“…the proper corrective to chauvinism is not to reverse it and practice it against males, but rather basic fairness.”
Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men has a terrific piece in the New York times entitled, “Boys at the Back:”
Boys score as well as or better than girls on most standardized tests, yet they are far less likely to get good grades, take advanced classes or attend college. Why? A study coming out this week in The Journal of Human Resources gives an important answer. Teachers of classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades — and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better than boys….
Isn’t it time for women and girls to enjoy the advantages? The impulse is understandable but misguided. I became a feminist in the 1970s because I did not appreciate male chauvinism. I still don’t. But the proper corrective to chauvinism is not to reverse it and practice it against males, but rather basic fairness. And fairness today requires us to address the serious educational deficits of boys and young men. The rise of women, however long overdue, does not require the fall of men.
But the proper corrective to chauvinism is not to reverse it and practice it against males, but rather basic fairness. And fairness today requires us to address the serious educational deficits of boys and young men.
In my experience, the typical American woman’s concept of fairness is about the same as the typical American teenager’s: It’s fair if an only if I get whatever I want, regardless of what it might cost anybody else.
The rise of women, however long overdue, does not require the fall of men.
It certainly shouldn’t, but, in my experience, that’s exactly what it requires for the typical American woman. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the fall of men is more important to the typical American woman than the rise of women.
I don’t know if it’s the view of the “typical” woman, but certainly the view of the typical leftist woman (and man wanting to been seen on the correct side). To them, everything is a zero-sum game: in order for women to rise, men must fall accordingly. You can’t have a rising tide, only revenge.
Bartender! A double Glenfiddich for this man!!!
CH Somers seems to obssess more on her perception of chauvinism than the “war on boys.” Oh, and she retitled her book. It no longer says “misguided feminism.” It’s now “misguided policies.”
The more I see and read CH Somers, the more I’m convinced she’s a disingenuous joke and a complete waste of my time. She isn’t interested in stopping the war on boys/men half as much as she’s desperately trying to reclaim some semblence of credibility for the Sisterhood.
Good luck with that.
Interesting. So while men were dying in hideous wars and in workplace accidents, and women were sitting at home with their children, it was Male Chauvanism! Sorry, Mrs. Hoff-Sommers, that we had the Male Privilege to die of mustard gas inhalation in the fetid trenches of WW1.
When such rank stupidity is deemed moderate and fair to men, and this woman is regarded as an ally, we know just how bad a shape we’re in.
This is exactly right. For in many, cases unless men are *required* to (metaphorically?) tie one hand (and possibly a foot) behind our backs then women will not get to be equal (read: superior) in every possible way. This, apparently, is unacceptable. Reality is so unfair!
Take this for what it’s worth. When I was teaching, the worst behavioral problems I had were almost always with girls. Oh, I had the occasional problem boy, but he was easily correctable. The girls, not so much.
Want to know what the best class I ever taught was? It was a low level freshman English class in high school. And these kids were really low level. They had been special ed through junior high, but now they were being mainstreamed for the first time. They could barely print. Some of them couldn’t even spell their names. All boys, by the way.
But I’ll tell you what, those kids were the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. Know how many tardy slips I had to file on them? None. Know how many behavior reports I had to write on them? None. Every day I had to monitor the hall during passing period, but when the tardy bell rang, these kids were seated and ready to work.
Okay. Because these boys were at least five years behind in their academic development–this was the 9th grade, they were writing at a 4th grade level–I had to get creative. Boys, we need to write a paper. So, I set up a weekly program. Monday: Prewriting. Tuesday: Outlining. Wednesday: Rough Draft. Thursday: Editing and Rewriting. Friday: Final Draft.
Every day, these boys were attentive. They followed instructions and completed their assingments. Then, one by one, they would come to my desk and show me their work. I would read it, mark the mistakes, and give it back to them. And, one by one, they would return to their desks, rewrite their assignment and correct their mistakes. At the end of the week, they turned in error-free papers. I gave them all 100s. Never tardy, always attentive, they followed instructions, completed their assignments, and corrected their mistakes. It was the first time in their lives they had ever gotten a 100. Now they were motivated, and they only worked harder, which was my intention all the while.
