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The Dartmouth
July 18, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Where Feminism Went Too Far

Anyone who watches television or movies can tell you that the one member of the American citizenry who remains a safe punchline (or punching bag, to be more accurate) is the American man. In fact, as the father figure becomes dumber, fatter, whiter, more outrageous and more laughable, a show's lasting power seems to grow or a movie's box-office take seems to balloon. Now, I personally do enjoy these shows and have even blown a considerable amount to get them on DVD, but they, along with many other sitcoms, comic strips and low-rent Hollywood comedies, are the culmination of nearly a quarter century of acceptable attacks on men. The worst part is that popular entertainment not only reflects acceptable values, but reinforces the notions of what is and is not acceptable.

To make this point less contentious, I'm going to tone down the whole race thing in an effort to show the plight of the average American male -- black, Hispanic, white, whatever -- and bear in mind that as representative as Dartmouth tries to be with its admissions process, in terms of capability and background the average Dartmouth student is nowhere near representative of an average American. This fact is often taken for granted or even proudly bandied about as an entitlement to sneer at those who, for various reasons, cannot attend an institution of as high a quality as the one here.

For the past 30 years, education numbers have told a sobering story for the half of America that has no self-glorifying "ism." Test scores from the National Assessment of Education Progress shows a gap between reading test scores of boys and girls that is sustained across three age groups. Sadly, the gap actually increases from the first year of the data in 1971 to the present across all three age groups as well. Boys are also more likely to be held back and studies indicate that boys even in elementary school suffer from lower confidence in their academic abilities than girls.

In 2003, the most recent year for which I could find data, 11 percent of males from 16 to 24 did not finish high school, as opposed to 8 percent of females for the same age group. More simply put, men make up 59 percent of high school dropouts, which is significantly disproportionate. Given the much lower quality of life of those who do not have a high school diploma, this shortcoming should be alarming to all but the most dyed-in-the-wool feminist. Understandably, post-secondary education sustains this unfortunate gender gap. Women also earn a clear majority of master's degrees in this country.

Even outside purely educational numbers, the trends are disheartening. For every girl who commits suicide, four boys do. For every girl suspended from school, three boys are. Girls are also twice as likely to indicate that they want to pursue a career as early as eighth grade.

I know that perhaps the most powerful statistic that seems to undermine my position is that of wages. Men do earn more on average than women, but only the ignorant or the malicious would fail to add the fact that when experience (since fewer women were in the private sector in, say, 1975) and voluntary time lost to pregnancy are taken into consideration, the gap disappears. Shockingly, some women actually want to be mothers, and even the most dedicated career woman can't get that child thing over in a day or two and race back to the office.

Not to disappoint Mary Daly, but this writing is not indicative of the fact that men are just dumber than women. In fact, the College Board's statistics show that the average SAT score for a male is higher than for a female. What all this is indicative of is a growing lack of encouragement and belittled expectations for male students stemming from elementary school onward. When given equal encouragement and discipline in the classroom, male and female students perform comparably, but this encouragement and discipline will never be forthcoming from a culture that popularizes the sale of stickers and T-shirts with charming little ditties like "Boys are Stupid. Throw Rocks at Them!" Imagine the uproar if the slogan was the other way around. You would be able to hear Gloria Steinem screeching "misogyny" from states away.

Because of these alarming statistics and even more alarming antagonism toward boys in primary and secondary education, I must commend First Lady Laura Bush's Helping America's Youth initiative, which is seeking to redress this gender gap through more responsible teachers and curricula. In my opinion, this seems more substantive than sprinkling seeds on highway medians and more attainable than some byzantine health-care plan that not even a certain unnamed proponent fully grasps.

I'm not belittling feminism, which has made "equal opportunity" a reality in America when it clearly was not in the 1960s and earlier. What I am saying, though, is that the cadre of extremist feminists that seemingly has hijacked American education from kindergarten through graduate work has created an Orwellian playing field where one gender is just more equal than the other.