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A review by benhourigan
Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women by Christina Hoff Sommers
4.0
It is perilous even to speak of feminism today if one does not agree with its radical adherents, now populating the opinion pages of The Guardian or Australia's Daily Life with essays claiming that women are universally victims of a male conspiracy known as patriarchy. This is especially so if you are a man, and a man who loves women—with the simplistic equation current that critics of feminism must be misogynists (i.e. women-haters)—you become viewed as an enemy of women, and the women you love may turn against you.
Christina Hoff Sommers' 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? is remarkably pertinent in this climate, some nineteen years later, for it offers the apparently forgotten prospect that one might be a critic of some feminism or feminists, but a supporter of others. In fact, it offers the forgotten prospect that there are multiple feminisms, and that while one kind may be collectivist, doctrinaire and illiberal, there is another that is liberal, inclusive, and in favor of equality and the full complement of rights for all. Elsewhere Sommers speaks of "freedom feminism"—here she calls the good feminism "equity feminism" and the bad "gender feminism."
While this distinction is perhaps Sommers' major gift to readers, the other gem is chapter 5, "The Feminist Classroom," which covers the gender feminist model of education as ideological indoctrination, and its advocates' at least occasional use of intimidation tactics such as "defense guarding," which Sommers describes as "extremely reminiscent of fascism, of brown shirts." The tactics and experiences recounted therein may seem familiar to humanities students (and former students) in other disciplines theoretically or institutionally dominated by Marxism or other forms of extreme opposition to the status quo that view all means as justified in the fight for their ideals. Still more familiar may be the experience of some that if they speak out against a political opinion viewed by some as self-evident, orthodox, or "what all good people believe," they will be ostracised and shamed.
In its use of these tactics of indoctrination, intimidation, and social pressure, gender feminism is concerning not necessarily in its sexual politics, but as a movement that irrespective of its content, is illiberal and respects neither the autonomy of those who are not part of it, nor the possibility that a person of good character may rationally and acceptably hold a different and defensible view.
The remaining value in Sommers' book is as a catalog of areas in which ideologically motivated gender feminist researchers have made selective use of statistics to fabricate a case for ongoing universal female victimhood even in a scenario where a prior generation of equity feminists had already won almost total legal equality and material equality of opportunity for men and women. She devotes particular and effective attention to dissecting and debunking gender feminists' inflated (but seldom questioned) estimates of the incidence of rape and other forms of sexual violence, and their claims that girls are disadvantaged in education.
In this regard, Who Stole Feminism? has much in common with Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power, which is also in large part a sourcebook for those who find the gender feminist critique of our society unconvincing and are looking for the counterexamples to the myth of female victimhood that they instinctively know must be there. Here, Sommers' is the better book: she is wittier, and happy to draw amusement from the eccentricities and irrationality of the gender feminists she criticizes. There is also, here, none of the perhaps unavoidable feeling of self-pity in Farrell's book, which is full of cries of "but men suffer too!" (and yet, it is one of Farrell's points that we have been wrongly conditioned to view the openly suffering man as unattractive).
If one is looking for an alternative to what one may suspect is the distorted view of sexual politics presented by the gender feminist commentariat, this is an excellent place to start, not least because Sommers reminds us that in spite of its many illiberal proponents, there was once, and remains, much that is laudable in a certain kind of feminism that is rigorously focused on the pursuit of rights and equality.
Christina Hoff Sommers' 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? is remarkably pertinent in this climate, some nineteen years later, for it offers the apparently forgotten prospect that one might be a critic of some feminism or feminists, but a supporter of others. In fact, it offers the forgotten prospect that there are multiple feminisms, and that while one kind may be collectivist, doctrinaire and illiberal, there is another that is liberal, inclusive, and in favor of equality and the full complement of rights for all. Elsewhere Sommers speaks of "freedom feminism"—here she calls the good feminism "equity feminism" and the bad "gender feminism."
While this distinction is perhaps Sommers' major gift to readers, the other gem is chapter 5, "The Feminist Classroom," which covers the gender feminist model of education as ideological indoctrination, and its advocates' at least occasional use of intimidation tactics such as "defense guarding," which Sommers describes as "extremely reminiscent of fascism, of brown shirts." The tactics and experiences recounted therein may seem familiar to humanities students (and former students) in other disciplines theoretically or institutionally dominated by Marxism or other forms of extreme opposition to the status quo that view all means as justified in the fight for their ideals. Still more familiar may be the experience of some that if they speak out against a political opinion viewed by some as self-evident, orthodox, or "what all good people believe," they will be ostracised and shamed.
In its use of these tactics of indoctrination, intimidation, and social pressure, gender feminism is concerning not necessarily in its sexual politics, but as a movement that irrespective of its content, is illiberal and respects neither the autonomy of those who are not part of it, nor the possibility that a person of good character may rationally and acceptably hold a different and defensible view.
The remaining value in Sommers' book is as a catalog of areas in which ideologically motivated gender feminist researchers have made selective use of statistics to fabricate a case for ongoing universal female victimhood even in a scenario where a prior generation of equity feminists had already won almost total legal equality and material equality of opportunity for men and women. She devotes particular and effective attention to dissecting and debunking gender feminists' inflated (but seldom questioned) estimates of the incidence of rape and other forms of sexual violence, and their claims that girls are disadvantaged in education.
In this regard, Who Stole Feminism? has much in common with Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power, which is also in large part a sourcebook for those who find the gender feminist critique of our society unconvincing and are looking for the counterexamples to the myth of female victimhood that they instinctively know must be there. Here, Sommers' is the better book: she is wittier, and happy to draw amusement from the eccentricities and irrationality of the gender feminists she criticizes. There is also, here, none of the perhaps unavoidable feeling of self-pity in Farrell's book, which is full of cries of "but men suffer too!" (and yet, it is one of Farrell's points that we have been wrongly conditioned to view the openly suffering man as unattractive).
If one is looking for an alternative to what one may suspect is the distorted view of sexual politics presented by the gender feminist commentariat, this is an excellent place to start, not least because Sommers reminds us that in spite of its many illiberal proponents, there was once, and remains, much that is laudable in a certain kind of feminism that is rigorously focused on the pursuit of rights and equality.