By Suzanne Venker
For the past two months, I’ve been preparing a speech for my upcoming visit to Williams College in Massachusetts. The purpose of this program, or “club,” is to provide intellectual diversity in an atmosphere in which debate is heavily influenced by left-leaning scholars.
“There is no learning without being uncomfortable,” says Williams College student David Gaines. “One cannot learn and grow without being challenged and made to think.”
Funny, ‘uncomfortable’ is the exact word I used in the opening remarks of the speech I’d prepared—before I even knew the title of the speaking series. Here’s the exact paragraph:
My goal for you all, my purpose in being here today, is to inspire you to think for yourselves. Do not be swayed by groupthink no matter what your friends, your family or the culture believe. Do not be afraid to ask yourself questions that may make you uncomfortable. And do not be afraid of the answers.
From there I had planned to talk about feminism, but from a different perspective than the one students are used to hearing. I was going to tell them why feminism fails. (Hint: because it denies the existence of biology and teaches that equality means sameness, which is a losing proposition when it comes to planning a life—particularly if that life includes marriage and family.)
Though my contact didn’t give a reason, the day before he’d sent me this email: “Dear Ms. Venker, A quick heads up…We’ve been advertising the event, and it’s already stirring a lot of angry reactions among students on campus. We just wanted to make you aware of the current state of students before your presentation…”
Despite the fortuitous match between my message and the ‘Uncomfortable Learning Speakers Series,’ my talk was cancelled several days prior to the event. “Thank you for agreeing to speak,” read the email, “but we’re not going to be able to host this event.”
Though my contact didn’t give a reason, the day before he’d sent me this email: “Dear Ms. Venker, A quick heads up…We’ve been advertising the event, and it’s already stirring a lot of angry reactions among students on campus. We just wanted to make you aware of the current state of students before your presentation…”
When I pressed further as to why the event was being cancelled (though of course I knew why), he conceded that Williams College “has never experienced this kind of resistance” to a campus speaker.
And so, the school caved.
Naturally, all my preparation went down the drain. I’d even pushed aside a book I’m working on because I felt so strongly about sharing with students some critical facts about women, men, work and family—facts that, despite undermining the feminist cause, are nevertheless true and may have changed both hearts and minds. That is the point of an education, is it not?
That I was passed over is not the concern, though. What is of concern, what should be of concern to all of us, is a new kind of progressive climate that pervades America’s campuses. It even has a name: the “call-out culture.”
The “call-out culture” encourages students to see opposing points of view (read: any argument that’s right of center) as potential threats to their well being and forces groups, such as the Uncomfortable Learning Speaking Series at Williams College, to disinvite or shut down guest speakers whose views are deemed by the campus thought police (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/opinion-blog/2015/09/03/making-a-college-prep-checklist-get-ready-for-the-campus-thought-police) as intolerable.
Some schools actually set up “safe spaces” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html?_r=0) for students who are overwhelmed by being confronted with ideas they find hurtful. That would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Even President Obama, the most progressive president in American history, has denounced this development on campus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWo-mNfmP2A. At a town hall event in Iowa last month, he said, “I’ve heard some college campuses where they want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative, or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. And, you know, I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either.”
He adds, “You shouldn’t silence [a speaker] by saying, ‘You can’t come because my—I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’ That’s not, that’s not the way we learn either.”
Indeed it isn’t. But the students who took issue with my appearance are as sensitive as their feminist leaders, who are notorious for cowering in the face of opposition. And I understand why: their arguments are weak. And weak arguments can’t hold up to scrutiny.
Feminists and their followers love to define feminism as a push for ‘equal rights’—as Hillary Clinton did in a recent gush-fest with Lena Dunham (http://www.salon.com/2015/09/29/hillary_clinton_opens_up_to_lena_dunham_im_a_femin ist_and_i_say_it_whenever_im_asked/)—because that’s a benign term with which few would disagree. But "equal rights" is not at all what feminism is about.
What today's feminists want is a new world order, one in which men and women become interchangeable. In other words, whatever men do women must do in equal numbers—and vice versa. As Facebook COO and new feminist activist Sheryl Sandberg told a group of college graduates in 2011 (http://women2.com/2011/05/19/facebook-coo-sheryl-sandberg-challenges-women-to-be-more-ambitious-and-reach-equality-for-the-win/), “A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions would be just a much better world.”
To achieve this sexual utopia, feminists use fear. Everything they preach is predicated on the notion that some great calamity will befall women if they don’t insist that society change to accommodate the injustices American women face. And at the nucleus of this fear is men. It is man—specifically: husbands, employers and the government—that holds women back.
