The WAR AGAINST BOYS: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men [Paperback]

Christina Hoff Sommers (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 12, 2001

Despite popular belief, American boys tag behind girls in reading and writing ability, and they are less likely to go to college. Our young men are greatly at risk, yet the best-known studies and experts insist that it's girls who are in need of our attention. The highly publicized "girl crisis" has led to many changes in American schools, politics, and parenting...but at what cost?

In this provocative book, Christina Hoff Sommers argues that our society has continued to overemphasize the troubles of girls while our boys suffer from the same self-esteem and academic problems. Boys need help, but not the sort of help they've been getting.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The author of the provocative bestseller Who Stole Feminism? returns with an equally eye-opening follow-up. "It's a bad time to be a boy in America," writes Christina Hoff Sommers. Boys are less likely than girls to go to college or do their homework. They're more likely to cheat on tests, wind up in detention, or drop out of school. Yet it's "the myth of the fragile girl," according to Sommers, that has received the lion's share of attention recently, in hot-selling books like Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia. When boys are discussed at all, it's in the context of how to modify their antisocial behavior--i.e., how to make them more like girls.

This book tells the story of how it has become fashionable to attribute pathology to millions of healthy male children. It is a story of how we are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world. No one denies that boys' aggressive tendencies must be checked and channeled in constructive ways. Boys need discipline, respect, and moral guidance. Boys need love and tolerant understanding. They do not need to be pathologized.

Sommers eviscerates feminist scholarship by Harvard's Carol Gilligan, the American Association of University Women, and others. Hers is feisty, muscular prose and fans of Who Stole Feminism? will delight in it. "There have always been societies that favored boys over girls," she writes. "Ours may be the first to deliberately throw the gender switch. If we continue on our present course, boys will, indeed, be tomorrow's second sex." That rhetoric may err on the side of alarmism, but Sommers' ideas are full of common sense. She essentially urges parents and educators to let boys be boys, even though their "very masculinity turns out to be politically incorrect." The War on Boys is sure to set off a fiery controversy, just as Sommers' previous book did--but it should also find a big audience of readers who become fans. --John J. Miller --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Sommers (Who Stole Feminism?) pulls no punches in this critique of the current crop of "crisis" studies about boys. Methodically analyzing and dismantling what she calls the "myth of shortchanged girls" as well as the "new and equally corrosive fiction that boys as a group are disturbed"Atheories she calls "speculative psychology"Ashe bolsters her findings with extensive footnotes and data from such sources as the U.S. Department of Education. Sommers's conclusions are compelling and deserve an unbiased hearing, particularly since they are at odds with conventional wisdom that paints girls as victimized and boys as emotionally repressed. "Routinely regarded as protosexists, potential harassers and perpetuators of gender inequity, boys live under a cloud of censure," she writes, going on to show how they are also falling behind academically in an educational system that currently devotes more attention to the needs of girls. Pointing out that "Mother Nature is not a feminist," she also dismisses the current vogue to "feminize" boys, calling social androgyny a "well-intentioned but ill-conceived reform." Instead, Sommers champions "the reality that boys and girls are different, that each sex has its distinctive strengths and graces." Sure to kick up dust in the highly charged gender debates, Sommers's book is at its best when coolly debunking theories she contends are based on distorted research and skewed data, but descends into pettiness when she indulges in mudslinging at her opponents. Perhaps the most informed study yet in this area, this engrossing book sheds light on a controversial subject. It deserves close reading by parents, educators and anyone interested in raising healthy, successful children of both sexes.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Touchstone Ed edition (June 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684849577
• ISBN-13: 978-0684849577
• Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 0.7 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

240 of 266 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The ideas in this book are challenging my lifelong beliefs June 9, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

I am a 37-year-old professional female who was raised in an all-female modern feminist household. Thus, I have been taught the established feminist doctrines from a very early age. I consider myself intelligent, but I must admit I never questioned my beliefs, until I read this book by Ms. Hoff Sommers. I found a great deal of her arguments (dispelling how girls are targets of our sexist society) to simply make sense. I am grateful that my mind has been opened to look at women's issues in a fresh way, although I am uneasy in that I am more cynical of those for which I previously had naive trust. I admire the author's guts for challenging such entrenched concepts, because she is certain to face a lot of anger. I would recommend this book for those of you who are not afraid to confront and consider ideas contrary to traditional feminist assumptions.

194 of 218 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This teacher comments: One of the best non-fiction books I've read all year! December 26, 2005

By DWD TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I graduated from Indiana University in 1990 - just as the 'girls are fragile' movement was gaining momentum. I was taught the 'facts' that Sommers refers to in numerous in-services (for all of you non-teachers, in-services are attempts at teacher training in which a speaker comes and entertains or horrifies us with a speech that usually has little or no practical value - when I taught in the inner city it was usually the horrifying type: "these kids are all failing and blah-blah percent of them will end up dead or in jail and it's all because you didn't teach them how to multiply fractions or diagram a sentence correctly!").

