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from Political News
Militant Homosexuality and Feminism:
The Politicizing of Research and Feelings
by Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D.
A small but vocal minority of radical gays and feminists are politicizing their anger against straight males in power.
Misrepresenting research, they distort our perception of gender difference, gender development, and gender bias.
During the last thirty years, American culture has been inundated with politically motivated research on gender issues. Since the 1960s, when the various "rights" movements came into full bloom, radicals have used this research--together with a huge propaganda effort channeled through the media--to change the norms and values not only of American society, but of the world. At the core of this revolution is a multitude of studies by various groups that purport to prove that sexism and homophobia are the cause of most of the problems of women and homosexuals, as well as of our society in general.
NARTH readers will already be familiar with the highly overblown and questionable research regarding a biological foundation for homosexuality. In 1993, Dean Hamer (himself a gay man) purported to discover a "gay gene." Immediately following his announcement, the media announced across the country that homosexuality was biological, even though the study had not been completed or replicated. This research was used to bolster legal cases, as when a Colorado court overturned the so-called "Anti-Gay Amendment," concluding that homosexuality has a significant genetic basis. However, at least one independent study since that time has failed to replicate Hamer's finding.
Another study by Simon LeVay sought to prove that there is a difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in the volume of a cell group in the anterior hypothalamus of the brain, an area involved in sexual behavior. This study, like Hamer's, was widely reported but has also not been replicated. LeVay's study was also used to bolster the Colorado court decision. The underlying aim of all such research seems to be to prove that homosexuality is inborn and normal, and that the problems of homosexuals stem not from the abnormality of their condition, but from social discrimination against them.
Similarly, there has been a plethora of questionable research and skewed statistics by feminist groups which purports to prove that the problems of women are not caused by female neurosis (or abnormalities), but in fact by male sexism. (In each case, the blame is put on heterosexual males.) Following are just a few of them:
Battery
In January 1993, at a news conference in Pasadena, California, site of that year's Superbowl, a coalition of women's groups announced that Super Bowl Sunday "is the biggest day of the year for violence against women." They cited research which they said proved that there was a 40% increase in wife battery during and preceding a Superbowl. Immediately following this announcement there were a host of talk shows, newspaper columns, magazine articles, and public service announcements (one aired during the Superbowl), all citing this "statistic." But in fact, there never was any such study. The announcement was made on the basis of one woman's misunderstanding of a statement by a professor at Old Dominion University to the effect that an increase in emergency-room admissions "was not associated with the occurrence of football games in general."
The Journal of the American Medical Association, citing a study in an 1989 issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine, reported that 23-35% of all visits by females to emergency rooms are for injuries from domestic violence. This study, entitled, "Education is Not Enough: A Systems Failure in Protecting Battered Women," obviously written from a feminist perspective, focused on the segment of the population with the highest overall rates of violence. It made reference to one emergency medical department serving an inner-city neighborhood in Philadelphia. The article concluded that "In the United States, every 7.4 seconds a woman is beaten by her husband."
This slogan was repeated on the air waves and print media as fact. Actually, the slogan underwent a revision over time until one pamphlet, put out by a feminist men's group called Brotherpeace, stated that "6.5 million women annually are assaulted by their partners ... one every five seconds."
In contrast, two national surveys which are nondoctrinaire in their approach to the study of domestic violence-- conducted by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, and cited in their book, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, (1980)--found that women were as likely to engage in family violence as men. Another study by Claire Renzetti, described in her book, Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships (1992), found that lesbians batter each other at the same rate as heterosexuals. Yet these studies are seldom mentioned by feminists or the media, and are ignored by many professional journals.
Disease
NARTH members will be familiar with the politicization of AIDS. Militant gays continue to protest that not enough research is being done, asserting that this constitutes discrimination against gays. But in fact a great deal of research is being done, and one can arguably say that AIDS is the highest-profile disease in America. Such attempts to focus on homophobia and discrimination serve to take the focus off the self-defeating sexuality of many gays, who in fact do not consistently practice safe sex themselves, yet continually warn others that we are in the midst of a mainstream epidemic.
There exists a similar misrepresentation of facts by militant feminism with regard to women's diseases. Warren Farrell--a disillusioned former member of the National Organization of Women--notes in The Myth of Male Power (1993) that feminists frequently offer statistics making the case that women's diseases receive less funding, for which they blame social inequities--i.e., patriarchy. In a kind of "medical affirmative action," a great deal of attention is now being given to breast cancer. In fact, the two most prevalent forms of cancer--breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men--affect roughly an equal proportion of women and men. However, according to the National Cancer Institute, funding for breast cancer is more than six times greater than for prostate cancer.
