> Commentary
> Conservatives Fabricating 'War on Boys'
>
> By Caryl Rivers - WEnews commentator
>
> Conservatives have taken up the cry that American society has embarked on a
> war on boys that demonizes young males and ignores their problems, focusing
> instead on girls. In fact, they argue, feminists have hijacked the agenda
> of American schools, and boys are suffering as a result.
>
> Leading the charge is Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American
> Enterprise Institute and author of "The War Against Boys." As she sees it,
> American girls are thriving, but boys are in grave danger.
>
> But are boys, in fact, in terrible shape? First of all, in detailing boys'
> woes, critics like Hoff Sommers downplay the role of class and race. Poor
> boys, especially African Americans, are indeed in crisis, with more young
> black males in prison than in college.
>
> But are middle-class boys in great trouble? In fact, few are involved with
> the criminal justice system and drug use is going down. And while a few
> school shootings by troubled boys get massive publicity, schools are in
> general very safe. Your child has only a one in a million chance of being
> shot by a crazed boy in school.
>
> That's not to say that boys don't have problems. Boys have more learning
> disabilities than girls do, for example. But is this fact being ignored?
> Hardly. Schools are spending billions of dollars on such problems as
> attention deficit disorder. Arguably such programs benefit boys more than
> girls.
>
> Critics say that "zero tolerance" policies toward violence and sexual
> harassment demonize boys. In fact, they help more than hurt boys, often the
> victims of violence themselves. Sure, there is the occasional
> silliness--like the suspension of four kindergarten boys for playing a game
> and using their hands as toy guns. But overall, anti-violence and
> anti-bullying messages are good for boys. The Columbine tragedy might not
> have happened if vicious bullying of the two high school boys had been
> halted by school officials before the youths picked up guns.
>
> As for sexual harassment, clear policies can help boys sort out mixed
> messages they get from a hyper-sexualized media. They need to understand
> that in today's workplace, harassing behaviors are not tolerated and they
> could derail a man's career.
>
> There is, in fact, no war being waged against boys. And while Hoff Sommers
> makes some valid points about how the problems of girls have sometimes been
> exaggerated, the author does exactly the same thing herself with boys'
> problems. The book is based on anecdotes, not data. While she bombards the
> reader with charts and statistics, she makes her major points based only on
> a story or two. For someone who chides advocates for girls for playing fast
> and loose with data, her own data are far from solid and convincing.
>
> Hoff Sommers argues that girls' problems have been exaggerated; it's boys
> that really need help. And indeed, a well-intentioned but poorly designed
> study of self-esteem by the American Association of University Women gave
> the impression that all girls are at risk for self-esteem problems. Not so;
> a minority of girls actually suffer low self-esteem. But girls do have
> problems. While they get higher grades than boys, they score lower on the
> all-important SATs that often determine college admissions. Girls suffer
> from a plethora of eating disorders and math and computer phobias that
> could keep them out of the good jobs in tomorrow's workplace.
>
> None of this means we should ignore boys' problems, educators warn--but we
> shouldn't exaggerate them, either, which some on the right are doing.
>
> For example, US News and World Report columnist John Leo notes with alarm
> the fact that girls now outnumber boys in college classrooms. He conjures
> up a dire scenario in which educated middle-class women won't be able to
> find men to marry and the numbers of unmarried mothers will increase.
>
> That's a misreading of statistics. Where are middle-class young men going
> who are dropping out of college? The roaring economy is attracting many of
> them, especially into computer jobs. Will middle-class young women refuse
> to marry young men with good jobs because they don't have a college degree?
> Not likely. And if the economy cools off, these still-young men may return
> to school; they are not hampered by the lack of basic skills that keeps
> poor young men unemployed. Just as many 60s "hippies" turned into lawyers,
> doctors and businessmen after dropping out for a while, few of today's
> young middle-class college dropouts will morph into jobless men who can't
> support their children. It's a false alarm.
>
> And American University Professor David Sadker notes that female presence
> increases as the status of the college decreases. Females are more likely
> to dominate in two-year college than in the prestigious Ivy League, where
> males still outnumber females. Also, too often women are concentrated in
> majors that correlate with lower-paid positions in the job world.
>
> Setting boys against girls is an exercise that serves children ill. And it
> is risky to advocate, as some conservatives do, that we should raise
> today's boys just as their grandfathers were taught in the 1950s. In those
> days, white males could look forward to 30-year jobs in the industrial
> state. They composed the dominant group who had no competition for jobs
> from women and male members of minority groups, and they could expect that
> their wives would be willing to stay home and do nearly all the parenting.
>
> That world is gone. Young men who can't accept the new economy and the new
> realities of gender and race will only inherit anger, sadness and, most
> likely, failure. While the old hierarchical order rewarded macho behavior
> and the stiff upper lip, new realities at work and in families demand
> flexibility and the ability to communicate.
>
> In fact, Harvard professor William Pollack's study of boys, "Real Boys'
> Voices," found them constrained by old gender stereotypes and very much in
> need of "being openly caring, loving and affectionate without fear of being
> seen as weak and feminine."
>
> Stereotypes hurt both girls and boys and they both need all the help we can
> give them. In order to prepare them for the real world they will be facing,
> we should neither exaggerate nor ignore their problems, especially in the
> name of ideological warfare.
>
> Caryl Rivers is a professor of journalism at Boston University and the
> author of "Slick Spins and Fractured Facts," Columbia University Press.
>
> ---------------------------
>
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