In a couple of posts in January, I touched on the topic of “male-bashing.”

“Male-bashing” is an inaccurate phrase, since — as Hugo says — words are not fists. (And see this post by Mandolin, as well.)

But in general, I understand the phrase “male-bashing” to mean not literal bashing¹, but “unfair criticism of men, rooted in prejudice against men.”

Well, unfairness and prejudice — how could I defend that? Really, I can’t. I don’t believe that anyone should be judged or treated differently based on what’s between their legs.² There have been times when I’ve encountered outright anti-male bigotry on feminist boards, both directly and indirectly (such as women who agreed with a man in argument having their positions dismissed as “male-coddling,” which is sexist against both sexes).

That’s prejudiced, and it sucks. No doubt about that, at least in my (male) mind. On the occasions I encounter stuff like that, sometimes I object, and sometimes I roll my eyes and mutter under my breathe about picking battles.

But I still think that male-bashing — or, rather, the intellectual space for male-bashing — is necessary.

Mainly because what male-bashing is, is contested territory. If a feminist scholar says that rape is extreme behavior, but part of the spectrum of normal male behavior, is that male-bashing? That’s pretty clearly what Christina Hoff Sommers insinuated when, seeking to discredit Mary Koss’ rape prevalence research, she wrote (emphasis Sommers’):

In 1982, Mary Koss, then a professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, published an article on rape in which she expressed the orthodox gender feminist view that “rape represents an extreme behavior but one that is on a continuum with normal male behavior within the culture” (my emphasis). Some well-placed feminist activists were impressed by her.

So is Koss’ statement anti-male? Apparently Sommers thinks so, but I don’t know why. Koss isn’t saying all men are rapists; she’s not saying that for men to rape is normal; she’s saying that there is a continuum of male sexual behavior, and rape is an extreme on that continuum.³ You might disagree with that, but should the very thought be off-bounds for those of us who want to avoid being bigoted against any sex? I don’t think so.

Similarly, I’ve more than once seen critics of feminism suggest that being critical of masculinity is anti-male. From my perspective, nothing in this world is more harmful to men than cultural norms of masculinity, and nothing more profoundly anti-male than the idea that the ideals of “masculinity” should not be criticized or changed (or, preferably, done away with). Every person who is against challenging the idea of masculinity, is in favor of boys being beaten and bullied in schoolyards; is in favor of men going off to stupid wars where they can be shot and blown up, mainly by other men also trying to be masculine; etc, etc. But for other people, my entire line of thinking is somehow “anti-male.”

Historically, the idea that women needed the vote — (”What are you saying, that men don’t vote in the best interests of their families?”) — was once considered anti-male. I’ve more than once been told that thinking that men and women should be equally represented in government, was anti-male and sexist, because I was claiming that male politicians can’t represent women. (I do think an individual male politician can represent women. I’m not sure a governing body that’s 85% male can adequately represent a population that’s 51% female). I’ve also been told, again and again, that my belief that children of lesbian couples turn out fine without a father is anti-male (never mind that I’d say the same thing about motherless children of gay male couples).

The intellectual freedom to be anti-male is necessary, because today’s common sense was yesterday’s anti-male screed, and today’s screed tomorrow’s common sense. It would be bad for both women and men if all of feminism’s good ideas were dropped because they were labeled anti-male.

* * *

There’s another reason, which I believe but am having difficulty articulating: I think that when fighting an entrenched, unjust system, radical ideas are valuable as a “shock to the system.” (Credit to Mandolin, who discussed this with me in IM a while ago, for influencing my thinking on this.) There is a value in fiery rhetoric; there is a value in saying “fuck all that shit.”

1. Of course, some men are literally bashed, but this is usually called “violence” or “abuse,” not bashing. (back)
2. I can think of a few very narrow exceptions to this, in cases that either have to do with genuine physical differences, such as having urinals in men’s restrooms but not women’s, or that are intended to mitigate the effects of already-existing sexism, such as affirmative action. (back)
3. In context, Koss’ paper (published in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology) argued that a spectrum approach is a more useful way of categorizing “sexual aggression/sexual victimization” than a typological approach, which says a “subject is either a rapist, a rape victim, or a control subject. Recently, several writers have suggested that a dimensional view of rape be adopted. In this framework, rape represents an extreme behavior but one that is on a continuum with normal male behavior within the culture.” (back)

In a speech, self-described “conservative feminist” Christina Hoff Sommers said:

Let me turn to my second major objection to contemporary feminism: its reckless disregard for the truth. In doing research for my books, I looked carefully at some standard feminist claims about women and violence, depression, eating disorders, pay equity and education. What I found is that most –- not all —- but most of the victim statistics are, at best, misleading –- at worst, completely inaccurate. [...]

I partly agree with Sommers: Too many feminists — including those we rely on to get facts right (such as academics and published writers) — have been careless about fact-checking their claims. Critiquing a textbook on domestic violence, Sommers writes:

Zorza also informs readers that “Between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency room in America are there because of domestic violence.” This claim is ubiquitous in the feminist canon. But is it false. There are two legitimate studies on emergency room admissions: one by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and another by the Centers for Disease Control. The results of both indicate that domestic violence is a serious problem, but that it is far down on the list of reasons women go to emergency rooms. Approximately one half of one percent of women in emergency rooms are there seeking treatment for injuries from domestic violence.

Sommers cites a second recent textbook, The Penguin Atlas Of Women In The World, which repeats the same error. And she’s right — it is an error. (Although, as I’ll show in a future post, Sommers’ counter-claims are just as false.)

I think this is the strongest of Sommers’ claims. Sommers is right to say that “false assertions, hyperbole and crying wolf undermine the credibility and effectiveness of feminism in general.” And many errors could easily be avoided if authors just checked primary sources — something that professional writers and academics should do routinely.

Within feminism, there’s sometimes too little skepticism regarding statistics and news stories which emphasize harms against women. We’ve created a culture which does a rotten job of self-correction.

But although she has a point, Sommers is still substantially wrong, for two reasons. First, Sommers conflates unambiguous errors of fact — which will inevitably happen sometimes, especially in a movement the size of modern-day feminism — with well-reasoned disagreements. And secondly, Sommers’ own work is full of errors, and at times actually deceptive.

In her lecture, Sommers writes:

Some of you are probably thinking –- the literature on feminism is vast and complex –- there are bound to be some mistakes. So what? But I and other investigators have not found “some mistakes.” What we have found is a large body of blatantly false information. The Domestic Violence Law textbook and the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World are not the exception. They are the rule.

So here’s Sommers’ argument:

1) Feminist writers sometimes repeat “blatantly false information.”

2) This errors are the rule, not the exception. This is documented in the works of Christina Hoff Sommers and “other investigators.”

3) Therefore, feminism, as a rule, consists of “a large body of blatantly false information.”