To be sure, that is one interpretation of the world. And it will bring women nothing but misery.
Imagine the possibilities if students at Williams College and elsewhere were exposed to a completely different worldview. Something positive. Something uplifting. Something, dare I say it, empowering?
Uncomfortable or damaging?: Debating the merits and detriments of harmful speech on campus
Uncomfortable Learning scheduled and later cancelled a talk by Suzanne Venker, founder of Women for Men, a news and opinion website that claims that the feminist movement results in female privilege and discrimination against men. While we at the Record believe Venker’s views are wrong, offensive and unacceptable, it is difficult to determine whether or not there would have been enough educational value in her lecture to justify an appearance, given that her presence on campus would have hurt students who face sexist and homophobic stereotypes.
Though Venker’s speech is legally protected, the College, as a private institution, has its own set of rules about what discourse is acceptable. In general, the College should not allow speech that challenges fundamental human rights and devalues people based on identity markers, like being a woman. Much of what Venker has said online, in her books and in interviews falls into this category. While free speech is important and there are problems with deeming speech unacceptable, students must not be unduly exposed to harmful stereotypes in order to live and learn here without suffering emotional injury. It is possible that some speech is too harmful to invite to campus. The College should be a safe space for students, a place where people respect others’ identities. Venker’s appearance would have been an invasion of that space.
The purpose of Uncomfortable Learning, however, is to confront problems outside the purple bubble and introduce students to opinions that they would not otherwise hear on campus. These ideas might not be welcome in the intellectual, academic, liberal discourse that takes place in the classroom. It may be worthwhile to hear these opinions, including Venker’s, even if we find them harmful and fundamentally disagree with them.
A significant portion of people, both in the United States and in other countries, share Venker’s views. Her beliefs are harmful to women, gay men and society as a whole. Engaging with people who have damaging views and gradually educating them about privilege and discrimination is necessary to bring about societal change. Bringing Venker to campus would have offered interested students a chance to practice that skill. Williams students are not likely to encounter people with Venker’s beliefs on campus, and many may have come from backgrounds that did not expose them to her beliefs. It is difficult for an educated person who associates mostly with other liberal-minded people to understand how Venker justifies her beliefs or how she came to hold them. The potential value in her lecture was the opportunity for students to hear her explain herself and the chance for community members to ask her questions. In this format, students would be exposed to the reasons for her position rather than merely writing her off as irrational or unintelligent. Those reasons and justifications are the root of her wrongful opinions, so learning what they are is essential to removing those opinions from society.
It was not Uncomfortable Learning’s intention that students would consider Venker’s views to be correct or attempt to find some truth in them. The idea of her coming to campus was to provide students with the opportunity to understand and challenge the underpinnings of her beliefs. Uncomfortable Learning is a safe way to discuss otherwise unacceptable opinions on campus, as the audience members choose to attend and understand going in that the speaker may be offensive.
That being said, there are reasons to believe that the lecture would not have enough educational value to justify inviting Venker to campus. Her beliefs are not nuanced. Arguing with a speaker with whom one shares no common ground could amount to nothing more than each side validating its own views. Trying to persuade Venker might have been a hopeless endeavor and is not necessarily the most productive use of Uncomfortable Learning’s resources, especially in light of the strong reaction from students against her appearance.
The potential value and harm of inviting Venker to speak are difficult to quantify. Weighing the two against each other is an even more complicated calculus, and we at the Record could not come to a unified consensus on this calculation. It is important that Uncomfortable Learning pushes the envelope of campus discourse, but they must consider the potential damage of introducing harmful thoughts into the safe space that is so vital to the College’s ability to nurture and educate.
=========================
Wow.
What I wanted to tell students at Williams College
Good evening. I’d like to begin by talking about what it means to be truly educated. An education rests upon an exchange of ideas. It requires a free mind, one that is not swayed by groupthink.
Groupthink, or being told what to think rather than how to think, undermines the purpose of an education. Another term for groupthink is "political correctness."
You’ve no doubt heard this label used in the media lately with regard to the 2016 presidential election, but I believe it’s a concept that’s misunderstood. A lot of people think being “P.C.” means to be kind or tactful, or to simply avoid saying things that might offend someone. It can mean that. But more often than not, it means something else entirely.
In "The New Thought Police," Tammy Bruce defines political correctness, or groupthink, as the notion that “only certain things can be said, or considered, or thought—and that some group out there has the authority to decide, for everyone, what is appropriate.”
