Background: In my blog posts Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor’s Manbashing, She Reacts by….Suing Her Students! (Part I), Part II, and Part III, I explained how a group of Dartmouth students rebelled against a feminist professor and her manbashing. The professor, rather than engaging in debate, pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and is now suing her students.
Some of what the students had to endure reminds me of what I saw when I went to graduate school at UCLA in the late 1990s. In my column Why Males Don’t Go to College (She Thinks, 11/13/02) I wrote:
“I recall, for example, my Latin American folklore class, taught by a woman whom we’ll call Ms. Smith. Ms. Smith is a kind, gentle, elderly lady whose bigotry rings as loud and clear as that of any stereotypical racist Southern cracker. The sometimes subtle, sometimes slap in the face prejudice which males endured in her class is typical of what occurs in many modern university classes.
“Early in the semester Ms. Smith informed the class that all folklore was widely believed to be a code of misogyny that was developed and employed by men to suppress women. Ms. Smith did say she considered this to be a slight exaggeration, yet whenever a folktale contained a negative portrayal of a woman, it was cited as evidence of the rampant misogyny in men’s dark souls. What Ms. Smith never explained was why this ‘misogynistic’ folklore contained far more negative portrayals of men than of women.
“Ms. Smith also informed us that folklore was largely invented by women, because it was women who had the ‘long, tiresome, boring jobs’ and thus the motivation to invent it. Unanswered were two questions. One, why would we say that folklore was misogynistic if it had, in fact, largely been invented by women? Two, did we really imagine that the men of that era–or at least 98% of them–did not also have ‘long, tiresome, boring’ jobs?
“Ms. Smith wrung her hands over the stigma, enshrined in some Spanish folklore, against romantic or sexual activity by Spanish women whose men had gone off to fight the invading and occupying Moors. This was, she said, another example of the oppressive social controls which men placed upon women. What Ms. Smith never mentioned was the nature of the oppressive social controls which made 12 and 13 year-old Spanish boys march obediently off to war for years at a time, many of them never to return.
“Most of the males sat in the back of Ms. Smith’s class, an arrangement which started to feel more and more like the back of the bus. The females in front were fully engaged, enjoying the class and its anti-male tales. Not surprisingly, many of the males were disengaged, and seemed to be there simply to put in their time.
“One day, after an hour or so discussing tale after tale where Ms. Smith concluded that the men involved were always wrong or evil or cruel or stupid and the women were always right and good and kind and smart, Ms. Smith began softly describing a soothing tale of a father and his daughter setting off through the woods to go to the big city.
“‘The father….and his daughter….rode together… as they went through the beautiful Spanish countryside,’ Ms. Smith said softly.
“I sat back and closed my eyes.
“‘They…were on their way to the big city….the daughter had never seen the city before…..she was happy that her father was taking her…’
“I imagined a special, loving, father-daughter bond.
“‘..and then…..he rapes her.’
“Jolted, I sat up. A male in the back of the classroom pushed his heavy book off of the table and it made a loud, crashing sound.
“An accident? Or a protest? (more…)
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amfortas said,
To the ivory towers with them; to the top floor; and out the window. Defenestration is a word likely too big for them.
May 20, 2008 at 3:14 am
lieweary said,
May 20, 2008 at 8:46 pm