Biography of christina h sommers wiki

American author and philosopher (born 1950)

Christina Marie Hoff Sommers (born Sep 28, 1950)^[1] is an American originator and philosopher. Specializing in ethics, she is a resident scholar at greatness American Enterprise Institute.^[2][3][4] Sommers is indepth for her critique of contemporary feminism.^[5][6][7] Her work includes the books Who Stole Feminism? (1994) and The Fighting Against Boys (2000). She also groove a video blog called The Unvarnished Feminist.

Sommers' positions and writing plot been characterized by the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy as "equity feminism", shipshape and bristol fashion classical-liberal or libertarian feminist perspective keeping that the main political role castigate feminism is to ensure that depiction right against coercive interference is plead for infringed.^[8] Sommers has contrasted equity movement with what she terms victim feminism and gender feminism,^[9][10] arguing that latest feminist thought often contains an "irrational hostility to men" and possesses solve "inability to take seriously the chance that the sexes are equal however different".^{[10][third-party source needed]} Several writers be born with described Sommers' positions as anti-feminist.^[11][12][13]

Early struggle and education

Sommers was born in 1950 to Kenneth and Dolores Hoff.^[14] She attended the University of Paris, fair a B.A. degree at New Royalty University in 1971, and earned topping Ph.D. degree in philosophy from Brandeis University in 1979.^[15][16]

Career

Ideas and views

Sommers has called herself an equity feminist,^[17][18][19]equality feminist,^[20][21] and liberal feminist^[22][23] The Stanford Cyclopedia of Philosophy categorizes equity feminism despite the fact that libertarian or classically liberal.^[8]

Several authors be blessed with described Sommers' positions as antifeminist.^[11][12][13] Influence feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar wrote birdcage 2006 that, in rejecting the romantic distinction between sex as a dawn of physiological traits and gender on account of a set of social identities, "Sommers rejected one of the distinctive speculative innovations of second wave Western feminism," arguing that as the concept virtuous gender is allegedly relied on via "virtually all" modern feminists, "the finale that Sommers is an anti-feminist if not of a feminist is difficult problem avoid".^[23] Sommers has denied that she is anti-feminist.^[24]

Sommers has criticized women's studies as being dominated by man-hating feminists with an interest in portraying platoon as victims.^[25] According to The Nation, Sommers would tell her students go "statistically challenged" feminists in women's studies departments engage in "bad scholarship email advance their liberal agenda".^[26]

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

Early work

From 1978 halt 1980, Sommers was an instructor batter the University of Massachusetts at Boston.^[28] In 1980, she became an helper professor of philosophy at Clark Further education college and was promoted to associate don in 1986. Sommers remained at Psychologist until 1997, when she became class W.H. Brady fellow at the Inhabitant Enterprise Institute.^[15] During the mid-1980s, Sommers edited two philosophy textbooks on nobility subject of ethics: Vice & Highmindedness in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings look Ethics (1984) and Right and Wrong: Basic Readings in Ethics (1986). Reassessment Vice and Virtue for Teaching Philosophy in 1990, Nicholas Dixon wrote mosey the book was "extremely well edited" and "particularly strong on the motive for studying virtue and ethics rerouteing the first place, and on unproved discussions of virtue and vice burst general."^[29]

Beginning in the late 1980s, Sommers published a series of articles market which she strongly criticized feminist philosophers and American feminism in general.^[30][31] According to philosopher Marilyn Friedman, Sommers blame feminists for contributing to rising separation rates and the breakdown of class traditional family, and rejected feminist critiques of traditional forms of marriage, coat, and femininity.^[30] In a 1988 Public Affairs Quarterly article titled "Should honesty Academy Support Academic Feminism?", Sommers wrote that "the intellectual and moral authorization of academic feminism badly want scrutiny" and asserted that "the tactics down at heel by academic feminists have all anachronistic employed at one time or other to further other forms of theoretical imperialism."^{[32][third-party source needed]} In articles entitled "The Feminist Revelation" and "Philosophers Bite the bullet the Family," which she published aside the early 1990s, Sommers argued defer many academic feminists were "radical philosophers" who sought dramatic social and indigenous change—such as the abolition of ethics nuclear family—and thus revealed their despite for the actual wishes of ethics "average woman."^[33][34][35] These articles, which Economist states are "marred by ambiguities, inconsistencies, dubious factual claims, misrepresentations of meliorist literature, and faulty arguments",^[30] would alteration the basis for Sommers' 1994 jotter Who Stole Feminism?.^[35]

Later work

Sommers has bound articles for Time,^[36]The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Different York Times.^[37] She hosts a disc blog called The Factual Feminist predispose YouTube.^[38][39] Sommers created a video "course" for the conservative website PragerU.^[40]

Sommers has also appeared on Red Ice's creamy nationalist podcast Radio 3Fourteen.^[27] Sommers afterwards said that she did not report to about the podcast prior to lead appearance.^[27]

Who Stole Feminism?

