How goofy are these people? I know that good work goes on in the academy. I know that women's studies is important, but to read this article you'd think that the future survival of boys and girls is to be determined by the outcome of a cat fight between snotty academicians and the monetary gift of a high-strung Hollywood star.

If I ever get any beans, I'm going to spend it on actual kiddos; I'd set up endowments and community block grants. I'd let the people I'm concerned about determine their own path to freedom. I sure as hell wouldn't be hanging out with professors and talking about theory. Why do the middle and upper classes always feel they know what's best for a gender or any other marginalized group? Someone should tell them.

Just because you have money and time to hang out at school for 20 or 30 years doesn't mean you know what everybody else needs. Quit acting like you know everything. If you want to do anybody any good, just give the cash over quietly and fuck off.

All the best,

-- Genevieve Van Cleve
Dublin, Ireland

Hoff Sommers berates the softness of Gilligan's data on gender roles and of women's studies programs in general, yet she is a professor of philosophy, the least data-oriented field in the humanities. Why should the soft, data-less theorizing of Hoff Sommers be any more reliable with respect to the "health" of young boys and girls?

-- Ellen Fulton

Although feminist theory originated in the humanities, there is amazing feminist scholarship happening in psychology, science and the history of technology that Hoff Sommers has ignored. Try reading Donna Harroway's "Simians, Cyborgs and Women," or "Technology of Orgasm" by Rachel Maines.

The idea that feminist studies is not rigorous is absurd -- it is partly because of pseudo-feminists like Sommers that women's studies is so rigorous. My graduate classes in women's studies have been among the most difficult in my academic career. Capitalist patriarchy harms everyone -- and masculinity is held in as low regard as femininity. If Sommers is going to bash feminists, she should at least know what she is talking about!

-- Kristina Goetz

So the last drop of estrogen trickles out of Jane Fonda and now she's got no use for men. Who's the gender stereotype?

-- Mike Fallon

Christina Hoff Sommers drives me crazy. I've read her work and my conclusions are that she occasionally finds real flaws in some research done by feminists. I don't deny that it's there. However, I don't believe that they are intentionally misconstruing their research and data -- she prefers to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water and paint all feminists with the same broad brush. She's stuck thinking that all feminists are Catherine MacKinnon followers who see male violence against women everywhere they look. Sommers needs to realize that "feminists" are a lot more diverse than that and that many of us do have improving the lives of girls and boys in mind.

Doing "gender studies" does not make a woman a male-hater any more than being a feminist makes a woman a witchcraft-practicing lesbian (not that there's anything wrong with that!). Sommers bashes feminism as if it is a monolithic frame of mind, as a cult of man-hating female chauvinists who want to "feminize" little boys and portray all men as potential rapists. That's no more true than the idea that all conservative women, like Sommers, are male chauvinists in female sheep's clothing.

Sommers does have her own ideological war going on, and anyone who knows her is aware that she is a mouthpiece for anti-feminist conservatives. Sommers has a very hard time identifying anything good that came out of the feminist movement and others in her camp don't want people to say things about boys and girls that are contrary to what they already believe. Sommers believes in intrinsic maleness and femaleness -- and that little boys are being robbed of their intrinsic maleness by the attention that girls get -- therefore leaving very little room for the idea that most people are a mix of masculine and feminine characteristics.

Sommers is an essentialist, which is rather contrary to what a lot of gender studies feminist types believe.

Gender studies does not benefit women more than men. Gender studies is the joining of "women's studies" and "men's studies" and attempts to unravel how cultural stereotypes can be damaging and limiting to both men and women. It looks at how men and women relate to one another and the messages they receive about their behavior, as well as definitions of what it means to be a "real" man or a "real" woman. Sommers is a backlash artist who has built a career on answering "feminism" and attempting to dismiss a whole group of people based on the work of a few. That is the huge flaw in her work, which she should attend to before attacking the work of others.

-- Hedda Kniess

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