The Feminization of American Culture –
Human Biology and Modern Chemicals
By Leonard Sax
From The World and I, Oct 2001
Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician and psychologist practicing in Montgomery
County, Maryland.
1. In ancient times--by which I mean,
before 1950--most scholars agreed that
women were, as a rule, not quite equal
to men. Women were charming but
mildly defective. Many (male) writers
viewed women as perpetual teenagers,
stuck in an awkward place between
childhood and adulthood. German
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, for
example, wrote that women are
"childish, silly and short-sighted, really
nothing more than overgrown children,
all their life long. Women are a kind of
intermediate stage between the child
and the man."
2. Psychologists in that bygone era
devoted considerable time and energy
to the question of why women couldn't
outgrow their childish ways. The
Freudians said it was because they
were trapped in the pre-Oedipal stage,
tortured by penis envy. Followers of
Abraham Maslow claimed that women
were fearful of self-actualization.
Jungians insisted that women were
born with a deficiency of imprinted
archetypes.
3. Back then, of course, almost all the
psychologists were men.
4. Things are different now. Male
psychologists today are so rare that
Ilene Philipson--author of On the
Shoulders of Women: The Feminization
of Psychotherapy--speaks of "the
vanishing male therapist" as a species
soon to be extinct. As the gender of the
model psychotherapist has changed
from male to female, the standard of
mental health has changed along with
it. Today, Dr. Philipson observes, the
badge of emotional maturity is no
longer the ability to control or sublimate
your feelings but rather the ability to
express them. A mature adult
nowadays is someone who is
comfortable talking about her inner
conflicts,
someone
who
values
personal relationships above abstract
goals, someone who isn't afraid to cry.
In other words: a mature adult is a
woman.
5. It is now the men who are thought to
be stuck halfway between childhood
and adulthood, incapable of articulating
their
inner
selves.
Whereas
psychologists fifty years ago amused
themselves by cataloging women's
(supposed) deficiencies, psychologists
today
devote
themselves
to
demonstrating "the natural superiority
of women." Psychologists report that
women are better able to understand
nonverbal communication and are
more
expressive
of
emotion.
Quantitative personality inventories
reveal that the average woman is more
trusting, nurturing, and outgoing than
the average man. The average eighthgrade girl has a command of language
and writing skills equal to that of the
average eleventh-grade boy.
6. The feminization of psychology
manifests itself in myriad ways.
Consider child discipline. Seventy
years ago, doctors agreed that the best
way to discipline your child was to
punish the little criminal. ("Spare the
rod, spoil the child.") Today, spanking
is considered child abuse. You're
supposed to talk with your kid.
Spanking sends all the wrong
messages, we are told, and may have
stupendously horrible consequences.
Psychoanalyst Alice Miller confidently
informed us, in her book For Your Own
Good, that Adolf Hitler's evil can be
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The Feminization of American Culture / 1
traced to the spankings his father
inflicted on him in childhood.
7. It isn't only psychology that has
undergone a process of feminization
over the past fifty years, and it isn't only
women whose attitudes have changed.
For example, men didn't used to care
so much about their appearance.
Psychiatrists Harrison Pope and
Katharine Phillips report that in
American culture today, "Men of all
ages, in unprecedented numbers, are
preoccupied with the appearance of
their bodies." They document that
"men's dissatisfaction with body
appearance has nearly tripled in less
than thirty years--from 15 percent in
1972, to 34 percent in 1985, to 43
percent in 1997." Cosmetic plastic
surgery, once marketed exclusively to
women, has found a rapidly growing
male clientele. The number of men
undergoing liposuction, for instance,
quadrupled between 1990 and 2000.
THE FEMINIZATION OF
ENTERTAINMENT AND POLITICS
8. This process of feminization
manifests itself, though somewhat
differently, when you turn on the TV or
watch a movie. Throughout the midtwentieth century, leading men were,
as a rule, infallible: think of Clark Gable
in Gone With the Wind, Cary Grant in
North by Northwest, or Fred McMurray
in My Three Sons. But no longer. In
family comedy, the father figure has
metamorphosed from the all-knowing,
all-wise Robert Young of Father Knows
Best to the occasional bumbling of Bill
Cosby and the consistent stupidity of
Homer
Simpson.
