Male Bashing in Academe

Started by blackmanxxx, Jan 27, 2007, 11:20 AM

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Male Bashing in Academe
by Ilana Mercer

Dr. Veronica Dahl is a professor of computing science at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. While the estimable Prof. doubtless has considerable expertise in her field, computers were not the topic on which she was asked to expound by the local Knowledge Network. In a taped interview some time back, Prof. Dahl offered that the reason boys were falling behind girls in the school system was that boys were lazy. They know they are the "ruling class," she said in a soothing dulcet voice, and they know that no matter how badly they perform, their position in society is secure.

I followed up with a column in a local newspaper in which I identified Dahl's faux pas with second wave feminism whereby women are seen as a besieged political class fighting to unseat the ruling class whose members refuse to let go of patriarchal privilege and power. Dahl and colleague, John Dewey Jones, director of the school of engineering science, protested to the editor that I had failed to divine the laudable context of Dahl's message. Here is the gist of Prof. Jones' rebuttal: Dahl didn't say what Mercer alleged she said, but even though she didn't say what she is alleged to have said, what Dahl didn't say is accurate (see satire "Yes, Prime Minister"). Plainly, both Dewey and Dahl deny the quote, but go on to reinforce its message, namely that girls work hard because of society's expectations; boys often don't because they dominate society. Voila, second-wave feminism!

There are so many disturbing things about this pronouncement not least its blanket condemnation of half the population. Here is a woman who should know something of the scientific method, yet is advancing opinion based not on data, but on radical feminist ideology. To anyone who has any doubts, feminism and second wave feminism in particular is a theory, no more, no less, and a conspiracy theory at that, since it claims that throughout history men have conspired to dominate women.

The position of men right now contradicts this dogma. It is quite striking that an educator like Dahl can shrug off the facts: Women continue to live longer than men. Five times as many young men as women commit suicide, men are twice as likely to be unemployed and find it twice as hard to get another job, and men are infinitely more likely to suffer industrial accidents and diseases which may destroy their lives. Boys, moreover, are far more likely to be slapped with the diagnosis of learning disabled than girls, and subjected to the Ritalin assault, as are they less likely to graduate from high school and go on to college.

Judging from the letters I received from students at SFU, our devoted faculty are blithely unaware of the experience many men have on campus. Wrote one student: "...I cannot seem to escape the biases of feminism no matter where I turn. Every female teacher somehow manages to bring the argument around to point out that males overrun everything. If I produce any artwork with any sort of tall thin form in it, I immediately am criticized for producing artwork that involves phallic symbolism. Thus meaning that I obviously am promoting male dominance in society". The young man described this as "wearing of his spirits". The academe, once dedicated to freedom of expression and learning, now let's philistines hound males for producing personalized imagery.

The wild fire of radical feminism has pretty much engulfed universities, evidently not sparing the computing science departments. Women's studies courses and English departments are littered with its lumpen jargon, which takes the tack of reducing works of literature and art to the bare bones of power relationships in society. When treated with this academic acid, great artists like Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or T. S. Eliot are dissolved into pale, patriarchal ruling class oppressors. Text is routinely deconstructed and shred using sophistic constructs, my point being that radical feminism is nothing but a subjective world-view based on a narrow insular and partial view of history. Why then is it touted as an immutable truth fit to guide public policy?

Up until the last stages of the industrial revolution, writes columnist Barbara Amiel in her book Confessions, societies were preoccupied with the propagation of its members. The division of labour was the culmination of necessity and biology; it was necessary to make the most of man's superior physical strength and woman's ability to bear children. For a few children to have survived, explains Amiel, a woman had to give birth to ten or twelve. Were women not pregnant or in labour for most of their arduous lives, the tribe would not have lingered. There are other biological differences that separate the sexes. These have become taboo to study or discuss. Men do have an advantage in the perception of spatial-geometrical relationships. This advantage was vital in earlier societies that relied on brute force and hunting for survival.

Feminism is staple doctrine in the secondary schools as well, and it animates the child-centered education system and the 1960s vision its teachers hold. My daughter's schooling has for the most transmitted sentimentality over reason, attitude and mush over canon and curriculum. She has been forced-fed a pedagogic diet of pop psychology. Her female teachers have been feminists who promote every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist. The dyed-in-the-wool feminist teachers will invariably greet a show of individualism or a sharp retort from the child with sly assertion - not reasoned argument. No doubt, the child-centered progressive public schooling is bad for girls and boys alike, but it is probably particularly bad for boys.

