WHEN I WAS BROUGHT UP AS A YOUNG LAD, ONE OF THE MORAL imperatives instilled in me was, “Don’t hit girls.”
Although I have rebelled against many of the early teachings to which I was exposed, that one always seemed reasonable. I have followed this bit of folk wisdom in my own life and have attempted to pass it along to my son, now aged ten.
The only problem is, things are now a bit more complicated on the not-hitting-girls front than they were in my own youth. We are all now faced with the results of the so-called women’s liberation movement which has permeated our society. It has been argued vehemently, and with no small measure of success, that men and women are, for all intents and purposes, the same. If this is true, then boys and girls must also be equal. But, if it is legitimate for my son to hit back at boys, then why not at girls too?
In this case, there is a further complication. He is enrolled in a karate class along with equally young people of the female persuasion. Undoubtedly, as part and parcel of feminist inroads into our culture, he is urged by his teacher to engage in combat with them; if he demurs at my suggestion, he loses face.
It is against this background that we consider Michael Levin’s response to the feminist invasion of the world of ideas. We are all in great debt to him, especially those among us who are libertarians. This book is monumental in its coverage, refuting the claims of the feminists in just about every area in which they have staked a claim: innateness, sex differences, affirmative action, comparable worth, education, “women’s studies,” sports, law and order, language, the family. It is masterful in its insights, using an interdisciplinary approach which brings to bear the findings of economics, politics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, logic, history, and biology. It is ambitious in that it is the only study to my knowledge dedicated to a refutation of feminism in its totality. It is extremely well written. I waged a continual struggle with myself to read more slowly; as with a riveting novel, I didn’t want the book to end.
Given the long march toward statism, we libertarians are especially indebted to Professor Levin for this book, which constitutes a spirited defense of freedom from the many attacks made upon it by the feminists.
Above all, Feminism and Freedom is the work of a supremely courageous individual. This is so for several reasons. Women’s liberation has so permeated the universities that this volume must create personal difficulties for its author, a Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, a hotbed of feminism if ever there was one. Then, too, there is the courage that one must amass when he takes on not just a single author, nor even a few dozen, but a movement which comprises literally hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, artists, writers, and people from all walks of life. Beyond this, however, is the even more superlative courage it takes to “hit back at girls,” not physically, of course, but intellectually and morally. I contend that it is deeply embedded in our very beings that we refrain from engaging in such activities.
I suspect that a large part of the reason for the success of the feminist movement is that it is mainly comprised of women. Our chivalrous instincts cry out in protest against any spirited attack on people of the weaker sex. I speculate that were the identical arguments brought to bear by any sub-group other than women, they would long ago have been given the short shrift they so richly deserve.
What, then, are Levin’s arguments against the feminists? At the core of his contribution is the denial of their thesis that men and women are exactly alike, except for reproductive elements. On the face of it, this might not sound like much. Indeed, it can only be considered the merest of common sense. However, an entire public policy has been erected based upon either the denial or neglect of this elementary insight.
Consider the analysis of Berkman v. NYFD with which the book begins. In 1977, all 88 women who took the New York City Fire Department’s entrance examination failed its strength component, while only 54 percent of the men did not pass. In the ensuing class action, sex discrimination lawsuit, the court, utilizing the guidelines set down by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, asked “how likely it would be, in the absence of discrimination, that none of the 88 women passed, while 46 percent of the men did.
“As the court correctly noted,” states Levin,
the pass rates were separated by more than eight standard deviations,” and the probability that this could happen is so small—less than one in 10 trillion—as to amount to virtual impossibility. The court’s conclusion that discrimination must have occurred is entirely cogent, if strength is assumed to be uncorrelated with sex. A difference in failure rates on a strength test is consistent with the absence of bias if it is allowed that men are on average stronger than women. The court found the outcome. … unacceptably improbable because it adopted the hypothesis that gender and strength are independent variables. … Since women are the same as men, the EEOC and the court reasoned, special steps must be taken to compensate for their manifest differences.
I could trace Levin’s reasoning throughout the book, where he eviscerates fallacy after fallacy in similar manner. And, indeed, I am tempted to do this, if only to afford the reader the enjoyment of his analytical mind. I have a better suggestion, though. Let the reader buy this book for himself, and derive the full benefits thereof.
There is, however, one further implication of the Levin thesis that I absolutely cannot resist describing: that regarding language, specifically the substitution of “he or she” or “(s)he” for “he,” and the use of the appellation “Ms.” as a substitute for “Mrs.” and “Miss.” It is important to me that I relate his contribution on the language front because, I confess, I had been taken in by the feminists on this one, and have now resolved to struggle mightily to overcome my previous error.
Before reading Feminism and Freedom, I had tried not to use the words “he,” or “man” when referring to all people. I told myself that it was an unfair denigration of the female gender. How would I like it, after all, if everyone used “she” or “woman” to refer to all persons? In like manner, I tried to accustom myself to “Ms.” and to eschew the “sexist” “Mrs.” and “Miss.”
But I now see this issue very differently, thanks to Professor Levin’s book. In this area, too, the feminists are, in effect, arguing that there are no important differences between men and women. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If people cannot tell from a man’s title (Mr.) whether or not he is married, they should not be able to garner this information with regard to a women. “Ms.” puts the woman on equal non-informational footing with “Mr.”
However, men are very different from women. For one thing, due to the number of sperm available, the most efficient male strategy for propagating his gene pattern is one of promiscuity: the more children he fathers, the better. But the female has far fewer opportunities to leave heirs. The maximum biological limit is only a few dozen; in actuality, most females bear far fewer children than this. Her ideal strategy, then, is not one of promiscuity; instead, she must be far more careful and choosy, picking as a mate someone upon whom she can rely, who will help her raise her offspring.
From these undoubted biological facts stem sociological patterns which are deeply embedded in us. This includes the physical protection of the female alluded to at the outset of this review, the importance of the family, and the discouragement of males from wasting time making indiscriminate passes at married women when they could (and should, from the point of view of propagation of the human species) be courting single women. Anything, then, that encourages inter-familial sexuality is to be counted as a positive. But this includes such things as the wearing of wedding rings, and, to return to our point, the clarity as to female marital status by use of the distinction between Mrs. and Miss.
Says Levin,
The wish to collapse “Miss” and “Mrs.” into Ms’s is the wish that women be thought of as selecting sexual partners in the way and with the purposes characteristic of men. It is a wish for the terms of address and marital status that would have evolved had there been no differences in the sexual nature of men and women.
As well, Levin points to the Orwellian historical examples of which the Ms. caper is only the latest. During the French Reign of Terror, all persons were addressed as “citizen”; during and after the Bolshevik Revolution, all Russians became “comrades.” Nor can it be objected that in these historical cases, but not in the present, people were coerced into using the new appellations through force of law. Although the full force of the law has not as yet landed upon those intemperate enough to insist on their right to use “sexist” language, the courts are moving in the direction of a finding that the use of this language is sexually discriminatory, and even comprises sexual harassment, both of which practices are illegal.
I recommend this book without any reservation. Its positive contributions are great, and its flaws do not at all detract from its central thesis. On the contrary, they are peripheral, although interesting, issues. (Levin is a conservative, not a libertarian; hence he takes positions on several issues—government roads and education, land reform, the draft, abortion—that are not strictly compatible with freedom.)
I conclude that if you have any love at all for freedom and want to help protect it against the feminist onslaught, go out and get this book! Now! It is the only exhaustive, in-depth, utter refutation of the feminist argument presently in existence.
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Nomos 7, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 25–26.