Commercially
successful movies now often feature
women who are physically aggressive,
who dominate or at least upstage the
men. This description applies to movies
as diverse as Charlie's Angels and
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In
today's cinema, to paraphrase Garrison
Keillor, all the leading women are
strong and all the leading men are
good-looking.
9. A transformation of comparable
magnitude seems to be under way in
the political arena. Military command
used to be considered the best
qualification for leadership--as it was
with
Ulysses
Grant,
Theodore
Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and
Dwight Eisenhower, to name only a
few. Today, the best qualification for
leadership may be the ability to listen.
The feminine way of seeing the world
and its problems is, arguably,
becoming the mainstream way.
10. In 1992, Bill Clinton ran against
George Bush for the presidency.
Clinton was an acknowledged draft
evader. Bush, the incumbent, was a
World War II hero who had just led the
United States to military success in
Operation Desert Storm. Clinton won.
In 1996, Clinton was challenged by Bob
Dole, another decorated World War II
veteran. Once again, the man who had
evaded military service defeated the
combat veteran. Moral of the story: It's
all very well to be a war hero, but in our
modern, feminized society, being a war
hero won't get you elected president.
Conversely, being a draft dodger isn't
as bad as it used to be.
11. A number of authors have
recognized the increasing feminization
of American society. With few
exceptions,
most
of
those
acknowledging this process have
welcomed it. As Elinor Lenz and
Barbara Myerhoff wrote in their 1985
book The Feminization of America,
"The feminizing influence is moving
[American society] away from many
archaic ways of thinking and behaving,
toward the promise of a saner and
more humanistic future. ... Feminine
culture, with its commitment to creating
and protecting life, is our best and
brightest hope for overcoming the
destructive, life-threatening forces of
the nuclear age."
12. I think we can all agree on one
point: there have been fundamental
changes in American culture over the
past fifty years, changes that indicate a
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The Feminization of American Culture / 2
shift from a male-dominated culture to
a feminine or at least an androgynous
society. The question is, what's causing
this shift? Some might argue that the
changes I've described are simply a
matter of better education, progressive
laws,
and two generations of
consciousness-raising: an evolution
from a patriarchal Dark Ages to a
unisex, or feminine, Enlightenment. I'm
willing to consider that hypothesis. But
before we accept that conclusion, we
should ask whether there are any other
possibilities.
FEMINIZED WILDLIFE
13. We have to make a big jump now, a
journey that will begin at the Columbia
River in Washington, near the Oregon
border. James Nagler, assistant
professor of zoology at the University of
Idaho, recently noticed something
funny about the salmon he observed in
the Columbia. Almost all of them were-or appeared to be--female. But when
he caught a few and analyzed their
DNA, he found that many of the
"female" fish actually were male: their
chromosomes were XY instead of XX.
14. Nagler's findings echo a recent
report
from
England,
where
government scientists have found
some pretty bizarre fish. In two polluted
rivers, half the fish are female, and the
other half are...something else. Not
female but not male either. The English
scientists call these bizarre fish
"intersex": their gonads are not quite
ovaries, not quite testicles, but some
weird thing in between, making neither
eggs nor sperm. In both rivers, the
intersex fish are found downstream of
sites where treated sewage is
discharged into the river. Upstream
from the sewer effluent, the incidence
of intersex is dramatically lower. The
relationship between the concentration
of sewer effluent and the incidence of
intersex is so close that "the proportion
of intersex fish in any sample of fish
could perhaps be predicted, using a
linear equation, from the average
concentration of effluent constituents in
the river."
15. It's something in the water.
Something in the water is causing
feminization of male fish.
16. And it's not just fish. In Lake
Apopka, in central Florida, Dr. Louis
Guillette and his associates have found
male alligators with abnormally small
penises; in the blood of these alligators,
female hormone levels are abnormally
high and male hormone levels
abnormally low. Male Florida panthers
have become infertile; the levels of
male sex hormones in their blood are
much lower (and the levels of female
hormones higher) than those found in
panthers in less-polluted environments.
17. What's going on?
18. Our modern society generates a
number of chemicals that never existed
before about fifty years ago. Many of
these chemicals, it turns out, mimic the
action of female sex hormones called
estrogens.