The trick here is in point 2. Sommers wants us to believe that her critiques of feminism, as well as those by “other investigators,” are filled with examples of feminists making unambiguous factual errors. But that’s not true. In Sommer’s book Who Stole Feminism?, Sommers does catch feminists making some unambiguous errors, but most of the book is taken up by subjective political disagreements, not by fact-checking.

In order to accept that Sommers’ work demonstrates that a “reckless disregard for truth” is the “rule,” “not the exception,” we’d have to accept that anytime a feminist disagrees with Christina Hoff Sommers — because such disagreements take up most of Sommers’ work — that is evidence of a reckless disregard for the truth. But of course, it’s no such thing.

So what do I mean when I say subjective political disagreements? By “subjective political disagreements,” I mean questions that reasonable, honest people, basing their opinion on well-founded evidence, can disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers on.

I will focus on one example: the rape prevalence research of Mary Koss. Koss’ research is probably the single example that “conservative feminists” and their allies have used most often to “prove” feminist dishonesty, ¹ starting in the early 1990s in books like Sommers’ own Who Stole Feminism?, and continuing to this day (Heather MacDonald published an attack on Koss’ research just last year). According to the Independent Woman’s Forum,² Koss’ research is the “number one feminist myth” in America.

So what was Koss’ rape research? In the 1980s, Koss pioneered a new approach to surveying populations about their past experiences with rape. Where previous surveys measured rape prevalence by asking respondents a single, sometimes hilariously vague question (”Has anybody ever attacked you in any other way?”), Koss asked a series of comparatively specific questions (”Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of a physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?”) about respondents’ experiences.

Koss’ study of “hidden rape” proved three important facts, which feminists and criminologists had long suspected: that rape happened much more frequently than official numbers indicated; that most rapes aren’t committed by strangers; and that most rapes are never reported to police or other authorities.

Koss’ study, in the decades since, has led two parallel lives. In one life — a life lived in books funded by right-wing foundations, anti-feminist websites, and the like — Koss’ work is an enduring symbol of feminist dishonesty and deception, and is considered a discredited joke, trotted out for rehashed debunkings every couple of years.

In another life, however — a life lived among academic experts — Koss’ work has been amazingly successful. Decades later, her work is respectfully cited in peer-reviewed studies — a few years ago I found that just two of Koss’ articles had been cited over six hundred times.³

Although subsequent research has arguably improved on Koss’ 1980s work, her insight — that rape victims are more likely to recount their experiences in response to a series of behaviorally-specific questions — is accepted by virtually all published rape prevalence researchers. And Koss’ central findings (described above) have been replicated in study after study, including two major studies conducted by the Federal government.

By ordinary academic standards, a frequently-cited study which has been replicated multiple times is solid work. That’s not to say that Koss’ study was perfect — no study ever is — but citations plus replication is the gold standard.

Of course, reasonable people can sometimes disagree with professional researchers, and Sommers and other “investigators” are entitled to their opinions.⁴ But Sommers’ position on Koss’ research isn’t that reasonable people can disagree. Instead, she and other “investigators” have repeatedly used Koss’ research as their major example of feminist lying, even though Koss’ results are widely accepted by experts and have been replicated over and over.

This is the central dishonesty of Sommers’ thesis: She claims her work shows that feminists “as a rule” have “reckless disregard for the truth,” but most of her book concerns matters that an honest person could easily disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers about.⁵

Sommers has to frame all her disagreements with mainstream feminism as feminist lying, because that is the basis of her case against feminism. If she admits that reasonable, honest feminists can disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers, she loses her claim that modern feminism consists of “a large body of blatantly false information… at best, misleading –- at worst, completely inaccurate.”

* * *

Earlier this post, I said that “Sommers’ own work is full of errors, and at times actually deceptive.” In my next post in this series, I’ll back that statement up, using her discussion of emergency room admissions as my example.

This post appears both at “Alas, a Blog” and at “Blog By Barry.” To facilitate intra-feminist dialog, the comments at “Alas” are only open to feminists, while the comments at “Blog By Barry” are open to all.

1. Think I’m exaggerating? Here is an incomplete list of books which rehash the “conservative feminist” arguments against Koss’ research: The Morning After by Katie Roiphe; The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism by Carrie Lukas; Dead End Feminism by Elisabeth Badinter; Lip Service by Kate Fillion; Tax-funded Politics by James T. Bennett; A Nation of Victims by Charles J. Sykes; Moral Panic: Biopolitics Rising by John Feteke; The New Victorians: A Young Woman’s Challenge to the Old Feminist Order‎ by Rene Denfeld; The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell; Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? by Warren Farrell, Steven Svoboda, & James P. Sterba. It’s likely there are additional books I’m unaware of, not to mention dozens of articles and hundreds of website. (back)
2. A Sommers-influenced “conservative feminist” think tank. (back)
3. In Who Stole Feminism, Sommers claims that Koss’s work is frequently cited by activists but “not so much by established scholars in the field of rape research.” It would in fact be hard to name a scholar of rape prevalence who has been cited more often in the professional literature. (back)
4. To delve into the details of the debate, including detailed responses to the arguments most often brought up by Sommers and other “investigators,” see my past posts about the Koss controversy. (back)
5. It’s not just rape prevalence research; I could make similar arguments for how Who Stole Feminism? treats topics like domestic violence, education, the wage gap, etc…. (back)

I was thrown off my horse by strep throat, but I am planning to continue my series responding to Christina Hoff Sommers.

First, however: Over at The Y Files, columnist Cathy Young responds to part two of my series.

Cathy begins, I think, by misunderstanding what I meant when I said “If man-hating is so pervasive in contemporary feminism, why don’t men in feminism encounter it more?” Cathy responds:

Barry says he hasn’t seen any male-hating attitudes from feminists except for a few people on the Ms. boards way, way back. I’m guessing the late Andrea Dworkin, famous for such aperçus as, “Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman,” or “Male sexuality, drunk on its intrinsic contempt for all life, but especially for women’s lives…”, does not qualify? ¹

But — like David Cohen, who I quoted — I was talking about the feminists I’ve directly interacted with. (Was this really so unclear in context, Cathy?) Alas, I never met Andrea Dworkin.

To be sure, there are some stunning anti-male quotes from Dworkin and a few others — quotes I’ve often seen recycled by critics of feminism. (Some of these quotes are out of context or fabricated, but some are real.) Are they representative of day-to-day feminism, of most feminists, or of current feminism? Not in my experience.

But this brings up something I’ve wondered about for quite a while. When I read MRAs, as well as “conservative feminists” like Christina Hoff Sommers, a narrative history of feminism tends to emerge, which goes something like this: Once upon a time there were the suffragettes, who were libertarian or conservative and they were Good. Then came the second wave feminists in the 60s and 70s, who fought for equal pay and the like, and they were Good. But in the 1980s came the Evil “gender feminists” or “victim feminists,” who turned feminism into man-hating victimology, and feminism has been Bad ever since.