Compare that to the AP class I taught. There was this one girl who always showed up late, like 15 minutes late. She would just waltz into class, sit down and start talking. I was like, who are you, little Miss High School? Tardy, not following instructions, disrupting class, I had to file more behavior reports on this girl than all the other students combined. Did she do prewriting? No. Did she do an outline? No. Did she write a rough draft? No. Did she edit and rewrite? No. And when she turned in her final draft, with an air of disrespect, it was full of mistakes. So, I gave her the grade she deserved, a 50. If I could have given her the grade she truly deserved, a 0, I would have, but the law mandates that the lowest grade you can give is a 50.
Her mother threw a fit. And I mean a real fit. I got called into the principal’s office to explain myself. Turns out one of the boys in my low level class lived next door. “My daughter in on the honor role! My daughter has never received a grade below 90! This boy is special ed and he get’s a 100? But you give my daughter a 50?”
Well, this is his work. He doesn’t print very well, and he’s working on that, but you will note that there are no grammar, punctuation or spelling mistakes. He’s never been tardy. He’s always attentive. I haven’t had to file any behavior reports on him. His paper is error-free.
These are all the tardy slips I’ve filed on your daughter. These are all the behavior reports I’ve filed on your daughter. This is my phone log. I’ve called you over 30 times to inform you of your daughter’s behavior. This is her paper. It’s full of mistakes. What grade do you think she deserves?
I caught more grief for that than any of you can believe. But I stood my ground. I just told them, hey, I have one student and one problem child.
The inevitable result was that the next semester, they took away my AP classes and gave me all lower level students. And that was fine with me. Those lower level kids, they work hard.
The larger point remains is the obsession with female achievement and entitlement, even when they don’t show up on time or do the work they’re assigned; they think they’re entitled. That’s the feminist conundrum.
All I know is this. I’ve taught at every grade from 1st through sophomore college. The best students I had were boys. The worst students I had were girls.
GG,
Not that it would detract, but is this a reprint from an earlier post of yours?
Do I repeat myself? Very well then I repeat myself. Maybe at some time my point will get across.
I’ll tell you exactly what the problem with education is. They took away recess. They took away dodge ball. They took away almost all the avenues for boys to burn off their energy. Hell, they’ve practically done away with PE.
You can’t expect young boys to sit still in a classroom all day. They have too much energy. They have to be allowed to go outside and play.
Do you know that almost all of the shooters in these mass killings we’ve heard so much about lately were on some psychotropic drug?
Yeah, the shooters at Columbine were on Rittalin. So was the guy who shot up the theater in Colorado at the Batman premier. And so was the guy who shot up the elementary school in Connecticut. He might not have been on Rittalin, but he was on some type of psychotropic drug.
What are the side effects of these drugs? Restlessness, difficulty sleeping, unusual dreams, suicidal thoughts, homicidal ideation. Oh, yeah, that sounds like the perfect drug to prescribe to a hyperactive teenager, who’s only hyperactive because he does’t have an outlet to burn off his energy.
Even more bizarre are the commercials for depressed women. Oh, you’re depressed? Take this pill. It only causes unusual dreams and suicidal thoughts. That will cure your depression. You’re better off when your dead.
The whole thing is insane. We take away what boys need most, physical activity, then give them drugs that cause murderous thoughts and suicidal tendencies. And then we take away what women need most, a stable relationship, then give them drugs that make them want to kill themselves?
It’s an absurdity, modern American culture.
You are 100% correct. There seems to be no interest in addressing the over-prescription of these psychotropic drugs because the crises must be used to go after the guns. The drug companies pay psychiatrists and spend obscene amounts of money lobbying the FDA. Yet there’s no national database of withdrawal symptoms and it took forever just to get black box warnings placed on some of the drugs. It’s criminal.
Lack of recess is another huge problem. It was gone after 5th grade for my kids, so I had them join track. Best decision I’ve ever made.
As a society, we are throwing the kids under the bus.
