Figuring out feminism - how feminists abuse statistical information to serve their political agenda - Cover Story

National Review, June 27, 1994 by Christina Hoff Sommers

150,000 girls die of anorexia each year! 40 per cent more women are battered on Super Bowl Sunday! Women get paid 59 cents on the dollar! When feminists quote statistics, reach for your common sense.

In Revolution from Within, Gloria Steinem informs her readers that "in this country alone ... about 150,000 females die of anorexia each year." That is more than three times the annual number of fatalities from car accidents for the total population. Miss Steinem refers readers to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, where one again finds the statistic, along with the author's outrage. "How," she asks, "would America react to the mass self-immolation by hunger of its favorite sons?" Although "nothing justifies comparison with the Holocaust," she cannot refrain from making one anyway. "When confronted with a vast number of emaciated bodies starved not by nature but by men, one must notice a certain resemblance."

Where did Miss Wolf get her figures? Her source is Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease by Joan Brumberg, a historian and former director of women's studies at Cornell University. She, too, is fully aware of the political significance of the startling statistic. She points out that the women who study eating problems "seek to demonstrate that these disorders are an inevitable consequence of a misogynistic society that demeans women ... by objectifying their bodies." Professor Brumberg, in turn, attributes the figure to the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association.

I called the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association and spoke to Dr. Diane Mickley, its president. "We were misquoted," she said. In a 1985 newsletter the association had referred to 150,000 to 200,000 sufferers (not fatalities) of anorexia nervosa. What is the correct morbidity rate? Most experts are reluctant to give exact figures. One clinician told me that of 1,400 patients she had treated in ten years, 4 had died - all through suicide. The National Center for Health Statistics reported 101 deaths from anorexia nervosa in 1983 and 67 deaths in 1988. Thomas Dunn of the Division of Vital Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 1991 there were 54 deaths from anorexia nervosa and no deaths from bulimia. The deaths of these young women are a tragedy, certainly, but in a country of one hundred million adult females, such numbers are hardly evidence of a "holocaust."

Yet now the false figure, supporting the view that our "sexist society" demeans women by objectifying their bodies, is widely accepted as true. Ann Landers repeated it in her syndicated column in April 1992: "Every year, 150,000 American women die from complications associated with anorexia and bulimia."

Will Miss Steinem advise her readers of the egregious statistical error? Will Mrs. Landers? Will it even matter? By now, the 150,000 figure has made it into college textbooks. A recent women's studies text, aptly titled The Knowledge Explosion, contains the erroneous figure in its preface.

Next Crisis, Please

The anorexia "crisis" is only one example of the kind of provocative but inaccurate information being purveyed by women about "women's issues" these days. On November 4, 1992, Deborah Louis, president of the National Women's Studies Association, sent a message to the Women's Studies Electronic Bulletin Board: "According to [the] last March of Dimes report, domestic violence (vs. pregnant women) is now responsible for more birth defects than all other causes combined. Personally [this] strikes me as the most disgusting piece of data I've seen in a long while." This was, indeed, unsettling news. But it seemed implausible. I asked my neighbor, a pediatric neurologist at Boston's Children's Hospital, about the report. He told me that although severe battery may occasionally cause miscarriage, he had never heard of battery as a significant cause of birth defects.

I called the March of Dimes to get a copy of the report. Maureen Corry, director of the March's Education and Health Promotion Program, denied any knowledge of it. "We have never seen this research before," she said. I did a search and found that - study or no study - journalists around the country were citing it.

"Domestic violence is the leading cause of birth defects, more than all other medical causes combined, according to a March of Dimes study." (Boston Globe, September 2, 1991.)

"Especially grotesque is the brutality reserved for pregnant women: the March of Dimes has concluded that the battering of women during pregnancy causes more birth defects than all the diseases put together for which children are usually immunized." (Time magazine, January 18, 1993.)

"The March of Dimes has concluded that the battering of women during pregnancy causes more birth defects than all the diseases put together for which children are usually immunized." (Dallas Morning News, February 7, 1993.)

I called the March of Dimes again. Andrea Ziltzer of their media-relations department told me that the rumor was spinning out of control. Governors' offices, state health departments, and Washington politicians had flooded the office with phone calls. Even the office of Senator Edward Kennedy had requested a copy of the "report."