High school history teacher and avowed feminist Nicholas Ferroni recently conducted a social “experiment” with a class of students. The experiment was designed to illustrate the bias created by a U.S. congress where 80% of congressional representatives are male. In a classroom of 80% girls and 20% boys, school policies were proposed that blatantly privileged female students/restricted male students. Some policies included language that suggested male students were sexually predatory. Despite the male students’ complaints, all the proposals passed with support from the vast majority of their female classmates.

The boys were supposedly taught a valuable lesson about how a majority male congress is biased against women (even though no concrete examples of the actual U.S. Congress being biased against women were provided). Ferroni disturbingly received media praise for turning his classroom into a gender-politics soapbox. Whoopi Goldberg called it the “best experiment ever” on her popular daytime talk-show The View.

However, as I will point out, there are numerous flaws and unanswered questions in Ferroni’s “experiment”. It’s also funny to note that when taken at face value, this painfully biased exercise in male-shaming actually only proves that women are sexists who shouldn’t be given political power.

Ferroni’s methodology is unclear

The actual methodology of Ferroni’s social experiment is very unclear. Ferroni offers only a threadbare explanation of what he is actually doing:

“Did you know congress is made up 80% men. Wonder how a man would feel of being part of a group made up of 80% women. Does it sound extreme? Well today we’re going to give some young men that opportunity by making them part of a focus group that is primarily women. Let’s see how young me react when they’re put in that position because that is how woman feel in congress everyday” [emphasis added]

Ferroni’s video of the experiment is heavily edited. I’m not confident it wasn’t mostly staged.

It appears a high school classroom was divided into 80% girls and 20% boys. A exact number of students isn’t given, but it looks like 6 boys and 24 girls. It’s unclear if this was a school sanctioned activity, how students were asked to participate, if they knew the purpose of the experiment beforehand, if they knew they were going to be put on Youtube and if they might have been some how psychologically primed to vote one way or another.

It’s also unclear if students were selected randomly. Ferroni’s interview on The View makes it sound like specific male students were selected and the school’s feminist club was heavily involved. This makes me think this wasn’t a random sample of students, but rather a few boys (perhaps unknowingly) being chosen to sit in a feminist lion den.

Ferroni puts three suggested policies up for a vote. Ferroni claims these were created by the “students” (perhaps the students in the feminist club), but I’m highly suspicious of how these were created/selected:

The Proposed Policies:

Policy #1: Girls get A 21% discount on all school related items

“All girls get a 21% Discount on all school related items: lunch, school dues, tickets, events and prom.”

Passed: Yes: 25 / No: 4

Policy #2: Boys must give girls a 2 minute head start between class periods

“Boys must give girls a 2 minute head start between class periods to avoid possible uncomfortable situations to protect you from suspension and stuff like that.”

Passed: Yes: 24 / No: 6

Policy #3: All boys must use lockers on the 2nd Floor

“All boys must use lockers on 2nd floor, only so girls can avoid being harassed between class periods”

Passed: Yes: 18 / No: 12

Experiment shows GIRLS are sexist

Before I get more into the flaws of this supposed social experiment, I want to point out the hilarious outcome that Ferroni unintentionally reached. Ferroni only actually shows examples of women committing sexist abuses of political power.

Ferroni is obviously trying to suggest that a majority male congress must therefore be enacting misogynist policies. However, he doesn’t provide any evidence this is actually the case. Ferroni doesn’t try the same exercise with a different group given a 80% male/20% female demographic, so we don’t know if boys would have actually done something similar.

Ferroni (a history teacher) also never gives any concrete examples of clearly misogynist legislation passed by the current congress. Probably because modern U.S. history doesn’t have many (or any?) examples of legislators so blatantly granting privileges specifically to men. In fact, many laws and acts have been created specifically to help women, such as the billion dollar Violence Against Women Act. Female genital mutilation has been outlawed across the country, but forced infant male genital mutilation is still legal and commonplace. Even after the military opened up all combat positions to women, the majority male congress still hesitates to make women equally subject to military conscription.

Basically, Ferroni wants us to assume with absolutely no proof that congressmen or men in general act just as horribly as the girls when given the majority of political power. You shouldn’t draw any conclusions from Ferroni’s exercise because it’s horribly flawed. However, if you did, the most reasonable conclusion would be that women (or at least high school girls) shouldn’t be trusted with political power.

History teacher doesn’t seem to know how democracy works

There are numerous problems with this experiment. Indeed, I’m very reluctant to even call it an “experiment”, because it is clearly not an honest effort to uncover objective truth, but a rigged political stunt.

Most noticeably, the experiment completely ignores the whole idea that elected congressional representatives are accountable to their electorate. Also, since at least the late 1960s, the majority of the U.S. electorate has been female.

How would the results of the experiment change if you told the students you were actually going to enact these policies BUT their votes would be made public record and next semester a much larger group of students that was 55% male would vote on whether they would be expelled from school? Not only that, but at least one other student would actually be campaigning for them to be expelled! I imagine this would encourage much more thoughtful and fair policy decisions from the students.

In their excellent takedown of Ferroni’s classroom antics, the National Coalition for Men also points out how ridiculous the idea of a bias against women is in a U.S. government awash with special programs and benefits for women, but lacking similar programs for men.

