From the Independent Women’s Forum http://iwf.org/;-
The Ten Most Common Feminist Myths:
1. Myth: One in four women in college has been the victim of rape or attempted rape.
Fact: This mother of all factoids is based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem, acknowledges that 73 percent of the young women she counted as rape victims were not aware they had been raped. Forty-three percent of them were dating their “attacker” again.
Rape is a uniquely horrible crime. That is why we need sober and responsible research. Women will not be helped by hyperbole and hysteria. Truth is no enemy of compassion, and falsehood is no friend.
(Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, “The Making of an Epidemic,” Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993; and Neil Gilbert, “Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the Incidence of Data and Acquaintance Rape,” Current Controversies in Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132; and Campus Crime and Security, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997. *According to this study, campus police reported 1,310 forcible sex offenses on U.S. campuses in one year. That works out to an average of fewer than one rape per campus.)
2. Myth: Women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Fact: The 75 cent figure is terribly misleading. This statistic is a snapshot of all current full-time workers. It does not consider relevant factors like length of time in the workplace, education, occupation, and number of hours worked per week. (The experience gap is particularly large between older men and women in the workplace.) When economists do the proper controls, the so-called gender wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.
(Essential reading: Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, published by the Independent Women’s Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. 2000.)
3. Myth: 30 percent of emergency room visits by women each year are the result of injuries from domestic violence.
Fact: This incendiary statistic is promoted by gender feminists whose primary goal seems to be to impugn men. Two responsible government studies report that the nationwide figure is closer to one percent. While these studies may have missed some cases of domestic violence, the 30% figure is a wild exaggeration.
(National Center for Health Statistics, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary , Hyattsville, Maryland, March 1997; and U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments: Washington, D.C., August 1997.)
4. Myth: The phrase “rule of thumb” originated in a man’s right to beat his wife provided the stick was no wider than his thumb.
Fact: This is an urban legend that is still taken seriously by activist law professors and harassment workshoppers. The Oxford English Dictionary has more than twenty citations for phrase “rule of thumb” (the earliest from 1692), but not a single mention of beatings, sticks, or husbands and wives.
(For a definitive debunking of the hoax see Henry Ansgar Kelly, “Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband’s Stick,” The Journal of Legal Education, September 1994.)
5. Myth: Women have been shortchanged in medical research.
Fact: The National Institutes of Health and drug companies routinely include women in clinical trials that test for effectiveness of medications. By 1979, over 90% of all NIH-funded trials included women. Beginning in 1985, when the NIH’s National Cancer Center began keeping track of specific cancer funding, it has annually spent more money on breast cancer than any other type of cancer. Currently, women represent over 60% of all subjects in NIH-funded clinical trails.
(Essential reading: Cathy Young and Sally Satel, “The Myth of Gender Bias in Medicine,” Washington, D.C.: The Women’s Freedom Network, 1997.)
6.Myth: Girls have been shortchanged in our gender-biased schools
Fact: No fair-minded person can review the education data and conclude that girls are the have-nots in our schools. Boys are slightly ahead of girls in math and science; girls are dramatically ahead in reading and writing. (The writing skills of 17-year-old boys are at the same level as 14-year- old girls.) Girls get better grades, they have higher aspirations, and they are more likely to go to college.
(See: Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women, Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Education, June 2000.)
7. Myth: “Our schools are training grounds for sexual harassment… boys are rarely punished, while girls are taught that it is their role to tolerate this humiliating conduct.”
(National Organization of Women, “Issue Report: Sexual Harassment,” April 1998.)
Fact: “Hostile Hallways,” is the best-known study of harassment in grades 8-11. It was commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1993, and is a favorite of many harassment experts. But this survey revealed that girls are doing almost as much harassing as the boys. According to the study, “85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys surveyed say they have experienced unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with their lives.”
(Four scholars at the University of Michigan did a careful follow-up study of the AAUW data and concluded: “The majority of both genders (53%) described themselves as having been both victim and perpetrator of harassment — that is most students had been harassed and had harassed others.” And these researchers draw the right conclusion: “Our results led us to question the simple perpetrator-victim model…”)(See: American Education Research Journal, Summer 1996.)
