Jim Saksa | Missing the bigger picture

Earlier in the semester, the DP ran a guest column by Colleen Honigsberg entitled, "Closing the LSAT Gender Gap."

In it, Ms. Honigsberg managed to masterfully illustrate the terrible flaws of modern feminism.

Citing a year-long period, she noted that while women were 49.08 percent of LSAT takers, only 46.9 percent of law students are women. What this equates to is a devastatingly massive 2.18-percent (two-point-one-eight!) decline from test takers to enrollees.

The culprit? A 2.5 point difference in the average LSAT score, presumably caused by biased questions, which destroyed any and all hope for an admissions letter for our maligned - no, oppressed! - two percent.

But I'm just quibbling with pesky details, trying to mask this torrid gender bigotry for my own good-I'm doing your dirty work, Law School, let me in already!

Or girls could always just apply to schools like Cal. They care more about your GPA - in which girls have outperformed guys for the past five years, as Ms. Honigsberg pointed out.

Isn't that a gender gap, too, or do they only count when they hurt women?

And then there's the American Bar Association, which points out that in the past 40 years, the number of women pursuing law has increased dramatically. In fact, 49 percent of students entering law school in 2000 had vaginas (if the Vagina Monologues can use the hoo-ha synecdoche, so can I). That's a lot better than 4 percent in 1961.

Moreover, every law student I spoke to when I visited Georgetown's law school this past weekend said that there was no noticeable gender gap. "I certainly don't sense it in the classroom," first year law student Natasha Gopaul told me.

Ms. Honigsberg really got my goat with this line: "The media [is] ignoring gender differences in the LSAT." Are you serious? Thank God that the media is ignoring this statistically insignificant "problem." Distressingly, however, they are also ignoring a much larger - and far more insidious - gender gap.

According to the Department of Education, men comprised a mere 43 percent of undergraduate enrollees in 2005.

That's a 14-percent (fourteen!) gender gap that the media is ignoring. Moreover, men are less than 41 percent of the students earning a Masters degree - that's almost a 19-point (I can't even count that high with my shoes on!) gap. Moreover, if historical trends continue, these gaps will continue to grow.

Now, girls and guys who have graduated high school are still going to college in about the same numbers - girls only have a 4-percent lead here. So where did my 14-percent enrollment swing come from? It's not that we have a massive over supply of young women. It's that fewer guys are graduating high school compared to the fairer sex.

Forget about law school - it's hard to even get a janitorial job without a high school degree. Maybe this massive and mounting education gap helps explain why guys are much more likely to commit felonies and make up 95.5 percent of prison inmates (gender gap, anyone?)

But instead of concern for these massive systemic biases in our society in general and education in particular, so-called feminists like Ms. Honigsberg bewail trivial differences.

This is exactly why feminism has been relegated to the political periphery and why an ever-increasing number of women refuse to call themselves feminists.

And that is a terrible shame because not all feminist issues are complete bunk like this.

Women remain more likely to be the victims of sexual violence. They remain more likely to be forced into sex slavery. And they remain more likely to be victims of domestic abuse.

We haven't seen a prominent politician champion federal day care for working mothers or demand affordable contraception for low-income women or do much of anything to end the cycle of violence against our mothers, sisters and daughters.

These are the serious and important issues that get ignored when misguided feminists complain about LSAT scores or the exclusion of the Other in literature or film. Feminism has ceased to be a viable sociopolitical movement focused on achieving equality for women and has become a limp heap of intellectually bankrupt literary criticism, humanist philosophy and vapid complaint. Worst of all has been this recent turn toward hypocrisy; the lament over inequality, only if said inequality affects women.

In Philadelphia, one group, Women Organized Against Rape, still works on issues that matter. Penn V-Day is raising money to support it, proving that not every instance of feminism these days is worthless. Some are actually quite good. And more should be.

Jim Saksa is a College senior from Toms River, NJ. His e-mail address is saksa@dailypennsylvanian.com. You Sir, are an Idiot appears on Mondays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.