Saturday, September 28, 2013

Anger In Higher Education

The problem is that the feminist anger of the 1960s and 1970s s been institutionalized on our campus, where it seems impervious to change. Consider what your son faces if he enters a college in North America, Australia, or most of Europe. In the first week or two, he is required to attend a program on date rape, but nothing on date communication. By October, he will encounter Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but nothing about a "prostate cancer awareness month," though the incidence and deaths from the two diseases are similar. If your son becomes involved in student activities, he has access to significant student funds for women's centers and speakers on women's issues, but not for men's centers or speakers on men's issues. 

If your son is heterosexual, he may express interest in a woman who is taking a women's studies course or degree, and see her researching papers on how the patriarchy consists of men who made laws to benefit men at the expense of women. He may learn she is on a scholarship to encourage women in engineering, math or the other STEM professions; if he's observant, he'll note that despite few men majoring in the social sciences, he hasn't run across even a single man with a scholarship designed to encourage men to enter the social sciences. The low percentage of women in STEM fields is depicted as very troubling, but the fact that males account for only 43% of all college students is not.