That is the America we live in today, and it’s a blight on our culture.
My goal for you all, my purpose in being here tonight, is to inspire you to think for yourselves. Do not be swayed by groupthink no matter what your friends, your family or the culture believe. Do not be afraid to ask yourself questions that may make you uncomfortable. And do not be afraid of the answers.
With that in mind, let’s get to the main topic I’ve come here this evening to discuss: feminism.
In 2008, Rebecca Walker, daughter of Alice Walker, who wrote "The Color Purple," said this about feminism:
“Yes, feminism has undoubtedly given women opportunities. It’s helped open the doors for us at schools, universities and in the workplace. But what about the problems it’s caused for my contemporaries? Far from taking responsibility for this, the leaders of the movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them—as I have learned to my cost. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.”
Ms. Walker is right: feminism is an experiment—a monumental experiment—that needs to be assessed on its results, not on its intentions or on its leaders’ proclamations. In this particular case, Walker was referring to the women of her generation who ended up childless, or almost childless, because they listened to feminists who told them motherhood wasn’t important, or shouldn’t be important, to an educated woman.
Fertility struggles are indeed one of feminism’s great casualties.
There are more.
As you know, feminism is a large umbrella for an enormous range of topics — from its signature issue, abortion, to sex and relationships, women in the workplace, marriage, divorce, domestic violence, women in the military and work-family balance.
There isn’t a person among us who doesn’t have a stake in at least one of these issues.
But they are not “women’s issues,” as the media often claim. They are everyone’s issues.
Men have opinions on these matters as well, as they should, yet their voices are rarely heard.
Same goes for women who don’t consider themselves feminists — which, for the record, is most women.
We hear from feminists the most for good reason.
A. Feminists pride themselves on being the arbiter of all things female.
B. They have the microphone. Indeed, the feminist elite run the show.
The feminist elite is comprised of left-leaning professors, journalists, writers, psychologists, actresses and lawyers whose beliefs have seeped into the culture to such a degree that anyone who takes a non-feminist view of any topic is branded either sexist or a misogynist.
This group uses their clout to bully people into silence, and the result is a lack of reasonable dialogue.
Since people don’t wish to be attacked for simply questioning an idea, they say nothing — giving feminists free reign of the conversation.
I’m sure you’ve heard a lot over the years about liberal media bias, but feminist bias is an offshoot of that — and it’s far more toxic.
As former CBS News journalist Bernard Goldberg wrote in his book "Bias," “I know a few top male producers who would rather walk barefoot on cut glass while drinking Drano than have to face the Missus back home after giving the green light to a story on the excesses of feminism.”
There are even doctors, scientists and researchers in this country who can’t publish their findings if what they’ve discovered undermines a feminist worldview. That’s the insidious nature of feminist bias.
The assumption is that to be a woman is to be a feminist. Because after all, a feminist is someone who believes in equal rights, and who wouldn’t believe in that? You’d have to be a nut to not to believe in that.
But Americans do believe in equal rights, so a feminist label is unnecessary — because that is not what feminism is about.
The reason there’s so much back and forth about what feminism means is because Americans have caught on to the fact that the movement is not what it claims to be.
So what is feminism? What do feminists believe? Namely, that American women are oppressed by a patriarchy hell-bent on keeping women down, and that men and marriage are expendable.
If you think I’m exaggerating, consider these newspaper and magazine headlines:
“Who Needs Marriage?” (Time, Nov. 18, 2010)
“The End of Men ”(The Atlantic, July/Aug 2010)
“For Women, Is Home Really So Sweet?” (The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 18, 2012)
“Is It Time to Retire the Word ‘Wife’”? (The Huffington Post, Feb. 15, 2012)
“Do You Hate Your Husband?” (Yahoo, Dec. 5, 2010)
And here’s a headline from The Wall Street Journal just three weeks ago: “Two Careers, Still Unequal” — which claims yet again that working mothers suffer more than working fathers. That is patently false.
Both mothers and fathers work equally hard, just in different locales.
A study in the Journal of Economic Literature reports that while women perform roughly 17 more hours of work inside the home, men perform roughly 22 more hours outside the home. When comparing the total amount of work men and women each do inside and outside the home, women average 56 hours and men average 61 hours.
That I even have to give you those statistics makes me sad, but that is what feminism has come to. It has made marriage, or just relationships in general, a virtual battleground. Love has become a game of oneupmanship. Except no one wins.
