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?

"I did sometimes protest in Ms. Smith's class and others, but a 6'2" male confronting a female educator about her bigotry, however politely, is quickly perceived as a bully. In addition, tension and arguing make the days and semesters long and hard, and there were times when it was easier to tune out, as so many other males had done. Some male students have told me that they had been retaliated against at grade time for speaking out against misandry. I never had this experience, and Ms. Smith did grade me fairly.

"In Spanish language class we were reading and discussing Snow White when a properly PC-educated male student raised his hand and lamented the poor, womanly lot of Snow White, 'forced' to cook and wash dishes while the dwarfs 'did nothing.' Naturally I raised my hand and explained that mining (the dwarfs' trade) was a hard, dangerous job which required a lot of sacrifice. I was immediately fighting a battle against the male professor and 10 other students (the usual odds one faces when confronting misandry in our universities) but I defended those seven dwarfs the best I could.

"One woman, an older student obviously infused with decades of anti-male bigotry, smiled contemptuously and explained that whatever the dwarfs did, they still didn't do housework and were thus morally indicted. In her world, whatever men do, whatever their special sacrifices and their burdens, all that matters is who washed the dishes last night.

"Part of the reason it is difficult and unpleasant to be a male college student today is that anti-male bigotry pops up by surprise all the time in the most unlikely of places. For example, on my Portuguese final we were presented with some disputes and were expected to discuss possible solutions to them in Portuguese. A couple of the problems were between married couples, and in both situations there was a clear person who was right and a clear person who was wrong. The reader can guess the gender of both offenders without my assistance.

"In answering one of them, about a husband who was oppressing his wife by not 'doing his share' around the house, I explained that numerous studies have shown that, when all work--both housework and breadwinning--is considered, American men are doing at least as much in their households as women are. I also noted that I was unhappy with this negative portrayal of men.

"To her credit, the professor graded me fairly and responded to my objection. She explained that my complaint was not valid because men's control of society and women were so vast that a man's complaints about anti-male prejudice paled in meaning beside it. In other words, it's OK to say whatever you want about men, no matter how unfair, cruel, or inaccurate, because all the man-hate in the world could never amount to more than tugging on Superman's cape."

For an example of when men were faced with outrageous bigotry at a graduation ceremony and should have stood up for themselves and didn't, see my column The Best Valentine's Day Gift for College Students: Gender Reconciliation (She Thinks, 2/13/03) and search for "Catherine MacKinnon."

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Feminism/NOW, Misandry, Women's Studies. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.