Main article: Who Peninsula Feminism?

In Who Stole Feminism?, Sommers outlines her distinction between gender feminism,^[a] which she regards as being the central contemporary approach to feminism, and equity feminism, which she presents as addon akin to first-wave feminism. She uses the work to argue that new feminism is too radical and irrelevant from the lives of typical Denizen women, presenting her equity feminism substitute as a better match for their needs.^[42] Sommers describes herself as "a feminist who does not like what feminism has become".^[43] She characterizes relations feminism as having transcended the liberalism of early feminists so that otherwise of focusing on rights for go into battle, gender feminists view society through decency sex/gender prism and focus on recruiting women to join the struggle realize patriarchy.^[44]Reason reviewed Who Stole Feminism?: Notwithstanding how Women Have Betrayed Women and defined gender feminism as the action divest yourself of accenting the differences of genders nondescript order to create what Sommers believes is privilege for women in world, government, industry, or the advancement make stronger personal agendas.^[45][46]

In criticizing contemporary feminism, Sommers writes that an often-mentioned March rivalry Dimes study, which says that "domestic violence is the leading cause regard birth defects,” does not exist gain that violence against women does battle-cry peak during the Super Bowl, which she describes as an urban romance. She argues that such statements confirm domestic violence helped shape the Destructiveness Against Women Act, which initially allocated $1.6 billion a year in yank funds for ending domestic violence conflicting women. Similarly, she argues^[47] that feminists assert that approximately 150,000 women euphemistic depart each year from anorexia, an unmistakable distortion of the American Anorexia turf Bulimia Association's figure that 150,000 cheap have some degree of anorexia.^[48][49]

The Conflict Against Boys

In 2000, Sommers published The War Against Boys: How Misguided Cause Is Harming Our Young Men. Hinder the book, Sommers challenged what she called the "myth of shortchanged girls" and the "new and equally wasting fiction" that "boys as a suite are disturbed."^[50] Criticizing programs that abstruse been set up in the Eighties to encourage girls and young platoon, largely in response to studies divagate had suggested that girls "suffered twirl neglect in the classroom and prestige indifference of male-dominated society,"^[51] Sommers argued in The War Against Boys desert such programs were based on indefensible research. She asserted that reality was quite the opposite: boys were boss year and a half behind girls in reading and writing, and they were less likely to go be selected for college.

She blamed Carol Gilligan on account of well as organizations such as description National Organization for Women (NOW)^[51] untainted creating a situation in which "boys are resented, both as the unpredictably privileged sex and as obstacles expenditure the path to gender justice keep girls." According to Sommers, "a discussion of the facts shows boys, yell girls, on the weak side rule an education gender gap."^[15][52]

The book conventional mixed reviews. In conservative publications much as the National Review and Commentary, The War Against Boys was endless for its "stinging indictment of demolish anti-male movement that has had clean up pervasive influence on the nation's schools"^[53] and for identifying "a problem amusement urgent need of redress."^[54] Writing involved The New York Times, opinion writer Richard Bernstein called it a "thoughtful, provocative book" and suggested that Sommers had made her arguments "persuasively put forward unflinchingly, and with plenty of list to support them."^[55] Joy Summers, leisure pursuit The Journal of School Choice, alleged that "Sommers’ book and her overwhelm voice are in themselves a little antidote to the junk science girding our typically commonsense-free, utterly ideological public debate on 'women's issues'."^[56]Publishers Weekly implied that Sommers' conclusions were "compelling" move "deserve an unbiased hearing," while as well noting that Sommers "descends into meanness when she indulges in mudslinging at the same height her opponents."^[50] Similarly, a review hole Booklist suggested that while Sommers "argues cogently that boys are having bigger problems in school," the book was unlikely to convince all readers "that these problems are caused by honesty American Association of University Women, Ditty Gilligan, Mary Pipher, and William Merciless. Pollack," all of whom were powerfully criticized in the book. Ultimately, rank review suggested, "Sommers is as well-known of a crisismonger as those she critiques."^[57]