Sommers (1994) reported that Gloria Steinem, in her 1992 book Revolution from Within, informed readers that "about 150,000 women die of anorexia each year." She indirectly attributed these deaths to the oppression of patriarchy. This statistic had been taken from another book by Naomi Wolf, who had picked it up from another book by Joan Brumberg; Brumberg linked the statistic to the American Anorexia and Bulimia Society. As it turned out, all were in error. According to the AABS, about 150,000 women suffer (not die) from anorexia.
Depression is another disease that has been politicized by feminists. In 1992 a Harris Poll was commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund, asking 2,500 women and 1,000 men about their physical and mental well-being in the past week. A large majority of the women (82%) claimed they "enjoyed life most of the time," while the same small proportion of both men and women (5%) said they were depressed most of the week.
The Commonwealth took this poll and used it for a press release that announced, "Survey results indicate that depression and low self-esteem are pervasive problems for American women. Forty percent of the women surveyed report being severely depressed in the past week, compared with 26% of men." Soon news reports around the country were saying, "Four in ten women polled suffer severe depression." In actuality, the Commonwealth Fund, a feminist organization, had interpreted the answers to the survey in a highly skewed way.
In trying to find out how they came to the conclusion that 40% of women report being severely depressed during the past week, Sommers was given the run-around by people at the Commonwealth Fund and The Harris Poll. Nobody seemed to know how they got that figure. The woman in charge of the poll had left the Harris organization. Finally, Sommers reached Lois Hoeffler, who had done the interpreting. She did not directly say how she got the 40% figure, but informed Sommers that most interpretations of polls were "phallocentric," and that she had made use of a feminist interpretation.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the reality is this: men are three times as likely as women to commit suicide, live seven fewer years than women, and die more often from all of the fifteen major causes of death. Again, these facts are for the most part ignored by the popular media and by government and private social agencies.
Education
Sommers notes that since its founding in 1981, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has sponsored a number of questionable and skewed studies about education, suggesting that the American educational system is biased against girls. Their first study, the "Self-Esteem Study," consisted of a survey of three thousand children between the ages of nine and fifteen. This survey, according to the AAUW, proved that self-esteem of girls was much lower than that of boys--and claimed that this was due to social bias.
They issued a report entitled, "Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America." This report led to headlines around the country, hundreds of conferences and community action projects, and eventually to the submission of a $360 million bill in Congress, called Gender Equity in Education Act. The act was eventually passed and has resulted in millions of tax dollars being sent to feminist organizations.
The survey on which all of this was based, according to those who saw it, did not at all prove that there was a self-esteem gap between boys and girls. Instead, the AAUW's interpretation was slanted. For example, one of the criteria for making this judgment was that boys had bigger career dreams. "Self-esteem is critically related to young people's dreams and successes. The higher self-esteem of young men translates into bigger career dreams .... The number of boys who aspire to glamorous occupations (rock star, sports star) is greater than that of young women at every stage of adolescence, creating a kind of 'glamor gap'."
The fact that boys dream of being rock singers or sports stars more than girls is not an indication of greater self-esteem. On the contrary, it might be an indication of an inferiority complex for which one must compensate through fantasies of heroism, as in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."
Evaluation of the survey was based on only one of five possible responses--another source of misinterpretation. Most answers were in the middle range. Yet we are only told how many boys and girls responded "always true" to the question, "Are you happy the way you are?" In tabulating the results, investigators did not consider any middle-range answers.
Buoyed by the success of their first study, the AAUW went on to do another a year later. The Wellesley Report, completed in 1992, was entitled "How Schools Shortchange Girls." They cited the statistical fact that boys outscored girls by three points in math and eleven points in science on the National Assessment of Education Progress Tests, while omitting the fact that girls outperformed boys by thirteen points in reading, and twenty-four points in writing. Second, the report pointed to a study by Myra and David Sadker, detailed in their book, Failing at Fairness, which purports to prove that boys get more attention in elementary schools than girls.
"In a study conducted by Myra and David Sadker," the AAUW report notes, "boys in elementary and middle school called out answers eight times more often than girls. When boys called out, teachers listened. But when girls called out, they were told to 'raise your hand if you want to speak'."
While it may be true that boys get more attention in elementary school, due to a rowdier disposition, this cannot be considered proof of anti-female discrimination.
In fact, in 1989, females received 52 percent of American B.A.'s, 52 percent of M.A.'s, and 36 percent of doctoral degrees. Girls outnumber boys in all extracurricular activities except sports and hobby clubs--including student government, band, chorus, drama, and service clubs, yearbooks and newspapers. The evidence suggests that it is boys who may be suffering more from emotional trauma (five times as many boys as girls commit suicide during adolescence, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
Sexual Abuse
The AAUW came up with yet another study, this one on sexual harassment, basing its report on a survey done by Seventeen magazine. Of the magazine's 1.9 million subscribers, only 4,200 returned the questionnaire--an 0.2% response. Nearly all of the respondents reported they had been sexually harassed as defined in the survey; 89% said they had received suggestive gestures, looks, comments, or jokes; 83% had been touched, pinched, or grabbed; 47% had been leaned over or cornered; 28% received sexual notes or pictures; and 10% were forced to do something sexual. This report went out in 1993 and was followed by hundreds of headlines such as one in the Boston Globe which read: "A U. S. survey shows wide harassment of girls in school." Of course, nobody bothered to check where this survey had been done, or the fact that it was based on only the 0.2% of respondents who sent in the questionnaire. This is called a self-selecting poll. Professional pollsters know that all such polls are inherently biased.
