By Professor
Doom
One of the many problems on campus today
is how males are targeted to the point of being second class citizens. As
faculty, I’ve been warned against giving homework and tests, because these
things discourage students…but admin doesn’t understand how creating a climate
of hatred against males is discouraging male students from coming to campus (60% of graduates are female for
reasons, after all).
It’s isn’t just the endless “we need more
females in STEM” promotions on our campuses, the systemic sexism on our
campuses really does make males think they are the problem.
To be fair,
these sorts of initiations don’t simultaneously come from all departments.
There’s usually a specific origin:
The Counseling and Mental Health Center at the University of Texas at Austin recently launched a new
program to help male students “take control over their gender identity and
develop a healthy sense of masculinity.”
--emphasis added.
I really do remember a time when campuses
were all about education and research, and campuses were composed of
departments, each focusing on particular academic fields. Today, campuses are
spit up into little fiefdoms, each filled with assorted Vice Presidents
determined to find something to do; academic departments are now an
afterthought, a mere curlicue on the new university mission of supporting the
administrative fiefdoms.
So it is that instead of Pyschology
Departments handling this sort of thing, we have “Counseling and Mental Health
Centers” doing what no university would consider doing a generation ago.
The program is
predicated on a critique of so-called “restrictive masculinity.” Men, the
program argues, suffer when they are told to “act like a man” or when they are
encouraged to fulfill traditional gender roles, such as being “successful” or
“the breadwinner.”
Seriously, what’s happened to us as a
people that being successful, acquiring enough resources to raise a family, are
considered bad things, goals which
are problematic for a man to pursue? Imagine being raised in a normal home
environment where these goals are encouraged, and then coming to campus and
being told that what you’ve learned in your family is wrongthink? Having this new point of view given to you by a
$150,000 a year Vice President of Man-Hating is going to give a mixed,
confusing message to be sure.
Though you might
enjoy “taking care of people” or being “active,” MasculinUT warns that
many of these attributes are actually dangerous,
Holy cow. If I were the suspicious sort
(though I guess I am), I could interpret the above as saying “you shouldn’t
take care of people, let the government do it” and “don’t be active, become a
couch potato, sit home and trust your government-supplied news, and get your
health care from the government…”.
Perhaps that’s a bit paranoid, but for
thousands of years, it was understood that a proper male did indeed take care
of the people he loved, and engaged in rigorous physical activity—a gymnasium was a place both for
exercise and intellectual pursuit in the ancient world, after all. Today a gymnasium is just
for exercise, and they don’t want males doing even that.
Why are our universities now teaching the
exact opposite of the wisdom humanity accumulated over thousands of years? A
healthy body really does contribute to a healthy mind, and we’ve known this for
a very long time…but the university is negating this belief, for some reason.
“If you are a male
student at UT reading this right now, we hope that learning about this helps
you not to feel guilty about having participated in these definitions of
masculinity, and instead feel empowered to break the cycle!” the program
offers.
Males need help to not feel guilty?
Break the cycle of life which has created the most advanced civilization this
planet has ever produced? If we’re really going to reject thousands of years of
knowledge, shouldn’t we do so for a good reason beyond “maybe the students
aren’t happy with this wisdom”? Seriously, is there nobody on campus
cognitively able to question this new initiative?
The program is
currently without leadership, but not for long. The school is in the process of
hiring a “healthy masculinities coordinator” to
run the program…
Am I truly alone in thinking it
ridiculous that “leadership” is defined as “mindlessly following the new
narrative”? Is there truly nobody who finds the title “Healthy Masculinities
Coordinator” a bit Orwellian in that this coordinator will be promoting the
exact opposite of what “healthy masculinity” has meant for thousands of years?
Does anyone think maybe this is a strange title to find on a university campus?
While many schools
now have similar programs, this appears to be the first run directly out of a
Counseling and Mental Health Center.
As the article a bit too subtly
points out, this isn’t just a problem at University of Texas. Many of our
schools are now pursuing social engineering, tearing down the foundations which
allowed us to build a great society in the past.
There is no evidence
that masculinity itself contributes to violence. Universities that run similar
programs, such as UNC-Chapel Hill and Northwestern, have admitted that their programming isn’t supported by any evidence.
Yes, this destroying of the
foundations of our culture is unsupported by any evidence…and yet our schools
are still doing it. It’s a shame none of our “leaders” in higher education can
ask “why?” but allow me to offer a very simple answer.
Our schools are drowning in fiefdoms
filled with very highly paid administrators, far, far, far, more than could
ever be justified for the university missions of education and research. These
guys have to give themselves a job to do, and they do not care if there’s no
reason for it, no evidence indicating their job is necessary. If it turns out
what they’re doing is a disaster, that’s a bonus—you’ll just establish another
fiefdom to fix the problems created by the anti-masculinity fiefdom.
And so again I come to the student loan
scam, which provides the money for these people who’ve given themselves the job
of destroying a system which has created so much wealth it can pay them,
exorbitantly, to do it. Just end the student loan scam already.
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