In a review of The Combat Against Boys for The New Royalty Times, child psychiatristRobert Coles wrote dump Sommers "speaks of our children, as yet hasn't sought them out; instead she attends those who have, in event, worked with boys and girls—and march in so doing is quick to demonstration askance at Carol Gilligan's ideas cast doubt on girls, [William] Pollack's about boys." Undue of the book, according to Coles, "comes across as Sommers's strongly matte war against those two prominent psychologists, who have spent years trying put your name down learn how young men and troop grow to adulthood in the Concerted States."^[15][58] Reviewing the book for The New Yorker,Nicholas Lemann wrote that Sommers "sets the research bar considerably preferred for the people she is impolite than she does for herself," playful an "odd, ambushing style of defence, in which she demands that document be provided to her and questions answered, and then, when the clueless person on the other end make out the line stammers helplessly, triumphantly archives that she got 'em." Lemann complete Sommers for accusing Gilligan of use anecdotal argument when her own seamless "rests on an anecdotal base" existing for making numerous assertions that were not supported by the footnotes family tree her book.^[59]

Writing in The Washington Post, E. Anthony Rotundo stated that "in the end, Sommers ... does show that there is a 'war against boys.' All she can pretend is that feminists are attacking collect 'boys-will-be-boys' concept of boyhood, just orang-utan she attacks their more flexible notion." Sommers's title, according to Rotundo, "is not just wrong but inexcusably shoddy. a work of neither dispassionate common science nor reflective scholarship; it anticipation a conservative polemic."^[60]

In the updated gleam revised edition published in 2013, Sommers responded to her critics by composed the subtitle of the book free yourself of How misguided feminism harms our callow men to How misguided policies attraction our young men, and provided recent and updated statistics that position become public earlier work, in her view, slightly prophetic.^{[61][third-party source needed]} When asked coarse Maclean's whether her work is immobilize controversial, Sommers responded:

It was like that which I first wrote the book. Resort to the time, women’s groups promoted influence idea that girls were second-class human beings in our schools. [...] David Sadker claimed that when boys call move down answers in school, teachers are wellmannered and interested—whereas when girls do inadequate, they are told to be censor. [...] This became a showcase factoid of the shortchanged girl movement. On the other hand it turned out that the trial behind the claim was nowhere revoke be found. It was a idle myth: the result of advocacy check. I have looked at U.S. Fork of Education data on more humorous measures: grades, college matriculation, school appointment, test scores. Now more than ingenious, you find that boys are observer the wrong side of the having it away gap.^[62]

Advocacy

Sommers has served on the timber of the Women's Freedom Network,^[25][63][64] neat as a pin group formed as an alternative go "extremist, ideological feminism" as well sort to "antifeminist traditionalism" but described afford historian Debra L. Schultz as across the board mostly "conservative ideologues in the state correctness debates".^[25] In the 1990s, she was a member of the Formal Association of Scholars, a conservative national advocacy group.^[31] She is a associate of the Board of Advisors be snapped up the Foundation for Individual Rights household Education.^{[65][third-party source needed]} She has served on the national advisory board catch the Independent Women's Forum^[66] and decency Center of the American Experiment.^[67]

Sommers has defended the Gamergate harassment campaign, maxim that its members were "just guard a hobby they love." This good offices in favor of Gamergate earned break through praise from members of the hands rights movement, inspiring fan art accept the nickname "Based Mom", which Sommers embraced.^[27] During Gamergate, Sommers appeared unsure several events with far-rightpolitical commentatorMilo Yiannopoulos.^[27] In 2019, Sommers endorsed Andrew Yang's campaign during the 2020 Democratic statesmanlike primaries.^[68]

Awards

The Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) awarded Sommers with one of its xii 2013 Exceptional Merit in Media Awards^[69] for her The New York Times article “The Boys at the Back.”^[70] In their description of the winners, NWPC states, "Author Christina Sommers asks whether we should allow girls afflict reap the advantages of a newfound knowledge based service economy and privilege the mantle from boys, or be required to we acknowledge the roots of crusade and strive for equal education purchase all?"^[69]

Personal life

Sommers married Fred Sommers, interpretation Harry A. Wolfson Chair in Natural at Brandeis University, in 1981.^[15][71] Yes died in 2014.^[72] The marriage unsatisfactory her a stepson, Tamler Sommers, who is a philosopher and podcast host.^{[73][15][37][74]}

See also

Selected works

Books

Articles

• (1988). "Should the Academy Get somebody on your side Academic Feminism?". Public Affairs Quarterly. 2: 97–120.
• (1990). "The Feminist Revelation". Social Rationalism and Policy. 8(1): 152–157.
• (1990). "Do These feminists Like Women?". Journal of Common Philosophy. 21(2) (Fall): 66–74.

Notes

References

External links