The War Against Boys

by Christina Hoff Sommers

  Then, in the late 1990s, the fears were horribly realized. In 1997, teenage boys murdered schoolmates in Bethel, Alaska; West Paducah, Kentucky; Pearl, Mississippi; and Stamps, Arkansas. The bloody crescendo came in 1999, in the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado. Seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered twelve classmates and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. They had planned the assault for more than a year, hoping to kill at least five hundred schoolmates and teachers with bombs they had placed around the school (which failed to detonate).

  Suspicion of the masculine gender quickly went generic, extending to all boys. “The carnage committed by two boys in Littleton, Colorado,” said the Congressional Quarterly Researcher, “has forced the nation to reexamine the nature of boyhood in America.”52 Michael Kimmel, professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, explained that the Littleton shooters were “not deviants at all,” but “over-conformists . . . to traditional notions of masculinity.”53

  The public was ready for tough defensive measures, and zero-tolerance policies fit the bill. But there was a problem with the picture of escalating school violence and the approaching superpredators: it was not true. At the very moment that DiIulio, Wilson, and other crime experts were predicting a superpredator surge, youth crime was beginning to plummet to historic lows. Criminologists are still at a loss to explain it. Between 1994 and 2009, the juvenile crime rate fell by 50 percent. A 2009 bulletin of the US Department of Justice noted that, “Contrary to the popular perception that juvenile crime is on the rise, the data reported in this bulletin tell a different story.”54 Here are a few highlights of the DOJ report:

  • Compared with the prior twenty years, the juvenile murder arrest rate between 2000 and 2009 has been historically low and relatively stable.

  • The 2009 rape arrest rate was at its lowest level in three decades.

  • The 2009 juvenile arrest rate for aggravated assault was at its lowest since the mid-1980s.55

  Could it be that youth violence diminished because fear of the superpredators led to harsher policies and more arrests? The best evidence we have says no. Rates of juvenile crimes in states with high arrests were not significantly different from those with low arrests.56 What about school violence? The American Psychological Association task force study found no evidence that zero-tolerance policies had made schools more peaceable. More generally, rates of violent crime in school were low before zero tolerance and are even lower today57 (see Figure 11).

  Figure 11: Percentage of Students ages 12–18 Who Reported Serious Violent Victimization at School During the Previous Six Months

  Source: Indicators of School Crime and Safety, US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009.

  The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 2010, “One percent [of students] reported violent victimization, and less than half of a percent reported a serious violent victimization.”58 School shootings are ghastly, mortifying events and extremely rare. Dewey Cornell, in his study of school violence cited earlier, considered the number of school murders between 1994 and 2004 and did the math: “The average school can expect a student-perpetrated homicide about once every 13,870 years.”59 Rates of serious school violence were even lower between 2004 and 2010.60

  Following the December 2012 slaughter of twenty first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, a Gallup poll found that 60 percent of women and 43 percent of men thought it “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that a similar shooting could happen in their own community.61 The reactions were no doubt shaped by the particularly demented and horrifying nature of shooter Adam Lanza’s deed, the national soul searching that ensued, and the fear of copy-cat incidents. It does no disrespect to the victims to note that homicidal school violence was a rare aberration in the 1990s when criminologists predicted the arrival of a horde of superpredators—and it is even rarer today.

  Retreat and Reinforcements

  The superpredator hypothesis was aggressively disputed by academics and child advocates almost as soon as it appeared in print. University of California, Berkeley, law professor and crime expert Franklin Zimring summed up the opposition in 1998: “His [DiIulio’s] prediction wasn’t just wrong, it was exactly the opposite. His theories of the superpredators were utter madness.”62

  To their credit, both Wilson and DiIulio quickly recanted. As early as 1999, Wilson conceded that he was wrong about a juvenile crime wave—“So far, it clearly hasn’t happened. That is a good indication of what little all of us know about criminology.”63 DiIulio apologized for the mistakes and their “unintended consequences” and became a committed advocate of preventive measures rather than harsh punishment.64

  And what about those widely reported surveys contrasting gum-chewing problems in 1940 with today’s hyperviolent schools? It turned out to be an urban legend. When Yale professor Barry O’Neill tried to find a reliable source, he found that not a single one existed. It had been concocted by a Texas businessman, T. Cullen Davis, in the 1980s. What was his source? As he told O’Neill, “I read the newspaper.”65

  But the damage was done. The public would remain anxious about the specter of youth violence. Although Wilson and DiIulio renounced their theory about young male superpredators, a large group of activist gender scholars immediately took their place. Their theories were even more extravagant and far less empirically grounded. But the outraged criminologists, law professors, and child welfare activists who stood up to the superpredator myth left the new mythmakers alone.

