War Against Boys in Society

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Recommended: Gender similarities and differences in education

War Against Boys in Society

It is a bad time to be a boy in America. As the new millennium began, the defining event for American girls was the triumph of the U.S. women’s soccer team. For boys, the major event was the mass killing at Columbine High School. It would seem that boys in our society face great difficulties and risks as they grow up. Yet the best-known studies and the academic experts are telling us that it is girls who are suffering from a decline in self-esteem. The experts say that it is girls who need extra help with academics and elsewhere in a society that favors boys.

Christina Hoff Sommers, a Ph.D. in philosophy and a former professor of philosophy at Clark University, disagrees with the increasingly popular feminist views. Sommers believes that it is boys who are being "shortchanged" in a society that is rapidly becoming overrun with feminist views. There is no girl crisis, says Sommers. Girls are not being pushed aside, "shortchanged," or repressed in American society argues Sommers. Girls are outperforming boys academically, and girls’ self-esteem is no different from boys’. Sommers believes that it is boys who are lagging far behind girls and Sommers attempts to prove this in her book: The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men.

Sommers argues three main points in this book. First, boys encounter more difficulties growing up in America today and being successful in schools and colleges, than do girls. More boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs. Girls attempt

suicide more often than boys, but boys actually kill themselves more often. In a typical year (1997), there were 4,493 suicides of young people between the ages of five and twenty-...

... middle of paper ...

...n the work force, and much more. Don’t get me wrong, I think that girls have many more opportunities than they used to, but boys are still considered to be the "better" sex by the majority of the population.

Bibliography:

Carroll, Mary. "War Against Boys Review." Booklist.

http://www.Amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/st...ws/ref=pm_dp_ln_b_ 6/104-9142923-7170319 (24 Oct. 2000).

Finn, Chester E., Jr. "Puppy -Dogs’ Tails." Commentary

Magazine. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/0009/bk.finn.html

(24 Oct. 2000).

Foster, Brooke Lea. "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men." Washington Magazine Inc. http://www.washingtonian.com/book/waragainstboys.html

(24 Oct. 2000).

Hoff Sommers, Christina (2000). The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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