But curiously enough, when reading Sommers and others, it quickly becomes apparent that most of their examples are from 60s and 70s feminism. And so Sommers makes a big deal of the word “ovulars,” a term from the 1960s that no one but Sommers herself uses nowadays. Dworkin, Young’s example, peaked in influence and prominence in the 70s, became a hugely controversial figure within feminism in the 80s, and pretty much faded from prominence after that. Most of the feminists I see quoted as proof of how awful and man-hating feminists are (Robin Morgan, Germaine Greer , Marilyn French, etc) came into prominence in the 60s and 70s.

60s and 70s feminism was, frankly, a lot wilder, and a lot more unrestrained. This has its good side (I’m a fan of some of Firestone’s wilder digressions), but also a negative side, in the unrestrained anti-male sexism of some feminist leaders. But it’s interesting that the peak of anti-male sexism in feminism — which I’d say was when Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol — happened before many of today’s feminists had even been born. Yet according to the conservative feminist narrative, feminism now is much worse than feminism then.

It’s a new century, but conservative feminists and MRAs are still nattering on about what Robin Morgan said in the 70s, or about the super bowl Sunday controversy from over a quarter century ago. Let me ask you this, Cathy: take stock of what feminists have been doing and saying this century. Do you really think that Andrea Dworkin saying “Male sexuality, drunk on its intrinsic contempt for all life” is typical of current-day feminism?

* * *

Cathy also defends the relevance of The Vagina Monologues, which, I’ll remind readers, was the one and only example Sommers gave in her lecture to support her argument that feminist believe that “men are beasts.” I don’t find anything Cathy comes up with persuasive. Yes, The Vagina Monlogues are very popular, but it’s still fiction, and it’s still just one example. No honest person can claim with a straight face that a single work of fiction proves anything about feminism in general.

Analyzing pop culture is valuable; but to discuss a general trend in pop culture, one must analyze multiple works, and show that a pattern actually exists. Otherwise, all you have is cherry-picking — Sommers’ stock in trade.

So what is feminist pop culture? It’s Vagina Monologues, sure (and nothing wrong with that; not the greatest work of literature, but it’s funny and sexy and it’s raised tons of money for good causes); but it’s also Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the songs of Ani Defranco and the comedy of Wanda Sykes and a dozen other things. I think looking at all these things would produce a more complex, but more honest, picture of feminism than Sommers’.

When I suggested Sommers should be able to provide a couple of quotes from current, prominent feminists saying “men are beasts,” Cathy says I set the bar too high. Maybe, although I’d accept quotes that amount to the same thing (such as the Dworkin quotes Cathy recycled). But if I raise the bar too high, Cathy digs a trench and drops the bar in.

Here’s where I’d set the bar: Current feminists, please. Multiple quotes from this century. Quotes from actually published, known feminists, not students quoted in some student paper or something said in the comments section of a blog. And if you’re going to claim that these quotes represent current feminism, then the quotes should be from a representative variety of current feminism: not only white feminists, and not only radical feminists, and not only academic feminists. (Or, if the only quotes you can find are from a particular sub-group of feminists, say so, rather than falsely claiming that this represents all of current feminism.)

Is that a high bar? I’d say it’s a reasonable bar, given the extreme and far-reaching claims made by Sommers. If Sommers can’t provide reasonable evidence for her claims, then it’s up to her to moderate her claims, not up to me to lower the bar.

(Cross-posted at Blog by Barry.)

1. The first quote is from Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, 1976. The second quote is from “The Night and Danger,” a speech Dworkin delivered in 1979. The text of the speech is reprinted in her book “Letters From A War Zone,” and is available online here. (back)

Christina Hoff Sommers criticizes feminist professors for using the made-up word "ovulars" -- but in the last quarter-century, practically the only person who's used the word is... Christina Hoff Sommers.

Feminist Law Professors has posted the text of a lecture by Christina Hoff Sommers, entitled "What’s Wrong and What’s Right with Contemporary Feminism?" ((There's also a video, here. I'll mostly be critiquing the text version, which is easier to quote.)) Despite the title -- which is, Sommers notes, a softening from her original title, "Reject Contemporary Feminism" -- Sommers has almost nothing positive to say about contemporary feminism. The lecture (which can be read here, in pdf format) is 23 pages long, of which a page and a half is what's "right with" feminism; the rest is what's wrong. (In Sommers' opinion, anyway.)

This is the first of a planned series of blog posts responding to Sommers' lecture. In some posts I'll be directly criticizing her arguments; in other cases, I'll use her arguments as a springboard for thoughts of my own. I actually agree with a couple of her criticisms of contemporary feminism, and I'll note those areas of agreement as I go along. By and large, however, Sommers' arguments fall apart under examination.

Sommers opens with a funny anecdote about her dad, which I won't discuss here, but David reprints it on his blog.

I think Sommers -- who quit academia years ago to work for a right-wing think tank -- may suffer from spending too much time talking to people who agree with her. (This is a very common flaw among both feminists and non-feminists). This lecture was originally written for the Federalist society; I doubt that they blinked at all upon being told that it is her "bias toward logic, reason, and fairness that has put me at odds with the feminist establishment." Nor would they have been bothered by her expression of pity for boys with feminist mothers. But if she's sincere about wanting to have respectful dialog with mainstream feminists, snarky comments like that are counterproductive.

On to the critique.

* * *

Sommers uses the timeworn technique of quoting something silly-sounding an academic once said, and using this to generalize about the whole of "contemporary feminism." For instance, to show that "feminism was being hijacked by gender war eccentrics in the universities," Sommers writes:

To give one quick example, one of my colleagues in feminist philosophy referred to her seminars as "ovulars." She rejected the masculinist “seminar” because the root of that word is associated with, well, the very essence of male power. It is actually very funny when you think about it. But this woman was not kidding.

That does sound eccentric (and frankly silly, if it wasn't tongue in cheek). But is this a substantive critique of feminism, or just a cheap shot? If you flip to Sommers' endnotes, you'll find a citation to a use of "ovulars" by Professor Joyce Trebilcot 25 years ago. Googling shows that the word has hardly spread to common usage -- Google knows of only 300 times the word has been used on English language webpages.

But isn't 300 a lot? No, not really. For comparison, "heterocentric," a feminist neologism feminist academics actually use, is found 14,000 times. And 130 of the 300 usages of the word "ovular" are times when Christina Hoff Sommers used the term. If any contemporary feminist is using the term, it's not the feminists Sommers criticizes; it's Sommers herself.

(Most of the other usages are irrelevant to this discussion: references to a radical lesbian photography collective from 1979, right-wingers making fun of feminism, medical discussions, a women's center newsletter from 1974 (pdf link). I found only one instance of the word being used by feminist academics to refer to classes taught: an experimental UK program called "Ovular" which existed for a couple of years and offered "seminars".)