All of this has been done in the name of empowerment, yet feminism is rooted in victimhood. Indeed, feminism is riddled with inconsistencies. Either you’re empowered, or you’re a victim. Which is it?
Same goes for sex differences. Feminists believe gender is a social construct, that parents and society make children the way they are. But feminists also support gay and LBGT rights for people who they insist are born that way. So which is it? Is gender biological, or isn’t it?
But the worst part of feminism, the part that really irks those who are able to think for themselves, is that feminists claim there’s one way to be a woman. If you’re not pro-Choice, if you’re not a Democrat, and if your goal is to make family the focal point of your life, you’re anti-woman.
I know, I know—you’re going to say I don’t understand feminism. “Feminism is about choice!” you’ll shout. It is not about choice, any more than it’s about equal rights. Those are red herrings.
It’s true women today have more opportunities than they did in the past, and thus more choice. But there are reasons for that that are unrelated to feminism (though feminism certainly helped pushed things along). Birth control, laborsaving devices and technology — for which we mostly have men to thank — gave women what they needed all along: time.
Time is what allowed women to turn their attention away from the home in record numbers. We should be thanking men for liberating women.
It is also true there was a time when women who did not want to live conventional lives felt marginalized. But it is equally true that women today who do want to live conventional lives feel just as marginalized, which proves feminism was not about accepting women who didn’t fit the mold. It was about re-making the mold. It was about changing the natural order of things so the natural order no longer feels natural.
Feminists’ obsession with gender equality is simply that: an obsession. And it has changed the character of this nation.
Hanna Rosin, author of "The End of Men," describes the new ethos this way: “Thanks to the sexual revolution, [women] can have relationships — and maybe some drama — through their twenties and early thirties and not get tied down with a husband and babies. If the price is a little more heartache, so be it. These days women have a lot more important things on their horizon.”
You will never be happy or successful in love if you adopt an attitude like that — unless, that is, you plan to never marry. If that’s the case, fine. But statistically speaking, the vast majority of you will become wives and mothers (and husbands and fathers) someday.
And if we know this to be true, which we do, why not talk about it? Why don’t we talk about how to incorporate what will, for most of you, become your future?
The choices you make in your personal life will have far more impact on your happiness and well being than the choices you make in your professional life.
You can become president if you wish, but even that accomplishment will pale in comparison to the state of your personal relationships.
That’s one of the reasons I’m not a feminist. Rather than push women to become CEOs to prove some faux notion of equality— which is not to say there’s anything wrong with becoming a CEO; you’ll just have to accept the trade-offs — I’d rather help you plan a life that makes space for marriage and family, since that’s what most of you will choose to do.
I could spend these two hours telling you how great you are, or telling you to reach for the stars and to shatter glass ceilings, but why beat a dead horse? You’ve been told that same thing since the day you were born.
We wonder why women have fertility problems or why working mothers can’t find balance in their lives. Perhaps if someone had to said to them, “You know, a woman’s life has seasons — a time for this and a time for that. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but there will come a time when being a wife and mother will become your primary focus, so make sure you consider that when mapping out your life.” Or: “You know, motherhood may seem a long way off; but don’t wait too long. Your body has an agenda of its own.”
I tell you these things because despite being relatively successful in the professional sphere, nothing in my life has been more fulfilling than being a mom. If you choose this route, it will add to your life — not detract from it.
That is not something a feminist will tell you. Women who put family first are a real problem for feminists because they undermine the feminist goal, which is to change society.
What feminists want is to make men and women interchangeable.
As Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg famously said at a 2011 graduation speech. “I believe the world would be a better place if men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions.”
Anne-Marie Slaughter is another example. Slaughter is the self-described feminist, and former Princeton professor who wrote an article that went viral in 2012 called “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” In it, Slaughter concedes, ironically, that the “feminist beliefs on which I had built my entire career were shifting under my feet.”
When I first read those words, I was dancing a gig that a high-profile woman had the courage to admit that feminism is flawed — particularly when it comes to work-family balance, which is what her article was about. But rather than end with that observation, she went marching back to her feminist principles and blamed society for why she couldn’t be successful in both arenas. That’s what feminists do when they can’t make their lives work: blame the system.
They also blame men. Today Slaughter is arguing for “a whole new domestic order.” In a recent interview about her new book "Unfinished Business," she repeated a version of Sandberg’s claim: that gender equality “is about men owning the care side of [women’s] lives just as much as the competition side.”
And that, of course, is where the rubber meets the road.
I am not a feminist because I don’t believe feminists have an accurate understanding of human nature.
