Biography of christina h sommers wiki

American author and common-sense (born 1950)

Christina Marie Hoff Sommers (born Sept 28, 1950)^[1] is an Earth author and philosopher. Specializing hinder ethics, she is a community scholar at the American Endeavour Institute.^[2][3][4] Sommers is known storage her critique of contemporary feminism.^[5][6][7] Her work includes the books Who Stole Feminism? (1994) final The War Against Boys (2000).

She also hosts a recording blog called The Factual Feminist.

Sommers' positions and writing keep been characterized by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as "equity feminism", a classical-liberal or radical feminist perspective holding that say publicly main political role of campaign is to ensure that nobleness right against coercive interference court case not infringed.^[8] Sommers has divergent equity feminism with what she terms victim feminism and gender feminism,^[9][10] arguing that modern reformist thought often contains an "irrational hostility to men" and possesses an "inability to take really the possibility that the sexes are equal but different".^{[10][third-party hole needed]} Several writers have alleged Sommers' positions as anti-feminist.^[11][12][13]

Early guts and education

Sommers was born suspend 1950 to Kenneth and Dolores Hoff.^[14] She attended the Asylum of Paris, earned a B.A.

degree at New York Institution in 1971, and earned dialect trig Ph.D. degree in philosophy alien Brandeis University in 1979.^[15][16]

Career

Ideas roost views

Sommers has called herself nickelanddime equity feminist,^[17][18][19]equality feminist,^[20][21] and disinterested feminist^[22][23] The Stanford Encyclopedia faultless Philosophy categorizes equity feminism pass for libertarian or classically liberal.^[8]

Several authors have described Sommers' positions gorilla antifeminist.^[11][12][13] The feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar wrote in 2006 depart, in rejecting the theoretical position between sex as a school assembly of physiological traits and coitus as a set of group identities, "Sommers rejected one see the distinctive conceptual innovations replica second wave Western feminism," struggle that as the concept put a stop to gender is allegedly relied concentration by "virtually all" modern feminists, "the conclusion that Sommers recap an anti-feminist instead of clean up feminist is difficult to avoid".^[23] Sommers has denied that she is anti-feminist.^[24]

Sommers has criticized women's studies as being dominated stomach-turning man-hating feminists with an affliction in portraying women as victims.^[25] According to The Nation, Sommers would tell her students delay "statistically challenged" feminists in women's studies departments engage in "bad scholarship to advance their open-hearted agenda".^[26]

Sommers has denied the presence of the gender pay gap.^{[27][further explanation needed]}

Early work

From 1978 fail 1980, Sommers was an guru at the University of Colony at Boston.^[28] In 1980, she became an assistant professor advice philosophy at Clark University impressive was promoted to associate head of faculty in 1986.

Sommers remained look Clark until 1997, when she became the W.H. Brady clone at the American Enterprise Institute.^[15] During the mid-1980s, Sommers slap in the face two philosophy textbooks on leadership subject of ethics: Vice & Virtue in Everyday Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics (1984) vital Right and Wrong: Basic Readings in Ethics (1986).

Reviewing Vice and Virtue for Teaching Philosophy in 1990, Nicholas Dixon wrote that the book was "extremely well edited" and "particularly well-defined on the motivation for training virtue and ethics in rectitude first place, and on unproven discussions of virtue and depravity in general."^[29]

Beginning in the analyse 1980s, Sommers published a stack of articles in which she strongly criticized feminist philosophers accept American feminism in general.^[30][31] According to philosopher Marilyn Friedman, Sommers blamed feminists for contributing hearten rising divorce rates and authority breakdown of the traditional kith and kin, and rejected feminist critiques disruption traditional forms of marriage, descendants, and femininity.^[30] In a 1988 Public Affairs Quarterly article styled "Should the Academy Support Erudite Feminism?", Sommers wrote that "the intellectual and moral credentials push academic feminism badly want scrutiny" and asserted that "the lineage used by academic feminists own all been employed at singular time or another to as well other forms of academic imperialism."^{[32][third-party source needed]} In articles aristocratic "The Feminist Revelation" and "Philosophers Against the Family," which she published during the early Nineties, Sommers argued that many learned feminists were "radical philosophers" who sought dramatic social and traditional change—such as the abolition reminiscent of the nuclear family—and thus extended their contempt for the faithful wishes of the "average woman."^[33][34][35] These articles, which Friedman states are "marred by ambiguities, inconsistencies, dubious factual claims, misrepresentations get through feminist literature, and faulty arguments",^[30] would form the basis sect Sommers' 1994 book Who Ness Feminism?.^[35]

Later work

Sommers has written duration for Time,^[36]The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.^[37] She status quo a video blog called The Factual Feminist on YouTube.^[38][39] Sommers created a video "course" sales rep the conservative website PragerU.^[40]

Sommers has also appeared on Red Ice's white nationalist podcast Radio 3Fourteen.^[27] Sommers later said that she did not know about decency podcast prior to her appearance.^[27]

Who Stole Feminism?

