In his recent blog post “A man getting a gender studies major is most likely to be gay”: on the importance of refuting that problematic stereotype, my friend Hugo Schwyzer (pictured), a feminist blogger and Women’s Studies/Gender Studies professor, writes:
“As a heterosexual man who teaches both women’s history and LGBTQ studies at the community college, I reject the implication that men who are drawn to these vital subjects are ‘most likely’ to be gay.
“The three classic assumptions we make about men who take gender studies are that they are gay; wolves in sheep’s clothing trying to hit on vulnerable women; filled with deep self-loathing of their own masculinity. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with gay men taking gender studies. There is something very wrong with the assumption that men who take a strong interest in this field are ‘most likely’ gay.”
I agree with Hugo about the assumptions that men in Gender Studies are either “trying to hit on vulnerable women” or “filled with deep self-loathing of their own masculinity.” Some of the posters here throw these stereotypes at feminist men like Schwyzer and bloggers Barry Deutsch and Dan Oppenheimer, and I dislike the tactic for about 50 reasons.
Having been on the receiving end of unfair stereotypes many times, I don’t have a very high opinion of people who use stereotypes to try to discredit an opponent’s argument, as opposed to addressing the argument itself. Whenever this is done to me in a radio debate, for example, by labeling me “anti-woman” or a “misogynist” or whatever, I just smile–I know the other side has lost the debate. (That is not to say that there aren’t genuine misogynists on our side–there’s no shortage).
On the specific issue of male Gender Studies/Women’s Studies/Men’s Studies students being gay or largely gay or often gay, I think there’s some truth to this, for a reason that Dr. Schwyzer’s feminist blinders make it hard for him to see.
Heterosexual men are judged by their success, their careers, and their ability to support a family. Heterosexual men may be interested in Gender Studies–as Schwyzer does note above–but few will want to take it as a major, because it’s worthless (or largely worthless) in trying to get ahead in the world. A heterosexual male’s access to love, companionship, and sex is shaped in part by his ability to earn a living, and being a Gender Studies major is a poor move.
By contrast, gay men for the most part don’t have that concern, so it would not dissuade them from being Gender Studies majors.
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The Man On The Street said,
Pot… meet kettle…
TMOTS
May 24, 2008 at 6:48 am
steven deluca said,
I knew a horny/lonely, feminist woman, a professional, who hit on me the second time we did business, during a “vulnerable” time in my life many years ago. (The second meeting with this attorney was related to military and medical issues and she started attempting to seduce me, and no I didn’t go crying to some government agency about sexual harassment like some wimp either - I took it as a complement and felt sorry for her too - I learned that her “true love” had been sent to Viet Nam and came back “just not the same” and as she was helping me with related issues - army violence, PTSD, injuries, … I reminded her of him and married or not, she wanted to “get together” - she hadn’t really considered that a man might point out that being drafted - while his twin sister was not, in a society where women were the majority population and biggest voting block, and had been for decades, that being drafted was a gender role/demand beyond ANYTHING she or her mother had ever faced.)
She was a mess.
Her son, a bright spot in her life, wanted her to be happy and he decided majoring in “women’s issues” would do the trick. She was very proud of him for that. I thought, he is a mess also.
We did walk in a park or two, and discussed life.
She wasn’t a bad person. We would share myths about gender with me from a feminist perspective - unequal pay (her husband, an attorney also, worked far more hours) oppression and DV issues, all the tale tales… and like many women who believe the myths she was very passionate - as passionate as those poorly educated women teaching “gender studies” in our children’s classes. To hear some of their claims you would think that they didn’t know any men.
She was so passionate and sure of her truths that If I didn’t know what her sources were, and how they had been disproved, if I had been ignorant about gender issues, she would have been very convincing.
If she had been a teacher few would have doubted her conviction, her sincerity, her need to make the world fair. Many would have left her class ready to fight bad men to protect good women. I am sure her passion, anger, rage, fear, was passed on to her son.
In the book “True Enough” by Farhad Manjoo - like the book Blink and The Tipping Point by Gladwell - are great examples of how blind we can be and how selective about the information we allow in because our own biases can blind us to the truth. And of course there are such things as facts, and of course we can find facts that simply are false, but sound true - to add to our biased convictions.
That’s what I believe feminist men must do. The believe, have faith, and to hell with what is easy to observe if you can look at the world without such “beliefs” and such faith - faith in your teachers who taught you to hate and fear maleness. Somebody once taught the young racists to grow up and join the KKK, somebody convinced too many Germans to hate Jews. I don’t see a lot of difference in the hatred being taught by feminists about men. And of course members of the KKK and the SS would have given you great arguments about their hatred, and cited reasons that compelled them to hate, fear and want to destroy… and so will the women of NOW and the AAUW … they will tell you that men are less than women, period and if not for women… blah blah blah.
There is nothing new about a young man taking risks to protect women. And what a step up for a gay guy to go from say, waitressing, or airline host to “women’s studies professor” - but straight guys becoming feminist, no, you don’t have to be gay, you just have to despise your own gender and buy into a cult. I think they could just go straight to cutting their nuts off because any woman who needs a feminist man isn’t going to have much use for a guy with balls and brains or any male pride.
