Christina Hoff Sommers
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'''Christina Hoff Sommers, Ph.D.''' (born 1950) is an [[United States|American]] [[author]] who researches [[culture]], adolescents, and [[morality]] in American society. 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''. A former [[philosophy]] professor in [[Ethics]] at [[Clark University]] in [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], she is a resident scholar at the [[American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research]], and a member of the Board of Advisors of the [[Foundation for Individual Rights in Education]]. She speaks on college campuses through the [[Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute]]'s campus lecture program.
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 critic of what she considers politically correct trends within [[feminism]], her views have been called [[Antifeminism|antifeminist]] by her critics.
==Summary==
Christina Hoff Sommers questions the direction that feminism has taken and the integrity of some of the research it has produced. Hoff Sommers claims that flawed reports have commanded large research grants and have been instrumental in setting misguided legislation and education policy. For example, she points out in ''Who Stole Feminism'' that the often quoted [[March of Dimes]] study which says that '[[domestic violence]] is the leading cause of [[birth defect]]s,' does not exist. Another often quoted statistic she has debunked is the claim that violence against women peaks during the [[Super Bowl]]. Yet, research reports on domestic violence were used in setting the scope of such things as the [[Violence Against Women Act]], which allocates $1.6 billion a year in federal funds for fighting domestic violence. In ''The War Against Boys'' and articles, Hoff Sommers faults misguided school curriculum, based on flawed research, for many problems in education including the falling reading scores of lower-school boys.
Hoff Sommers applies [[Paulo Freire]]'s principle of transition to supremacy movements in successful political struggles to the mainstream feminist movement. She encapsulates this transition using the two terms "[[equity feminism]]" and "[[gender feminism]]." Hoff Sommers describes [[equity feminism]] as the struggle for equal legal and civil rights and many of the original goals of the [[first-wave feminism|first wave]] of the [[women's movement]]; while describing "[[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. (This thesis is echoed by [[Tammy Bruce]], former president of NOW, in her book ''The New Thought Police''.)
Hoff Sommers does not hold out much hope that current leaders will provide enlightened guidance. After attending the Heilbrun conference she writes of them:
<blockquote>The women at the Heilbrun conference are the New Feminists: articulate, prone to self-dramatization, and chronically offended. Many of the women on the "Anger" panel were tenured professors at prestigious universities. All had fine and expensive educations. Yet, listening to them one would never guess that they live in a country whose women are legally as free as the men and whose institutions of higher learning now have more female than male students.{{ref|WSF21}}</blockquote> Hoff Sommers suggests that feminist leaders are not only placing their political goals above academic honesty, but they are also indoctrinating impressionable university students not with grounded science, but rather with disingenuous, emotionally-charged pseudo information. An example of this may be found in [[Naomi Wolf]]'s ''Fire with Fire'', where Wolf tells women to bring out their ''mean girl traits'' (see [[Rachel Simmons]], ''Odd Girl Out''), to trade acts of vengeance against men (“cross targeting”), and to engage in vicious gossip for the cause (“tell men's secrets,” she writes).
==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''
*''[http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/why-can2019t-a-woman-be-more-like-a-man? Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?]''
==Criticism==
Some{{ref|flood1}}{{ref|Pozner}} have called Hoff Sommers an antifeminist.
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) say about ''Who Stole Feminism?'' that they "[perceive] 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" {{ref|AAUW}}.
Hoff Sommers is also criticized in ''The Myth Of Political Correctness''{{ref|wilson}}.
