[VIDEO] There Is No Gender Wage Gap: Christina Hoff Sommers for Prager U
Posted: March 6, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, Gender Gap, Prager U, video Leave a comment
Is there a gender wage gap? Are women paid less than men to do the same work? Christina Hoff Sommers, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains the data.
Source: PragerU
[VIDEO] Is America an Imperialist, White-Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy?
Posted: January 21, 2017 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Academic Left, American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Capitalism, Christina Hoff Sommers, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Economic freedom, equality, Factual Feminist, Feminism, Free market, Imperialism, Liberty, media, news, Patriarchy, patriot, Republican Party (United States), United States, video Leave a comment
Gender scholars like bell hooks argue that American is an imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Is she right? The Factual Feminist responds. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Gender Specific Toys: Hazard to Children?
Posted: September 15, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Entertainment, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere | Tags: American Family Association, Cathy Smith, Christina Hoff Sommers, Gender, Gender Specific Toys, Target Corporation, toys, Transgender 2 Comments
In 2015, Target stopped labeling aisles for boys and girls to make toys “gender neutral.” Does their strategy match the facts? AEI Resident Scholar and Factual Feminist Christina Hoff Sommers argues that while activists want every toy to be marketed to both girls and boys, children are not gender neutral—and she has the data to prove it.
Watch other videos with the Factual Feminist
[VIDEO] Christina Hoff Sommers & Camille Paglia on Intersectional Feminism and ‘Safe Spaces’
Posted: June 28, 2016 Filed under: Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Academia, Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Feminism, Safe Spaces Leave a comment
Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia examine the origins of intersectional feminism and “safe spaces”, and discuss Paglia’s own interpretations of feminism—what she labeled over the years as “amazon feminism”, “drag queen feminism”, and “street smart feminism.”
This is part three of a nine part series featuring Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia. The other videos in the series can be found here:
Part 1 – The state of contemporary feminism: https://goo.gl/nRJ0ss
Part 2 – The fight for student liberties: https://goo.gl/dS1QKF
Part 3 – Intersectional feminism and safe spaces: https://goo.gl/cmbj8g
Part 4 – Based Mom and Based Goddess on #Gamergate: https://goo.gl/ZFfuzh
Part 5 – Trigger warnings and the danger of overprotecting students: https://goo.gl/WE29Yc
Part 6 – The “male gaze”: https://goo.gl/hRWfhi
Part 7 – Fixing a broken university curriculum: https://goo.gl/pWmpwh
Part 8 – The absence of biology in gender studies: https://goo.gl/QrZQEU
Part 9 – The danger of looking at history through a contemporary political lens: https://goo.gl/D82LYB
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Kentucky Fried Microaggression
Posted: December 18, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Mediasphere | Tags: Alice Walker, Anton Corbijn, Chadwick Boseman, Christina Hoff Sommers, Django Unchained, Jackie Robinson, Los Angeles, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oberlin College, Ohio, Pulitzer Prize, Rape culture, Reginald Hudlin, Scott Johnson, The Oberlin Review Leave a comment
Gastronomically correct students at an ultra-liberal Ohio college are in an uproar because the cafeteria food isn’t ethnically accurate enough.
Students at Oberlin College are so angered by the “insensitive” and “culturally appropriative” offerings at their Dascomb Dining Hall that they are filling screeds of protest in the school newspaper and even demanded a meeting with Campus Dining Service officials and the college president.
“When you’re cooking a country’s dish for other people, including ones who have never tried the original dish before, you’re also representing the meaning of the dish as well as its culture.”
At issue are foods such as General Tso’s chicken being served with steamed chicken instead of fried — which is not authentically Chinese, and simply “weird,” one student bellyached.
[Read the full text here, at New York Post]
Others were up in arms over Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwiches served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables on ciabatta bread — rather than traditional French baguette.
“How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”
“It was ridiculous,” Diep Nguyen, a freshman who is a Vietnam native, told The Oberlin Review, the school newspaper.
“How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”
“So if people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative.”
Not only that, but the sushi rice was undercooked in a way that was, according to one Japanese student, “disrespectful” of her culture.
That student, Tomoyo Joshi, a junior from Japan, was very offended by this flagrant violation of her rice. Read the rest of this entry »
Why College Kids Can’t Take a Joke
Posted: June 11, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Comics, Entertainment, Humor | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Sommers, comedy, Feminism, Kirsten Powers, Progressivism, Purdue University, Racism, Safe Space, Sexism, Trauma trigger, Trigger Warning, University of Chicago Leave a comment
Kyle Smith writes: What’s the deal with young people today? “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist,’ ‘That’s sexist,’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” Jerry Seinfeld told ESPN’s Colin Cowherd this week. “They don’t know what the f—k they’re talking about.”
“I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.”