A study of rape that has been accorded equally wide endorsement by the popular media was one done in 1985 by Ms. magazine and Mary Koss. Koss and her associates interviewed slightly more than 3,000 college women, randomly selected. They were asked ten questions about rape which defined it as penetration by penis, finger, or other object while being coerced by physical force or threats or while the woman is under the influence of alcohol. The study defined sexual victimization as yielding to sex play, though not intercourse, when a woman is overwhelmed by a man's continual arguments and pressure. The results of this survey were announced thusly: "The Ms. project--the largest scientific investigation ever undertaken on the subject--revealed that ... one in four female respondents had an experience that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape."
This "one in four" statistic has since become the official figure in women's studies departments, rape crisis centers, and the media in general. However, in order to come to this figure, the pollsters included as rape victims those responding affirmatively to the question, "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?"
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report of 1990, there were 102,560 reported rapes or attempted rapes in the U.S. This would be about one out of every thousand women. Of course this only covers one year, not a lifetime. Still, it is much different than the figure given by the National Victim's Center (a feminist organization, using the broader definition of rape--intercourse while under the influence of alcohol), which states that 683,000 rapes occurred in 1990.
These are just a few of the thousands of reports of statistic and studies that have filled our culture with misinformation about gender development, gender difference, and gender bias. These reports by militant gays and feminists promote antagonism in male-female relationships, and are destructive to families and our culture. They in turn lead to increasing misconceptions, such as the recent advertisement by a sports equipment company which echoed feminist propaganda stemming from these questionable studies and misleading statistics: "If you want me to be happy and confident ..." a little girl sadly says, "let me play sports." As the social problems of many famous male athletes indicate, playing sports has not led to emotional adjustment.
Yet, because of feminist propaganda, millions of tax dollars are being spent to encourage girls to become athletes, although hardly any dollars are being spent to support them in being effective future mothers. The bottom line is that interest in radical studies overshadows interest in accurate and socially useful research which might help solve the pressing social issues of our time.
As mentioned previously, the gist of militant homosexual and feminist activists seems to be to make heterosexual males the scapegoat for society's problems. In a paper that appeared in New Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Homosexuality (Collected Papers from the 1996 NARTH Conference), I speculated as to the psychodynamic link between militant homosexuality and militant feminism. In working with a number of militant homosexuals and militant feminists, I found that in both cases there was a rage toward fathers. That rage was politicized into a generalized rage against men and masculinity. In militant feminists, that rage is directed at "menacing patriarchy," as Sommers puts it. In militant homosexuals, the rage is directed at "homophobes" (menacing straight men).
How does this rage against fathers develop? In analyzing my militant patients, whether they were of the homosexual or feminist kind, there was often an overidentification and idealization of the mother, along with a disparagement of the father, which was brought about through their identification with mother's gender-narcissistic rage at men. The mothers of these patients tended to be women who felt frustrated by the traditional women's role, and who harbored deep feelings of resentment toward their husbands and toward men in general. Through identification with mother, the sons and daughters likewise felt the same frustrations and resentments. The fraudulent and skewed research we see so much today--designed to show that homosexuals and women are invariably innocent victims, and that straight males are inclined to psychopathology, and driven by evil aims--seems, at least in part, to have its root in this syndrome.
In families, these militant mothers disparage the father's and the son's masculinity; in society, militant gays and feminists attack male sexism and homophobia. My militant patients tended to repeat radical slogans as though repeating a liturgy, and used these slogans as a justification to resist therapy ("You don't understand me because you're straight"; "You can't understand me because you're a man.") Militants do not stay long in therapy; they are unwilling to have a real discourse with a therapist or with anybody else regarding their own or society's problems.
The Power of a Vocal Minority
Having said that, however, I must add that most homosexuals are not militant gays, and most women are not militant lesbians or feminists. Some moderate feminists (such as Sommers) are not part of this militant bandwagon, and indeed are fighting against it. Likewise, there are many moderate homosexuals who do not exhibit the narcissism and rage of the militants.
However, this vocal minority of militants has unleashed a spate of propaganda and radical revisionism that now permeates our society. Militant gays and militant feminists--motivated by unresolved resentments against heterosexual males--have joined forces to energize a social movement which is built on a false foundation.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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