Oh, it’s way worse than that. The pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists wrote the Affordable Health Care Act, aka Obomacare. He never read it, neither did any of the legislators. But they all signed off on it.
The whole thing is a scam. The pharmaceutical companies pay off the Congress, then they fabricate diseases they can prescribe pills for. Diseases like fybromyalgia, which didn’t even exist two years ago.
ADHD, a disease whith is typically prescribed to boys, what the hell is that? He’s a boy. He’s got a lot of energy, but he doesn’t have an avenue to burn it off. So we’ll just give him a drug that causes suicidal thoughts and homicidal ideation? Like that’s going to solve the problem.
And these women in their 30s. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. She’s depressed because no man will have anything to do with her. And why should he? Boys have been emasculated all of their lives, drugged into a homicidal rage by high school.
So now she has no one and she’s depressed. Let’s give her some drug that causes suicidal thoughts.
It’s insane, until you really think about it. The pharmaceutical companies get their profits; the legislators get their payoffs; the kids get drugged; and all we have to show for it is mass shootings and suicides. And a lot of depressed women taking drugs that make them want to kill themselves.
You can’t make this stuff up.
“…for the children!” who’re otherwise expendible, whether fetus or preteen (“Can’t make and omlette without breaking a few eggs,” as one leftist said).
Diseases like fybromyalgia, which didn’t even exist two years ago.
Not exactly accurate. I worked with a woman in 1998 who was diagnosed with fybromyalgia, so it has been around for at least 15 years.
Incredible insights. Thank God for teachers like you.
One other thing I rarely see mentioned is that modern boys probably see little point in doing well academically. Sitting still in school has always been hard for us, but we knew we had to do it because it could be part of becoming a man. You were going to have a special role to fill, and it was worth it to go through some crap in order to be able to do that.
Now, you’re just a defective girl. There’s no male mission for you to grow into, so if it sucks, you don’t do it.
FWIW, F. Carolyn Graglia in her book, “Domestic Tranquility,” points out that Christina Hoff Summers (and I believe she includes Elizabeth-Fox Genovese) mounts an internal critique of feminism as opposed to actually attacking the movement. Domestic Tranquility is pretty good, more than a little eye-opening.
When my youngest was in a fancy east-side-Manhattan nursery school (the kind that costs more per year (for a 2.5 hour day)) than four years of in-state tuition at UVa, he was identified as “socially and cognitively deficient.” In several meetings I would ask of the three female teachers “What, exactly, constitutes his social and cognitive deficiencies?” The answers were extremely thin, and in the last such meeting I was told only that he refused to “share” the opportunity to be first in line for recess. (Apparently, the teachers would say, All right, let’s line up for recess! and he would always race to the front of the line. To which I said, “Well, he’s a boy and he wants to go outside and get some exercise, no?”) Another great criticism I heard throughout the year was that he would happily sing while coloring or playing with building blocks (not while the teachers were talking), and while that was charming and all, they said, it made the other children confused, because they didn’t feel like singing while playing and he was distracting them from their coloring and block-building labors.
The solution was that he needed “therapy”, the only recommended “therapist” being another woman who happened to be close friends with the teacher. There were implied threats in this: his positive evaluations, which are central to getting into a fancy east-side-Manhattan private K-12 school, depended on his getting “therapy.” I generated great mirth when I suggested “Isn’t there a male therapist you might recommend?” So, off to the therapist, who said he needed multiple years of therapy in order to learn how to sit still and blink like the orderly classmates.
Meanwhile, the PhD who taught this nursery school class recorded him as right-handed. He’s a southpaw.
One out of the eight boys in his class were admitted to private school. Again, this is one of the accepted crazy Manhattan feeder schools: parents pay $30K per year to get their kids admitted next to Dalton or Horace Mann, etc. The schools deny that that’s their role, but puh-leez.
