anthrosciguy pointed out that something called Young America’s Foundation has a speaker’s page for Sommers.
Topics:Education, Feminism, Law / Constitution, Political Correctness, Race & Culture
Fee: 3,000 – 5,000
Not bad for an hour’s work.
POPULAR LECTURES:
1. The Case for Conservative Feminism (How the once noble cause of feminism lost its way and why it may take conservative women to put it back on track)
2. Guilty Because Accused: Why the new federal regulations on campus sexual assault are a travesty of justice. (Pressured by the Obama administration, our colleges and universities have abandoned all pretense of due process in cases of sexual assault.)
3. When Bad things Happen to Good Laws: The Truth About Title IX (How an idealistic law intended to eliminate discrimination against women turned into a quota law that discriminates against men.)
4. The War Against Boys: Is it Over? (How boys are faring in a society that now favors girls)
5. Say No to CEDAW: Why the UN Women’s Treaty Should Not Be Ratified (CEDAW contains many noble declarations, but its key provisions are 1970s feminism preserved in diplomatic amber. Releasing those aged provisions in 21st-century America would be harmful)
She’s making a lot of money as a parasite on feminism. What a pestilent niche she’s created for herself.
So being an anti-feminist “feminist” is a good gig.
Never mind the fact that most of the suffragettes were anything but conservative and most conservatives were opposed to any form of feminism, conservative women will reform the once noble cause.
As, long as the conservatives are allowed to rewrite history.
Check out the company she keeps there too. The available speakers list is the scum mist of the scum. They even have Ted Nugent.
“Scum mist” is what Steve Jobs apparently thinks I should have typed instead of “scummiest”. 🙂
Hahaha well I won’t fix it then, too amusing.
I would like to throw over-ripe tomatoes at her.
Is that included in the 3 grand?
wat?
I know. A SOCIETY THAT NOW FAVORS GIRLS??
Such a liar.
Why have these aged provisions when we can all have the evergreen policies that can be found at the Reagan Ranch.
Favoring girls
Peggy Seeger, engineer song
That’s a funny topic for someone who’s supposed to be a ‘registered Democrat’.
So all those people complaining about clickbait will now say that she’s Just Doin’ It For The Money, right? Right?
She works hard for the money
So hard for it honey
So you better treat her right
Society totally favors girls now; I mean, sometimes boys are actually *prosecuted*, or at least arrested, for raping a girl! The injustice against boys is immense!
/snark
I’m confused. If society favors girls over boys, why is it that women still earn only a percentage of what men earn – and have NEVER earned more, on average, than men earn, on average? Why is it that there are so many women and children in poverty, particularly single mothers? Cuz I’m not seeing the favorism O_O
Barf?
Wow, I live in the sheltered confines of a white middle class middle aged suburban lifestyle in a generally progressive modestly socialist (by US standards) country and I still haven’t noticed that society favours girls over boys. maybe it favours girls *more* than it used to, maybe. But, yeah, nah.
I feel deep contempt for the intellectual dishonesty of these people.
And to think this person is the go-to feminist of Monsignor Dawkins of the Atheist Establishment (NO GURLZ ALLOWD)™. I guess his appreciation of data and facts and things and actual stuff and the magic of reality is b0rked in this one highly specific instance. It’s like feminism is a distant galaxy to Dawkins and CH Sommers is the dense black hole between him and it, warping his perception of it with her gravitational lensing; he only sees a wavy twisty version of what’s actually there (and clearly can’t be arsed untwisting it).
But what do I know? They’ve been muzzled by misandrist Vagylon fascists or something, you see, despite having access to countless more platforms than the people they punch down on once they’ve climbed them and despite being able to charge thousands of pounds to people who want to hear them say stuff and despite their careers and activities having suffered virtually no ill effect whatsoever by virtue of their combined assault on women. So maybe I should pity the poor world-famous in-demand thinky speaky leadery ones whom noone wants to listen to anymore.
@AnthonyK, 11:
It sounds perfectly reasonable to someone in Europe. To us, your Democrats map reasonable closely onto our “conservative” politicians. Republicans map pretty closely onto what we would describe as “the far right” – loonies, basically. You don’t have anyone noticeable who maps onto what in Europe would be described as left/liberal. This is not unrelated to the fact that in Europe the word “liberal” isn’t an insult.
What the fuck does it even mean to be registered Democrat or Republican? Surely, in a country that doesn’t mandate voting and holds personal liberty above all else, there can’t be a requirement to decide your vote before you decide your vote?
