Myths or Facts in Feminist Scholarship?

An exchange between Nancy K.D. Lemon and Christina Hoff Sommers

Christina Hoff Sommers, in her essay "Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship" (The Chronicle Review, online edition, June 29), criticized Nancy K.D. Lemon, a lecturer in domestic-violence law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law, for publishing errors in the popular textbook she edits, Domestic Violence Law, and for not taking seriously her continuing criticisms of the book. "One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack," Sommers charged. Following is Lemon's response to those criticisms and Sommers's rebuttal. Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Nancy K.D. Lemon: Christina Hoff Sommers accused me of being a "scholarly merchant of hype" for material in my popular textbook, Domestic Violence Law. In fact, she is the one whose assertions are untrue and who is impervious to correction.

http://chronicle.com/article/Domestic-Violence-a/47940/

Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship

By CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS
"Harder to kill than a vampire." That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i40/40sommers.htm

Liberated and Unhappy

By ROSS DOUTHAT

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.

But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?_r=2&em

Phyllis Schlafly at 84

By Andrea Sachs

As the most visible and effective critic of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Phyllis Schlafly squared off against the National Organization for Women and other pro-ERA groups in one of the most bitter battles of the 1970s. Critics denounced her as a hypocrite: though she lauded stay-at-home mothers and wives, she herself was a full-time political activist and lawyer. Nonetheless, Schlafly's grass-roots efforts prevailed, and the ERA went down to defeat. Now 84, Schlafly remains a force in conservative politics, with a busy lecture schedule. She is the president of the pro-life, anti–gay marriage Eagle Forum, which has 25,000 members. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs reached Schlafly at her home in St. Louis.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1889757,00.html

International Women’s Day at the UN

Carolyn Moynihan

The annual Commission on the Status of Women is under way at United Nations headquarters in New York with thousands of activists, government and UN officials gathered to discuss the theme of “The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS”. The meeting also features sideshows where lobby groups promote their agendas on subjects such as “sexual and reproductive rights” and pro-life groups raise the flag for the right to life and family values.

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/international_womens_day_at_the_un/

Madonna syndrome

From The Times February 5, 2009
Madonna syndrome: I should have ditched feminism for love, children and bakingA playwright who embraced the feminism espoused by her mother and flaunted by Madonna now feels betrayed

I never thought I would be saying this, but being a free woman isn't all it's cracked up to be. Is that the rustle of taffeta I hear as the suffragettes turn in their graves? Possibly. My mother was a hippy who kept a pile of (dusty) books by Germaine Greer and Erica Jong by her bed (like every good feminist, she didn't see why she should do all the cleaning). She imbued me with the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation. I fought with my older brother and won; at university I beat the rugby lads at drinking games. I was not to be messed with.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article5662099.ece