Anyway, I did buy into some of the stuff about girls being fragile and being overrun in the classroom. I have heard the statistics Sommers skewers so completely and thoroughly and I swallowed many of them hook, line and sinker because it was early in my career and as a young person I foolishly believed that if a Harvard PhD researched the facts they must be right. As a more jaded professional, I appreciate Sommers' meticulously endnoted work.

She embarrasses the 'fragile girl' theorists by burying their under-researched (and sometimes un-researched) theories in a blizzard of relavent studies and facts from responsible and trusted sources (for example, I've had the '4 million women die from physical abuse from a man' stat thrown at me in a diversity seminar. Yes, verbally thrown at me - as if I were the man who personally beat them all to death! Well, if it happens again, I'm armed with the REAL facts from the Centers for Disease Control, thanks to Sommers).

Sommers overwhelmingly makes the point that our 'touchy-feely' self-esteem oriented schools are a great big turn-off to most of the boys. (in my experience as a high school teacher, the girls don't buy into it much either). Schools are not designed for most boys, especially as we take away physical activities and recesses. Male boisterousness is seen as wrong - a mental disorder and/or a sign of ADHD. Boys have to be medicated specifically for their built-in attributes that they possess as boys.

Special interest groups such as NOW and the ACLU will fight for the rights of women since they are oppressed, despite the fact that their grades are better, they are much less likely to be in special education classes (4-1 ratio of boys to girls), girls are more likely to go to college (55-60% of college students are female) and boys are much more likely to be punished in school than are girls.

As I read this book while enjoying the first few days of my Christmas Break from school I found myself resolved to take a look at how boys are treated in my class and in my school. I also found myself thinking of ways I can provide the specific needs of young men that Sommers' experts identify. I'll refer back to those recommendations often and make a few changes in my classroom and lobby for changes in the school.

***This is a must-read for any serious-minded and open-minded educational professional.

On a lighter note, why do publishers insist on using endnotes when footnotes are so much easier for the reader to access. Sommers' research was overwhelming - she should have proudly showcased it through the use of footnotes.

167 of 192 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally! October 19, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Christina Hoff Sommers has finally articulated what I have felt over the years as I have watched my three sons (I am their father) go through school and now college. The problem with feminism is not that it has fostered achievement for women. Rather it is feminism's attempts to demean the roles and achievements of men and "feminize" boys that are problematic. To the extent that feminism has encouraged girls and women to strive for excellence, it should be lauded. To the extent that it has used our institutions, particularly our schools, as a vehicle to establish a so-called "new feminist order" at the expense of our sons, it is shameful.

Hoff Sommers' research demonstrates that our schools , disproportionatly influenced by biased (and all too frequently suspect) feminist theory, are clearly engaged in institutional male bashing. From chastizing boys for engaging in naturally aggressive play, to attacking male oriented sports such as football(unless, of course a girl wants to participate), to denouncing fraternities(while saying nothing about sororities), to frequently ignoring the achievements of boys while sometimes artifically inflating those of girls and young women, to minimizing the role and importance of the male role model (ie fathers) it appears that feminist-influenced educators seem bent not on leveling the playing field, but tilting it towards Venus; and if our sons fall off in the process, well, that's unfortunate.

Perhaps this is best seen in the way test results are viewed. When young women achieve higher scores than men in, say, verbal skills (which by the way are much more susceptible to subjective interpretation than tests for math and science), feminists attribute this to women's perceived superior ability to communicate, and there is nary a mention of having to do more to eradicate the disparity. However, when young men achieve higher scores, say, in math, it is attributed to systemic discrimination that must be remedied, and not to any inherently positive male attribute. (This despite studies that many feminists like to ignore showing that men perhaps have innate skills in this area that are superior to those of most women) Similarly, not much alarm is expressed either in schools or by our "leaders" at large at the inordinately high male dropout rate or relatively low level of boys attending college as compared to girls. Indeed,at times one may believe that this is perhaps tolerated, since it is now "the girls's turn", though the boys who are being sacrificed had not a thing to do with past discrimination agains females. Query whether this would be the case if the shoe were on the other foot. Finally, one need only look at how quickly school officials will recommend that a little boy be placed on Ritalin simply because he doesn't pay attention like a little girl does, rather than force the teacher (all to frequently a woman)to deal with the behavior, to see the war against boys in its most graphic terms. Again, imagine the outcry if our institutions tried to medicate a little girl out of a naturally female tendency.

Of course, the answer is to encourage both boys and girls to realize their full potential, which Hoff Sommers advocates. More important, though, is Hoff Sommers' frequently stated belief, based on her research, that both genders be encouraged to achieve and develop on their own terms, rather than by transforming one into the other(I do find it interesting that if women engage in aggressive "male type" behavior feminists laud this, but not so for men. Imagine the praise Hillary would have received from women's groups if she had "invaded" Lazio's "space")

Hopefully the PC police that currently wield inordinate power in our educational and social institutions will not ignore excellent research such as that presented by Hoff Sommers, or the eventual ensuing backlash may well trim the legitimate and necessary gains that women have made in the recent past.