and added to your compost heap.
Going from the ridiculous to the sublime: NB -- Our choice for Gore's V.P. is KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND. Check her out at:
http://www.gov.state.md.us/gov/homepage/html/ltgov.html
2000-028
Copyright 2000 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@gendergappers.org.
G e n d e r G a p p e r s T M
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