An Open Letter to Edward Stephens, M.D.

2010-04-17
By

Dear Dr. Stephens,

I wanted to take the opportunity to write this letter as an expression of gratitude from Men’s News Daily, and on behalf of the many men and women who have been inspired by your efforts to put forward the new academic discipline of male studies.

The new discipline, brilliant in concept and bold in its promise for the future, is a singularly unique initiative on behalf of men and boys, and indeed on behalf of  human beings in modern society. Its implications are as far reaching as our collective hopes for a better world.

As I continue to watch the small media firestorm that has erupted from the conferences mere two hours of speaking before only a few hundred people, I am stunned an amazed by the unprecedented phenomena that has unfolded as a result. For the first time in modern history there is actually a serious public debate on what we need to do to address the concerns of men and boys.

The magnitude of what this means cannot be overstated.

Men’s News Daily Publisher Mike LaSalle perhaps put it best recently when he said the following. “MND has been host to a boatload of men eternally lost at sea. You’re the first dry land we have seen in eight years.”

Allow me to apply those apt words past our readership to an entire culture of men and boys, adrift not for eight years, but for fifty.

It is understood that there were many involved in this conference, and that there are many who work toward our shared and just goals. Their work goes on around us all the time.

But we would be seriously remiss not to offer you our public thanks, for a job well done, and for standing out as an inspirational example of what one man can do with unrelenting dedication to a higher ideal.

With best regards and high expectations for the future,

Paul Elam
Editor-in-Chief
Men’s News Daily

Bio available at my website
  • Joe

    After fifty years of having feminist crap rammed down our throats, we are ready for a change. We are ready to find our own voices, free from feminist hatemongering.

  • Red0660

    I do love many things about women and I don’t hate them BUT……

    Females by nature are gynocentric, they don’t look after the well-being of males like males do for them. They are masters at manipulation, it is how they survive.

    They have managed to convince men that we are in power because we do the work for them… Her ability to make us believe the opposite of reality exemplifies her tremendous abilities of manipulation, power and control..

    Women know this about other women and many don’t get along with women because of it.. Women can only deceive males this way. I get the impression (as if TV, media and popular culture isn’t enough example) that women have really lost respect for men, fathers and our place in society..

    Female authority is not so kind, not so protective and provisional, women look down on men because we have given them all of our power….

    I honestly think the only thing keeping this whole charade going is the ability of females to convince us that they are hard done by and oppressed.

    The reality of the male health and well-being is stark.

    –When you look at why men as a whole of the population earn more than women you find that it is not oppression of women but quite the opposite that drives males and often forces them by law to produce or face a jail sentence. The sacrifice of the male body and the fruits of its labor to women is mandatory.

    –When you look at his life expectancy as compared to women in 1920 and then now you realize there is a problem.

    –When you look at male workforce participation, male voting participation, male suicide rates, male incarceration rates, male college attendance, male disenfranchisement from a place in the family and as a father to our children you realize that men hold very little power at all. Increasingly I feel the only place men have to work in fairness with each other is in sports and video games.

    The truth is that women in fact own their own bodies and the fruits of it’s labor, they own the body of children and they own the body of men and the fruits of its labor outside of marriage after divorce.

    May I mention that although the Stimulus Package was diverted to create jobs for women (See article No Country For Burly Men by Christina Hoff Sommers) it is men like my brother who have to produce for women or face high interest payments and jail time if they do not produce. My brother’s unemployment is currently being garnished to provide for a woman that left him in no-fault and the child she took from him.

    The position and status of men as compared to women is clearly one of servitude and powerlessness.

    –Competitive and resource reward based learning models have been mostly if not entirely replaced with cooperative learning models in our schools.

    –Equal opportunity for competitive advantage and a fair playing field for men in the public sphere and in business is being removed from men day by day in favor of Title IX, Affirmative Action and other “women first” policies such as hiring and promotion freezes for males so as to fill “equality quotas” for females. Males are being handicapped, discriminated against and suffer from unequal protection under law.

    I’m hoping for a great male awakening! The new initiative to create Male Studies programs (OnStep.org) & (MaleStudies.org) gives me hope for change in the male condition, our health, well-being and the prospect of restoring and enfranchising males to have and seek an honorable place in society and in the family.

  • http://avoiceformen.com/ Paul Elam

    @ Mike LaSalle

    I have it from dependable, but undisclosed sources that Heasley was never invited to the conference in the first place. He got an invitation to attend, along with several thousand other people, as an audience member, but not to speak.

    It is quite possible that he somehow confused a generic invitation to attend with a formal request for his participation.

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/mike-lasalle Mike LaSalle

    Here’s another interesting story from the National Post. They echo the essential questions posed by Male Studies:

  • “What are the ethics of devoting 90% of academic resources to one gender?”
  • “What are the unintended consequences of the failure of our academic institutions to consider the 21st century needs of males”

    • According to the NP article, the arch enemy of Male Studies is not “Women’s Studies”, but its academic offspring, often called Men’s Studies or the study of “men and masculinities”.

    Robert Heasley, president of the American Men’s Studies Association, rejected an invitation to sit on the panel because of what he viewed as a combative attitude toward feminism. “If what they’re presenting — that feminism has hurt men and oppressed boys — had some data to support it might be fine,” he said in an interview. “It’s not like men don’t have challenges, but they tend to present it in a way that says feminism has done this to men…”

    It is difficult to understand how the AMSA could reject a seat on the Foundation for Male Studies panel on the grounds that Male Studies is hostile to feminism. By using this argument, Heasley is acknowledging the academic debt that Pro-Feminist Men’s Studies owes to its ideological patroness.

