Junior English major
Apparently, feminist groups have become so successful that young boys are now at a disadvantage in society — because girls are finally being encouraged to thrive in school, attention is being taken away from the boys.
At least that’s what Christina Hoff Sommers thinks. This author of Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, who is known for her critique of late 20th century feminism (yet calls herself a feminist), gave a lecture Monday night in Jimenez Hall, hosted by UMD Students for Liberty, Young Americans for Liberty and College Republicans.
Now, I attended the talk with members of UMD Feminists. And the hosting groups presented a welcoming attitude toward differing opinions, which was definitely refreshing. But what we heard was so incredibly jarring that we could barely contain our looks of shock and outrage.
The most distressing point of her lecture was when she claimed boys are innately more competitive than girls, that this stems from a need to “protect vulnerable people” (namely, women) and that rough-and-tumble play is critically important to boys’ development.
These assertions are a clear example of the blatant gender differentiations that still exist in today’s society — ideas like these are the main reasons a clear cultural divide still exists between men and women. If we cultivate these feelings in young boys, at what point do we tell kids women don’t need protection if no one is violent toward them and that it’s OK for anyone to be competitive? At what point do we tell young boys that violence is not an acceptable outlet?
Sommers’ response was that boys who grow up with a father in the house are much less likely to be violent. It’s a ludicrous claim she used without any foundation or support to dodge a serious question about rough boys becoming violent men. And what we absolutely don’t need any more of is people who avoid questions up for legitimate debate.
During her presentation, Sommers instead presented statistics on women succeeding in writing and humanities to prove feminist groups are giving girls too many benefits and too much help in education. But she ignored the gender gap in STEM majors, in which men are exceedingly more prevalent, claiming women have been given enough opportunities to become engineers or computer scientists but just don’t have the perseverance or drive to pursue left-brain fields — women innately prefer to nurture, rather than throw themselves into a prominent profession.
What she conveniently omitted is the concept that the past couple hundred years isn’t nearly enough time to break cultural norms women are raised to believe in. Our grandparents’ generation — and in some cases, even our parents’ generation — was raised to believe in the “traditional roles” of men and women, with men serving as the breadwinners and women serving as the housewives.
In her lecture, Sommers conveyed the belief that feminist groups like the American Association of University Women are trying to “make” girls succeed in STEM subjects, and in their constant efforts to ensure equality for men and women, they prioritize girls and obstruct any attempt to give men a boost in education.
Boys simply don’t need a boost — and if they do, why aren’t they pushing for it themselves? Historically, men have oppressed women, which is why feminist activism groups were conceived. So why, if these boys are now being oppressed, do they not seem to care? One of Sommers’ main points was that boys are simply becoming apathetic toward school, and more girls are excelling at higher levels. Shouldn’t you work on boys’ apathy, as opposed to trying to assert some imaginary oppression in order to force the indifference out of them?
We can’t just assume that because there hasn’t yet been an infiltration of women in all science and math markets that there is some biological difference that makes women run away from these jobs.
But that’s exactly what Sommers, and many other attendees of her lecture, want to argue.
Much of what we do as a society is led by tradition. If there is any chance of overcoming the inequality cemented in our past, we must expel oppressive traditions and do what we want by ignoring societal pressures. This way, people like Sommers will be stripped of the wavering foundations for preposterous claims of “biological differences” between women and men.
Maria Romas is a junior English major. She can be reached at mromas3@gmail.com.