"Ovulars" is a term that was used by a handful of feminists in the 1970s, and by a single feminist professor in the 1980s. I'm not aware of a single relevant use of the term that's less than 20 years old. So it's obviously unfair and illogical to use "ovular" is an "example" of what's wrong with "contemporary feminism." ((To be sure, Sommers did say this was just "one quick example." But I assume that she wouldn't have chosen such a lousy example, if her other examples are all much better.))

This dispute is not, in and of itself, an important question. But I've spent this post discussing it because "ovulars" is an excellent illustration of three consistent flaws in Sommers' criticism:

1. Cherry-picking wildly unrepresentative examples.
2. No acknowledgment of differences between 1970s/1980s feminism and contemporary feminism.
3. Important context (in this case, that her example is a quarter-century old) is either omitted or buried in endnotes.

These flaws came up again and again in Sommers' book Who Stole Feminism, and they are unfortunately present in this lecture, as well.

(Hmmn. Over 700 words, and I'm only as far as page 2 of her lecture. I'll try to pick up the pace.)

To facilitate intra-feminist discussion, comments on this post on "Alas, a Blog" are limited to feminist and feminist allies only. However, the cross-post at "Blog By Barry" is open to feminists and non-feminists.

Jill and Piny both have good posts at Feministe regarding Anorexia Nervosa. My favorite quote is from Jill’s post:

And as for denial, on a most basic level, fuck that. Sorry, but why are the values of self-sacrifice only brought up when we’re talking about women’s bodies? We’re supposed to deny ourselves food in order to stay thin so that someone else (always male) will enjoy looking at us; we’re supposed to deny ourselves sex so that the virginity fetishists can have an all-access pass once we’re married; and even then we’re supposed to sacrifice all of our own wants and needs for our children and our husband, and still deny sex if we don’t want any more babies. I call bullshit. I’ve had enough of the cult of female martyrdom, and I feel no need to let other people tell me that I should feel guilty for enjoying pleasures like food and sex. I own a vibrator, I use birth control, and I make myself steak au poivre and drink good red wine every Friday night. These things bring me far more pleasure than skinny thighs or blood on my wedding-night bedsheets. And if that makes me an over-indulgent pig, then so be it.

Sing it, sister!

But the main reason I’m posting is because of this quote, from a post on the blog “Cosmic Tap”:

My personal offhand estimate had been that we might lose about 100 Americans annually to anorexia. My research this morning showed that I was not far off — a 2001 study by the University of British Columbia’s Department of Psychology of every American death for the most recently available five year period showed only 724 people with anorexia as a causal factor - 145 per year. Christina Hoff-Sommers, in her research for the book Who Stole Feminism, came up with a number below half that. In a presentation to the International Congress of Psychology, one expert (Dr. Paul Hewitt) estimated a death rate for anorexia of 6.6 per 100,000 deaths. Even if you assume that sufferers outnumber deaths by a few orders of magnitude, it would still seem that all objective evidence shows the health impact on Americans from anorexia is statistically nil. Now, I know that doesn’t make for very good shock journalism, but it doesn’t change the uncomfortable fact that it’s true.

Hoff-Sommers claimed that between 50 and a hundred Americans a year die from anorexia - but her claim was based on an appalling misunderstanding of mortality statistics. She’s right that only a tiny number of Americans have “anorexia” credited as their cause of death, but that’s not the relevant question.

According to the NIMH, anorexics typically die due to “complications of the disorder, such as cardiac arrest or electrolyte imbalance,” not anorexia itself. Hoff-Sommers might as well have claimed that because so few people have “cigarettes” written on their death certificate, smoking hardly ever causes any deaths.

So what’s the real number? There are about 19 million American women between ages 15 and 24; of those, somewhere between 190,000 and 380,000 have anorexia (it’s estimated that 1-2% of young women suffer from anorexia). About 0.56% - somewhere between one and two thousand - of those die of anorexia-related causes each year. (This is a conservative estimate, both because some studies have found a much higher long-term mortality rate, and because not everyone with anorexia is a young woman age 15-24).

Hoff-Sommers used the mistaken “100 deaths” statistic to refute an also-mistaken number some feminists used in the early 1990s. She was right to correct the feminists - but, unlike Hoff-Sommers, the feminists were willing to retract their mistaken statistic. Hoff-Sommers has never corrected or retracted her false “100 deaths from anorexia” figure.

* * *

Anthony at The Cosmic Tap complains that concern for anorexia is a “moral panic” - but it’s clear that he’s uncritically bought into a far more pervasive and popular moral panic, fat-hating. He complains that two-thirds of Americans are “overweight” and jumps from this to all the usual cliches about Americans stuffing their faces and so forth. But there’s no evidence that fat people eat significantly more than thin people.

Anthony also doesn’t mention that the “two-thirds” statistic defines anyone with a BMI (body mass index) over 25 as “overweight.” But by that standard, merely being muscular can make someone “overweight” (Brad Pitt is a famous example - what a porker!).

More substantively, as a JAMA study published last year showed, “overweight” Americans with BMIs of 25-30 actually live longer than Americans who aren’t overweight. The panic over weight has very little to do with health. It is instead a true moral panic - a reflection of the fear that Americans are over-indulgent and pleasure-driven. As Elkins wrote, “Eating is the new sex. Anti-fat hysteria is the new Puritanism.”

Via Redneck Feminist, an amusing article in Reason considers the right-wing horror of Eve Ensler’s much-criticized play.

Meet the put-upon conservative coed, the prototype pushed by conservative feminists to demonstrate liberal bias on college campuses. We’ll call her Claire. Claire doesn’t want any part of this vulgar spectacle known as The Vagina Monologues, but her Feminine Mystique-touting, Germaine Greer-quoting friends are tying her to a chair and making her watch. She desperately wants to be chaste, but condom-peddling feminists are driving her to her knees at the frathouse next door. She really just wants to be a mom, but her mentors in the gender studies department say that’s just not acceptable.

Claire may or may not exist, but there is a whole movement dedicated to setting her free. I recently watched Christina Hoff Sommers, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, give a speech on Eve Ensler’s Monologues to like-minded women. The play is performed on hundreds of campuses around Valentine’s Day ever year, and Sommers is annually appalled, most deeply by what she calls “a four-letter-word that begins in c, ends in t, and is not coat.” [...]

This is the frustrating irony of conservative feminism: As the movement rightly condemns modern feminism for being a paralyzing ideology of victimization, it leaves a bloody trail of victimhood in its wake. Whether they be Yale freshmen or Princeton professors, the weaker sex is apparently unable to withstand the excesses of Naomi Wolf. Claire doesn’t stand a chance.

