Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women | Christina Hoff-Sommers

Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women | Christina Hoff-Sommers | Insightful

books:

Who Stole Feminism...

	Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women Christina Hoff-Sommers Simon & Schuster / Touchstone, 1995 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 84 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Arguing that a small but powerful group has used unscientific research and misinformation campaigns to promote the idea of women as victims of the ""patriarchy,"" an expose+a7 of these idealogues maintains that extremists damage the cause of equality. Tour.

It's not us v. them

I first read Ms. Hoff-Sommers book with some skepticism, after all I had never met the kinds of feminists she was accusing of hijacking feminism. But my opinion of the book changed when I went to Duke University and took a class on Feminism and Ecology and was attacked by the instructors because I am apparently a sell-out to patriarchy, simply because I happened to marry someone who works for an organization they were against.This is the play-book for gender difference feminists.
Ms. Hoff-Sommers points out in her book that gender difference feminists claim their "special natures," a reflection back to 19th century ideals of womanhood, as a reason for their determiniation to set up an us v. men world.
But the truth of the matter is that all people must learn to live cooperatively and equally in order to move toward a society where men and women can fully appreciate their differences, similarities and their collective strengths. Ultimately, equality does not mean everyone feels exactly the same on every issue, as gender difference feminists try to enforce. Rather, feminism is about educating women, allowing them to make their own decisions, even when we don't always agree with them. No one wins in an us v. them game, and that is what this book tries to point out.
You will have to deal with someangry rants in this book, but they are the passionate frustration of a woman trying desperately to remind women that our strength comes through unity, not through selling out groups of people who don't agree with everything we have to say.

for more information click here

Insightful

When I read negative reviews of this book, I inevitably wondered if the critics actually read this scholarly work. Or do they really believe that things like re-writing history or trouncing on the First Amendment can be justified?

The author's experiences and analysis ring true with the irrational, postmodern, and pseudoscientific nonsense I have encounter in nursing academia from aggressive "gender feminists." Thirty years ago, 15% of nurses were male; today it's half that many. It may have something to do with academia's hostility towards men. One nurse academic even published a paper explaining why male nurses should never do nursing research because they could never understand this female profession. Argh.

The author makes a convincing argument that gender feminism is academically lazy, undisciplined, overbearing, and has no respect for science/reason. I hope in the years since this book was written that this destructive trend has waned.

for more information click here

Excellent, Fact-Based Deconstruction

Hoff-Sommers expertly dismantles a vast amount of feminist disinformation such as the idea that one in four women will be rape victims at some point in their lives, that there is a vast epidemic of near-murderous man-on-woman spousal abuse or that girls are being systematically demoralized and ignored in school by showing us such things as how the original research contradicts their publicly-stated finding, demonstrating glaring methodological flaws and even finding cases where the "results" were pulled out of a location best left unmentioned in polite company.

More importantly, Hoff-Sommers shows what anyone who has paid serious attention to the feminist movement ought to know: Though the idea of gender equality is a genuine advancement based on a principled and logical adherence to enlightenment values, feminists themselves have little use for them and often resort to censorship and bullying to get their way. Alarmingly, feminists have taken control of the curriculum in many of our universities, the very place where enlightenment values are supposed to be the whole point. Happily, college students being what they are, the damage seems to be limited mostly to their own good name. Gender equality itself seems to be moving along just fine despite feminism's help.

Although feminists are understandably unpopular with mainstream Americans, they have gotten a free pass from many on the left who confuse them (and quite often themselves) with genuine supporters of liberal values. As the Amanda Marcottes of the world are showing, the movement hasn't exactly improved with age which is why "Who Stole Feminism?" remains an important antidote--at least as good as the negative reviews to be found here of the book.

for more information click here

Insightful & Provides Balance to Some Myths of Feminism

Though I'm a progressive feminist and FAR from being a conservative or republican(but, god feminist is so 20th century), I found this book to be insightful as a counterbalance to the uber-extreme left views of feminist groups that are doing a disservice to other women by citing "data" with no real source or feeding misinformation to fuel women's ire. Especially like the points made re: NOW and its increasingly volatile focus on the issue of abortion rights rather than equality in pay and housing, help for single mothers, low-income mothers, etc.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

products you might be interested in