Is There a War against Men?

(To watch the event, please click "play" in the video above.)

We often hear from activists, educators, and members of the media that the heteropatriarchy is ruthlessly oppressing women. Based on the rhetoric, one could reasonably think that men are waging a full-blown war on the opposite sex.

It's certainly true that women were in a very different position 50 or 100 years ago. If equity is your goal, tremendous progress has been made when it comes to opportunities for women. Indeed, most men today would probably be surprised to learn that they are waging war on women. Those men (and some women) may even think that the pendulum has swung too far, that there's actually a war on men.

So, what's true? Is one sex waging a "war" on the other? If so, who is winning?

To answer those questions and more, Intellectual Takeout hosted Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men (2000), as our featured guest at a special event on October 30, 2017 at the Guthrie in downtown Minneapolis.

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Christina Hoff Sommers is a nationally recognized commentator on issues of moral theory, feminism, and the gender wars. Her book The War Against Boys put her on the map as The New York Times named it the Notable Book of the Year 2001. She is also the author of One Nation Under Therapy, Who Stole Feminism?, and Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life. Previously a professor of philosophy at Clark University where she specialized in moral theory, she is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Her writings have appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Dr. Sommers has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brandeis University and a B.A. from New York University.