The Factual Feminist: McEnroe vs. the Media

Latest installment here.

'During an interview with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro on June 25th, 2017, tennis great John McEnroe said that tennis great Serena Williams would rank about "700 in the world" if she played against men. The outcry on social media and in the press was swift, harsh, and omnipresent. But was it deserved? Christina Hoff Sommers, AEI Resident Scholar and Factual Feminist, serves up her analysis.'

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This sort of reaction in the media is nothing new. Remember when Lawrence Summers at Harvard brought down the wrath not only of the apoplectic Angry Sisterhood, but had much of the Harvard faculty screaming for his blood when he suggested that maybe, just maybe, innate differences account for some of the gender imbalance in STEM fields? That had everyone in the media bouncing off the walls like gibbons. And yet many studies support the claim that men have a degree of advantage in spatial reasoning and abstract theorizing. See, it's OK to claim that women possess this or that innate advantage (e.g., verbal development), but heaven forbid you should make a similar claim about men's abilities. Dontcha know, women are just better at everything? And don't you dare question it!

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