— Chris Rock
Comics are afraid to work on college campuses, Seinfeld said. To give an idea of how young people think, he cited a bizarre response his 14-year-old daughter made when his wife noted that the girl might want to go to New York City from the suburbs more often “So you can see boys.” The girl replied that the remark was “sexist,” her father said.
“There is a word…That word is illiberal; there is nothing ‘conservative’ about it.”
— Kyle Smith
The determination of the identity-politics obsessed to shut down speech on campus inspired a couple of hilarious one-liners in the past year. One was from The Onion: “College Encourages Lively Exchange of Idea: Students, Faculty Invited to Freely Express Single Viewpoint.” The other, though unintentionally funny, was equally amusing, and came from Chris Rock: “I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.”
There is a word for the move to ban a screening of 2014’s most popular movie, American Sniper (and replace it with Paddington), to hound a major university into rescinding its honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to punish someone with a Title IX investigation for the crime of questioning the wisdom of certain Title IX investigations, and designating a “safe space” to which to flee after failing to prevent a speech by Christina Hoff Sommers from taking place. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Everytown: We’ll Only Debate If Our Sparring Partners Agree With Us
Posted: April 29, 2015 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, Politics, Self Defense | Tags: 2nd amendment, American Enterprise Institute, Anti-Americanism, Charles C. W. Cooke, Christina Hoff Sommers, Civil Rights, Everytown, Feminism, Georgetown University, Gun control, Gun rights, National Review, NRO, Oberlin College, OCRL, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Trauma trigger, Washington DC Leave a comment
At The Corner, Charles C.W. Cooke has this item:
Watch this representative from gun-control group “Everytown for Gun Safety” explain on C-SPAN why he won’t debate anybody who disagrees with him:
[Read the full text of Charles C.W. Cooke‘s post here, at National Review Online]
Here’s transcript of the relevant part of his answer:
Everytown is committed to an evidence-based approach. We speak with criminologists, legislators across the country and we welcome debate. In fact, we’re thrilled that there is an increased amount of research in this area, and an increased amount of conversation about what laws are effective to keeping guns out of the hands of felons and domestic abusers. So, when there’s a credible scientist — somebody who wants to have a real constructive conversation about this — we’re going to be there. But folks who seek to minimize the grave issue of gun violence in this country – or to draw attention away 
from the real issues to themselves – that’s not a conversation I think it’s productive to be a part of.
[Check out Charles C. W. Cooke‘s new book: “The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future” at Amazon.com]
Obviously, the speaker is doing little more than begging the question. “Sure we’ll talk to people who disagree” he appears to be saying, “but only if they agree. Because to disagree with the claims that we are making is to take attention away from the claims that we are making, which are true by virtue of their having been made.”
Oddly enough, this is also exactly how critics of, say, Christina Hoff Sommerstend to explain away their unwillingness to engage. Read the rest of this entry »
Reed Humanities Professor: ‘In light of the serious stress you have caused your classmates, I feel that I have no other choice’
Posted: March 19, 2015 Filed under: Education, Politics | Tags: Bill Cosby, Buzzfeed, Campus, CBC News, Christina Hoff Sommers, Jian Ghomeshi, Katherine Timpf, Rape, Rape culture, Reed College, Rolling Stone, Sexual abuse, Sexual assault, Student 1 Comment
Apparently, feelings are more important than facts
Katherine Timpf
writes: A student at Reed College in Portland claims he was banned from class discussions mainly because he questioned a rape “statistic” — even though that “statistic” has been debunked — just because other students said they were uncomfortable.
Nineteen-year-old Jeremiah True told BuzzFeed News that his Humanities 110 professor, Pancho Savery, had warned him that his views on campus sexual assault were bothering other students — before ultimately sending True an e-mail telling him he was forbidden from participating in the “conference” portion of the class at all.
“Please know that this was a difficult decision for me to make and one that I have never made before; nevertheless, in light of the serious stress you have caused your classmates, I feel that I have no other choice,” the e-mail stated, according to BuzzFeed. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] The Phony Gender Wage Gap Myth
Posted: April 8, 2014 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Christina Hoff Sommers, Equal Pay Day, Gender pay gap, Obama, State of the Union address, War on Women 1 Comment
“Yes, of course it’s not true. Yes…I know. It’s fiction. It’s complete bullshit, I know. It’s a wedge issue. It’s all we got. Give it time. If we keep repeating the lie, it will….yes, exactly…It’s perfect…”
The wage gap myth, most recently used by President Obama during the State of the Union Address, states that women make only 77 cents to every dollar that men earn. AEI resident scholar Christina Hoff Sommers debunks the bogus statistic…
No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men
Posted: February 1, 2014 Filed under: Economics, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Barack Obama, Christina Hoff Sommers, Gender pay gap, Naval Architecture, President of the United States, State of the Union address, United States, Washington Post, White House 1 Comment
Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty
It’s the bogus statistic that won’t die—and president deployed it during the State of the Union—but women do not make 77 cents to every dollar a man earns.