    All the more reason to establish independent Male Studies departments.

    This makes me think that the establishment of Male Studies departments might be particularly helpful for those Universities that suffer from big sex ratio disparities.

    If the reason for the decline of males in higher education is the result of that fact that our K-12 educational system has been specifically optimized for girls, then it seems to me that Male Studies could help by developing educational strategies and techniques that are likewise optimized for boys.

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/mike-lasalle Mike LaSalle

    The Dartmouth columnist actually called for an independent Male Studies department at their University:

    Male Studies could offer a valuable and important contribution to academia. As just such an institution, Dartmouth should seize this opportunity to show progressive leadership, much like it did by creating the first Women’s and Gender Studies program in the Ivy League years ago, and separate Male Studies from Women’s and Gender Studies, endowing the field with its own department.

    The columnist pointed up the fact that “it is often difficult to broach the concerns that men face in the wake of an emotionally charged discussion about misogyny, sexism or sexual assault.”

    That’s a pretty good point: Women’s Studies departments tendentiously spotlight, accentuate and normalize abnormal male behaviors and their effects on women.

    Under this kind of academic environment it is practically impossible to conduct an impartial study of the human male that does not exaggerate the incidence of abnormal male psychology.

    For this reason alone Male Studies must be an independent department widely separated from “Gender Studies” or “Women’s Studies”.

  • Mr.K

    @ Harry,
    Sometime ago there was a dispute in MND about what kind of language and terminology is tolerable. Example, Masculinist, Men’s studies, Male studies etc.
    Since I’m poor on linguistics, idioms, vernacular, slang etc. I tried to use safe terms. ( also my sight is getting poor with old age)Thanks for the correction and Mike LaSalle and Paul Elam for other links.

  • http://avoiceformen.com/ Paul Elam

    Agreed to all. I also hope that MRA’s who are doing the good work to refute these contentious and ignorant reactions might also take a moment to thank the good people who are doing what so very few have done before them by bucking the current paradigm and siding with reason and scholarship.

    Among them are Dr. Michael Blumenfield, and writers from the University of Arizona and Dartmouth.

    http://wildcat.arizona.edu/opinions/opting-for-male-studies-major-1.1287983

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-blumenfield-md/why-would-anyone-protest_b_512080.html

    http://thedartmouth.com/2010/04/13/opinion/rasheed

  • http://www.angryharry.com Harry

    @Mr K

    “there is links to belittling comments”

    The word ‘belittling’ does not do justice to the ridicule, the sneering, the denigration and the general hostility that is emanating from certain quarters toward this program.

    Fortunately, we are mostly accustomed to experiencing such nastiness even for the mildest of attempts to put across our points of view about various men’s issues.

    But it is not so easy for Dr Stephens and his team to fight this mindless, well-orchestrated hostility. After all, they must remain calm, dignified and professional.

    Happily, however, there are many MRAs who are not so restricted.

    And I am sure that many of them will do their best to counter most vigorously this hateful opposition to such a worthwhile enterprise.

  • http://mensnewsdaily.com/author/mike-lasalle Mike LaSalle

    Here’s how “Male Studies” is being portrayed at the Forbes blog:

    “A lot of feminist argument is just irritating” and other reasons why believers say we need this new academic discipline.

    The postmodernist watchdogs at change.org offered the following in replace of any actual insight:

    …the fact that a few men feel the need to establish a Male Studies field to counter the “evils” of feminism and Women’s Studies says a lot about the resentment and anger of privileged, white men.

    The Washington City Paper added still more thoughtful commentary…

    Since I can’t think more than one thought at the same time, and I get distracted easily due to my inherent brain defect caused by my penis, could I get your call on whether men bleed when pricked….?

    A blogger at salon.com thinks Males Studies should be used to encourage men to behave like women…

    Come on Men! Fight for your right to be soft! Flush your Viagra down the toilet! (Your erections do not define you). Fight for your right to be colorful! Burn your ties! Grow your hair! Kick off your army boots, paint your toe nails, and dance like nobody’s watching!

    The NYTimes was somewhat more sophisticated in their reporting on Male Studies. Their article opened with the facts, and gave a couple column-inches to Lionel Tiger to make a pull-quote case that Male Studies was a needed discipline.

    But of course the NYTimes is not without its bias. They concluded the article by quoting the president of the Feminist Men’s Studies Association, who not surprisingly dismissed Male Studies as a populist “Glenn Beck” phenomenon.

    So there you are. The hate, fear, derision, and dismissal of the establishment left is palpable.

    They protest too much.

    Ed Stephens must be doing something right.

  • Mr.K

    I second Paul Elam’s letter of thanks for Male Studies Program to Edward Stevens, MD. Mike La Salle’s comment was very apt. After Googling the title, there is links to belittling comments, but also a link to NYT story how a federal judge dismissed a gender-based lawsuit against women studies only. A federal judge earlier had dismissed a lawsuit against federal Department of Education for exmpting most members of http://www.womenscolleges.org from Title IX.
    Link to NYT story.
    http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/court-rejects-mens-studies-lawsuit/


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