I have repeated a story about a friend of mine -who teaches womens studies - more than once because I see feminist men stuck in a place a lot like Neo in the Matrix when he learns the world he has been taught to see doesn’t really exist. For feminist men it’s being trapped with the wannabe Matriarchs. All the info - input in - was based on images and lies to creat a world that only existed in the mind of those who were simply used as a source of energy in the Matrix. For too many women men seem only good as a source of labor, energy, goods. Feminist women see men as … you know, less than a source of labor. Men who want to be more than beasts in the eyes of feminist women must kiss a lot of feminist ass to become “honorary women” as some have been called. Like Indians talking the calvary to kill other Indians, like black men telling white men where to get slaves, feminist men helping women castrate our sons is similar.
This female friend who teaches women’s history was caught up in all the animosity towards men. Unlike the Matrix, she didn’t take the blue pill to learn the truth, she simply got tired of finding out that her sources were feminist quoting other feminists quoting studies inaccuratley, or quoting other feminist who made up “facts” that were bizzare but accepted as true.
Males, who as boys were sexually abused of victimized in other ways by adult women find themselves in a world where women deny or excuse women’s perversities or violence while they hear, over and over, women just don’t do those things. Her problem - this friend - was that there were too many men she respected and liked and some of what she was taught didn’t seem to fit “male nature” as she new it. Toss in two abusive step-moms and she just couldn’t buy what the feminist sold over the long haul.
She went beyond her “women’s studies” teachers handouts to the sources and found, like Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz, or like the child in “The Emporers New Clothes” that if you stepped out of the crowd you would see a very successful propaganda machine, a string of lies, a house of cards.
In “True Enough” there is a perfect story of an actor convincing sociologists and psychiatrists that he was an authority about something barely related to their work. He just ranted, used humor, double talk, and he convinced most that he knew what they did not know, he intimidated the one who dared to challenge him by presenting his list of credentials and then asking the person who challenge him “what he had accompished” in comparison.
I have read two or three books by the same feminist author, (pick one, they become clones at some point) repeating the same lies. The same people buy books based on cult values and beliefs. The “gender studies” experts in your local high school has a row of such books and they become her world, her truth, and for proof that her views are correct she points at her books and suggests… how could they all see men the same way and not be right, well, because they are bigots.
I see that need to please mom, or women in general, in most men, feminist men are no different. Feminist men bought the myths and lies, feel ashamed of being male, and ride off on their horses in such a thick cloud of dust that they are blinded to what is true: most men, like most women, are decent, period. They are today and they were a 1,000 years ago. Most men and women try to be the people their parents, both parents, taught them to be.
My friend, a female, still teaches women’s history but she has moved from “victim feminist” to “victim feminist in remission” and she calls those men who repeat the myths and lies - lies she was taught and once repeated herself - “Philosophically Castrated” by the victim feminist movement. I have shared this two or three times but I think it’s so true - and not fully appreciated - that I will repeat it again.
If feminists got almost everything wrong about men in the present - consider DV, work and money issue, female vrs male sacrfices, health issues, and education, - where they always find women worse off them men, or giving more than men, when it’s the men who die younger, get killed at work, it’s the boys who are struggling in schools, it is males who have the most medical problems, who who work MORE hours to take care of their families… when feminist are so wrong about men today and in their own life times, why in hell would anyone trust their views of events regarding gender from 200 to 2,000 years ago.
I am not trying to convince men who are majoring in women’s studies to change, they are too far gone and won’t change. But I will insult them as they insult my brothers, my great grandfathers, all the dead veterans, all the men who sacrificed in work and war and marriage… I see them as castrated and they might not even see that as an insult (Glad to consider getting rid of the “testosterone poisoning” and all those icky useless muscles and all that gross body hair, and women accepting them as almost one of their own, how nice… )
Is that an insult,too bad, because what feminist teach about men can only be compared to what some used to say about blacks, “unevolved” “prone to violence” “too sexual” “Don’t care about their families” and so on. That is what feminist women teach aboout men, isn’t it? Or did I miss the lecture the day I was sick - the lecture in feminist studies after a year of “male- bashing” a “male apprecdition day” discussing “All the wonderful things men have done for our culture and for women in particular” (From plumbing, to electricity, to art and music, to medicine,to the Titanic, to dying in wars to protect their country or someone else’s country, to supporting families under incredible stress and strain at jobs they hate.)
If there ever was such a course, fill me in. Sorry to go off again but -
SD
SD
May 24, 2008 at 1:13 pm
amfortas said,
Yes, most of us have been at that end. But what of the other stereotypes that have benefitted us? We don’t complain when a stereotype isn’t seen as unfair, do we.
I, for instance, have benefitted from the one that says men rule the world and are brave and strong and should sacrifice to their families and country. Boy, have I benefitted. I have the the last lot of benefits, sacrifices, to prove it. Roll on the day when I get the first lot and the chance to rule. I will know I have a benefit at last.
For Hugo to compalin about stereotypes while advocating (at $150 an hour and tenure) that all men are rapists (does he include himself or is he elevated to Honorary womanhood, I wonder) is a huge laugh. Not.
May 24, 2008 at 9:33 pm
tom of covent garden said,
May 25, 2008 at 7:00 am