8. Myth: Girls suffer a dramatic loss of self-esteem during adolescence.
Fact: This myth of the incredible shrinking girls was started by Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gilligan has always enjoyed higher standing among feminist activists and journalists than among academic research psychologists. Scholars who follow the protocols of social science do not accept the reality of an adolescent “crisis” of confidence and “loss of voice.” In 1993, American Psychologist reported the new consensus among researchers in adolescent development: “It is now known that the majority of adolescents of both genders successfully negotiate this developmental period without any major psychological or emotional disorder [and] develop a positive sense of personal identity.”
(Anne C. Petersen et al. “Depression in Adolescence,” American Psychologist February 1993; see also, Daniel Offer, and Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, “Debunking the Myths of Adolescence: Findings from Recent Research,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, November 1992.)
9. Myth: Gender is a social construction.
Fact: While environment and socialization do play a significant role in human life, a growing body of research in neuroscience, endocrinology, and psychology over the past 40 years suggests there is a biological basis for many sex differences in aptitudes and preferences. In general, males have better spatial reasoning skills; females better verbal skills. Males are greater risk takers; females are more nurturing.
Of course, this does not mean that women should be prevented from pursuing their goals in any field they choose; what it does suggest is that we should not expect parity in all fields. More women than men will continue to want to stay at home with small children and pursue careers in fields like early childhood education or psychology; men will continue to be over-represented in fields like helicopter mechanics and hydraulic engineering.
Warning: Most gender scholars in our universities have degrees in fields like English or comparative literature–not biology or neuroscience. These self-appointed experts on sexuality are scientifically illiterate. They substitute dogma and propaganda for reasoned scholarship.
(For a review of recent findings on sex differences see a special issue of The Scientific American “Men: The Scientific Truth,” Fall 2000.)
10. Myth: Women’s Studies Departments empowered women and gave them a voice in the academy.
Fact: Women’s Studies empowered a small group of like-minded careerists. They have created an old-girl network that is far more elitist, narrow and closed than any of the old-boy networks they rail against. Vast numbers of moderate or dissident women scholars have been marginalized, excluded and silenced.
(Essential reading: everything by Camille Paglia; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge–Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies; and Christina Hoff Sommers–Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women)
(This image may be freely distributed.)
38 comments
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July 22, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Anonymous
Anti-female shaming tactics?
July 22, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Exposing Feminism
Anonymous,
Women are a gender. Feminism is a socio-political doctrine. A criticism of feminism is not a criticism of women per se – no woman is born a feminist.
February 25, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Sophie Ruffian
Perfect, ! I am tried of being looked at as a feminist , and I do NOT support their doctrine at all .
March 17, 2009 at 2:57 am
Max
As a former feminist, I remember hearing most of these myths in the past.
One thing you’ve got wrong there though…gender IS a social construction. We first need to delineate the difference between sex (male vs. female) and gender. Sex is what you’re born with, it’s your potential. Gender is the role within that sex that society expects and socializes its members to be.
What you are describing are sex differences, which correctly are not a societal construction, but rather a biological one.
The lines get pretty blurry though. For example, a boy raised as a girl: how would you expect him/her to be nurturing or outgoing? Difficult to say, right?
Another point to consider is that both of these categories are not categories at all. They are more of a spectrum. There is a spectrum of biological sex: intersex people, chimeras etc. But there is also a spectrum of societal imposed gender expectations.
Would you expect two men to walk down the road holding hands as a gesture of friendship? Not in the US. What about two girls? More believable. However, there are some countries where men holding hands fraternally is perfectly acceptable and common.
Gender is part of culture and is a social construct. Sex is not.
December 29, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Perceptor
You’re the one who’s wrong here… “Sex” means “what you’re born with”: it’s the _biology_ that defines your social role. Can “culture” make women produce sperm and men give birth? All the “cultural differences” are minor ones and are reflecting the environment in which they were formed; but the differences does not expand to the level of sexuality.
The cultural marxists created an artificial dichotomy by splitting the biological and the social role of the sexes. The term “gender” should be used only in grammatical sense–where it belongs in the first place.
As for the boy raised as a girl case–as long as the boy does not have any hormonal deviations, it will still demonstrate male behavioral patterns: it will still be a boy.
February 21, 2011 at 9:43 pm
Joseph
Thank you for holding strong to your moral and ethical principles! I feel very alone in this perverted world. Men and boys are treated like perverts for normal hetrosexual behavior and natural lust for women while we are forced to aprove of gays and lesbians and all sorts of perversions that strike deep at healthy family and personal structures. Please email me with ways I can help and be helped for the cause.