  Reimagining Boys

  On July 28, 2005, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), hosted Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Parents were surprised to discover that the Center for Gender Equity, the UCSF group in charge of organizing the day, had planned distinctly different days for boys and girls. Girls were scheduled to participate in exciting hands-on activities: playing surgeon, wielding a microscope, and firing lasers. Boys would be spending most of the day learning about “violence prevention and how to be allies to the girls and women in their lives.” When a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle questioned the logic behind this plan, the director, Amy Levine, explained, “It’s about dealing with effects of sexism on both boys and girls and how it can damage them.”66

  As Levine sees it, boys are potential predators in need of remedial socialization. Her view is the norm among gender activists. Consider how the Ms. Foundation explained its mission in a 2007 report, Youth, Gender and Violence: Building a Movement for Gender Justice: “At the center of this work must be a reimagining of what it means to be masculine, since violence appears to be built into the very core of what it is to be a man in US society.”67

  From its beginnings in the 1990s, the gender equity movement has been leery of boys and has looked for ways to reimagine their masculinity. By 1996, the Ms. Foundation, the creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, found itself on the defensive. Parents and employers were insisting that boys be included. To preserve the feminist purity of the girls-only holiday, Ms. went to work designing a special day for boys. The first Son’s Day was planned for Sunday, October 20, 1996. October was especially desirable because, as the Ms. planners pointed out, “October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so there will be lots of activities scheduled.”68 Here are some of the ways Son’s Day was to be celebrated:

  • Take your son—or “son for a day”—to an event that focuses on . . . ending men’s violence against women. Call the Family Violence Prevention Fund at 800 END-ABUSE for information.

  • Plan a game or sport in which the contest specifically does not keep score or declare a winner. Invite the community to watch and celebrate boys playing on teams for the sheer joy of playing.

  • Since Son’s Day is on SUNDAY, make sure your son is involved in preparing the family for the work and school week ahead. This means: helping lay out clothes for siblings and making lunches.69

  And for boys not exhausted by al
l the fun and excitement of the day’s activities, the Ms. planners had a suggestion for the evening:

  • Take your son grocery shopping, then help him plan and prepare the family’s evening meal on Son’s Day.70

  Ms. made the mistake of sending their planning documents to a large number of child advocates. A few of them protested this little “holiday in Hell for Junior,” and Son’s Day was canceled. But Ms.’s attempt to inaugurate a boys’ holiday is illuminating. It shows how female advocates think when they imagine what would be good for boys. And Ms. was hardly alone.

  Sue Sattel, a “gender equity specialist” with the Minnesota Department of Education and coauthor of an antiharassment guide for children aged five to seven, said, “Serial killers say they started harassing at age ten. . . . They got away with it and went on from there.”71 Nan Stein, a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women and a major figure in the movement to get antiharassment programs into the nation’s elementary schools, has referred to little boys who chase girls in the playground and flip their skirts as “perpetrators” committing acts of “gendered terrorism.”72 Classroom curricula produced by the gender equity activists reflect their worldview.

  Consider Quit It! This is a still-popular 1998 K–3 antiharassment and antiviolence teacher’s guide and curriculum, produced by the Wellesley Center, the National Education Association, and other like-minded groups. (The guide was first published when the initial Harry Potter novels were gaining a passionate following among young people—its title seemed to be a critical pun on the novels’ hyper-raucous, hyper-demanding, hyper-popular game of Quidditch.) The authors explain why boys as young as five need special training: “We view teasing and bullying as the precursors to adolescent sexual harassment, and believe that the roots of this behavior are to be found in early childhood socialization practices.”73

  Quit It! includes many activities designed to render little boys less volatile, less competitive, and less aggressive. It is not that “boys are bad,” the authors assure us, “but rather that we must all do a much better job of addressing aggressive behavior of young boys to counteract the prevailing messages they receive from the media and society in general.”74

  The curriculum promises to develop children’s cooperative skills through “wonderful noncompetitive activities.”75 The traditional game of tag, for example, includes elements that the authors consider socially undesirable. Quit It! shows teachers how to counteract the subtle influences of tag that encourage aggressiveness: “Before going outside to play, talk about how students feel when playing a game of tag. Do they like to be chased? Do they like to do the chasing? How does it feel to be tagged out? Get their ideas about other ways the game might be played.” After students share their fears and apprehensions about tag, the teacher is advised to announce that there is a new, nonthreatening version of the game called Circle of Friends—where nobody is ever “out.”

  In reading Quit It!, you have to remind yourself that its suggestions are intended not for disturbed children but for normal five- to seven-year-olds in our nation’s schools. These are mainstream materials. Quit It! was funded by the US Department of Education. According to the National Education Association’s website, it is a “bestseller” among teachers. What motivates the girl partisans to sow their bitter seeds? The views of a prominent equity specialist shed some light on this question.

