Christina Hoff Summers

While I happened to sit in front of some rather rude listeners that spoke and snickered throughout the entirety of the lecture, I did manage to pay attention and take copious amounts of notes. While I find myself on the fence when it comes to much of what she said, of particular interest to me in Christina Hoff Summers's lecture was her focus on education. While taking the male side of the argument, Professor Hoff Summers seemed to shoot herself in the foot, so to speak, when it came to her ideas regarding male education. Apparently, at an early age, boys are incapable of actually engaging in true academic subjects, favoring playtime and rough housing instead. Also, as an English major, as all of us here are, I felt unconvinced at her assertion that literary and artistic fields were dominated by women, while the sciences were dominated by men. With all these points in consideration, the core of her arguments seemed to involve a lack of belief in gender as a social construct. As I said earlier, I am still on the fence about a great many of these things and perhaps life experiences will set my own beliefs on one side or the other.