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Christina Hoff Sommers (born 1950 in Petaluma, California) is an author who researches culture, adolescents, and morality in American society. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy categorizes Sommers as a socially conservative equity feminist, as well as a classical liberal or libertarian. Her best-known books are Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. Sommers has described how the feminist movement has been appropriated by "a cadre of party-line bureaucrats promoting an agenda of victimism and victimology-based revolution, with serious implications for the wider world." Critics of Sommers have referred to her as an antifeminist.

Sommers earned her B.A. at New York University where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1971. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy at Brandeis University in 1979. A former philosophy professor in Ethics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at several conservative institutions, including the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Board of Advisors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. She speaks on college campuses through the socially conservative Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's campus lecture program, and is also one of the founding members of the conservative Independent Women's Forum.

Views on feminism

Hoff Sommers uses the terms "equity feminism" and "gender feminism" to differentiate what she sees as acceptable and non-acceptable forms of feminisnm. She describes equity feminism as the struggle for equal legal and civil rights and many of the original goals of the early feminists, i.e., first wave of the women's movement. She describes "gender feminism" as the action of accenting the differences of genders for the purposes of creating privilege for women in academia, government, industry, or advancing personal agendas.

Christina Hoff Sommers questions the direction that feminism has taken. She claims that flawed reports have commanded large research grants and influenced misguided legislation and education policy. She claims in Who Stole Feminism that the often quoted March of Dimes study which says that 'domestic violence is the leading cause of birth defects,' does not exist. She writes that violence against women does not peak during the Super Bowl, a widely-held belief. Hoff Sommers claims that these statements about domestic violence were used in shaping the Violence Against Women Act, which allocates $1.6 billion a year in federal funds for ending domestic violence. She also alleges that feminists assert that approximately 150,000 females die each year of anorexia, a number often quoted in the media. She holds that that was a distortion of the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association's figure that 150,000 females have some degree of anorexia.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Controversies

Sommers harshly criticizes women's organizations like the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in her book Who Stole Feminism in conservative publications like The National Review, and in public forums. She writes of the AAUW:

"The American Association of University Women (AAUW) issued two reports in the early Nineties that were harmfully wrong. AAUW researchers claimed to show how “our gender biased” classrooms were damaging the self-esteem of the nation’s girls and holding them back academically. That was simply not true... If the AAUW were serious about improving the climate on campus, it could start by looking for ways to reason with the V-Day enthusiasts to discourage their antics. But that is not about to happen any time soon. Campuses need effective policies against genuine harassment. They do not need the divisive gender politics of the AAUW spin sisters. The AAUW’s statistically challenged, chronically mistaken, and relentlessly male-averse “studies” should not be taken seriously."

Sommer's criticisms prompted a response by the AAUW:

Unfortunately, Who Stole Feminism? is not about making positive societal change or changing behavior to create a more equitable society for women and girls. Rather, AAUW perceives the book to be an attack on scholars, women's organizations, and higher education. Contrary to what Sommers contends, there is nothing in any of our research about terms she uses--domination, subjugation, victimization, or oppression. Anyone who has read The AAUW Report will know that none of this is in our research. Ours is not a radical agenda despite Sommers' characterization of AAUW. We are about positive societal change. What does Sommers have to offer women and girls of America?Our research looks for solutions and is based on facts, not anecdotes or soundbites. The important thing to remember is that this debate is not about AAUW; it's about the children in this country. What is important is that our daughters and sons reach their full potential.

In The War Against Boys Hoff Sommers faults misguided school curriculum, allegedly based on flawed research, for many problems in education including the falling reading scores of lower-school boys. Writing in the Atlantic Monthly about her book, "The War Against Boys," Sommers claims there is an achievement gap between boys and girls in school, and that girls in some areas are achieving more than boys. She writes, "Growing evidence that the scales are tipped not against girls but against boys is beginning to inspire a quiet revisionism. Some educators will admit that boys are on the wrong side of the gender gap."

Books and articles

• Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women (1994) ISBN 0-684-80156-6
• The War against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men (June 2001) ISBN 0-684-84957-7
• Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life
• Right and Wrong: Basic Readings in Ethics
• One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance
• A Book for Real Boys
• Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?

See also

• Independent Women's Forum

References

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, Simon and Schuster, 1994, 22. ISBN 0-671-79424-8 (hb), ISBN 0-684-80156-6 (pb), LCC HQ1154.S613 1994
3. ^ Tama Starr, Reactionary Feminism, Review of Christina Hoff Summers Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, Reason Magazine, October 1994.
4. Michael Flood, Chapter 21(PDF) of The Battle and Backlash Rage On, XLibris, 2006 ISBN 1-4134-5934-X
5. Jennifer Pozner, Female Anti-Feminism for Fame and Profit, excerpted from Uncovering the Right on Campus, Center for Campus Organizing (CCO), 1997.
6. Time: "The Rights New Wing" Quote: Antifeminist Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys, darkly warned that Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues — a collection of sketches about women's sexual experiences that was performed on more than 600 campuses last year — has inspired "an army" of campus feminists whom she called "very elitist." Sommers told the audience, "You have been marginalized. You have to begin to demand some kind of representation."
7. Texas A&M website has a doctor of philosophy degree in philosophy from Brandeis University
8. Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's campus lecture program
9. ^ Mary Lefkowitz, Review of Christina Hoff Summers Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, National Review, July 11, 1994.
10. The National Review ""Crying Wolf" by Christina Hoff Sommers
11. "The Future of Feminism: An Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers
12. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research A Speech by Christina Hoff Sommers
13. The National Review "Crying Wolf" by Christina Hoff Sommers
14. American Association of University Women Memorandum March 1995
15. The Atlantic "The War Against Boys"
16. The Atlantic "The War Against Boys"

Further reading

• Sterling Harwood, "Introduction: A Statistical Portrait," in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2000), pp. 166-167.

External links

• Reason magazine entry on "Who Stole Feminism?"
• "Is There a War Against Boys?: Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers, Michael Kimmel and Susan Bailey"
• CBS 60 Minutes, The Gender Gap: Boys Lagging in Education
• "Has Feminism Gone Too Far?: Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia"
• Salon.com entry on "The War Against Boys"
• New York Times entry on "The War Against Boys"
• WritersReps.com entry on "The War Against Boys"
• AEI scholars & fellows: Christina Hoff Sommers
• WBUR The Connection interview with Sommers

• Washington Post criticism of Sommer's War against Boys
• The Future of Feminism - An Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers by Scott London
• MediaTransparency entry on Christina Hoff Sommers
• Salon.com review of Hoff Sommer's work: "Lost boys"

• 1950 births
• American women writers
• Brandeis University alumni
• Jewish American writers
• Living people