Sure enough, he didn’t get into any of the private K-12 schools, and he now attends PS6 — where his teachers enjoy him, he is reading at a first grade level (while in kindergarten), and was recommended for the G&T program. He still doesn’t act like a budding little hedgefund manager or tax attorney. He’s happy, I’m happy, he’s got a visual intelligence superior to my own (I look at the directions to assemble Legos, he scans them and builds), and the only downside I see is that I can’t slap a sticker onto the Volvo wagon
I really don’t know how boys survive school now. I got 4-6 hours of heavy activity (two recesses, gym class, sports in the yard until dinner) plus walked to and from school twice each day (10 blocks) (home for lunch and back) beginning at age 6, biked at age 8, then started paper routes at 11. Most girls, also unsupervised, just opted to do different things with their time. Boys now are supervised and constrained, go nowhere alone, and are only playing sports and games in adult-supervised “activities.”
Sommers, imo, is just articulating the obvious: the matriarchy that is the present school industry considers the “boys model” disruptive and even pathological (hence the need for “therapy” in order to better resemble their “girls’ model”). It’s no wonder that boys opt out of this educational and worklife model, which further reinforces the marriage-strike behavior that now characterizes whole swathes of our society. No doubt Lena Dunham will soon explain all of this for me, and I’ll be a better father and role model as a result. In the meantime, son #1 (a history/philosophy grad from a pretty good school) is a writer/pro skier living half the year in his car, and looking forward to riding his bicycle from Montana home to the east coast next summer. That young man will never “sit still” the rest of his life. And I am grateful he made it out of the meat-grinder with his innate desires and appetites intact.
Oh, incidentally, in one of my many counseling sessions with son#2′s teachers and therapist, none of them had ever heard of Sommers. Her perspective simply doesn’t exist inside their bubble.
Your kid ever starts to get depressed or anything, you give him five pounds of Hercules Red Dot shotgun powder and a model rocket electric ignition system and he’ll be right as rain in a week (the downside, probably on a wanted list as well).
Ritalin is a slow death. Explosives are what a growing boy needs! (That and access to his sister’s Career Barbie with Real Action Marketing Briefcase.)
One day without giving it much thought, my son bought rocket launchers to school to use for an engineering class. Once he realized he had explosives in his locker he ran to get them and bring them to his engineering teacher. If caught, he would’ve been suspended, zero tolerance and all that nonsense.
The over medication of boys in our society is criminal. They need action and fresh air…and they may not need explosives, but they sure do love them.
In grade 6 my son’s teacher was fixing something. My son pulled out his Swiss Army knife and offered it to the teacher. The teacher used it and gave it back to him. This was shortly after Columbine, ahem the school had adopted ZERO tolerance for weapons. That was a teacher with common sense. Not many of them left.
My kids’ favorite teacher is a former engineer who teaches tech engineering, robotics and a few other classes. More than half their teachers are men this year because they’re taking heaving science, math and tech classes. I could not be happier!
I used to walk home from junior high past a traditional drugstore. A person could buy jars of sulfur and saltpeter, mix it up with a little ground charcoal, watch things burn and go bang. And charge it to one’s father. “You know he’s making gunpowder,” the kindly pharmacist said to my dad once when we were in there together. “Oh, sure,” my father said. (I was four when I started playing with matches.)
A child was thrown out of school this week for having a picture of a gun on his person.
I saw that. Very troubling how “objectionable” can be interpreted.
When my middle son was in high school (and a Boy Scout) he quite happily stated that he wanted to major in chemistry in college in order to study explosives and learn how to make bombs.
One day another concerned (female) parent caught me after a troop meeting and sais, “Do you know your son talks about wanting to be a bombmaker?” “Yes.”, an answer that caught her by surprise. “Aren’t you worried about that?” “Why? Bomb making is an old and honorable profession.” A horrified look in return, but apparently, she told others, because the subject never ever came up again. And his teachers knew.
Of course, having gone to sea for many years sleeping mere feet away from megatons of explosives gave me a little different perspective on the whole thing.
My butler sends his kids to Horace Mann.
But I’m sure you’re still a very important sit-at-home who bagged a rich guy.
Great comment! It’s comments like yours that remind me what a wonderful place the internet can be.
I’m a single father/software entrepreneur/ex-college athlete/pilot/hunter/blah-blah-blah. So perhaps you need to adjust the rabbit ears on your mind-reading machine.