Plastics--including
a
plasticizer called phthalate, used in
making flexible plastic for bottles of
Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, Evian water, and
so forth--are known to have estrogenic
effects.
Many
commonly
used
pesticides have estrogenlike actions on
human cells. Estrogenic chemicals
ooze out of the synthetic lacquer that
lines the inside of soup cans. These
chemicals and others find their way into
sewage and enter the rivers and lakes.
Hence the effects on fish, alligators,
and other wildlife.
EFFECTS ON HUMANS
19. Modern chemicals may have a
feminizing effect on wildlife. That's
certainly cause for concern in its own
right. But is there any evidence that a
similar process of feminization is
occurring in humans?
20. Answer: there may be. Just like the
Florida panther, human males are
experiencing a rapid decline in fertility
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The Feminization of American Culture / 3
and sperm count. The sperm count of
the average American or European
man has declined continuously over the
past four decades, to the point where
today it is less than 50 percent of what
it was forty years ago. This downward
trend is seen only in industrialized
regions of North America and western
Europe. Lower sperm counts are being
reported in urban Denmark but not in
rural Finland, for example. Of course,
that's precisely the pattern one would
expect, if the lower sperm counts are
an effect of "modern" materials such as
plastic water bottles.
21. Male infertility, one result of that
lower count, is now the single most
common cause of infertility in our
species. The rate of infertility itself has
quadrupled in the past forty years, from
4 percent in 1965 to 10 percent in 1982
to at least 16 percent today.
WHAT ABOUT GIRLS?
22. So far we've talked mainly about
the effect of environmental estrogens
on males. What about girls and
women? What physiological effects
might excess environmental estrogens
have on them? Giving estrogens to
young girls would, in theory, trigger the
onset of puberty at an earlier than
expected age. In fact, in the past few
years doctors have noticed that girls
are beginning puberty earlier than ever
before. Just as the environmentalestrogen hypothesis would predict, this
phenomenon is seen only in girls, not in
boys. Dr. Marcia Herman-Giddens,
studying over seventeen thousand
American girls, found that this trend to
earlier puberty is widespread. "Girls
across the
United States
are
developing pubertal characteristics at
younger ages than currently used
norms," she concluded.
23. Rather than labeling all these
pubescent
eight-year-olds
as
"abnormal," Dr. Paul Kaplowitz and his
associates recently recommended that
the earliest age for "normal" onset of
puberty simply be redefined as age
seven in Caucasian girls and age six in
African-American girls. Dr. Kaplowitz is
trying, valiantly, to define this problem
out of existence. If you insist that
normal puberty begins at age six or age
seven, then all these eight-year-old
girls with well-filled bras suddenly
become "normal."
24. But saying so doesn't make it so.
Last year, doctors in Puerto Rico
reported that most young girls with
premature breast development have
toxic levels of phthalates in their blood;
those phthalates appear to have
seeped out of plastic food and
beverage containers. The authors
noted that Puerto Rico is a warm
island. Plastic containers that become
warm are more likely to ooze phthalate
molecules into the food or beverages
they contain. These authors, led by Dr.
Ivelisse Colon, reported their findings in
Environmental Health Perspectives, the
official journal of the National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences (a
branch of the National Institutes of
Health). On the cover of the issue in
which the report appeared, the editors
chose to feature the picture of a young
woman drinking water from a plastic
bottle.
25. What effect might extra estrogen
have on adult women? Many scientists
have expressed concern that exposure
to excessive environmental estrogens
may lead to breast cancer. The rate of
breast cancer has risen dramatically
over the past fifty years. Today, one in
every nine American women can
expect to develop breast cancer at
some point in her life. But this increase
is seen only in industrialized countries,
where plastics and other products of
modern chemistry are widely used.
Women born in Third World countries
are at substantially lower risk. When
they move from a Third World country
to the United States, their risk soon
increases to that seen in other women
living here, clearly demonstrating that
the increased risk is an environmental,
not a genetic, factor.
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The Feminization of American Culture / 4
WHAT’S THE CONNECTION?
26. At this point, you may feel that
you've been reading two completely
disconnected essays: one about the
feminization of American culture, and
the second about the effects of
environmental estrogens. Could there
be any connection between the two?