March 12, 2012 at 3:50 am
Anonymous Anthropologist
Actually Max is right, and the entire Anthropology discipline will back him up on that one. Sex and Gender are indeed two different things. Sex is our biology; one has a penis, the other a vagina. Culture, though determined in large part by our biological sex, is actually much more complicated.
Gender (masculine, feminine, etc) is defined by social norms within society. In our society, we have definitions for gender that are determined largely by habits; boys play with toy cowboy guns, girls play with barbies, etc. And notice I say ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ here; not ‘male’ or ‘female.’ ‘Boy’ and ‘girl’ are gender terms, whereas ‘male’ and ‘female’ denote the biological sex.
Believe it or not, there are cultures which define gender differently than we do. Many tribal societies have a wide range of cultural criteria which determine gender; criteria that can range from how good one is with a bow and arrow to the foods one likes to eat. The Navajo Native Americans for example, actually have three genders; a masculine, a feminine, and an ‘inter-gender community that everyone is born into. For the Navajo, your gender is determined in a ceremony you undergo upon reaching adolescence.
The effect of feminism is the destruction of the traditional feminine gender, but even with that being the case, the biological female sex remains the same.
April 12, 2012 at 9:17 am
A Deeper Thinker
Thank you, Anonymous Anthropologist, for regurgitating the talking points with which political radicals are indoctrinating students in our universities. It is important for normal people to be exposed to the extent to which garbage about sex roles in society is being shovelled onto unsuspecting young people under the guise of legitimate academic scholarship.
Your appeal to the authority of academic anthropologists is an exercise in circular reasoning. Universities are controlled by leftists who seek the radical redefintion of our culture and, therefore, don’t tolerate the opinions of those who do not subscribe to the leftist worldview. The radicals control the hiring and tenuring processes and systematically exclude those with whom they disagree. It is in the nature of academia that universities, despite their self-image as bastions of free-thought, are, in fact, among the most hidebound institutions in existence. Always have been, always will be.
Do some cultures define sex roles differently than our culture does? To some extent, yes, but the differences are generally not all that great and the mere existence of some differences doesn’t mean that sex role definitions are arbitrary or that all definitions are equally useful or equally desireable. Western culture dominates the globe. Why radically change that which has worked so well? In particular, why elevate the sex role definitions in a “noble-savage” fantasy version of Navajo culture above that of our own as you have? There is nothing about Navajo culture that recommends it as worthy of replacing our own other than a dogmatic desire on the part of leftists to tear down our culture as it currently exists by celebrating fabricated versions of other cultures.
You have offered an interpretation of traditional Navajo culture as, unlike our own culture, having three “genders”, masculine, feminine and “inter-gender” with “inter-gender” being the gender that everyone is born into. Has it ever occurred to you that what you are really describing is not a society with three genders, but a society like most others that treats individuals as children until they undergo a rite of passage into adulthood at which point the individual is expected to adopt the behaviors and responsibilities of adult sex roles? I think that if you give it a little thought, you will come to realize that the whole Navajo “three gender” narrative is a load of hooey concocted specifically for the purpose of suggesting to naive and guillible students that sex roles differ greatly from culture-to-culture in order to lessen their resistance to the idea that sex roles in our society can and should be radically altered. The same goes for the “2-spirit” narrative that is sometimes advanced to suggest that Amerindian cultures readily accepted homosexuality.
Girls are girls, boys are boys – live with it.
October 1, 2011 at 4:01 pm
gothelittle
You’re right, but wrong, respectfully.
Gender roles within society don’t appear out of nowhere. They are formed as a function of the sexual roles, with which you are born. For instance, the man protects the woman. A feminist would say that this is for no other reason than the man wants to be a misogynist. In fact, the bonding hormone in a man, vasopressin, drives his behavior towards protection of his mate and children. His societal gender role is a function of his physical body.
That doesn’t mean that a man cannot nurture or that it is wrong for him to do so. It simply means that he is going to nurture in his own way due to the chemicals in his brain, and societal roles reflect that.