So as a highly successful software entrepreneur/ex-college athlete/pilot/hunter (why all the job-hopping??) … you can’t bag a rich guy to take care of you?
You are against same-sex marriage, I take it?
I think that Bellanca also forgot “race car driver and brain surgeon”. I mean, it’s the Internet, just go for the gold as long as you’re making stuff up.
And if you’re bragging on the Internet, you’re making stuff up, whether you are or not.
My mistake. I was responding to the one guy who said I was a woman (an impossible conclusion for anyone who can read), and the other guy who said I was a dependent male gay wife (a stretch for anyone who can read). I will be sure not to provide text in these columns, again. Y’all just go forward with your ad hominems and posturing! Don’t worry about any more upsetting comments from me!
Both of my nephews are gifted at building and creating things,and both are struggling in the boring,gynocentric,cookie cutter,state indoctrination schools.Fairness isn’t a concern of the feminists if a situation is unfair to men and boys.
I read “The War Against Boys” it made me angry and sad about what is happening in our education system.
Boys are today’s kulaks in the educational system… can’t redistribute what they’ve got, so destroy ‘em with Ritalin and bevahior modification.
Reverse discrimination is still discrimination. No payback against boys to make up for lack of girls’ achievement earlier.
The future is now…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9755015/Macy-Gray-women-arent-equal-to-men-theyre-better.html
…and it has been for a good, long while.
From your link:
“Macy Gray talks to Emma Barnett about why women aren’t equal to men, her love of Michelle Obama and life as a single mother.”
Macy Gray? Bwahahaha. A washed up entertainer’s opinion isn’t something I would pay much attention too. Single mum as well? Yeah, every man will hang on to her every word. Heh.
No, no, no. Generations of men, especially white men, must be punished for the sins of their fathers (and mothers).
That’s right. My father made his way through high school while working in a cotton mill, served in the Korean War, went to college and got a degree in electrical engineering, worked with von Braun, and raised one son (me) who has worked with Space Shuttle astronauts, and another (my brother) who has played in a band signed to a major label, and is now in IT planning and design. For that, he must definitely be punished!
Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
Say rather that he’s apolitical.
“Once the rockets are up,
who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department,”
says Wernher von Braun.
Tom Lehrer. Awesomeness.
Too little too late, fairness went out the window as soon as women decided they wanted equality. No such thing.
Actually, most feminists don’t want equality. They want options for women and obligations for men. This BS about equality is just that, BS. Feminism is just an intellectual construct allowing women to behave like vicious monsters while still thinking of themselves as wonderfully caring and giving people who are only concerned with the welfare of others. Men are stigmatized because men DESERVE to be stigmatized and demonized. Interesting word, “deserve”.
Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.
+1 for the Clint quote.
The Munny Quote.
The ‘rise of women’ is just another bubble in a long series of bubbles created by a corrupt State. It too will pop because it is inflated by the constant propping up of the State. Having to ‘make work’ for the millions of English, Arts and Human Resources majors is about as productive as the Fed printing more money to stave off inflation…
Of course all these ‘career’ women will find a lonely and miserable life at the end of their careers and looking back they will realise that Feminism was just another Marxist tool to enslave them all.
Don’t say they weren’t warned.
der-hay.
“…Of course all these ‘career’ women will find a lonely and miserable life at the end of their careers and looking back they will realise that Feminism was just another Marxist tool to enslave them all.”
Sorry, but you expect too much from these over-schooled (as opposed to ‘educated’) female fools. That they would actually have the capability of honest introspection and self-analysis is futile optimism! Has it actually happened yet?
Instead, they’ll hold themselves as blameless victims, and blame the evil ‘patriarchy’ and men for all of their ills — just like they have always done and always do!
Christina Sommers knows the score. This is not rocket science. She knows exactly the types of measures that have been used to disqualify boys and qualify girls both at school and tertiary institutions. She knows because she writes a book about it, that if a man had to write would be written off as sexist dribble. She writes a book because her ilk introduced the system by which they destroy boys. She’s still a feminazi and must be treated as such. They declared war on boys and men, it’s about time they were payed back in spades.