Some research has indicated that boys thrive in a disciplined structured learning environment. The child-centered schooling shuns discipline and moral instruction, and promotes co-operative working habits and groupthink over individual achievement. Boys like competition and are hard wired for it. But when they invariably bubble over with unbridled testosterone, rather than challenge, discipline, and harness their energies, they are all too often subdued with Ritalin. While the child-centered schooling system, with its lax standards, and shopping mall assortment of flimsy courses is girl friendly - it is hostile to boys. Boy biology is demonized, and boys are made over in the emotional image of woman, or at least in the image of the caricature-of-woman feminists promote.

SFU Prof. Doreen Kimura, on the other hand, is not wont to theorize into the ether. She has demonstrated empirically that there is "no evidence for systemic discrimination against women...and that when women do apply for science jobs they get preferential treatment". Her findings, reported in the National Post, confirm that women "self select out of certain science careers." She confirms that men and women differ cognitively in how they solve problems. As I've indicated, men, on average, are better at spatial tasks, mathematical reasoning and co-ordination of visual and motor activities. Given these findings, women would not be equally represented in professions such as physics and engineering.

After years of producing bad science on the wage gap, Statistics Canada has finally admitted the pay gap is not due to discrimination, something the quasi-free market Fraser Institute demonstrated almost 2 decades back. The faulty premise held by public school educators like Dahl and Jones is equally hard to relinquish because it is politically expedient: The fight is on for power not truth

An aside: What do you think would have befallen Prof. Dahl had she ventured that the only reason women are underrepresented in the engineering sciences is because they are lazy and know a man will eventually take care of them? I wager the Prof.'s fitness to teach women would have been called into question.

June 15, 2001

Ilana Mercer [send her mail] is a freelance writer based in Seattle.

Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com


 

Leomair10

#1
Jun 12, 2009, 12:40 AM Last Edit: Aug 23, 2009, 06:57 PM by dr e
On this post, I knew that feminism is staple doctrine in the secondary schools as well, and it animates the child-centered education system and the 1960s vision its teachers hold. Thanks for this information.



_________________
California Orange County Lawyer

CG9603

It is important to expose and keep these biases in the light, as school and university is where many women and men learn the reverse discrimination and double standards that pervade feminism and the rest of society.   
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
-- General Dwight D.  Eisenhower. 

"Be bold and courageous.  When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did."
-- Unknown.

Captain Courageous

I highly recommend two new blogspots in support of this topic. The first is The Bullied Academics Blospot. This one shows the subtle and not-so-subtle tactics used on faculty members who don't tow The Feminist Party line. Next is the newest one - Rebuking Feminism Blogspot. This one centers on what's happening at Harvard University specifically. These moves are deliberate, premeditated and systematic!

dr e

Interesting link Cap'n.  The rebuking feminism blog looks very good.  I only had time to skim a bit but it looks very promising.  Great stuff!

http://rebukingfeminism.blogspot.com/
Contact dr e  Lifeboats for the ladies and children, icy waters for the men.  Women have rights and men have responsibilties.

Captain Courageous

The other one is -

http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com

It's titled "Bullying of Academics in Higher Education".

Captain Courageous

Why do you list the ICQ number for Jean Bryan if you are a male? Why do you list "Tie Russan Woman" (http://tierussianwoman.w-ru.com/) as your website? So ... you're a guy from Germany, with a woman's name and a lot of Russain acquaintances? Hmmmm!
:pino:

Men's Rights Activist

Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights for all (including males), & not contingent on gender feminist approval or denial. Consider my "Independence" from all tyrannical gender feminist ideology "Declared" - Here & Now!

Men's Rights Activist

Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights for all (including males), & not contingent on gender feminist approval or denial. Consider my "Independence" from all tyrannical gender feminist ideology "Declared" - Here & Now!

Men's Rights Activist

Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights for all (including males), & not contingent on gender feminist approval or denial. Consider my "Independence" from all tyrannical gender feminist ideology "Declared" - Here & Now!

Men's Rights Activist

Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights for all (including males), & not contingent on gender feminist approval or denial. Consider my "Independence" from all tyrannical gender feminist ideology "Declared" - Here & Now!

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