Christina Hoff Sommers
Encyclopedia
Christina Hoff Sommers is an American author and former philosophy professor who is known for her critique of late 20th century feminism
, and her writings about feminism in contemporary American culture
. Her most widely discussed books are Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. Although her critics refer to her as anti-feminist, Sommers is a self-described "equity feminist" who faults contemporary feminism for "its irrational hostility to men, its recklessness with facts and statistics, and its inability to take seriously the possibility that the sexes are equal--but different."
at New York University
in 1971 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa
. She earned a Ph.D.
in philosophy
from Brandeis University
in 1979.
A former philosophy
professor in Ethics
at Clark University
in Worcester, Massachusetts
, Sommers is a resident scholar at the free-market, non-partisan American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
. She has spoken and participated in debates at over one hundred college campuses and served on the national advisory board of the Independent Women's Forum
.
categorizes Sommers' equity feminist views as classical liberal or libertarian
and socially conservative. Sommers has criticized how "conservative scholars have effectively been marginalized, silenced, and rendered invisible on most campuses." In an article for the text book, Moral Soundings, Sommers makes the case for moral conservation and traditional values.
of the women's movement. She describes "gender feminism" as having "transcended the liberalism" of early feminists. Instead of focusing on rights for all, gender feminists view society through the "sex/gender prism" and focus on recruiting women to join the "struggle against patriarchy." A reviewer of "Who Stole Feminism" characterized gender feminism as the action of accenting the differences of genders in order to create what Sommers believes is privilege for women in academia, government, industry, or the advancement of personal agendas.
Sommers wrote in The Atlantic, about her own book The War Against Boys, that misguided school curriculum, based on flawed research, is a likely cause for many problems in education including the falling reading scores of lower-school boys. Sommers writes that there is an achievement gap
between boys and girls in school, and that girls in some areas are achieving more than boys. She writes, "Growing evidence that the scales are tipped not against girls but against boys is beginning to inspire a quiet revisionism
. Some educators will admit that boys are on the wrong side of the gender gap." Writing for The New York Times
, Richard Bernstein
wrote of The War Against Boys, "Observations like that lift Ms. Sommers's book from polemic to entreaty. There is a cry in the wilderness
quality to her book, a sense that certain simple truths have been lost sight of in the smoky quarrelsomeness of American life. One may agree with Ms. Sommers or one may disagree, but it is hard not to credit her with a moral urgency that comes both from the head and from the heart."
Sommers writes in Who Stole Feminism that an often-mentioned March of Dimes
study which says that "domestic violence
is the leading cause of birth defects," does not, in fact, exist. She writes that violence against women does not peak during the Super Bowl
, which she describes as another popular urban legend
. Sommers also writes that these statements about domestic violence were used in shaping the Violence Against Women Act
, which allocates $1.6 billion a year in federal funds for ending domestic violence. Sommers writes that feminists assert and the media report that approximately 150,000 women die each year from anorexia
, an apparent distortion of the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association's figure that 150,000 females have some degree of anorexia. A Reason
magazine review stated that "the answer to the question in the book's title is, nobody stole feminism. The liberals gave it away. Their abdication of principles and cowardly fear of reprisals so ably chronicled by Sommers sealed the deal."
Sommers is a longtime critic of Women's Studies
departments, and of university curricula in general. In an interview with Scott London, Sommers said, "The perspective now, from my point of view, is that the better things get for women, the angrier the women's studies professors seem to be, the more depressed Gloria Steinem seems to get. So there is something askew here, something amiss." According to The Nation
, "Hoff Sommers carefully explains to the students that much of the fault for this unfortunate phenomenon[of "pathologizing maleness"] lies with women's studies departments. There, 'statistically challenged' feminists engage in bad scholarship to advance their liberal agenda. As her preliminary analysis of women's studies textbooks has shown, these professors are peddling a skewed and incendiary message: 'Women are from Venus, men are from Hell'. In a book review in the conservative magazine National Review
, Mary Lefkowitz
writes of Who Stole Feminism that "[Sommers] provides clear guidelines on how to distinguish indoctrination from education. That alone is a major service to all of us who are struggling to distinguish fact from fiction in today's troubled academic world."
Sommers has also written about Title IX and the shortage of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers. She opposes recent efforts to apply Title IX to the sciences because "Science is not a sport. In science, men and women play on the same teams...There are many brilliant women in the top ranks of every field of science and technology, and no one doubts their ability to compete on equal terms." Title IX programs in the sciences could easily "stigmatize" women and cheapen their hard-earned achievements. Moreover, Sommers points to research that indicates that personal preferences, not sexist discrimination, plays a role in women's career choices. Not only do women favor fields like biology, psychology,, and veterinary medicine over physics and mathematics, but they also seek out more family-friendly careers. Sommers writes that "the real problem most women scientists confront is the challenge of combining motherhood with a high-powered science career" - not discrimination.