A critical review of her work in ''[[Z Magazine]]'' attacked her for what the author considered hypocrisy. It points out that she claims that feminists suppress dissent and yet attacked ''[[The New York Times]]'' for having Nina Auerbach review her book. It also points out numerous perceived factual errors and distortions in her work.{{ref|Zmagazine}}
==See also==
*[[Independent Women's Forum]]
==References==
#{{note|AAUW}}{{cite web | last =Bhattacharya| first =Chandrima S.| title =American Association of University Women Memorandum| publisher = AAUW Media Relations | date = March 1995| url =http://www.rightgrrl.com/steph/aauwmemo.html| accessdate =2007-09-02}}
#{{note|WME}}{{cite news
| first = Wendy
| last = McElroy
| authorlink = Wendy McElroy
| title = Prostitution: Reconsidering Research
| url = http://www.wendymcelroy.com/articles/spin1199.html
| work = SpinTech
| publisher = (magazine)
| date = 1999-11-12
| accessdate = 2006-10-19
}}
#{{note|DLF}}{{cite book
| last = LaFramboise
| first = LaFramboise
| authorlink = Donna LaFramboise
| title = The Princess at the Window: A New Gender Morality
| url = http://adamjones.freeservers.com/donna.htm
| accessdate = 2006-10-19
| year = 1996
| publisher = Penguin
| location = Toronto, Canada
| id = ISBN 0-14-025690-3
| quote = Over the past few years, a growing number of women have written books critical of mainstream feminism. Among them [...] Christina Hoff Sommers.
}}
#{{note|WSF22}}{{cite book
| last = Hoff Sommers
| first = Christina
| title = Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women
| year = 1994
| publisher = Simon and Schuster
| location = New York
| id = ISBN 0-671-79424-8 (hb), ISBN 0-684-80156-6 (pb), {{LCC|HQ1154.S613|1994}}
| pages = 22
}}
#{{note|WSF21}} ibid. p. 21
#{{note|Pozner}}Jennifer Pozner: [http://organizenow.net/cco/right/antifem.html Female Anti-Feminism for Fame and Profit.]
#{{note|flood1}}{{cite book
| last = Flood
| first = Michael
| authorlink = Michael Flood
| editor = Stacey Elin Rossi, ed.
| title = The Battle and Backlash Rage On
| accessdate = 2006-10-19
| date = 2004-07-07
| publisher = XLibris
| location = N.p.
| id = ISBN 1-4134-5934-X
| pages = 273
| chapter = Backlash: Angry men's movements
| chapterurl = http://www.xyonline.net/downloads/backlash.pdf
}}
#{{note|wilson}}{{cite book
| last = Wilson
| first = John
| authorlink = John Wilson
| title = The Myth Of Political Correctness
| date = [[December 2005]]
| publisher = Duke University Press
| location = N.p.
| id = ISBN 978-0822317135
| pages = 224
}}
#{{note|Zmagazine}}{{cite web
| title = Queer and Loathing
| date = [[December 2005]]
| publisher = Z Magazine
| url = http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/dec94reviews.htm
}}
==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 [http://reason.com/9410/bk.starr.shtml "''Who Stole Feminism?''"]
*[http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript893.html "''Is There a War Against Boys?'': Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers, Michael Kimmel and Susan Bailey"]
*[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/60minutes/main527678.shtml CBS 60 Minutes, ''The Gender Gap: Boys Lagging in Education'']
*[http://www.menweb.org/paglsomm.htm "''Has Feminism Gone Too Far?'': Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia"]
*[[Salon.com]] entry on [http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/06/21/sommers/ "The War Against Boys"]
*[[New York Times]] entry on [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05EFD8123DF932A05754C0A9669C8B63 "''The War Against Boys''"]
*[[WritersReps.com]] entry on [http://www.writersreps.com/book.cfm?BookID=327 "The War Against Boys"]
*[http://www.aei.org/scholars/scholarID.56,filter./scholar.asp AEI scholars & fellows: Christina Hoff Sommers]
*[[WBUR]] [[The Connection]] [http://www.bu.edu/wbur/connection/audio/2000/06/con_0616a.rm interview with Sommers]{{Wikiquote}}
*[[Washington Post]] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/reviews/waragainstboys0703.htm criticism of Sommer's ''War against Boys'']
*[http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/sommers.html The Future of Feminism] - An Interview with Christina Hoff Sommers by Scott London
*MediaTransparency entry on [http://www.mediatransparency.org/personprofile.php?personID=69 Christina Hoff Sommers]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sommers, Christina Hoff}}
[[Category:1950 births]]
[[Category:American feminists]]
[[Category:American feminist writers]]
[[Category:American women writers]]
[[Category:Brandeis University alumni]]
[[Category:Feminist scholars]]
[[Category:Jewish American writers]]
[[Category:Living people]]
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