At the close of Sommers’ dire warning about Ensler’s play, a concerned mother had a question: “Where can I send my child so she’s not exposed to this?” The audience obliged with suggestions of Ensler-banning, second-rate colleges; Sommers nodded gravely. When women who call themselves feminists see censorship as the way forward, we have bigger problems than bad playwriting.

What bothers me more than the censorship is that some parents would rather send their daughters to second-rate colleges than allow them to be “exposed” to a play they disapprove of at a first-rate college.

Redneck Feminist’s post also has an entertaining story of how she learned to relax and enjoy The Vagina Monologues.

P.S. By the way, I’m not particularly bothered by Reason Magazine’s cliched slamming of contemporary feminism as “a paralyzing ideology of victimization.” Reason is a magazine written by libertarians; libertarians call it an “ideology of victimization” whenever anyone suggests anything other than Evil Big Government is ever oppressive or problematic.

UPDATE: Check out Amanda’s take on this story.

In the comments to an earlier thread, Mousehounde wrote:

As to the topic: I do not understand the fixation on trying to discredit Koss’ study. What difference does it make if the rate is not 1 in 4? So what if the numbers are different? Is there some magical cut off point in the numbers when it becomes something that doesn’t need fixing or attention? If the incidence of rape is 1 in 4, then there is a problem. But if the numbers are lower, 1 in 8, 1 in 20, then rape really isn’t a problem and women just need to stop whining about it I guess.

There’s a bit of a history there. The attack on Koss’ work was made popular among anti-feminists by Katie Roiphe and Christina Hoff Sommers. (Roiphe, in particular, was very convincing - I remember reading her 1993 New York Times Sunday Magazine attack on Koss and feeling livid at those lying feminists.)

Roiphe and Sommers, in turn, both cribbed their arguments from Neil Gilbert (not in a dishonest way; they both credit Gilbert in their books. By the way, Roiphe’s endnotes don’t cite a single piece of writing by Koss; her sources were all secondhand.) But Gilbert wasn’t arguing about the difference between “1 in 8″ and “1 in 20″ or whatever it is anti-feminists argue nowadays. From the conclusion to Gilbert’s seminal Koss-attacking essay (published in the magazine Public Interest in 1991):

The difference between a sexual-assault rate of 25 or 50 percent and one of 0.1 percent is more than a matter of degree. It is the difference between the view that male-female relations are normally enjoyable for most people and the view that they are inherently antagonistic and dangerous. To argue for the higher rate is to try to shift our understanding of the battle between the sexes; the model suggested by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn is to be replaced by one in which Conan the Barbarian violently thrashes his cavemate.

There’s a lot to unpack there (Conan wasn’t a caveman!), but note the statistical point: He thought he was arguing between 1 in 2 (a number he got, I suspect, from Diana Russell’s studies), 1 in 4 (Koss’ number, if you include attempted rapes) and 1 in 1000. That’s a real difference. That’s a difference that matters. Arguing about that difference makes sense.

Where did Gilbert get 1 in 1000 from? From the Bureau of Justice Statistic’s (aka BJS) estimate of how many rapes occur annually. It’s appropriate, considering how much the anti-feminist movement has mangled statistics to attack Koss over the years, that the trend was begun by a scholar so careless with statistics that he’d directly compare a lifetime statistic to an annual statistic and think he was saying something meaningful. (Of course, he’s not the only anti-feminist to make that particular error.)

What’s happened since? Well, a lot of studies - including three major nationwide studies - have replicated three of Koss’ major findings (that something in the range of 10% to 15% of American women are raped at some point in their lifetime; that the typical rapist is not a stranger to the victim; and that the vast majority of rapes are never reported to the police). All three of the studies were influenced by Koss’ earlier work, in my opinion. The BJS admitted that the survey instrument they used to measure rape back in 1991 was badly designed, and have revised their methods somewhat, although some problems remain. Koss’ work continues to be frequently cited in the peer-reviewed literature.

In short, Koss’ findings are widely accepted within the mainstream research community. Yet you’d never guess that from reading right-wing and anti-feminist literature; most anti-feminists who follow the issue believe that Koss has been entirely discredited. Why haven’t they given up already?

Furthermore, it’s now been nearly two decades since Koss’ study was published. As groundbreaking as Koss’ study was, other, more recent research is probably more significant at this point. So why is Koss still the target, rather than (say) the Centers for Disease Control, which ran a major, recent study replicating many of Koss’ findings?

Well, because for most anti-feminists the critique of Koss’ work was never really about how common rape is. Instead, Koss’ work was exhibit A in the prosecutor’s case against feminism for Malicious Anti Male Lying. Criticizing the CDC, which is not a feminist organization, doesn’t suit that purpose. The target must be a feminist, like Koss. And to admit they were wrong about Koss would imply that they might be wrong about their caricature of feminists as a bunch of vicious man-hating evil Feminazis - and to most anti-feminists, that’s simply unthinkable.

And that, as well, is the reason I keep on posting about Koss. Not because I think there’s an important difference between 1 in 8 and 1 in 15 or whatever - there isn’t. Nor is it only because I think Mary Koss is, if anything, a hero, and the constant attacks on her character deserve rebuttal.

Rather, I continue arguing with the anti-feminists because their implied view that “all feminists are liars” needs to be opposed. The more they succeed in getting policy-makers or the general public to accept their view of feminists are manhating liars, the harder it will be for feminists to succeed in their policy goals. Trying to disprove the anti-feminists regarding their chosen Exhibit A is, I think, worthwhile.

(This is the third of three posts on “equity feminism” and “gender feminism.”) (Part one) Part two)

Ironically, although self-dubbed “equity feminists” often say they’re continuing the traditions of first-wave feminism, it’s doubtful any first wave feminists would have signed on to an ideology so extreme in its pretense that feminism has nothing to say beyond formal legal equality that it believes that rape has nothing to do with misogyny or gender bias.

After Hoff-Sommers, the person who has done the most to popularize the concept of “gender feminism” is libertarian, “ifeminist” and Foxnews columnist Wendy McElroy. In Roderick Long and Charles Johnson’s essay on libertarian feminism, they consider Wendy McElroy’s use of “gender feminist.” (Long and Johnson are rare libertarian feminists whose feminism is distinguishable from anti-feminism.) At one time, they say, McElroy used “gender feminist” to refer mainly to radical feminism, but her definition has expanded over the years:

McElroy now clearly lumps liberal and radical feminists together as “gender feminists,” and opposes libertarian feminism (individualist feminism, ifeminism) to this aggregation. … “liberal feminism,” “left-of-center feminism,” and “gender feminism” are all apparently being treated as equivalent.

The implicit suggestion is that to regard something as a legitimate object of feminist concern is ipso facto to regard it as an appropriate object of legislation. On this view, those feminists who see lots of issues as meriting feminist attention will naturally favour lots of legislation, while those feminists who prefer minimal legislation will be led to suppose that relatively few issues merit feminist attention. But without the conceptual confusions that all too often accompany the authoritarian theory of politics, it’s hard to see any reason for accepting the shared premise. Certainly McElroy’s 19th-century libertarian feminist predecessors did not accept it.