I believe men and women are equal in value but different in nature. Each want and need different things, and each is often better suited to certain tasks due to their respective biology.
Accepting this fact does not mean women can’t be doctors or engineers or men can’t be full-time dads, nor does it mean all men and all women have identical nurturing and competitive drives. It just means more men than women may like sports and more women than men may want to stay home with the kids. And that’s okay.
But it’s not okay with feminists, who insist not on equal opportunity but on equal outcomes. They also insist there aren’t more women in government or more female CEOs due to rampant discrimination. Or, as Sheryl Sandberg suggessts, because girls are called "bossy" and that scars them for life.
But there’s a logical explanation for why there aren’t more female leaders: that is not what most women choose to do.
Just several weeks ago, in a Fortune magazine article about why there are so few women at the top, senior editor Nina Easton writes, “A missing piece of this conversation is how many highly educated, top-talent women drop out, curtail their work, or (like me) choose a ‘mommy-tracker’ route in their careers—not because of discrimination or hostile work environments but because of the time they want to devote to their kids…By definition, this limits the pool of female talent at the very top.”
The wage gap is also easily explained. It is nothing more than the mathematical quotient of the difference between the average annual income of all working women compared to the average annual income of all working men.
It ignores the education and training each makes, as well as the difficulty and the danger of the job.
It ignores the number of hours and overtime people accept, or whether or not they have to travel for the job.
It ignores the amount of vacation and personal leave time each uses.
What’s more, using this same comparison, research shows women earn more than men throughout their twenties.
The Press Association found that from 2006 to 2013 women between the ages of 22 and 29 earned roughly $1,700 more than their male counterparts. However, the wage differential between the sexes flips once people move into their 30s.
Which brings as back to motherhood.
Here is the truth no one wants to say: the birth of a child — maybe not your first, but definitely your second or third — will throw every plan you had prior to having children out the window. Whatever you thought your life was going to be turns out to be something else. Children change everything, and you have to adapt.
But that is not what feminists believe, so you never hear this message.
Feminists have been complaining for decades about the negative impact of motherhood on women’s lives.
My own mother, who received an MBA from Radcliffe College in 1952—1952!—used to tell me her female professor talked of children as being an “intrusion” in women’s lives.
It’s not like women haven’t tried to adopt feminist beliefs. They have. Women believed it when they were told that to be considered a man’s equal, they should reject their feminine nature and adopt male traits. Men, for example, are notorious for wanting to delay commitment, so women pretend they feel the same way when most don’t.
Women are literally made to bond. Their bodies are steeped in oxytocin and estrogen, two chemicals that together produce an environment ripe for attachment.
Thank God for women! Without them we’d all be sleeping with each until we’re old and gray.
Men have oxytocin, too, but a much smaller amount. They’re more favored with testosterone — which controls lust, not attachment.
That’s why women, not men, wait by the phone the next day after a one-night stand. That’s why the movie "He’s Just Not That Into You" wasn’t titled "She’s Just Not That Into You."
For most women, sex is never just sex. There’s almost always more to it than that.
As an example, this past May The New York Times published the winning essay of this year’s Modern Love College Essay contest. The author, Jordana Narin, writes about “Jeremy,” a guy she knew from their online relationship and with whom she eventually had sex. Here’s a portion of that essay:
“I’m told my generation will be remembered for our callous commitments and rudimentary romances. We hook up. We sext. We swipe right. All the while, we avoid labels and try to bury our emotions…To this day, if I ever let a guy’s name slip out to my father, his response is always, ‘Are you two going steady?’”
“People don’t go steady nowadays,” I explain. “No one says that anymore. And almost no one does it. Women today have more power. We don’t crave attachment to just one man. We keep our options open. We’re in control.”
"But are we?" she adds. “I’ve brooded over the same person for the last four years. Can I honestly call myself empowered if I’m unable to share my feelings with him? Could my options be more closed? Could I be less in control?”
For years feminists have been teaching women to ignore biology, as though it’s an irritant rather than a guide. This past July the dissident feminist Camille Paglia spoke with Salon magazine about this very thing. Here is a portion of what she said in that interview:
“Feminists lack sympathy and compassion for men…The heterosexual professional woman, emerging with her shiny Ivy League degree, wants to communicate with her husband exactly the way she communicates with her friends–as in “Sex and the City’…But that’s not a style straight men can do! Gay men can do it, sure–but not straight men! Guess what–women are different than men! When will feminism wake up to this basic reality?”
When, indeed.
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