The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter November/December 2002, Volume 7, No. 6 WOMEN'S FREEDOM NETWORK TOWN HALL MEETING Glamour Politics and the Women's Victim Culture By Christina Hoff-Sommers Christina Hoff-Sommers is a resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, and author of "The War Against Boys."

G lamour magazine endorsed Al Gore for president. So did Sharon Stone, Gwynneth Paltrow, Cher, Rosie O'Donnell, Helen Hunt, and Callista Flockhart. What is so fashionable about the Democratic ticket? What can those of us who are committed to libertarian or conservative politics do about it?

For the past two decades feminist scholars and researchers have been barraging the American public with statistics, and theories purporting to show that "our sexist culture" is hostile to women. Groups like Ms. Foundation, American Association of University Women, and Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, sponsor research and disseminate findings on subjects such as “the glass ceiling,” “the wage gap”, violence against women, and gender bias in education and healthcare. Much of this research is motivated by ideological preconceptions and not by intellectual curiosity. Most of it is substandard. The findings of this advocacy research arouse resentment among many women.

I remember an issue of Glamour Magazine in which an angry looking young woman asked, "Excuse me, are women equal yet?" Glamour editors then offered 18 reasons why women are not equal to men and explained why women should be incensed. Chief among the reasons was the favorite factoid: women earn only 71 cents on the-dollar as compared to men.

Women's Studies professors present feminist propaganda as truth to college students all over the country. The misinformation finds its way into newspapers, women's magazines, and into television shows.

"Eve Ensler is a gender warrior, and in all wars the first casualty is truth. "

It feeds and sustains a powerful, pervasive Women's Victim Culture. I will never forget watching Oprah one afternoon a few years ago. Oprah Winfrey was hosting two feminist journalists who had written a book "documenting" massive gender bias against women in medical research and practice. Before each commercial Ms. Winfrey asked the mainly female audience, "Are you angry yet? Are you really angry now?" The audience roared back its anger.

At about the same time, Dr. Andrew Kadar from UCLA Medical School carefully reviewed the standard charges that medicine is gender biased and concluded in his Atlantic Monthly article that "Though it is commonly believed that American healthcare delivery and research benefit men at the expense of women, the truth appears to be exactly the opposite." But, far more women watch Oprah or read Cosmopolitan Magazine than read Atlantic Monthly.

Today, one of the most popular plays on college campuses is Vagina Monologues. It is even an off-Broadway hit. It is poisonously anti-male. There is a child molester, a callous unfaithful spouse, a 16th century lawyer who torments and convicts a witch, 19th century doctors who mutilate girls for masturbating, two vile boys, and Serbian gang rapists. The playwright, radical feminist Eve Ensler says, "Most of the women in the world spend their lives either defending against violence, anticipating violence, or recovering from it." She counts the United States among the worst offenders claiming there are half a million rapes each year. Ensler's numbers on American rapes are almost five times higher than those given by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Eve Ensler is a gender warrior, and in all wars the first casualty is truth.

But the list of actresses lining up to play a part in Vagina Monologues is very long. The list includes Susan Sarandon, Lily Tomlin, Glenn Close, Winona Rider, Callista Flockhart, and New York Mayor Giuliani's estranged wife, Donna Hanover. Ensler's fame is considerable. First Lady Hillary Clinton chose Ensler to serve on her exploratory committee for her Senate run. According to The New York Times, Ms. Clinton will be writing the forward for Ensler's next book. Glenn Close told The New York Times, "You don't just hook up with Eve. You become part of her crusade. There's a core of us who are Eve's Army."

One may ask, what does all this imply for national politics? There are no Republicans in Eve's Army, nor are Republicans skilled when it comes to dealing with the women's victim culture. Democrats, on the other hand, thrive on feminist victimology. They have programs, initiatives, bills, interagency councils, sponsor advocacy research, disseminate statistics, and have created a huge gender injustice bureaucracy around the victim culture. Al Gore embraced it, exploited it, carried on about it everywhere he campaigned.

We are slowly but surely making it fashionable to be truthful, objective, and reasonable.

What can be done to diminish the power of Eve's Army? As we speak, the election results are still undetermined. If Gore wins, it will be hailed as a great victory by Eve Ensler and her "sisters in arms." But, if Bush wins, he will face the forces of an outraged victimology.

Are there signs of a return to sanity? A couple of years ago a liberal group called the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) published a report expressing alarm about the successes of the conservative groups such as the Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. According to the report, the conservative philanthropies have been effective in moving the country in a conservative direction by supporting think tanks like American Enterprise Institute and Cato, by helping fund college programs like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the National Association of Scholars, and by supporting the work of scholars who are thorns in the side of liberals. These conservative foundations have actually made a discernible change in public opinion and public policy on such issues as taxation, school choice, and the status of women. The world of the conservative/libertarian foundations and think tanks has been effective. The indignant liberal authors of the NCRP report are appropriately appalled.

But, the cultural left still has the support of the older and far richer foundations like Ford, Pew Charitable Trust, Carnegie, and MacArthur, as well as the universities, and the media. Despite this, we find a distressed NCRP conceding that conservatives may be winning the arguments and even scoring victories in the battle of statistics. We now see that the work of groups like the Women's Freedom Network and Independent Women's Forum have been making a difference. We do not have the actresses, the journalists, the editors of Glamour, or the followers of the Oprah show. What we do have is common sense as well as good scholarship. An Al Gore presidency would make our job harder, but it would only slow down the process we are engaged in. We are slowly but effectively discrediting the assumptions and the rhetoric of the victim culture. We are slowly but surely making it fashionable to be truthful, objective, and reasonable.