It is no new thing – at least among educated, well-informed conservative women - to talk about the hi-jacking of Feminism by angry, man-hating shrews bent on perpetuating their anti-paternal, victim mentalities. Unfortunately, many of these women are professors in insitutions of higher learning. And according to a piece by Christina Hoff Sommers in The Chronicle Review, at least some of these educators are guilty of citing false statistics in their work – and of getting quite testy when it is pointed out to them.
After choosing some sample texts and correcting or critiquing their statistics regarding violence against women and domestic abuse, and after interacting directly with their none-too-pleased authors (click thru and read about it!) Sommers says this:
All books have mistakes, so why pick on the feminists? My complaint with feminist research is not so much that the authors make mistakes; it is that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism. They do not get corrected. The authors are passionately committed to the proposition that American women are oppressed and under siege. The scholars seize and hold on for dear life to any piece of data that appears to corroborate their dire worldview. At the same time, any critic who attempts to correct the false assumptions is dismissed as a backlasher and an anti-feminist crank.
Why should it matter if a large number of professors think and say a lot of foolish and intemperate things? Here are three reasons to be concerned:
1) False assertions, hyperbole, and crying wolf undermine the credibility and effectiveness of feminism. The United States, and the world, would greatly benefit from an intellectually responsible, reality-based women’s movement.
2) Over the years, the feminist fictions have made their way into public policy. They travel from the women’s-studies textbooks to women’s advocacy groups and then into news stories. Soon after, they are cited by concerned political leaders. President Obama recently issued an executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls. As he explained, “The purpose of this council is to ensure that American women and girls are treated fairly in all matters of public policy.” He and Congress are also poised to use the celebrated Title IX gender-equity law to counter discrimination not only in college athletics but also in college math and science programs, where, it is alleged, women face a “chilly climate.” The president and members of Congress can cite decades of women’s-studies scholarship that presents women as the have-nots of our society. Never mind that this is largely no longer true. Nearly every fact that could be marshaled to justify the formation of the White House Council on Women and Girls or the new focus of Title IX application was shaped by scholarly merchants of hype like Professors Lemon and Seager.
3) Finally, as a philosophy professor of almost 20 years, and as someone who respects rationality, objective scholarship, and intellectual integrity, I find it altogether unacceptable for distinguished university professors and prestigious publishers to disseminate falsehoods. It is offensive in itself, even without considering the harmful consequences. Obduracy in the face of reasonable criticism may be inevitable in some realms, such as partisan politics, but in academe it is an abuse of the privileges of professorship.
For comments such as these, and for her exposure of specious feminist statistics in her 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? Sommers has been called a “thug,” “parasite,” “dangerous,” and a “female impersonator.” Early in her piece, she quotes sociologist Joel Best who once said that a bad statistic is ”Harder to kill than a vampire.” Apparently the egos of feminist professors who cite those bad statistics are pretty hard to kill as well.
