There Will Be A Next

When playing an academic game in class, nothing helped students focus more than to make it “girls vs boys.” At fourteen, masculine and feminine pride was strong and they bore down intensely. When I afterward explained that many feminists insisted there were no differences between males and females other than the obvious physical ones, they were incredulous. “No way,” they’d say. “Are they kidding?”

“No, they’re definitely not kidding,” I’d answer. “Teacher training today ignores differences and insists that boys and girls are the same. Many if not most now believe the only differences are physical and everything else is due to how they’re raised by parents and schools.” That’s when I’d pull out my VHS copy of a 1995 “20-20” episode John Stossel narrated called, “Boys and Girls Are Different: Men, Women and the Sex Difference.” 

Stossel declares his personal belief at the outset, “We’re just born different,” then interviews prominent feminists of the era who disagreed. But first he set it all up by interviewing parents who believed there were no differences beyond the physical and who tried very hard to raise their children accordingly. No matter what they did or didn’t do, boys preferred playing with guns and girls chose dolls. Toy manufacturers also tried marketing traditionally female toys to boys and vice versa, but their efforts failed as well.

Stossel summarized scientific studies documenting sex differences beginning in utero and continuing afterward through most of life, but when he put them to Gloria Steinem she said those studies shouldn’t be done because they kept women down. Then Stossel asked her, “Don’t you think women are by nature better nurturers?”

Bella Abzug

The temperature in the room plummeted as Steinem responded icily: “No. Next question.” There were similarly icy interviews with Bella Abzug and Gloria Allred. My students were affirmed in their belief that Steinem and company were defying common sense. That’s when I’d tell them the next generation of feminists younger than Steinem and Abzug were claiming there were more than two “genders,” a word they were substituting for sex —  that not all humans could be categorized as either male or female.

Gloria Allred

If they were incredulous before, this time they were flabbergasted. They thought I was making it up. “What else is there?” they’d ask.

I explained there were feminists with Hillary Clinton in the US delegation to the 1995 UN Conference on Women in Beijing who argued there were five “genders”: male and female on each end with gay, lesbian, and transexual between them. Some students considered the gay and lesbian categories might be possible but the transexual one was out of the question. Here in 2017, the word “transexual” isn’t used anymore. It’s been replaced by “transgender” in every media stylebook. I believe if I taught the same lesson today students would take it in stride and say, “So what?”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Now I ask myself what’s next, because there will be something — then something else after that. US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) spotted the trend back in 1993, and coined the phrase “defining deviancy down.” Moynihan was one of the last classical liberals in the party that used to have many. He defeated feminist Bella Abzug in the 1976 Democrat primary for the US Senate but was succeeded in that office by feminist Hillary Clinton in 2001. Moynihan wasn’t referring only to criminal matters but to many sociological trends, and the process he identified has accelerated since his death. What was unthinkable only twenty years ago is routine now.

Oh yeah?

After fifteen years, I’d worn out my VHS copy of Stossel’s 20-20 episode. I tried to purchase a replacement but it was nowhere to be found. One male/female difference he spotlighted sticks with me: the distinctly female skill of remembering where things are. A university study in Canada hired students for an experiment in which they were told to wait in a small office for their turn to be called. In it were a desk, a chair, wall hangings, and many other items on the desk. When summoned, they were asked what they remembered seeing in that office.

The males would say, “There was a desk, a chair, and umm…” then struggle to recall anything else. The females, however, would look off into space and say, “There was a desk, a chair, and on the desk was a pink calendar, a blue pencil holder, a tan telephone…” and many other items. “On this wall there was…” and they’d gesture to show each item’s exact location. Researchers stopped them lest go on for an hour.

I remember that study when asking my wife if she’s seen something I cannot find. After she’s told me where to look and I still can’t find it, she’ll say, “If I have to come over there…”

Sound familiar?