  The Heart and Mind of a Gender Equity Activist

  Katherine Hanson was the principal investigator for five National Science Foundation grants on gender equity. She was also director of the Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA) Resource Center from 1988 to 2000. For twenty-five years, the WEEA Center served as a national clearinghouse for and publisher of “gender-fair materials.” It was also the primary vehicle by which the US Department of Education promoted gender equity. As director, Hanson worked with schools and community organizations to “infuse equity” into all education policies, practices, and materials.76

  In February 1998, an exultant Hanson announced that the WEEA Center had been awarded a new five-year contract with the Department of Education that offered “exciting new opportunities to become a more comprehensive national resource center for gender equity.”77 These included “developing a national report on the status of education for women and girls . . . an exciting opportunity for the education field, the Department, Congress and the nation to explore the successes, challenges, and complexity of gender equitable education.”78

  Who is Katherine Hanson, and what are her credentials for educating Congress and the nation on gender equity? Judging from her writings, she shares the view of Nan Stein, Sue Sattel, and the Ms. Foundation’s would-be creators of “Son’s Day”: early intervention in the male “socialization process” is critical if we are to stem the tide of male violence.79 Underscoring the need for radical changes in how we raise young males, Hanson offers some horrifying statistics on male violence in the United States. To wit:

  • Every year nearly four million women are beaten to death by men.80

  • Violence is the leading cause of death among women.81

  • The leading cause of injury among women is being beaten by a man at home.82

  • There was a 59 percent increase in rapes between 1990 and 1991.83

  This “culture of violence,” says Hanson, “stem[s] from cultural norms that socialize males to be aggressive, powerful, unemotional, and controlling.”84 She urges us to “honestly and lovingly” reexamine what it means to be a male or a female in our society. “And just as honestly and lovingly, we must help our young people develop new and more healthful models.”85 One old and unhealthful model of maleness that needs to be “reexamined” is found in Little League baseball. Writes Hanson, “One of the most overlooked arenas of violence training within schools may be the environment that surrounds athletics and sports. Beginning with Little League games where parents and friends sit on the sidelines and encourage aggressive, violent behavior.”86

  History is one long lesson in the dangers of combining moral fervor with misinformation. So the first question we should ask is: Does Hanson have her facts right? Her organization, under the auspices of the Department of Education, sent out more than 350 publications on gender equity and distributed materials to more than 200 education conferences for more almost thirty years. In my book Who Stole Feminism?, I write at length about the tide of feminist “Ms/information.” Katherine Hanson’s “facts” are the most distorted I have yet come across.

  If Hanson were right, the United States would be the site of an atrocity unparalleled in the twentieth century. Four million women beaten to death by men! Every year! In fact, the total number of annual female deaths from all causes is approximately one million.87 Only a minuscule fraction are caused by violence, and an even tinier fraction are caused by battery. According to the FBI, the total number of women who died by murder in 1996 was 3,631.88 In contrast, Director Hanson calculates that 11,000 American women are beaten to death every day.

  I spoke to Hanson in June 1999 to ask about her sources. Where did she get the statistic about four million American women being fatally beaten each year? Or the information that violence is the leading cause of death for women? She explained that “those were pulled from the research.” What research? “They are from the Justice Department.” I inquired about her academic background. She told me she had been “trained as a journalist” and had done many things in the past, including “studies in theology.”89

  For the record, the leading cause of death among women is heart disease (c. 370,000 deaths per year), followed by cancer (c. 250,000). Female deaths from homicide (c. 3,600) are far down the list, after suicide (c. 6,000).90

  Male violence is also far down the list of causes of injury to women. Two studies of emergency room admissions, one by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics and one by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggest that fewer than 1 percent of women’s injuries are caused by male partners.91 Hanson’s
other factoids are no less fanciful: between 1990 and 1991, rapes increased by 4 percent, not 59 percent, and the number has gone down steadily since.92

  Hanson is convinced that “our educational system is a primary carrier of the dominant culture’s assumptions,”93 and that that “dominant culture”—Western, patriarchal, sexist, and violent—is sick. Since the best cure is prevention, reeducating boys is a moral imperative. She gratefully quotes the words of male feminist Haki Madhubuti: “The liberation of the male psyche from preoccupation with domination, power hunger, control, and absolute rightness requires . . . a willingness for painful, uncomfortable and often shocking change.”94

  It would be comforting, but wrong, to assume that such male-averse rhetoric is a relic of the 1990s and no longer with us. The WEEA Center closed in 2003 and, according to Hanson’s biography, she is “currently a writer and artist in New York.”95 But the Ms. Foundation is still going strong and has not softened its tone. If anything, it has become more extreme. Here, for example, is a typical pronouncement from its 2007 report Youth, Gender & Violence: “The roots of gendered violence lie in the efforts of the privileged and powerful—mainly white, middle-class men—to maintain their own status.”96 Misandry is very much alive and boys everywhere pay the price.