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Title: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women by Christina Hoff-Sommers ISBN: 0-684-80156-6 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9 (71 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Daring but Dangerous Book
Comment: Sommers has done an excellent job of demonstrating some of the problems with what passes for current feminist advocacy studies. Her analysis of what, and more importantly how, things are being taught on many American campuses is cogent and frightening to consider; the idea that colleges may no longer consider teaching students how to think, but rather what they should think. But Sommers book also poses a danger, because many readers who come in with their own opinions firmly established will assume that Sommers' work intends to show that women face no problems in the world, or that all feminists are deceitful or simply wrong. Even a cursory review of the work will show that she in fact acknowledges that there are still problems to be resolved for women, particularly for women who are not currently well represented by prominent feminists: women who are poor or who live elsewhere than the United States. Although this book does speak specifically and well about how a certain brand of feminism (what she calls gender feminism) is alienating many who otherwise support the goals of traditional feminism, it is even better as an example of how advocacy research can twist public policy. Unfortunately, this book is most likely to be used by opponents of any feminism to drag down any attempts to remedy real problems that exist for women. That is a real shame, because Sommers has clearly put a great deal of thought and effort into this work.
Rating: 4
Summary: wonderfully harsh polemic
Comment: In this wonderfully harsh polemic against modern feminism, Christina Hoff Sommers essentially sets out to hunt a mouse with an elephant gun. In a successful effort to demonstrate that radical feminists have betrayed the concerns of the vast majority of women, she does a great job of reporting horror stories from the gender wars, but she is not as good at analyzing the ideology that is causing them. When she's done, her target has certainly been destroyed, but there's not much meat left for us to chew on.
Her basic thesis is inarguable: the "First Wave" of feminism was based on the idea of equity, that women should have equal opportunity to succeed in society; but the "Second Wave" of feminism is based on a fight against men and an imaginary patriarchy bent on subjugating women. Unfortunately, the book consists almost exclusively of presenting anecdotes to demonstrate that the second half of this thesis is accurate. Whereas, if only Ms Hoff Sommers had taken the time to examine her own argument and place it in a broader historical and philosophical context, she could have both obviated the need for presenting quite so much detailed proof and taken advantage of the powerful preexisting critiques of this same tendency in other groups.
The transition she identifies is after all nothing more than the common historical movement by disadvantaged interest groups from a demand for equality of opportunity to a demand for equality of results. The Second Wave feminists, or gender feminists as she refers to them, are simply your garden variety radical egalitarians. Their ideas are nothing new--they are borrowed from Marxists and Black activists and others--all that has changed is who gets grouped in the victim class (in this case it's women rather than proletarians or people of color) and who gets grouped in the oppressor class (men instead of the bourgeoisie or whites). The solution offered by the gender feminists is nothing new either; when equality of opportunity fails to produce equal results, egalitarians only have one recourse and that is to place restrictions on those who are succeeding in the existing system.
Egalitarians are always coercive utopians. Having determined an ideal set of outcomes, but unable to produce them in the rough and tumble of the free market, they resort to limitations on certain individuals and classes, and to privileges for others, as the only means to reach their cherished goal. It is hardly surprising that some 100 years into the era of women's rights, the most radical fringe element of the women's movement should have reached this stage.
This book offers an important portrait of the real life effects that these feminists and their authoritarian tactics are having, particularly in American schools. The litany of abuses which these activists have perpetrated should serve as a wake up call to anyone who is concerned about the decline of the educational system and who believes in freedom of expression, in basic civil rights, in equality of opportunity and, ultimately, in the future of women specifically and society in general. One can only wish that the author had drawn back a little from her passionate but parochial concern with gender feminism and integrated her argument into the much wider ongoing struggle against coercive egalitarians everywhere.
GRADE: B-
Rating: 5
Summary: Bold, insightful, and very politically incorrect!
Comment: One of the canned reviews that Amazon.com posted says that "despite claims to the contrary, this book (sic) reads like a right-wing, antifeminist..." blah, blah,blah.
Reviewers such as the one who wrote this insipid comment need to realize that the term "right-wing" does not scare anyone. The American people are tired of disingenuousness, narrow special interests, lies, and deceptions---which is precisely the reason why Christina Hoff-Sommer's book is so enormously popular.
Who Stole Feminism throws the curtain back on the modern day women's rights movement. No right thinking person could possibly be against equal rights for women. But Hoff-Sommer's book is not targeting true, liberating feminism, she is attacking the rabid, attack-dog gender feminism that is largely populated by lesbians, eco-femi-nazis, animal rights activists,leftist literatti and glitteratti--a vast array of fruits and nuts with seemingly disparate interests.
Hoff-Sommers posits that a genuine, worthy, historical movement has been hi-jacked by the aforementioned special interests, and this to the detriment of the cause. She goes in-depth exposing the faux scholarship and non-intellectual "studies" which back into conclusions that men are all bad, the penis is a weapon of oppression, and women are STILL under the thumb of the male-dominated society--facts to the contrary be damned!
She discusses the oft-cited canard that female students are at a disadvantage; this despite the fact that the education establishment is still overwhelmingly populated with females. And so on, and so forth she goes.
This book gives the reader a true perspective on what has happened to the women's movement.
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Title: The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell ISBN: 0425181448 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 09 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women by Lionel Tiger ISBN: 0312263112 Publisher: Golden Books Adult Publishing Pub. Date: 02 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say: Destroying Myths, Creating Love by Warren Farrell Ph.D. ISBN: 1585420611 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: 21 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Backlash : The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi ISBN: 0385425074 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 06 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism by Daphne Patai ISBN: 0847689875 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing (via NBN) Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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