Robert Coles
, a child psychiatrist
at Harvard University
, has compared Sommers' book with the separate but complementary work of psychologist William S. Pollack, author of Real Boys' Voices and Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, and the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan
.
Richard Bernstein, a New York Times columnist, praised the book, writing, "The burden of [this] thoughtful, provocative book is that it is American boys who are in trouble, not girls. Ms. Sommers...makes these arguments persuasively and unflinchingly, and with plenty of data to support them."
E. Anthony Rotundo of the Washington Post, in reviewing Sommers' The War Against Boys, has stated: "In the end, Sommers fails to prove either claim in the title of her book. She does not show that there is a 'war against boys.' All she can show is that feminists are attacking her 'boys-will-be-boys' concept of boyhood, just as she attacks their more flexible notion. The difference between attacking a concept and attacking millions of real children is both enormous and patently obvious. Sommers's title, then, is not just wrong but inexcusably misleading... Sommers's book is a work of neither dispassionate social science nor reflective scholarship; it is a conservative polemic."
In an article circulated by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
(FAIR), a national progressive
media watch group, Laura Flanders
wrote "[Sommers'] book [Who Stole Feminism] is filled with the same kind of errors, unsubstantiated charges and citations of 'advocacy research' that she claims to find in the work of the feminists she takes to task... Sommers relies heavily on a handful of oft-repeated anti-feminist anecdotes — or folktales."
magazine, Sommers was quoted as saying, "There are a lot of homely women in women's studies. Preaching these anti-male, anti-sex sermons is a way for them to compensate for various heartaches-- they're just mad at the beautiful girls." Many times since 1994, Sommers has denied making such a statement: "I never said any such thing. Fifteen years ago, an Esquire magazine writer misquoted me, made it up or confused me with someone else. When Washington Post writer Meg Rosenfeld did a profile of me in 1994, she asked the writer about the quote. He said his notes had gone missing (Washington Post, 7/7/1994.) The fact is: they never existed. No matter how many letters I write correcting the fabrication, it seems never to go away."
(AAUW) in her book Who Stole Feminism in conservative publications like The National Review, and in public forums. She writes of the AAUW:
Sommer's criticisms prompted a response by the AAUW:
” to a law about wife beating that existed during the reign of Romulus
in Rome
. Lemon defended the accuracy of her textbook in a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In reply, Sommers refuted Lemon’s assertions again and lamented that, with the publication of another uncorrected version of Lemon’s textbook, “Law students will now be treated to another round of Elvis sightings parading as scholarship.”
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and her writings about feminism in contemporary American culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. Her most widely discussed books are Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. Although her critics refer to her as anti-feminist, Sommers is a self-described "equity feminist" who faults contemporary feminism for "its irrational hostility to men, its recklessness with facts and statistics, and its inability to take seriously the possibility that the sexes are equal--but different."
Career
Sommers earned her B.A.Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
in 1971 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Beta Kappa Society
The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honor society. Its mission is to "celebrate and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences"; and induct "the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at America’s leading colleges and universities." Founded at The College of William and...
. She earned a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
from Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in 1979.
A former philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
professor in Ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
at Clark University
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university and liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.Founded in 1887, it is the oldest educational institution founded as an all-graduate university. Clark now also educates undergraduates...
in Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
, Sommers is a resident scholar at the free-market, non-partisan American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a non-profit group founded in 1999 and focused on civil liberties in academia in the United States...
. She has spoken and participated in debates at over one hundred college campuses and served on the national advisory board of the Independent Women's Forum
Independent Women's Forum
The Independent Women's Forum is an American conservative, non-profit, non-partisan research and educational institution focused on domestic and foreign policy issues of concern to women...
.
Ideas
Author Barbara Marshall has stated that Sommers explicitly identifies herself as a "libertarian." The Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...
categorizes Sommers' equity feminist views as classical liberal or libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
and socially conservative. Sommers has criticized how "conservative scholars have effectively been marginalized, silenced, and rendered invisible on most campuses." In an article for the text book, Moral Soundings, Sommers makes the case for moral conservation and traditional values.
Views on feminism
Sommers uses the terms "equity feminism" and "gender feminism" to differentiate what she sees as acceptable and non-acceptable forms of feminism. She describes equity feminism as the struggle based upon "Enlightenment principles of individual justice" for equal legal and civil rights and many of the original goals of the early feminists, as in the first waveFirst-wave feminism
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It focused on de jure inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage .The term first-wave was coined retroactively in the 1970s...
of the women's movement. She describes "gender feminism" as having "transcended the liberalism" of early feminists. Instead of focusing on rights for all, gender feminists view society through the "sex/gender prism" and focus on recruiting women to join the "struggle against patriarchy." A reviewer of "Who Stole Feminism" characterized gender feminism as the action of accenting the differences of genders in order to create what Sommers believes is privilege for women in academia, government, industry, or the advancement of personal agendas.