I’m from the arse-end of the world, and we wouldn’t vote if you paid us, but make it law and put a fine on non-voting and you’ve pushed the buttons of any self-respecting Aussie. – We are anti-rule until there’s a rule, and will stand up to the man, until there’s a cost. – 95% turnout! But we feel free to walk into a polling place (usually a school or hall) and draw squiggles on the vote form, or write our non-running favourite candidates name, or just, occasionally vote in accordance with our whims at that moment. But nobody would ever ask us to record our whims in some legal or quasi-legal manner before, during or after the vote. It don’t make sense. A secret ballot is a secret ballot.
And as for a society that favours girls. What science fiction novel are we reading in book-club. Bet the boy is still the hero.
@Janine the Jackbooted Emotion Queen, 2
Yeah, this is something I’ve been thinking (and occasionally saying) for a while now. There really is no case for conservative feminism unless you lie about history.
We’ve probably all noticed that, aside from the most regressive individuals, basically nobody has any issue with feminism up to about the 60’s. There is no argument that women don’t deserve the right to vote or stand for election that doesn’t rely on deeply regressive and irrational views; most anti-feminists will agree that, yes, that was a noble cause. As far as the west goes, women have had the vote for, pretty much, all of living memory, and there are no grounds on which to argue against it. At the time, though, it was very much a radical movement, very much in opposition to the conservatism of the time. True, bring those feminists into the modern world, and they’re going to seem conservative because, compared to us, they were, but in their day they were the rebels.
Despite the fact that the majority of anti-feminist quotemines come from the second wave, there’s very little argument that rape can’t happen within marriage, or that women don’t have the right to a decent job or to divorce. Even in the case of abortion, there are far fewer people who’d argue that it should be illegal than would argue that it’s a bad thing to be avoided. But again, at the time, these were all wildly radical ideas and while many second wave feminists can seem conservative now, they were the rebels of their time.
So, feminists today want to see an end to sexual assault and cultural norms that perpetuate it; we want gender equity, and the like and, yes, it is radical. That isn’t feminism losing its way, that’s staying the course.
People argue against feminism today for the same reasons that they argued against it in the 90’s, the 80’s, the 70’s…. It’s not because feminism is going too far, and it’s not because it’s straying off into the wilderness; it’s because it’s challenging the cultural norms and deeply ingrained preconceptions that they were raised with, rather than those of previous generations.
The suffragettes challenged cultural norms and preconceptions, too, and they were right.
Second wave feminists also challenged these norms and preconceptions, and they were also right.
Feminists today are challenging norms and preconceptions… sure, it isn’t safe to simply assume that we’re right now just because those who came before us were right, but it’s absurd to assume that continuing that tradition makes us wrong.
“How the once noble cause of feminism lost its way”
“Releasing this ages provisions in 21st-century America would be harmful.”
So in one lecture she talks about how feminism used to be noble, and in another she talks about how harmful implementing the provisions feminism used to have would be?
Or maybe she just has it in for both 70s feminism and 2000s feminism, but there’s some other decade that she actually does approve of?
@Brian E #20
“What the fuck does it even mean to be registered Democrat or Republican?”
It means you can vote in their primaries. People totally do use this as sabotage, however I doubt really enough people do it to have an effect.
@sonofrojblake #19, @Brian E #20, @rilian #22:
Thanks for the responses. The background context of my comment was that “Christina Hoff Sommers is a registered Democrat” is often used as a response to people who dispute that she’s a feminist of any kind. (No, I don’t know why they think it’s a good retort, but they do use it.) In fact, while I was double-checking to see whether or not it is true that CHSIARD, I encountered this piece:
http://sjwar.blogspot.ca/2014/09/for-critics-of-christina-hoff-sommers.html
From the first two comments:
Sorry, “people who dispute that she’s a feminist of any kind” in my above comment should be the more accurate “people who point out she’s a right wing conservative.”
From the YAF site:
This is considered a good thing?
How did you get to that page on Sommers, BTW. I wanted to do a quick comparison between the speaker fees and the speakers gender. You know, just to check the fax. 😉 I wonder if Sommers has done that yet?
It’s anthrosciguy who got to it.
It was a simple Google search for Christina Hoff Sommers speaking fee.
I knew a lot of people get big bucks for talks (her fee is actually a lot smaller than some) and figured that’s part of the follow the money equation.
BRW, I’ve tried but failed to find some mention of how many such talks she gives each year. I thought that might come up in one of those links, or as an intro to an interview, but haven’t seen it.
Very true. Colin Powell gets HUGE sums.
Condi Rice too. Being an abject failure at her government job, after what’s been described as a lackluster academic career, is no barrier to big bucks on the speaking circuit. And she’s far from the only one who fits that description.