Christina Hoff Sommers writes: President Obama repeated the spurious gender wage gap statistic in his State of the Union address. “Today,” he said, “women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.”
What is wrong and embarrassing is the President of the United States reciting a massively discredited factoid. The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to about five cents. And no one knows if the five cents is a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers. In its fact-checking column on the State of the Union, the Washington Post included the president’s mention of the wage gap in its list of dubious claims. “There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women… make it difficult to make simple comparisons.”
A Conservative Writer’s “Freedom Feminism” Agenda is Short on Both Freedom and Feminism
Posted: January 13, 2014 Filed under: Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Lucifer the Lightbearer, Moses Harman, Roderick Long, Sharon Presley Leave a comment
Can Christina Hoff Sommers Save Feminism?
Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today, by Christina Hoff Sommers, AEI Press, 127 pages, $3.95.
Sharon Presley writes: Some libertarians look askance at feminism, seeing it only as a leftist push to use the state to benefit women. Many conservatives see it something as far worse. But Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute wants to change all that. In Freedom Feminism, Sommers sets out to provide a manifesto for moderate and conservative women (and, some say, for libertarians) because they “must be at the helm” if they are to raise broad support for the kind of feminism that she thinks is worthwhile. Sommers asserts that her “freedom feminism” is a synthesis of 19th century “radical egalitarianism” and a conservative “maternal school,” and that the results avoid the problems of leftist feminism.
This raises two questions for libertarians: Is feminism salvageable? And if so, is Sommers’ new blend the right mix?
In addressing the first question, it is useful to recognize that leftists didn’t invent feminism. Mary Wollstonecraft, the leading influence on First Wave feminism, was an individualist. So were such 19th-century American feminists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who believed that “nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit.” In addition to working for the vote, 19th-century feminists struggled to undo unjust and unfair laws that made women the property of their husbands. They sought equal rights, not governmental privilege.
Interview With Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues
Posted: December 28, 2013 Filed under: Art & Culture, Politics, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, CrossFit, Miley Cyrus, Oscar Wilde, Paglia, Rush Limbaugh, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale Nota Bene S.), Yale University 4 CommentsThe cultural critic on why ignoring the biological differences between men and women risks undermining Western civilization itself
Neil Davies
Bari Weiss writes: ‘What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,” says Camille Paglia. This self-described “notorious Amazon feminist” isn’t telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead. And that’s just 20 minutes of our three-hour conversation.
When Ms. Paglia, now 66, burst onto the national stage in 1990 with the publishing of “Sexual Personae,” she immediately established herself as a feminist who was the scourge of the movement’s establishment, a heretic to its orthodoxy. Pick up the 700-page tome, subtitled “Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, ” and it’s easy to see why. “If civilization had been left in female hands,” she wrote, “we would still be living in grass huts.”
The fact that the acclaimed book—the first of six; her latest, “Glittering Images,” is a survey of Western art—was rejected by seven publishers and five agents before being printed by Yale University Press only added to Ms. Paglia’s sense of herself as a provocateur in a class with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. But unlike those radio jocks, Ms. Paglia has scholarly chops: Her dissertation adviser at Yale was Harold Bloom, and she is as likely to discuss Freud, Oscar Wilde or early Native American art as to talk about Miley Cyrus.
Ms. Paglia relishes her outsider persona, having previously described herself as an egomaniac and “abrasive, strident and obnoxious.” Talking to her is like a mental CrossFit workout. One moment she’s praising pop star Rihanna (“a true artist”), then blasting ObamaCare (“a monstrosity,” though she voted for the president), global warming (“a religious dogma”), and the idea that all gay people are born gay (“the biggest canard,” yet she herself is a lesbian).
But no subject gets her going more than when I ask if she really sees a connection between society’s attempts to paper over the biological distinction between men and women and the collapse of Western civilization.
Why Are Liberal Men Unhappy?
Posted: December 18, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Arthur Brooks, Christina Hoff Sommers, David French, Happiness, Left-wing politics, Liberalism, The New York Times, University of Chicago 5 Comments
David French writes: Last weekend AEI’s Arthur Brooks published an interesting piece on happiness in the New York Times’ Sunday Review. I’d encourage you to read the whole thing, but this observation (taken from the comprehensive work of the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey) was particularly interesting and runs counter to perceptions fostered by pop culture:
For many years, researchers found that women were happier than men, although recent studies contend that the gap has narrowed or may even have been reversed. Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative men and significantly happier than liberal women. The unhappiest of all are liberal men; only about a fifth consider themselves very happy.
Fascinating. While I’ll let others comment on the happiness of conservatives, let’s address liberal men. Why are they so much less happy?
A core component of modern leftism is its comprehensive attack (and accompanying redefinition) of masculinity. This attack poisons how men experience their own nature, relationships, and purpose.