The error of feminists is their assumption that there is no correlation between sexual characteristics and gender roles. They believe that women would be fine protectors and men would be fine primary nurturers if not for the evil patriarchal system set up on purpose to oppress women.
Now men can nurture and women can protect, but they’re not designed to take these on as primary roles. So what you have when feminism takes over is both men and women competing against each other, both of them handicapped in both competitions as a function of not physically being the opposite gender. Society as a whole suffers.
I say again, because this is the key: Gender roles in society are formed as a function of sexual characteristics.
March 20, 2009 at 9:01 pm
NewlySingle
Guys,
time to join the free man on the land movement…you can google it…it is everywhere…but you can start here. http://www.freemanhighland.co.uk/index.htm
The idea is that you can reject being governed and then are harmless from all statutes….you can refuse to pay taxes…..and just live under the law of the land….millions of men do this? We kill off our toxic governments who have promoted feminism as a way to divide and conquer the population. After all, feminism was just one tool of the Illuminati to corrupt society and to destroy it to be able to take it over….
July 2, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Rajesh Kumar
The present state is the biggest feminist.
State need reasons for its existence. The inefficient and corrupt instituion, state is, it cannot do much productive work- hence it makes itself relevant by creating one class of person as victim and another class of person as exploiter. Some time it is black and white, men and women- in future it can be humans and animals.
September 27, 2009 at 11:36 am
What is ‘ad hominem’? « Exposing Feminism
[...] ‘The Ten Most Common Feminist Myths’ [...]
December 10, 2009 at 12:59 am
Freeman
FreeWomen & Freemen
http://www.freemanhighland.co.uk/
April 28, 2010 at 7:03 pm
A user
I think men are better at everything, including verbal communication. Great communicators, writers, poets, they are all men.
November 27, 2011 at 10:41 pm
gothelittle
Women used to write under a man’s pen name, and some still do. You might be surprised to find how many women’s-written works you’ve praised.
October 21, 2010 at 9:26 am
Shitload of Conservative Stupid « Geoff's Blog
[...] P.S. The Ten Most Common Feminist Myths’. [...]
January 27, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Human-Stupidity.com
nice work
Picking nice studies to prove your point.
Visit my blog and comment. Feminism is one of the main topics there …….
July 27, 2011 at 12:17 am
WHAT IS MISANDRY? | Exposing Feminism | TRUST CHRIST OR GO TO HELL!
[...] ‘The Ten Most Common Feminist Myths’ [...]
August 9, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Anonymous
Guess what! Sex is constructed, too! Pick up some Judith Butler.
(Link added by myself – E.F.)
December 26, 2011 at 10:22 am
William Braddell
Tell me, what would actually falsify the feminist claim that gender (and in Butler’s case, sex) are a social construction? It seems as if no matter what evidence is brought before them against this view, feminists find some way to explain it all away. Sounds like feminism fails the scientific method and for something claiming to be an empirical ideology, thats deadly serious.
August 21, 2011 at 10:35 am
Anonymous
Feminism is a social construct.
August 21, 2011 at 10:37 am
Anonymous
Feminists say that God is a woman. If that’s true, can the Devil be a woman too?
November 5, 2011 at 9:17 pm
Jeanne-Michelle Lavigne
What a surprise, this post is written by a man.
November 6, 2011 at 2:25 pm
gothelittle
And women agree with it. Does that make *us* irrelevant, too?
November 27, 2011 at 10:32 pm
scatmaster
You sound fat.
Do you own a cat as well?
December 21, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Anonymous
Why would you even ask that? Would being overweight and owning a cat somehow make her words any less legitimate? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that only fit people who don’t own cats are allowed to post their views on the internet.
December 26, 2011 at 10:23 am
William Braddell
Transsexuals prove that gender is innate. If it were socially learnt then how could they identify with one gender when they were raised as another?
December 26, 2011 at 8:08 pm
BA BA Bull shit!
I can only speak of what i have experenced….I held a job for several years as a mechanic, I hold a degree for welding… and never in my time there had I been written up for any thing…..I made less pay than the people who were hired in and was expected to train them also….I worked more hours than my male counter parts in most instances….I could work that plant from operating, QC , mechanic and group leader…..all for less that some guy that had been there less than 48 hours and with no degree in shit!….Hmmmm , I just wonder where all these studies come from???/…..I wasn’t asked any questions for any study. Just remember that whilr ya’ll are trying all the studies to see whats fair…..IT WAS A WOMAN WHO TAUGHT YOU TO WIPE YOUR ON ASS….Now thats priceless!