27. There may be. If human physiology
and endocrinology are being affected
by
environmental
estrogens--as
suggested by lower sperm counts,
increasing infertility, earlier onset of
puberty in girls, and rising rates of
breast cancer--then there is no reason
in principle why human psychology and
sexuality should be exempt. If we
accept
the
possibility
that
environmental estrogens are affecting
human physiology and endocrinology,
then we must also consider the
possibility that the feminization of
American culture may, conceivably,
reflect the influence of environmental
estrogens.
28. The phenomena we have
considered
show
a
remarkable
synchrony. Many of the cultural trends
discussed in the first half of the article
began to take shape in the 1950s and
'60s, just as plastics and other modern
chemicals began to be widely
introduced into American life. There
are, of course, many difficulties in
attempting to measure any correlation
between an endocrine variable--such
as a decline in sperm counts--and a
cultural variable, such as cultural
feminization. One of many problems is
that no single quantitative variable
accurately and reliably measures the
degree to which a culture is becoming
feminized. However, we can get some
feeling for the synchrony of the cultural
process with the endocrine process by
considering the correlation of the
decline in sperm counts with the
decline in male college enrollment.
29. We've already mentioned how
sperm counts have declined steadily
and continuously in industrialized areas
of North America and western Europe
since about 1950. Let's use that decline
as our endocrine variable. As the
cultural variable, let's look at college
graduation rates. Since 1950, the
proportion of men among college
graduates has been steadily declining.
In 1950, 70 percent of college
graduates were men; today, that
number is about 43 percent and falling.
Judy Mohraz, president of Goucher
College, warned not long ago that if
present trends continue, "the last man
to graduate from college will receive his
baccalaureate in the year 2067....
Daughters not only have leveled the
playing
field
in
most
college
classrooms, but they are exceeding
their brothers in school success across
the board."
30. Of course, the correlation between
these phenomena--one endocrine, one
cultural--doesn't prove that they must
derive from the same underlying
source. But such a strong correlation
certainly provides some evidence that
the endocrine phenomenon of declining
sperm counts may derive from the
same
source
as
the
cultural
phenomenon of declining male college
enrollment (as a percentage of total
enrollment).
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE
MALE AMERICAN EMPIRE
31. I have suggested that the
feminization of American culture and
endocrine
phenomena
such
as
declining sperm counts are both
manifestations of the effects of
environmental estrogens. To the best
of my knowledge, no other author has
yet made such a suggestion. If this
hypothesis is ultimately shown to be at
least partly correct, it would not be the
first time that items of daily household
life contributed to the transformation of
a mighty civilization. A number of
scientists, most notably toxicologist
Jerome Nriagu, have suggested that
one factor leading to the decline and
fall of the Roman Empire was the lead
glaze popular among the Roman
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The Feminization of American Culture / 5
aristocracy after about A.D. 100. Bowls
and dishes were glazed with lead,
which was also widely used in
household plumbing. (Our word
plumbing comes from the Latin
plumbum, which means lead.) The
neurological symptoms of lead toxicity-mania, difficulty concentrating, and
mood swings--were not recognized as
manifestations of poisoning. No Roman
scientist conducted the necessary
controlled experiment: a comparison of
families that used lead-glazed pottery
with families that did not. The scientific
worldview necessary for such an
experiment did not exist at the time. It
is thought-provoking to consider that
something as insignificant as pottery
glazing may have brought down the
Roman Empire.
32. Could anything of comparable
magnitude be happening right now, in
our
own
culture?
Testing
the
hypothesis I have proposed will be
difficult. It is probably not possible to
randomize humans to a "modern,
plasticized" environment versus a
"primitive, no-plastics, no-cans, no-
pesticide" environment--and even if it
were possible, it would not be ethical to
do so. (It should be noted, however,
that one careful study has already been
published demonstrating that men who
consumed only organic produce had
higher sperm counts than men eating
regular, pesticide-treated produce.)
Measures of the degree to which a
culture is "feminized" would be
controversial, and only seldom would
such
measures
be
objectively
quantifiable.
33. Nevertheless, the world around us
is changing in ways that have never
occurred in the history of our species. It
is possible that some of these changes
in our culture may reflect the influence
of
environmental
estrogens,
an
influence whose effects are subtle and
incremental. To the extent that human
dignity means being in control of one's
destiny, we should explore the
possibility that our minds and bodies
are being affected by environmental
estrogens in ways that we do not, as
yet,
fully
understand.