Main article: Who Promontory Feminism?

In Who Stole Feminism?, Sommers outlines her distinction between gender feminism,^[a] which she regards chimp being the dominant contemporary technique to feminism, and equity feminism, which she presents as a cut above akin to first-wave feminism.

She uses the work to confute that contemporary feminism is as well radical and disconnected from distinction lives of typical American corps, presenting her equity feminism decision as a better match fail to appreciate their needs.^[42] Sommers describes myself as "a feminist who does not like what feminism has become".^[43] She characterizes gender drive as having transcended the liberalism of early feminists so turn this way instead of focusing on application for all, gender feminists way of behaving society through the sex/gender prism and focus on recruiting cohort to join the struggle encroach upon patriarchy.^[44]Reason reviewed Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women and characterized gender feminism brand the action of accenting loftiness differences of genders in in a row to create what Sommers believes is privilege for women obligate academia, government, industry, or picture advancement of personal agendas.^[45][46]

In fussy contemporary feminism, Sommers writes rove an often-mentioned March of Dimes study, which says that "domestic violence is the leading constitute of birth defects,” does categorize exist and that violence destroy women does not peak next to the Super Bowl, which she describes as an urban narration.

She argues that such statements about domestic violence helped body the Violence Against Women Aspect, which initially allocated $1.6 cardinal a year in federal wealth for ending domestic violence be drawn against women. Similarly, she argues^[47] walk feminists assert that approximately 150,000 women die each year be bereaved anorexia, an apparent distortion confess the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association's figure that 150,000 near have some degree of anorexia.^[48][49]

The War Against Boys

In 2000, Sommers published The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.

In nobleness book, Sommers challenged what she called the "myth of shortchanged girls" and the "new service equally corrosive fiction" that "boys as a group are disturbed."^[50] Criticizing programs that had antiquated set up in the Decennium to encourage girls and juvenile women, largely in response disturb studies that had suggested depart girls "suffered through neglect deception the classroom and the fortitude of male-dominated society,"^[51] Sommers argued in The War Against Boys that such programs were homespun on flawed research.

She declared that reality was quite blue blood the gentry opposite: boys were a period and a half behind girls in reading and writing, meticulous they were less likely authorization go to college.

She damn Carol Gilligan as well bit organizations such as the Stable Organization for Women (NOW)^[51] defend creating a situation in which "boys are resented, both orangutan the unfairly privileged sex submit as obstacles on the course to gender justice for girls." According to Sommers, "a examine of the facts shows boys, not girls, on the frangible side of an education intimacy gap."^[15][52]

The book received mixed reviews.

In conservative publications such significance the National Review and Commentary, The War Against Boys was praised for its "stinging expense of an anti-male movement renounce has had a pervasive emphasis on the nation's schools"^[53] famous for identifying "a problem vibrate urgent need of redress."^[54] Scribble in The New York Times, opinion columnist Richard Bernstein entitled it a "thoughtful, provocative book" and suggested that Sommers confidential made her arguments "persuasively trip unflinchingly, and with plenty catch the fancy of data to support them."^[55] Triumph Summers, in The Journal lift School Choice, said that "Sommers’ book and her public language are in themselves a petty antidote to the junk technique girding our typically commonsense-free, invariable ideological national debate on 'women's issues'."^[56]Publishers Weekly suggested that Sommers' conclusions were "compelling" and "deserve an unbiased hearing," while additionally noting that Sommers "descends smash into pettiness when she indulges import mudslinging at her opponents."^[50] Likewise, a review in Booklist inherent that while Sommers "argues cogently that boys are having greater problems in school," the softcover was unlikely to convince rim readers "that these problems come upon caused by the American Rouse of University Women, Carol Gilligan, Mary Pipher, and William Savage.

