In the Media
Recent Media Appearances and Mentions
It’s Time To Rethink The Phrase “Coming Out”
Sadhbh O'Sullivan | Refinery 29 | May 28, 2021
The closet as a concept, then, was born out of necessity: a useful way to describe repression for safety’s sake. But as Suzanna Danuta Walters, director of women's, gender, and sexuality studies and professor of sociology at Northeastern University, writes in her book The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality, it was only in the post-Stonewall world that 'coming out' became a political exercise: "Coming out as a representational form – as a genre and a tellable tale – really only emerges with the development of a movement for which coming out has salience." In order to fight for liberation, gay people would own their identity with pride by publicly owning their gay identity. The more gay people came out, so the thinking went, the more normalized gayness would become. Read the full article on Refinery 29.
Tucker Carlson: “It’s a sign of mental illness” to recognize the patriarchy.
Rachel Leah | Salon | August 29, 2018
Tucker Carlson railed into the director of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University and women, more generally, who believe that patriarchy has and continues to exist. During a broadcast Monday night of Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight," the host said, it's a "sign of mental illness" to believe that women are oppressed by men. Professor Suzanna Walters penned an op-ed for the Washington Post over two months, titled, "Why can't we hate men?" But somehow, it just made it onto Carlson's radar. In it, Walters acknowledges the need to recognize male power as institutional, and "not narrowly personal or individual or biologically based in male bodies," especially in order to give credence to the way racism shapes patriarchy as does geographic location. But she adds, that it's still true that there are gender inequities that are universal.... Read the full article on Salon.
Can We Talk About Sexism and Not Be Accused of Attacking Men?
Nancy LeTourneau | Washington Monthly | July 12, 2018
....I checked Sullivan’s article and the only link he provided of a Democrat saying those things was an article by sociology professor Suzanna Danuta Walters titled, “Why can’t we hate men?” She’s not asking for permission to hate men, she’s grappling with this reality:
Pretty much everywhere in the world, this is true: Women experience sexual violence, and the threat of that violence permeates our choices big and small. In addition, male violence is not restricted to intimate-partner attacks or sexual assault but plagues us in the form of terrorism and mass gun violence. Women are underrepresented in higher-wage jobs, local and federal government, business, educational leadership, etc.; wage inequality continues to permeate every economy and almost every industry; women continue to provide far higher rates of unpaid labor in the home (e.g., child care, elder care, care for disabled individuals, housework and food provision); women have less access to education, particularly at the higher levels; women have lower rates of property ownership.
In the midst of all that, we live with a lot of rules about who is allowed to be angry and who isn’t.
The world has little place for feminist anger. Women are supposed to support, not condemn, offer succor not dismissal. We’re supposed to feel more empathy for your fear of being called a harasser than we are for the women harassed. We are told he’s with us and #NotHim. But, truly, if he were with us, wouldn’t this all have ended a long time ago?
The professor ends by calling out men who say they’re #WithUs to step up to the plate and “play hard for Team Feminism.” Does that sound like someone who hates men, or someone who thinks it’s past time to level the playing field for women? What’s interesting about all of this is that both Emery and Sullivan prove Traister’s point: “White men are at the center, our normative citizen.” Even when people like Traister and Walters write about the oppression of women, it is twisted into being an attack on men. That is what sexism looks like.... Read the full article on The Washington Monthly.
Anthony Kennedy and the Death of True American Conservatism
Andrew Sullivan | New York Magazine | June 29, 2018
....We don’t know why this has happened. It may be the economy, lower unemployment, and marginally lower taxes. But that doesn’t explain the yawning and growing gender gap. So here’s a guess: When the Democratic party and its mainstream spokespersons use the term “white male” as an insult, when they describe vast swathes of white men in America as “problematic,” when they call struggling, working-class white men “privileged,” when they ask in their media if it’s okay just to hate men, and white men in particular, maybe white men hear it. Maybe the outright sexism, racism, and misandry that is now regarded as inextricable from progressivism makes the young white men less likely to vote for a party that openly advocates its disdain of them.
I don’t know for sure, of course. All I know is that, to my mind, bigotry is still bigotry, whoever expresses it. And those routinely dismissed as bigots might decide to leave a party that so openly expresses its disdain for them.... The full article is on New York Magazine.
A Scholar Asked, ‘Why Can’t We Hate Men?’ Now She Responds to the Deluge of Criticism.