I.
Global Questions
1.
What is the relationship between the first (par. 1-7) and second (par. 8-12)
sections of the article?
a. The second section gives examples of a main point in the first section.
b. The second section explains the reason for the effect in the first section.
c. The second section adds on and continues the ideas in the first section.
d. The second section presents ideas that contrast with the ideas in the first
section.
2.
Why does the writer discuss “feminized” wildlife (par. 13-18)? ______________
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The Feminization of American Culture / 6
3.
According to the writer, what effects do environmental estrogens have on males,
girls and women?
Males: _________________________________________________________
Girls: __________________________________________________________
Women: ________________________________________________________
4.
a. In which paragraphs of the article does the writer present his main question?
(NOTE: He asks the question in different ways 3 times. Try to find at least 2 of
them.) Par: ____________ Par: ____________
b. Write the question.
_______________________________________________________________
c. What is the answer to his question? ________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
5.
What is the MAIN purpose of this article?
a. To explain why the feminization of American culture is positive
b. To describe some possible effects of environmental chemicals on our society
c. To demonstrate how human biology has developed in the last century
d. To warn men about the rising dominance of women in modern culture
6.
Regarding the feminization of American culture, what does the writer
recommend?
a. He thinks nothing should be done, because overall the effect has been
positive.
b. He thinks we should try to investigate the source of the feminization.
c. He thinks nothing can be done, because it is too difficult to do ethical studies
on this topic.
d. He thinks that men should be encouraged to eat only organic produce.
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The Feminization of American Culture / 7
III.
Examples in the Text
Example
1. change in child
Paragraph
Idea it Illustrates
6
discipline
2. Men’s preoccupation
7
with their appearance
3. Men doing cosmetic
7
plastic surgery
4. Fred McMurray in My
Specific:
General:
8
Three Sons
5. Charlie’s Angels
8
Specific:
General:
6. Charles de Gaulle
9
7. Bill Clinton and George
10
Bush
8. Elinor Lenz and
Specific:
General:
11
Barbara Myerhoff
Specific:
General:
9. “Intersex” fish
14
10. Male Florida panthers
16
11. Sperm counts in
20
Denmark and Finland
12. Lead glaze used in the
31
Roman Empire
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The Feminization of American Culture / 8
Feminization of American Culture
Comprehension Questions
1. The writer divides the article into three parts. What is the topic of each part?
(Tip: Skim the whole article to locate the paragraph in which this division is
explicitly mentioned by the writer).
1) para. ____-______ _____________________________________________________
2) para. ____- _____
_____________________________________________________
3) para. ____- _____
_____________________________________________________
2. Which period of time does “back then” (para. 3) refer to?
1) 20-30 years ago
2) 50-70 years ago
3) 100 years ago
4) 200-300 years ago
3. a) In “ancient times”, women were most commonly referred to as
_______________________________________________________
b) How many possible explanations for this view does the writer bring? ______________
4. What is the main characteristic of an emotionally mature adult in today’s psychology? (The
answer is NOT ‘A woman’)
_________________________________________
5. What specific change in the cinema is illustrated by the examples of the movies
“Gone with the Wind” and “Charlie's Angels”?
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
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The Feminization of American Culture / 9
6. Paragraphs 10-11 mention names of several famous leaders. What general change in
politics do these examples illustrate? (Complete the sentence below).
*The answer may be found in other paragraphs as well.
Today the main characteristic of modern leadership is
______________________________ rather than
_______________________________________________________.
7. Better education, progressive laws and consciousness-raising (described by the
writer as an evolution in history) are examples of possible
_____________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
8. What causes fish, alligators and other wildlife species to become “intersex”?
________________________________________________
9. a) In the section “What’s the connection?”, the writer draws a connection between
___________________________________ and
_________________________________. Following that, in paragraphs 28-29, the writer
brings an example to explain this connection, in which the former phenomenon is
illustrated by _________________________________________ and the latter
phenomenon is illustrated by ______________________________________.
Yet, the writer feels it may not be easy to _________________ the above hypothesis.
10. Quote a sentence which shows that the text is based more on assumptions than on
facts.
Para #. ______ Quote
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The Feminization of American Culture / 10