…McElroy’s career has been a steady stream of books and articles documenting, and urging a return to, the ideas of the 19th-century libertarian feminists. Yet we know ““ and it is largely owing to McElroy’s own efforts that we know ““ that if there are any “gender feminists” lurking out there, the 19th century individualists, while libertarian, would certainly be found among their ranks.

* * *

One odd effect of Hoff Sommers’ formulation - in which “equity feminists” do not perceive any social problem of anti-woman beliefs (a position very at odds with first-wave feminist thought, by the way), and who additionally think feminism’s only legitimate goal is formal equality under the law - is that the category of feminists who can be considered “equity feminists” is astonishingly narrow. It consists of a handful of Republican activists and think-tankers, like Hoff Sommers herself and the IWF; and also some libertarians whose primary connection to feminism is opposing it, such as Wendy McElroy (who earns a living writing an anti-feminist column for Foxnews) and Cathy Young.

The way “equity” feminists like Hoff Sommers and McElroy discuss feminism is entirely binary; they don’t acknowlege that there are any feminists who don’t fit into the gender/equity dichotomy, nor do they suggest that any overlap between the catagories exist. Therefore, when “equity feminism” is drawn so narrowly, “gender feminism” becomes correspondingly broad. Virtually all feminists, apart from a handful of Republican and libertarian activists, are in practice derided as “gender feminists” by Hoff Sommers, McElroy and their fellow travelers.

In a comment on a HNN thread, Charles Johnson writes:

The popularity, in some libertarian circles, of Christina Hoff Sommers’ distinction between “equity feminism” and “gender feminism,” a pair of opposed categories that–so far as I can tell–actually track no historical tendency of thought and no shared premise whatsoever. (I don’t know what “gender feminism” is supposed to actually be, but I do know that if you put Kim Gandy, Andrea Dworkin, and Mary Daly into the same political boat, you are surely misunderstanding something.)

He’s got a point.

It can be useful, for the purpose of a particular article or thought experiment, to create a classification system from scratch. In her essay “Marooned on Gilligan’s Island” - one of my favorite pieces of intra-feminist criticism - Katha Pollitt makes up a category called “difference feminism,” which she contrasts unflatteringly with “equality feminism.”

But Pollitt’s category doesn’t have the effect of encouraging ignorance; although she posits a new category, “difference feminism,” she didn’t go on to make the difference/equality dichotomy her only lens for viewing feminism for decades on end. Since her difference/equality dichotomy wasn’t her sole and only approach to understanding feminism, her analysis doesn’t force her to lump together feminists whose intellectual traditions are actually strongly opposed. For Pollitt, “difference feminism” was an analytic tool, but not the only tool in the toolbox.

In contrast, most conservatives use the terms “gender feminist” and “equity feminist” less as a tool than as crutches; the simplistic duality between a handful of marginal libertarian and Republican feminists, and all other feminists, is their only means of understanding feminism. This means, of course, that they cannot understand feminism at all.

It’s as if someone divided all of cinema into two categories, “Arnold Schwarzenegger films” and “everything else,” and then remained committed to using this classification system, and no other, for decades. Is it really useful to have, as one’s exclusive classification system, an approach that pretends that the cinematic traditions that produced Fanny and Alexander, Mureal’s Wedding, Hero, and Monsters, Inc do not have any noteworthy distinctions?

An approach to feminism that divides feminists into “Hoff Sommers, McElroy and their allies” versus “all other feminists” is not useful to anyone who hasn’t already decided to hold the “all other feminists” catagory in contempt. Such an approach promotes lazy, stereotypical thinking, in which someone can read Mary Daly and conclude that he’s read all he needs to know about Katha Pollitt, Catherine MacKinnon or Martha Nussbaum, since they’re all from a single intellectual approach.

I can see why this approach is idealogically attractive to conservatives and anti-feminists; what I can’t see is how such an approach can be anything but intellectually vapid.

(This is the second of three posts on “equity feminism” and “gender feminism.” Part one is here; part three is here).

How far do “equity feminists” go in denying that there’s any widespread problem of sexism for feminism to address in the US? Here’s Hoff Sommers describing the “equity feminist” view of rape. First, she points out that in prison - which is to say, in an environment where men have absolutely no access to women - male rape is common. The she says:

Equity feminists find it reasonable to approach the problem of violence against women by addressing the root causes of the general rise in violence and the decline in civility. To view rape as a crime of gender bias… is perversely to miss its true nature. Rape is perpetrated by criminals, which is to say, it is perpetrated by people who are wont to gratify themselves in criminal ways and who care very little about the suffering they inflict on others.

Hoff-Sommers acknowledges that most violent criminals are male, but dismisses this as uninteresting: “That most violence is male isn’t news. But very little of it appears to be misogynist.”

And that is the “equity feminist” view on rape, according to the woman who invented the term.

What’s interesting to me is how, in bending over backwards to deny that rape has anything to do with gender bias, Hoff Sommers winds up not talking about rape at all, whinging on about “criminal violence” instead.

Yes, male-on-male rape is a serious problem (and a statistically huge problem in prison); but it’s not possible to seriously discuss causes and prevention of rape if we’re not willing to admit that - outside of environments where men are locked away from all access to women - rape is overwhelmingly perpetuated by men against women. And although all rapists are, by definition, criminals, the typical rapist isn’t a career criminal, but an acquaintance, boyfriend or husband of the victim. That’s the reality.

But since dealing with reality would conflict with “equity feminist” ideology, Hoff Sommers chooses not to deal in reality. Instead, according to “equity feminism,” rape has to be understood as a subcategory of gender-neutral “violence” and a “decline in civility,” and therefore has nothing to do with women being attacked at all.

(This is the second of three posts on “equity feminism” and “gender feminism.” Part one is here; part three is here).

(This is the first of three posts on “equity feminism” and “gender feminism.” Part two is here; part three is here).

As folks have been discussing a bit in this “Alas” thread, conservatives tend to divide feminists into two categories: “gender feminists” and “equity feminists.”

These terms were coined by Christina Hoff Sommers, in her anti-feminist classic Who Stole Feminism?. Here’s how Hoff Sommers introduced the term “gender feminists”:

The gender feminists (as I shall call them) believe that all our institutions, from the state to the family to the grade schools, perpetuate male dominance. … Gender feminists are constantly on the lookout for the smoking gun, the telling fact that will drive home to the public how profoundly the system is rigged against women. To rally women to their cause, it is not enough to remind us that many brutal and selfish men harm women. They must persuade us that the system itself sanctions male brutality. They must convince us that the oppression of women, sustained from generation to generation, is a structural feature of our society.