Sommers wrote in The Atlantic, about her own book The War Against Boys, that misguided school curriculum, based on flawed research, is a likely cause for many problems in education including the falling reading scores of lower-school boys. Sommers writes that there is an achievement gap
Achievement gap
Achievement gap refers to the observed disparity on a number of educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap can be observed on a variety of measures, including standardized...
between boys and girls in school, and that girls in some areas are achieving more than boys. She writes, "Growing evidence that the scales are tipped not against girls but against boys is beginning to inspire a quiet revisionism
Historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
. Some educators will admit that boys are on the wrong side of the gender gap." Writing for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Richard Bernstein
Richard Bernstein
Richard Bernstein is an American journalist, columnist, and author. He writes the Letter from America column for The International Herald Tribune...
wrote of The War Against Boys, "Observations like that lift Ms. Sommers's book from polemic to entreaty. There is a cry in the wilderness
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
quality to her book, a sense that certain simple truths have been lost sight of in the smoky quarrelsomeness of American life. One may agree with Ms. Sommers or one may disagree, but it is hard not to credit her with a moral urgency that comes both from the head and from the heart."
Sommers writes in Who Stole Feminism that an often-mentioned March of Dimes
March of Dimes
The March of Dimes Foundation is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies.-Organization:...
study which says that "domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
is the leading cause of birth defects," does not, in fact, exist. She writes that violence against women does not peak during the Super Bowl
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...
, which she describes as another popular urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
. Sommers also writes that these statements about domestic violence were used in shaping the Violence Against Women Act
Violence Against Women Act
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 is a United States federal law. It was passed as Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, , and signed as by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994...
, which allocates $1.6 billion a year in federal funds for ending domestic violence. Sommers writes that feminists assert and the media report that approximately 150,000 women die each year from anorexia
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
, an apparent distortion of the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association's figure that 150,000 females have some degree of anorexia. A Reason
Reason (magazine)
Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...
magazine review stated that "the answer to the question in the book's title is, nobody stole feminism. The liberals gave it away. Their abdication of principles and cowardly fear of reprisals so ably chronicled by Sommers sealed the deal."
Sommers is a longtime critic of Women's Studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...
departments, and of university curricula in general. In an interview with Scott London, Sommers said, "The perspective now, from my point of view, is that the better things get for women, the angrier the women's studies professors seem to be, the more depressed Gloria Steinem seems to get. So there is something askew here, something amiss." According to The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, "Hoff Sommers carefully explains to the students that much of the fault for this unfortunate phenomenon
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, Mary Lefkowitz
Mary Lefkowitz
Mary R. Lefkowitz is an American classical scholar and Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College. She is best known to non-Classicists for her anti-Afrocentrism book, Not Out of Africa . She is the widow of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones.-Biography:Lefkowitz earned her B.A...
writes of Who Stole Feminism that "
Sommers has also written about Title IX and the shortage of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers. She opposes recent efforts to apply Title IX to the sciences because "Science is not a sport. In science, men and women play on the same teams...There are many brilliant women in the top ranks of every field of science and technology, and no one doubts their ability to compete on equal terms." Title IX programs in the sciences could easily "stigmatize" women and cheapen their hard-earned achievements. Moreover, Sommers points to research that indicates that personal preferences, not sexist discrimination, plays a role in women's career choices. Not only do women favor fields like biology, psychology,, and veterinary medicine over physics and mathematics, but they also seek out more family-friendly careers. Sommers writes that "the real problem most women scientists confront is the challenge of combining motherhood with a high-powered science career" - not discrimination.
Reception
The War Against Boys was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2000Robert Coles
Robert Coles
Martin Robert Coles is an American author, child psychiatrist, and professor at Harvard University.-Life and career:...
, a child psychiatrist
Child and adolescent psychiatry
The branch of psychiatry that specializes in the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of psychopathological disorders of children, adolescents, and their families, child and adolescent psychiatry encompasses the clinical investigation of phenomenology, biologic factors, psychosocial factors,...
at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, has compared Sommers' book with the separate but complementary work of psychologist William S. Pollack, author of Real Boys' Voices and Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, and the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
.
Richard Bernstein, a New York Times columnist, praised the book, writing, "The burden of [this] thoughtful, provocative book is that it is American boys who are in trouble, not girls. Ms. Sommers...makes these arguments persuasively and unflinchingly, and with plenty of data to support them."