Ferroni practices feminist indoctrination not education

It shouldn’t surprise you that Ferroni is an avowed feminist and seems intent to bring his feminism into education. One of Ferroni’s articles at the Huffington Post reads:

“I, myself, have always been a feminist for many reasons but mainly because I owe my life and virtues to a woman. I have to believe that if we incorporated more women into our textbooks, boys would have less sexist tendencies and girls would have more ambition and optimism in their future career choices.”

In his interview on The View, Ferroni explains he decided in college that “if I become a teacher every week I’m going to do a social experiment” (I guess he didn’t take a class on the ethnics of human experimentation). When asked why he did this particular experiment, he explains:

“Next to me is one of my students Makala Bland and she founded our schools first feminist club, so we were talking about ways to teach boys true feminism. And I thought the best way was to flip the script on them a little bit. And we picked some of the biggest toughest football players at school, but they got it.”

What they “got” was publicly shamed. What they “got” was implicated in a feminist delusion of sexist oppression because they are men. What they “got” was the understanding they should feel ashamed for being men, but they will be accepted and applauded if they publicly admit their male privilege/sin.

Notice how the video of the experiment features (heavily edited) comments by the male students after the voting. Yet, no one asks a female student, “Why would you blatantly vote to give women privileges over men? Don’t you believe in equality?” Aren’t the female students’ votes really the most shocking thing about this whole affair? The complete lack of interest in why the female students voted how they did reinforces my suspicion this was all rigged. I wouldn’t be surprised if all/most of the female students were in on the whole thing from the start.

Also, notice that many of Ferroni’s proposed policies unnecessarily framed men as being sexually predatory. I am tempted to give Ferroni some what of a pass on this because its unclear if these statements may have been part of the (supposedly) student proposed policies. Although, it’s hard to imagine Ferroni didn’t have a hand in writing the proposed policies. Ferroni still makes plenty of other comments worthy of criticism. For example, after proposing Policy #1 (25% discount on school items for girls) Ferroni asks:

FERRONI: “Does anybody know way that probably does make sense?”



MALE STUDENT: “Because girl spend a lot on prom”



FERRONI: “Girls spend a lot on prom they do. Girls make less and girls actually have more expenses.” [emphasis added]

Ferroni is obviously referencing repeatedly debunked feminist gender wage gap propaganda, which claims/suggests the difference between men and women’s average salaries is caused by sexism and not simply different career choices. Also, I find it hard to believe there is any noticeable wage gap among high school students, who generally don’t have much in the way of careers.

Ferroni is also (perhaps unwittingly) making an incredibly controversial economic statement. The school is clearly mean to represent the nation state in this exercise. It sounds like he is suggesting the state (and thus ultimately the tax payer) should somehow subsidize largely voluntary and unnecessary spending habits.

It’s interesting that Ferroni doesn’t have much to say when one of the male student responds to Policy #2 (allowing girls to leave class 2 minutes earlier) by pointing out that girls also sexually touch/sexually harass boys at the school:

MALE STUDENT: “Why you gotta give girls a 2 minute headstart. I see girls smack guys butts and stuff all the time”



FERRONI: “Again…”



MALE STUDENT: “The girls touch guys, the guys touch the girls.”

The video then cuts, so we don’t see what (if any response) the male student received. Feminists don’t have a good history of accepting that women can actually be sexually predatory. It damages the core feminist narrative of sexual abuse being an inherent tool of patriarchal oppression. Prominent feminist research Mary Koss denied that it was even possible for a women to rape a man.

Even after Ferroni has read all the proposals, he can’t resist injecting more feminist talking points:

“I also want you to know that in congress 80% of men are telling women what do with their body.”

Ferroni is obviously voicing a political stance on the very controversial issue of abortion. This is not something a high school teacher should do with his students. It’s not his place.

Also, Ferroni again completely ignores the fact that many of these congressmen were elected by women. Would it be some how better if it were an 80% female congress telling women what to do with their bodies? How would Ferroni feel if every male pro-choice congressman was suddenly replaced by a pro-life congresswomen? If an female congresswomen telling American women what they can/can’t do with their bodies (or the unborn bodies connected to them) is still disagreeable, than the real issue isn’t about the sex of the legislator.

Ferroni is spreading the common fallacy that you must necessarily be part of a certain people group to be capable of making sound decisions or having empathy for that group.

Conclusion: Ferroni isn’t the solution, he is the problem

Ferroni was heaped with praise for his ridiculous charade. During his interview on The View, one of the hosts proclaimed, “You’re part of the solution.”

The host didn’t elaborate what exactly Ferroni was the solution to. Perhaps, the solution to teen boys being able to maintain any dignity or self-worth? Maybe the solution to students being able to gain knowledge in an environment that isn’t trying to politically indoctrinate them?

Unfortunately, too many American teachers can’t see the moral line between between acting as educators and acting as ideological indoctrinators. Ferroni used his classroom as a political soap box to spread gender propaganda, shame male students and then put the whole thing on Youtube. These aren’t the actions of a responsible teacher who respects and serves his students.

Media accolades have given Ferroni every incentive to continue playing feminist mind-games with teenagers. Ferroni is already somewhat of a media darling, having previously been declared the “sexiest teacher alive”, publicly honored for his LBGT community advocacy and allowed to host a (very boring) TED Talk. Unfortunately, Ferroni’s fame may cause other feminist-minded educators to attempt similar stunts. Teachers like Ferroni shouldn’t be applauded, they should be condemned.