Christina Hoff Sommers Quotes

That is the corrosive paradox of gender feminism's misandrist stance: no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men.

I'm concerned that boys have become politically incorrect, that we are a society in the process of turning against its male children.

When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and "discover themselves." The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire.

Genuine self-esteem comes with pride in achievement, which is the fruit of disciplined effort.

Perhaps in the pursuit of happiness, men and women take somewhat different paths. And, isn't it more than a little patronizing to suggest that most ... women are not free? They're not self-determining human beings?

Girls are more academically powerful. They make the grades, they run the student activities, they are the valedictorians.

Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best-intentioned "noble lie" ultimately discredits the finest of causes.

Truth is on the side of compassion.

I think the rules will change and I think more and more young women are going to decide that having a family and taking care of a home is not a bad choice, but how do we subsidize it - not necessarily European-style socialism. It'll have to be a new more creative, dynamic and local solution.

There are a lot of homely women in women's studies. Preaching these anti-male, anti-sex sermons is a way for them to compensate for various heartaches
they're just mad at the beautiful girls.

Harvard produces leaders. People with Harvard degrees go on to become administrators in high-level positions in state educational departments and in public schools around the country.

We must have moral education in the schools, anti-bullying programs, but this does not mean programs to feminize boys.

You have to be literate in today's world. We're not going to get away with not teaching boys to read.

If asked to make a drawing, little girls almost always create scenes with at least one person, while males nearly always draw things - cars, rockets, or trucks.

Any child may go through periods during which they become less outspoken with their parents or teachers. But girls, like boys, live in many different worlds - they have their friends and their classroom and their parents - and within these different domains, they may have different levels of expressiveness.

I think it's ill-advised to attribute pathologies to healthy people. It doesn't help normal, healthy, thriving children to be viewed as pitiable and fragile.

It's good to raise awareness that men and boys are struggling, at least many of them are. But why say men are finished? It's too harsh, too sweeping, and it happens to not be true.

Toy companies aren't interested in ideology, they want to sell toys. If they would sell a toy that both boys and girls would buy, it doubles profits.

Here are young women with more opportunities, more liberties than almost any women in history and at that moment we tell them they're short-changed silenced victims of a patriarchy? It's defeatist and demoralising.

I call [fourth-wave feminism] fainting–couch feminism, a la the delicate Victorian ladies who retreated to an elegant chaise when overcome with emotion. As an equality feminist from the 1970s, I am dismayed by this new craze. Women are not children. We are not fragile little birds who can't cope with jokes, works of art, or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilizing setback for feminism - and for women.

I don't think anyone will deny that girls are academically superior as a group.

But what is hard to understand is why the math and science gap launched a massive movement on behalf of girls, and yet a much larger gap in reading, writing, and school engagement created no comparable effort for boys.

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.