Alexander C. Kafka | The Chronicle of Higher Education | June, 18, 2018
This month in The Washington Post, Suzanna Danuta Walters published an op-ed called "Why Can’t We Hate Men?" Walters is a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, and also editor of the gender-studies journal Signs. Her op-ed has generated thousands of comments; drawn dismay, outrage, or ridicule in other publications and blogs; and spurred homophobic death and rape threats. In her op-ed, Walters writes that even before Schneiderman, Trump, Weinstein, mansplaining, INCELs, "red pill" men’s groups, live-streamed sex assaults, and wartime rape camps, she’d been pushed "over the edge." She understands and sympathizes with the idea that critiques should focus on male power in patriarchal structures, "not narrowly personal or individual or biologically based in male bodies." But she also insists on remembering "some universal facts" about sexual violence, inequality, access to education, property ownership, and so on.... Read the full article on The Chronicle of Higher Education.
What One Professor’s Case for Hating Men Missed
Conor Friedersdorf | The Atlantic | June 11, 2018
Last week, Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, posed the question, “Why can’t we hate men?” Because hate speech remains protected by the First Amendment, we can peruse her argument in The Washington Post, preempt anyone inclined to mistake it for mainstream feminism, and respond with persuasion rather than having her ideas fester unseen.
In her telling, at this cultural moment, “it seems logical to hate men.”
She implies that she doesn’t necessarily mean non-American men or men of color, writing that “criticisms of this blanket condemnation of men—from transnational feminists who decry such glib universalism to U.S. women of color who demand an intersectional perspective—are mostly on the mark.” However, she adds, none of that should blind anyone to “some universal facts” about the sexes:
Pretty much everywhere in the world, this is true: Women experience sexual violence, and the threat of that violence permeates our choices big and small. In addition, male violence is not restricted to intimate-partner attacks or sexual assault but plagues us in the form of terrorism and mass gun violence. Women are underrepresented in higher-wage jobs, local and federal government, business, educational leadership, etc.; wage inequality continues to permeate every economy and almost every industry; women continue to provide far higher rates of unpaid labor in the home (e.g., child care, elder care, care for disabled individuals, housework and food provision); women have less access to education, particularly at the higher levels; women have lower rates of property ownership.
The list goes on.
Women are told “#NotAllMen” and “#NotHim,” she continues.... Read the full response on The Atlantic.
I nominate Suzanna Walters for the most hateful, venomous, vitriolic, and reprehensible op-ed in history of WaPo
Mark J. Perry | AEI | June 10, 2018
I hereby nominate Suzanna Danuta Walters (picture above), professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, for authoring the most hateful, venomous, vitriolic, malicious, misguided, despicable, vindictive, unpersuasive and reprehensible op-ed in the history of the Washington Post, and possibly in the history of modern journalism for a mainstream media publication. The op-ed is titled “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” and is featured prominently on the main editorial page of today’s (Sunday) Washington Post, here’s the “money hate speech quote” (last paragraph):
So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.
#HateSpeech #SuchaSmallMinority #WithAlmostNoOne #BecauseThisTypeofFeminismIsPureHate
Question 1: Would the Washington Post ever print anything that so convincingly qualifies as pure “hate speech” if it was directed against any other target except men?
Answer: #NotAChance.
Question 2: Is there anybody, especially any feminists, who are publicly supporting Professor Walter’s noxious, anti-male effluvium of hatred and vitriol?
Answer: #ApparentlyNot.... Read the full response on AEI.
Some Ideas You Can Hate Instead of Me: A Response to Suzanna Danuta Walters
Kevin Van Dam | Medium | June 10, 2018
Suzanna Danuta Walters, in a masterclass of click-bait article headlines, posits so very subtly, “Why can’t we hate men?” The next several hundred words circle the well-worn toilet bowl of feminist victimhood narrative, beginning with the opening paragraphs — a few salvos of confessions, stating that her “edge has been crossed for a long time.” Apparently, her unbridled hatred for men has been long held but now seems acceptable to flaunt on digital newsprint with impunity. I suppose The Patriarchy is a bit impotent if such venom is allowed to remain unpunished by the collective group identity of “men” that should be reviled so much for their violent oppression.
She does insert a caveat of sorts, saying “But, of course, the criticisms of this blanket condemnation of men — from transnational feminists who decry such glib universalism to U.S. women of color who demand an intersectional perspective — are mostly on the mark.” Obviously, as with the generalization of men, to criticize part is to criticize the whole; there is no nuance here. Thus, any feminist psy-ops currently undertaken, especially those of transnational and intersectional types apparently, are acceptable and laudable. Though these efforts described as “movements to challenge a masculinity built on domination and violence and to engage boys and men in feminism” calls to mind a sort of conversion-therapy approach to the topic. Perhaps we need to Fem the Men Away…or something.... Read the full response on Medium.
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