Saturday, March 18, 2006

Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers


One way of teaching the writing and editing process is called The Mad Hatter. The student is told that the writer wears four different hats: the mad (wo)man, the architect, the builder, and the janitor. The problem with this book is that Sommers never made it past the first hat. There is great raw material here (including evidence to rebunk virtually everything you heard in the mainstream media about the status of women and girls in the last decade) but Sommers zings from topic to topic without context, transition, summation, or, you know, actually developing a thesis. Which is a real shame because the ideas in this book are important.

1 comment:

sylvia/ticklethepear said...

I read this after reading Backlash by Susan Faludi. I definitely agree that the ideas are worth agreeing but the tone seems to be kind of a rush job.

I haven't read Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Feminism without Illusions but the reviews I've read imply that this is a more coherent book.

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