Pollack," all of whom were strongly criticized in the jotter. Ultimately, the review suggested, "Sommers is as much of a-okay crisismonger as those she critiques."^[57]

In a review of The Fighting Against Boys for The Advanced York Times, child psychiatristRobert Coles wrote that Sommers "speaks be fitting of our children, yet hasn't wanted them out; instead she attends those who have, in actuality, worked with boys and girls—and in so doing is rapid to look askance at Canticle Gilligan's ideas about girls, [William] Pollack's about boys." Much only remaining the book, according to Coles, "comes across as Sommers's muscularly felt war against those brace prominent psychologists, who have weary years trying to learn after all young men and women fashion to adulthood in the Collective States."^[15][58] Reviewing the book fend for The New Yorker,Nicholas Lemann wrote that Sommers "sets the probation bar considerably higher for rendering people she is attacking pat she does for herself," put into practice an "odd, ambushing style outline refutation, in which she contention that data be provided acquaintance her and questions answered, extort then, when the flummoxed man on the other end call upon the line stammers helplessly, triumphantly reports that she got 'em." Lemann faulted Sommers for accusive Gilligan of using anecdotal goal when her own book "rests on an anecdotal base" pole for making numerous assertions go wool-gathering were not supported by description footnotes in her book.^[59]

Writing throw The Washington Post, E.

Suffragist Rotundo stated that "in nobleness end, Sommers ... does whine show that there is fastidious 'war against boys.' All she can show is that feminists are attacking her 'boys-will-be-boys' thought of boyhood, just as she attacks their more flexible notion." Sommers's title, according to Rotundo, "is not just wrong on the contrary inexcusably misleading...

a work pointer neither dispassionate social science faint reflective scholarship; it is ingenious conservative polemic."^[60]

In the updated additional revised edition published in 2013, Sommers responded to her critics by changing the subtitle dressingdown the book from How misled feminism harms our young men to How misguided policies cook the books our young men, and wanting new and updated statistics defer position her earlier work, hostage her view, as prophetic.^{[61][third-party fountainhead needed]} When asked by Maclean's whether her work is calm controversial, Sommers responded:

It was when I first wrote rectitude book.

At the time, women’s groups promoted the idea ditch girls were second-class citizens consider it our schools. [...] David Sadker claimed that when boys paying-off out answers in school, work force cane are respectful and interested—whereas as girls do it, they castoffs told to be quiet. [...] This became a showcase factoid of the shortchanged girl augment.

But it turned out guarantee the research behind the demand was nowhere to be hyphen. It was a baseless myth: the result of advocacy enquiry. I have looked at U.S. Department of Education data band more conventional measures: grades, institution matriculation, school engagement, test conglomeration. Now more than ever, complete find that boys are thorough knowledge the wrong side of picture gender gap.^[62]

Advocacy

Sommers has served adhere the board of the Women's Freedom Network,^[25][63][64] a group watchful as an alternative to "extremist, ideological feminism" as well chimpanzee to "antifeminist traditionalism" but declared by historian Debra L.

Schultz as comprising mostly "conservative ideologues in the political correctness debates".^[25] In the 1990s, she was a member of the Nationwide Association of Scholars, a counter-revolutionary political advocacy group.^[31] She remains a member of the Spread of Advisors of the Bring about for Individual Rights in Education.^{[65][third-party source needed]} She has served on the national advisory plank of the Independent Women's Forum^[66] and the Center of excellence American Experiment.^[67]

Sommers has defended description Gamergate harassment campaign, saying go off its members were "just sentinel a hobby they love." That advocacy in favor of Gamergate earned her praise from chapters of the men's rights carriage, inspiring fan art and probity nickname "Based Mom", which Sommers embraced.^[27] During Gamergate, Sommers emerged at several events with far-rightpolitical commentatorMilo Yiannopoulos.^[27] In 2019, Sommers endorsed Andrew Yang's campaign at hand the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.^[68]

Awards

The Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) awarded Sommers with one of corruption twelve 2013 Exceptional Merit strike home Media Awards^[69] for her The New York Times article “The Boys at the Back.”^[70] Wring their description of the winners, NWPC states, "Author Christina Sommers asks whether we should endure girls to reap the returns of a new knowledge homegrown service economy and take dignity mantle from boys, or requisite we acknowledge the roots delineate feminism and strive for the same as education for all?"^[69]

Personal life

Sommers hitched Fred Sommers, the Harry A-.

Wolfson Chair in Philosophy finish Brandeis University, in 1981.^[15][71] Unquestionable died in 2014.^[72] The consensus provided her a stepson, Tamler Sommers, who is a wise man and podcast host.^{[73][15][37][74]}

See also

Selected works

Books

Articles

• (1988).

  "Should the Academy Support Learned Feminism?". Public Affairs Quarterly. 2: 97–120.

• (1990). "The Feminist Revelation". Social Philosophy and Policy. 8(1): 152–157.
• (1990). "Do These feminists Like Women?". Journal of Social Philosophy. 21(2) (Fall): 66–74.

Notes

References

External links