Feminist in the Classroom

Conservative feminist? Most would say those two words together make an oxymoron. Not if you are describing Resident Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute Christiana Hoff Sommers.

“In classrooms today there is a one-party system… it’s radical and you’re not welcome if you’re not on the same page,” former Clark University professor Sommers said.
On behalf of the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, Sommers most recently spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C to a small audience comprised mostly of college students.

She insists that a majority of female professors’ classrooms are platforms for liberal pro-women, anti-male agendas. Girls are being fed lies, they are being taught they are oppressed and it is turning them into angry women.

“Once women get into the habit of regarding women as a subjugated gender, they’re primed to be alarmed, angry and resentful of men as oppressors of women,” she argues. “They’re also prepared to believe the worst about them and the harm they cause to women.”

“They may even be ready to fabricate atrocities.” She gave as an example the Super Bowl “statistic” in 1993 in which a Denver-based psychologist told several media sources statistics show a rise of battered women on Super Bowl Sunday.

The media frenzy went even as far as warnings telling “at risk” women not to remain home during the game. The hoax was finally exposed by a Washington Post reporter who did some digging for the study… a study that was never found. Much to the embarrassment of the psychologist, after the Super Bowl ended, battered woman help-lines and shelters reported no unusual rise in the numbers.

Sommers also opposes The Vagina Monologues crusade that is running rampant on many college campuses. The “Vagina Warriors,” as followers of the “play” call themselves, hold “V-day” campaigns nationwide on February 14th, to raise awareness of and hopefully end rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sexual slavery.

“A day that is set aside to celebrate love and romance is now dampened by a bunch of feminists,” she points out. “That’s like on Mother’s Day having rallies about child abuse by mothers.”

She fears the VM crusade will not be going away anytime soon, “It’s becoming like a religious holiday on some campuses,” she noted. She urged students to do something about it, like utilizing the “The Vagina Monologues Exposed” information and speakers provided by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute.

The AEI scholar has not always held the conservative position. In the 70’s she was a Vietnam protester and self-described raging liberal.

Sommers credits the “Semester at Sea” trip she took with the University of Pittsburgh as her awakening moment that converted her into a conservative. “I was on this ship with a bunch of radical liberals ranting about these crazy views they hold,” she remembers. “I came off the ship a right-wing nut!”

Despite her disagreements with what she calls “Gender feminists” she still considers herself a feminist. “I am a feminist who does not like what feminism has become,” the author of Who Stole Feminism? explains. “The new gender feminism is badly in need of scrutiny.”

“Only forthright appraisals can diminish its inordinate and divisive influence.”
She claims that the mainstream of women today identify with the feminist movement that began in the 1800’s, enabling women to vote, to work, etc., which she believes has been accomplished in the United States.

Most women do not want to be identified with the new feminist movement that places woman into a sect of resentful, anti-male, oppressed way of thinking. She does not see an end to this movement in sight, at least anytime soon, “Possibly when the ‘Baby Boomers’ are gone,” she reflects. “It will end by the weight of its own mass.”

Wendy Cook is a staff writer for Accuracy in Academia.