E. Anthony Rotundo of the Washington Post, in reviewing Sommers' The War Against Boys, has stated: "In the end, Sommers fails to prove either claim in the title of her book. She does not show that there is a 'war against boys.' All she can show is that feminists are attacking her 'boys-will-be-boys' concept of boyhood, just as she attacks their more flexible notion. The difference between attacking a concept and attacking millions of real children is both enormous and patently obvious. Sommers's title, then, is not just wrong but inexcusably misleading... Sommers's book is a work of neither dispassionate social science nor reflective scholarship; it is a conservative polemic."
In an article circulated by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
(FAIR), a national progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
media watch group, Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders is a British-American journalist who presents the current events show GRITtv, broadcast weekdays on Link and Free Speech TV....
wrote "
Criticisms and controversy
Sommers' work has attracted a great deal of attention and often draws sharp criticism from the women's groups and feminists whom she critiques.1994 Esquire interview quote controversy
In a 1994 interview with EsquireEsquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
magazine, Sommers was quoted as saying, "There are a lot of homely women in women's studies. Preaching these anti-male, anti-sex sermons is a way for them to compensate for various heartaches-- they're just mad at the beautiful girls." Many times since 1994, Sommers has denied making such a statement: "I never said any such thing. Fifteen years ago, an Esquire magazine writer misquoted me, made it up or confused me with someone else. When Washington Post writer Meg Rosenfeld did a profile of me in 1994, she asked the writer about the quote. He said his notes had gone missing (Washington Post, 7/7/1994.) The fact is: they never existed. No matter how many letters I write correcting the fabrication, it seems never to go away."
Exchanges with the AAUW
Sommers harshly criticizes women's organizations like the American Association of University WomenAmerican Association of University Women
The American Association of University Women advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. It was founded in 1882 by Ellen Swallow Richards and Marion Talbot...
(AAUW) in her book Who Stole Feminism in conservative publications like The National Review, and in public forums. She writes of the AAUW:
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) issued two reports in the early Nineties that were harmfully wrong. AAUW researchers claimed to show how "our gender biased" classrooms were damaging the self-esteem of the nation’s girls and holding them back academically. That was simply not true... If the AAUW were serious about improving the climate on campus, it could start by looking for ways to reason with the V-Day enthusiasts to discourage their antics... Campuses need effective policies against genuine harassment. They do not need the divisive gender politics of the AAUW spin sisters. The AAUW’s statistically challenged, chronically mistaken, and relentlessly male-averse "studies" should not be taken seriously.
Sommer's criticisms prompted a response by the AAUW:
Unfortunately, Who Stole Feminism? is not about making positive societal change or changing behavior to create a more equitable society for women and girls. Rather, AAUW perceives 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... Ours is not a radical agenda despite Sommers' characterization of AAUW. We are about positive societal change... Our research looks for solutions and is based on facts, not anecdotes or soundbites. The important thing to remember is that this debate is not about AAUW; it's about the children in this country. What is important is that our daughters and sons reach their full potential.
Controversy with Nancy Lemon
In 2009 Sommers contacted Berkeley law faculty member Nancy K.D. Lemon to inform her of errors in her textbook, Domestic Violence Law. Sommers had already been publicly criticizing the textbook, both online and in speeches. Specifically, Sommers pointed to erroneous statistics about domestic violence and the misattribution of the origin of the saying “rule of thumbRule of thumb
A rule of thumb is a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation. It is an easily learned and easily applied procedure for approximately calculating or recalling some value, or for making some determination...
” to a law about wife beating that existed during the reign of Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...
in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. Lemon defended the accuracy of her textbook in a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In reply, Sommers refuted Lemon’s assertions again and lamented that, with the publication of another uncorrected version of Lemon’s textbook, “Law students will now be treated to another round of Elvis sightings parading as scholarship.”
Books by Sommers
- 1986, Right and Wrong: Basic Readings in Ethics. ISBN 0155771108.
- 1995, Who Stole Feminism? ISBN 9780684801568.
- 2000, The War Against Boys. ISBN 0-684-84956-9.
- 2003 (with Frederick Sommers), Vice & Virtue in Everyday life. ISBN 9780534605346.
- 2006 (with Sally Satel, M.D.), One Nation Under Therapy. ISBN 9780312304447.
- 2009 The Science on Women in Science. ISBN 9780844742816
Further reading
- Sterling Harwood, 2000. "Introduction: A Statistical Portrait" in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual Belmont CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.: 166–167.
External links
- Christina Hoff Sommers page at the American Enterprise InstituteAmerican Enterprise InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
. - MediaTransparency entry on Christina Hoff Sommers.
- Is the future of feminism conservative? – a discussion of Sommers in the Harvard Law RecordHarvard Law RecordThe Harvard Law Record is an independent, biweekly student-edited newspaper based at Harvard Law School. Founded in 1946, it is the oldest law school newspaper in the United States.-Characteristics:...