Christina Hoff Sommers on How Feminism Went Awry

Conversations with Bill Kristol

Government, News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2015

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

A resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former philosophy professor, Christina Hoff Sommers is a thoughtful analyst and trenchant critic of radical feminism. In this conversation, Sommers and Kristol discuss how American feminism, once focused on practical questions such as equal opportunity in employment for women, instead became a radical ideology that questioned the reality of sex differences. Narrating her own experiences as a speaker on college campuses, Sommers explains how the radical feminism of today's universities stifles debate. Finally, Sommers explains a recent controversy in the video game community, which she defends from charges of sexism in a widely-publicized episode known as "GamerGate."

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:15.0	I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations.
0:18.0	I'm very pleased to be joined today by Christina Summers,
0:21.0	a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, former philosophy professor.
0:25.0	Once a philosophy professor, always a philosophy professor, right?
0:29.0	Author of many important works, including most recently, Freedom Femin freedom feminism and of course a
0:34.8	star of a wonderful series of YouTube videos the factual feminist yes so we'll talk
0:39.7	about feminism in a minute but I'm I thought maybe we'd begin by just I was minding my own
0:44.3	business one day a few couple months ago I guess and suddenly I'm looking online
0:48.2	and that your subject of a huge controversy you're speaking at Oberlin and people are
0:52.4	outraged and what was that what was that all? controversy or speaking at Oberlin, people are outraged.
0:53.3	And what was that?
0:55.1	What was that all about?
0:56.4	I am still trying to figure it out.
0:58.2	I have been lecturing on college campuses for years,
1:01.2	more years than I care to remember.
1:03.4	And it's often controversial.
1:05.4	Young women come to spar and debate because I'm a moderate feminist and I take exception
1:10.0	to some of the eccentricities on the campus and that has created controversy.
1:16.0	Well, at Oberland, they didn't come to debate.
1:20.0	First of all, they said that I was going to give them PTSD and they organized a safe space
1:25.7	a safe room where young women could flee if what my arguments created you know led
	...

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