In contrast, equity feminists are those who (in Hoff Sommer’s view) derive their feminism from the suffragettes. Here’s Hoff Sommers’ first mention of “equity” feminism:

The traditional, classically liberal, humanistic feminism that was initiated more than 150 years ago was very different. It has a specific agenda, demanding for women the same rights before the law that men enjoyed. The suffrage had to be won, and the laws regarding property, marriage, divorce, and child custody had to be made equitable. More recently, abortion rights had to be protected. The old mainstream feminism concentrated on legal reforms. …

Most American women subscribe philosophically to that older “First Wave” kind of feminism whose main goal is equity, especially in politics and education. A First Wave, “mainstream,” or “equity” feminist wants for women what she wants for everyone: fair treatment, without discrimination.

Note that the definitions are already a bit incoherent; although Hoff Sommers is trying to create two opposed categories, her definitions leave a lot of room for overlap. There is no contradiction, for example, between believing that “system is profoundly rigged against women” (gender feminists) and wanting “fair treatment, without discrimination, for everyone” (equity feminists).

Ignoring the incoherence for a while, the two key differences in Hoff Sommers formulation seem to be that “gender feminists” believe that sexism against women is a widespread problem, found in virtually all our society’s institutions. In contrast, “equity feminists” apparently think that feminism’s only proper concern is legal equality - a goal that has been, to a significant extent, achieved in the USA - and there is absolutely no cultural or systemic bias against women.

(Note, by the way, that the dictionary definition of feminism - which I’d phrase as “the movement organized around belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes” - is closer to “gender” than “equity” feminism, since its conception of equality is far broader than simple legal equality.)

(This is the first of three posts on “equity feminism” and “gender feminism.” Part two is here; part three is here).

Just added Rad Geek People’s Daily to the blogroll, and I highly recommend y’all check it out. It’s so nice to see a genuinely leftist blog.

I particular liked his critique of Christina Hoff Sommers (and of Salon’s weird dedication to anti-feminism), not because it’s better than his other material, but because it dovetailed with my interests really well. I’m definitely gonna spend some time reading through the archives there.

Oh, and if anyone can tell me the MT code for that cool thing Rad Geek does at the bottom of his blog - where there’s a list of recent posts that aren’t quite recent enough to be on the front page - I’d be grateful.

I ran across this article from the Chicago Tribune, about a right-wing student group that invited anti-feminist feminist Christina Hoff Sommers to speak at the University of Chicago. The article says nothing that isn’t predictable, but I was amused by this passage, quoting campus conservative Sara Butler:

Butler was happy to provide the refreshment. She said she and conservative-minded friends have chafed at campus women’s groups that have been protesting agricultural working conditions at Taco Bell suppliers and opposing war in Iraq.

“I think the feminist movement is out of touch with average women,” she said. “The big feminist issue has been the controversy with the Augusta National Golf Club.”

So in one moment Ms. Butler slams campus feminist groups for their concern with labor issues and war in Iraq, and the next she’s complaining all feminists worry about is the Augusta National Golf Club. Truly, some people are never satisfied.

(By the way, Ms. Butler does go on to give her opinion of what a truly pressing issue for women on campus is: the “lack of any dating culture on campus.” Thank goodness feminists have right-wingers to tell us what’s really important…)

(While I’m on the subject of zany things Ms. Butler has said, let me point out this National Review article, in which Butler - I kid you not - criticizes feminists for judging people by their policies, rather than their sex: “We couldn’t understand why their bond of sisterhood didn’t extend to Priscilla Owen, but included Sen. Chuck Schumer and Ralph Neas. Perhaps the sisterhood has awarded each of these two men an honorary estrogen pack since their politics are so obviously feminine. After all, for feminists, ideology trumps biology…” Here’s a clue for Ms. Butler: Of course feminists judge people by their ideology, not their biology. To do otherwise is called “sexism,” and real feminists are against sexism.)

But the real reason I’m blogging this is the article’s comment that “Butler says she is a feminist of a different sort - a conservative feminist.”

I have trouble accepting the idea of a right-wing feminist.

1. Real feminists don’t attack feminism for a living.

Most of the examples of conservative so-called feminism I’ve come across - the IWF, Christina Hoff Sommers and ifeminism, for example - are so discouraging. It seems to me that to be a feminist, one ought be in favor of feminism. Therefore, it’s difficult for me to accept that these “right-wing feminists” - none of whom ever take the feminist side in current controversies, and all of whom make their livings doing nothing but slamming feminism - are feminists.

Of course, real feminists can - and do - criticize other feminists. When feminist Naomi Wolf released her book Fire with Fire - a book that mostly criticized feminists and dominant feminist ideology - Christina Hoff Sommers eagerly predicted Wolf’s forthcoming expulsion from the feminist fold (”Get used to this, Ms. Wolf. You’ll soon be finding out how it feels just to be called antifeminist simply because you refuse to regard men as the enemy and women as their hapless victims…. Susan Faludi will now classify you as just another backlasher”). Of course, none of this came to pass; some feminists criticized Wolf, some didn’t, and years later Wolf’s still one of the most popular feminist writers in America. So much for Ms. Sommers’ crystal ball.

The difference, of course, is that no matter how much Wolf criticizes feminists, that’s not all she does. She’s also found time, in her career, to support feminist issues now and again. But conservative feminists like Ms. Sommers have not.

But examples aside (after all, that’s just anecdotal evidence), as a matter of theory I think right-wing politics and feminism are fundamentally in conflict.

2. Real feminists don’t think a women’s only place is in the home.

As I understand it (and speaking in sweeping generalizations), there are two dominant brands of right-wingers in the US today: social conservatives and libertarians. Social conservatism is pretty obviously incompatible with feminism: social conservatives are anti-abortion, anti-lesbian, anti-women-in-the-workplace. Basically, they’re anti-women-being-anything-but-barefoot-and-pregnant. Do I even have to explain why this ain’t compatible with feminism?

Libertarianism is on the surface more compatible with feminism. Libertarians believe in equal legal rights for women, and frequently oppose laws which would have the government force childbirth on unwilling women. So why don’t I think libertarians can be feminists?

3. Real feminists are for real equality, not just legal equality

There’s more to feminism than disapproving of legal sexism and keeping abortion legal. The dictionary defines feminism as a movement for “the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.” But libertarians aren’t for any of that; all they favor is the legal equality of the sexes. As long as women are equal in the strict letter of the law, libertarians don’t care if women are hugely unequal in ways social, political and economic. They see no problem in a congress that is 87% male; although they perform statistical somersaults trying to deny that a wage gap exists between men and women, at a more fundamental level they don’t mind that women get paid less. Their alleged concern for equality begins and ends with legal equality. That’s fine - they can believe whatever they want - but it’s not feminism, not even by the conservative dictionary definition.