December 26, 2011 at 11:29 pm
John Miller
http://Human-Stupidity.com will write about the wage gap myth in the next few days. In the meantime you can check YouTube and Google for Warren Farrell “Why men earn more”
You must be working in a small company. To earn more
a) look for a BIG company that urgently needs female welders for gender diversification
b) consider working on off shore oil rigs or in Alaska. Gets you extra pay for danger, for long hours, for unpleasant environment. Add to that the dearth of women who want to work that way and the despair of large companies that need to employ women, you ought to earn a HUGE salary, more then men in the same situation, and much much more as in an average company
April 12, 2012 at 9:35 am
A Deeper Thinker
Dear BBBS,
if you were paid less than your co-workers, then you should have found another job instead of complaining about how underpaid you were. I don’t know why you think that having a welding degree (certification?) entitled you to high pay as a mechanic and I also don’t know why you believe that you could have held most any job in the facility. The jobs you mentioned have wildly different skill sets and, unless you have actually held similar positions in all those areas, you can’t know that you could have competently performed all those job functions. You don’t know what you don’t know. You may think that you could have been a good group leader, but unless you have experience as a group leader, you can’t know exactly what is expected of a group leader and whether you could satisfy those expectations.
Living on envy, bitterness and resentment is poisonous. Try to adopt a more positive attitude. Cheers.
December 26, 2011 at 8:37 pm
gothelittle
The reason why studies use the word “on average” or “median” is because some women earn less than a man in the same position, while other women earn more.
The median U.S. household income is currently $50,233. Should I get on some political page and rant that the statistic is wrong because my household doesn’t make that much? “I wonder where all these studies come from. Nobody asked me what my household income was. Clearly it’s all wrong.”
You are one woman. There are 157.2 million females in the United States. I am another woman. When I was working full-time as a programmer/analyst and then as a software engineer, I consistently earned higher than my male counterparts.
By the way, who taught you how to wipe your off ass?
December 27, 2011 at 10:08 pm
BA BA Bullshit
My mom you stupid bitch……i guess shit didn’t stick to your higher paid ass…..so glad you were ONE of the Females that didn’t get screwed….and all my counter parts were men…Ever turned a wrench…..oh no…just a heel most likely……didn’t post for you to just so you could be a kill joy…..and why don’t you just get on a plane and bring your higher paid ass over here, I can show better than i can tell ya! The only damn thing your working is a damn pen…
January 3, 2012 at 8:20 pm
gothelittle
Did Feminism teach you that it was ok to hate, demean, and tear down women as long as they didn’t agree with you? I would’ve expected to hear this kind of tirade from the Oppressive Patriarchal Men that Feminism keeps trying to warn me about.
Yet somehow, all the angry, insult-flinging, profanity-screaming people I’ve seen trying to shut me up and take away my rights have been women. Specifically, Feminists.
You also make a myriad of bizarre assumptions that would make the people who know me laugh if they read them. Software Engineer isn’t the only career I’ve ever had, believe it or not. I’m a real person with real experiences, not the strawman puppet Feminists like you think I am. I’ve been a software engineer, a programmer/analyst, a computer lab technician, a computer lab manager, an adjunct college professor, a Calculus tutor, a convenience store worker, a child care worker, a librarian’s assistant, a small business owner, and a personal computer repair technician… The smallest company I worked for had one employee, largest one had over 70,000. And that’s just the jobs I’ve gotten paid for!
Women are human beings too, and it’s time Feminists like you started treating us like it!
April 12, 2012 at 9:45 am
A Deeper Thinker
Dear BBBS,
the anger and hostility in your comments suggest that you are a union worker. Trying moving to a right-to-work state. If being uniionized does not explain your nastiness, than perhaps an unattractive disposition is simply part of your personality.
Maybe your low-pay and a lack of advancement opportunities could be remedied by a sweeter demeaner, especially if you work mostly with men. Most men prefer women with pleasant personalities and, like it or not, getting along with one’s co-workers is an important aspect of one’s job performance.
February 18, 2012 at 2:38 am
Keith Dubois
t
March 5, 2012 at 5:13 am
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