Books in Canada

I WAITED FOR A LONG TIME before writing this column. I wanted to give the larger Canadian newspapers and magazines sufficient time to review Christina Hoff Sommers's book Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women. Time's up. This seminal work has been out in Canada for the better part of a year and has been given insultingly little coverage, after initially being ignored altogether. A similar phenomenon occurred in the United States, where the book was not given its appropriate place in the review sections of the press.

Because of the size of the media in the United States, however, the book did at least get a certain amount of attention. But north of the border it has, with a few noble exceptions such as the Ottawa Citizen and a non-books column in the Globe and Mail, been largely ignored. Or should I say rejected. The silence is deafening.

I wrote last issue about the effective censorship of books that challenge the liberal status quo. Step forward, Ms. Sommers. She is a philosophy professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, and a contributor to the New Republic and the New England Journal of Medicine. Time magazine described her book, vulgarly but not inaccurately, as arguing that "feminism has been derailed by a bunch of neurotic, self-indulgent intellectuals who have a direct personal interest in grossly overstating the woes of womankind."

What this feminist author does is to tear away at the foundations of victimology, that chimera upon which the entire industries of fraudulent statistics, false accusations, and radical political agendas are so frequently based. She analyses two central studies, one by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), that allegedly proved that girls suffer an enormous loss of self-esteem at the age of 11 and from then on they are treated unfairly by schools. Because of this Washington initiated the Gender Equity in Education Act at a cost of $360 million. The studies also influenced many legislators and educators in Canada. In Toronto we now have the ludicrous situation where a "woman centred" school has been created, where for $6,000 a year the sensitive wealthy may send their daughters.

Sommers shows that both of these studies relied on the highly problematic ideas of the gender feminist Carol Gilligan and her obsession with the moral differences between the sexes. Sommers also points out that the definition of lack of self-esteem consisted of girls at 11 realizing that they were not going to become rock musicians or movie stars, while boys continued with this fantasy. She argues that self-esteem is impossible to quantify or measure, that the AAUW has been taken over by extremists who detect patriarchal murder around every comer, and that they severely distorted the truth in their studies. In fact girls remain on a par with or do better than boys in school. Fifty-five per cent of students entering university are women -- the percentage is higher in Canada.

There is more. The etymology of the phrase "rule of thumb" was perverted by radical feminists. They simply made up the story that the saying was derived from the idea that men were once allowed to beat their wives with a rod no wider than their thumb, and that this was then incorporated into British and later American law. This was repeated without doubt or challenge in the Washington Post, Time, and many mainstream publications. Yet the phrase has no such origin. In reality it applied to carpenters who knew their trade so well that they did not require a ruler; in this case, the only violence being done is to the truth.

Then we have Naomi Wolf claiming that 150,000 American women die of anorexia every year. No, says Sommers. The figure is actually less than a hundred. Or what about the "fact" that on Super Bowl Sunday domestic violence increases by 40 percent'? This conclusion was ostensibly the result of years of research, and led to calls for legislation and advice to women to arm themselves or leave home on this particular day; but when the findings were analysed and the academics concerned were interviewed it appeared that it was all nonsense. Women's shelters, hospitals, and police stations were all monitored -- no change on Super Bowl Sunday. Lies, lies, and more lies.

Sommers claims that our universities are under attack, that our literature is being ripped apart, and that our regard for truth is under siege. Her book is new, fresh, objective, and revisionist, and it deserves maximum coverage. Which leads me to ask once again why it has not received more attention from the vast majority of Canadian publications. Conspiracy'? Surely not. The usual idiots doing the usual damage? Perhaps. This I do know. Christina Hoff Sommers might want to title her next book Who Stole Reviewing, and base it in Canada.

Michael Coren's The Man Who Created Narnia (Lester) is reviewed on page 49.