4. Real feminists don’t oppose every possible law to help women.

There’s a huge variety of feminisms out there, but there are a couple of things virtually all feminists believe. One is that feminists can, by taking collective action, change society in ways that improves the status of women-as-a-whole. Towards this end, feminists have lobbied for battered women’s shelters (and often lobbied for government funding), rape crisis lines (ditto), anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, pay equity, state-funded day care, the family leave act, a higher minimum wage, government-funded research on violence against women, and so on.

But libertarians opposes most collective action: for libertarians, everything is about the individual. Strict libertarians opposes laws against discrimination; if an individual business owner wants to discriminate against women, he should have that freedom, because after all it’s his business and his money. Similarly, pay equity, affirmative action, minimum wage, sexual harassment laws, and family leave are bad, because government shouldn’t tell business owners what to do. Rape crisis lines and battered women’s shelters should be provided by private charity and markets, not by tax dollars “taken at gunpoint.” And so on, and so on.

Of course, I’m not saying that no feminist can disagree with welfare, or affirmative action, or family leave, or whatever. Feminists disagree on things like this all the time. But can someone be against virtually every policy that might help women and still be a feminist? After all, it’s not just that libertarians want to prevent new laws to help women: libertarians also want to repeal most of the current laws that help women.

Getting rid of Social Security would hurt women more than men; getting rid of the minimum wage would hurt women more than men (because more women are minimum-wage workers); getting rid of anti-discrimination laws would hurt women more; I could go on with examples like these all day. All these policies would hurt women’s interests, and all of them are favored by libertarians. If virtually all the policies a person favors would hurt women’s interests, and drive women far away from “social, political, and economic equality” with men, doesn’t that make it a contradiction to call that person a feminist?

And, of course, feminists believe in doing everything possible - including government aid - to help improve the status of women discriminated against abroad. But try mentioning “foreign aid” to a libertarian - it’s like mentioning garlic and crosses to a vampire.

5. Real feminists want justice for all, not just justice for the well-off and white.

There’s one other reason I think it’s unlikely that any coherent philosophy could be both right-wing and feminist. Feminism’s mandate is justice, and especially justice for women. But fighting for “justice” for women isn’t meaningful if it only applies to some women. Consider the feminist principle that “all women must have the freedom to choose abortion.” If we’re serious about that principle, it’s not enough that abortion remain legal; it also has to be meaningfully available to all women. That means feminism has to concern itself at least partly with class justice - if poor women can’t afford abortions, then poor women lack the freedom to choose abortion.

Similar arguments could be made about why feminism has to not only consider gender justice, but also the places where gender justice “intersects” with racial justice, economic justice, justice for lesbians, and so on. Certainly, there are many individual right-wingers who are personally anti-racist, concerned with the plight of the poor, and so on. But it is the left which is fighting for social justice on all these fronts; and insofar as feminism has to be concerned with social justice for all women (and not just white middle-class first-world heterosexual women) to be legitimate, it’s more natural for feminism to ally with the left than with the right.

So do I think that individual conservatives who call themselves feminists are insincere? No, probably not: probably they just like the label and don’t care what it means. Still, it’s a kick in the pants, ain’t it? I don’t wander around insisting I’m a “libertarian” despite my lack of faith in pro-market ideology; i don’t call myself a “fundamentalist Christian” even though I’m a Jewish atheist. Why is it that right-wing terms are understood to have meaning, but anyone - no matter how regressive and anti-feminist their views - feels free to label herself a “feminist”?

Update: Turns out that Sara Butler has a blog, and she’s responded to me here. (If the permalink is bloggered, just look for the February 18th entry).

Instapundit links to this interview with professional “anti-feminist feminists” Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers. (The interview comes from “liberal media” PBS).

I can’t claim to know the truth or fiction of everything the anti-fem mavens say. But, going from what I already know about these issues, here are just some of Camille and Christina’s mistakes in this interview:

• Hoff-Sommers refers to Mary Koss’ study - which found that “one in four” female college students had experienced rape or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime (measuring only completed rapes, the number is 15%) - as a “grotesque exaggeration.” Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that Koss’ results didn’t exaggerate the problem. Aside from Koss’, there have been three other nationwide, representative studies specifically designed to measure rape prevalence, and all three - one by the U.S. Department of Justice (10% for completed rape), one by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (15% for completed rape), and one by the Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center (13% for completed rape) - supported Koss’ findings.

• Paglia claims that a female instructor at the University of Pennsylvania “demanded [a Goya painting of a nude woman] be taken down because she felt sexually harassed by it”; Paglia says the prof was “embarassed and upset” by human nudity. But Professor Nancy Stumhofer never claimed that Goya’s Naked Maja sexually harassed her; this myth was made up by right-wing pundits like Paglia. And far from being upset by nudity, Stumhofer assigned works with human nudity in other contexts. She did have Naked Maja moved to a public area in the student center, not because she felt harassed by Goya, but because her developmental English students seemed distracted by the painting. (Source: Democratic Culture, Spring 1994, pp 18-22).
• Hoff-Sommers cites only one source - Washington Post journalist Ken Ringle - to prove there’s no connection between the Super Bowl and increased domestic violence. The problem is, Ringle’s a known liar. Both the American Journalism Review (5/93) and the Washington Post’s own ombudsman critisized Ringle for his factual errors, bias and “twisted and selective quoting” in reporting this story. As FAIR notes, three of the four experts Ringle cited to “debunk” feminists, actually disagreed with Ringle’s claims. (I don’t claim to know if there’s more domestic violence on superbowl Sunday or not; I don’t think there’s enough evidence to say. But for Sommers to claim that she does know, based on a dishonest source like Ken Ringle, is ridiculous).
• Hoff-Sommers claims only 100 Americans a year die from anorexia - but she doesn’t understand mortality statistics. According to the NIMH, anorexics typically die due to “complications of the disorder, such as cardiac arrest or electrolyte imbalance,” not anorexia itself. Hoff-Sommers might as well have claimed that because so few people have “cigarettes” written on their death certificate, smoking hardly ever causes any deaths.

  So what’s the real number? There are about 19 million American women between ages 15 and 24; of those, somewhere between 190,000 and 380,000 have anorexia (it’s estimated that 1-2% of young women suffer from anorexia). About 0.56% - somewhere between one and two thousand - of those die of anorexia-related causes each year. (This is a conservative estimate, both because some studies have found a much higher long-term mortality rate, and because not everyone with anorexia is a young woman age 15-24).

  Hoff-Sommers uses the false “100 deaths” statistic to refute an also-false number some feminists used in the early 1990s. She was right to correct the feminists - but, unlike Hoff-Sommers, the feminists were willing to retract their mistaken statistic. Hoff-Sommers has never corrected or retracted her false “100 deaths from anorexia” figure.

Remember, these are the same people who built careers claiming that feminists are fact-challenged. Apparently right-wingers don’t have to worry about that whole “glass houses” thing.