Though I will of course have a Thursday Short Poem up tomorrow, this will be my last post until next Tuesday, February 21.
I’m sitting in my office as I write this, while in a classroom down the hall, my Western Civ students take their final exam of the winter intersession. I give open-book, open-note essay finals — which manage to be demanding (especially in terms of time management) but do not require careful proctoring. My students in the 8:00AM women’s studies class seemed particularly anxious this morning. They’ve been a remarkably good group, and I only wish I could do a better job of giving them emotional and spiritual encouragement while still inspiring their best work.
When my wife and I go out in Pasadena or surrounding communities of the West San Gabriel valley, more often than not we will run into a former student of mine. They approach shyly or boldly, call me "Hugo" or "Professor Schweitzer" (few master the correct pronunciation of the surname), and tell me what they are up to these days. Conservatively, I’ve taught more than 10,000 students in the past 13 years since I first arrived at PCC as a nervous twenty-six year-old adjunct in 1993. (I got the full-time gig the following year.) I love living in a community where I am guaranteed to run into so many former and current students, and though not all may remember me fondly, I’m touched by how many of them are eager to come up and say hello. (It’s been worth a heck of a lot of free desserts in a heck of a lot of restaurants, too!)
I rarely remember names of my students for more than a year or two. A few outstanding ones always linger in my consciousness, however, and as I age, I find myself asking "I wonder how so-and-so turned out? Did whatshisname go on to medical school? Did that young Army sergeant stay in the service, or did she go to grad school?" I think of the students who’ve brought me their stories of heartbreak and struggle, of poverty, of early and unplanned parenthood. I worry about them and wonder about them and, eventually, let most of them slip into the back of my mind to be replaced by a new "crop" of hundreds. I teach seven classes with 40 students each every semester, not counting the occasional "large enrollment" class or the summer and winter courses I teach. It’s so hard to connect with more than a few of these folks — and yet, even after more than a dozen years in this profession, I’m still hungry to do so.
Every semester, a student asks me why I am teaching at a community college. "Wouldn’t you rather be at a four-year university, or a liberal arts school?" When I first came to Pasadena City College, the answer was a "Heck, yes!" I did feel as if I ought to be somewhere more exclusive, more intellectually reputable, where the workload would be lighter and the students better prepared. But today, I always make clear that I love it here. If I taught at a more exclusive institution, would I get the first-generation immigrant single mothers who work three jobs and sleep three hours a night? Would I get the recovering addicts and alcoholics and parolees who are trying to turn their lives around? Would I get the kids from wealthy families who went off to four-year schools straight out of high school, flunked out, and are now desperate for a second chance? Would I get classes filled with students who, not ten years ago, were living in Nigeria, Russia, China, and El Salvador? Above all, would I get as many of them?
From time to time, I’m haunted by the sense I’m not living up to my potential. My father taught at UCSB for four decades, my brother is at the University of Exeter with his third book on the way. At times, I confess I’ve felt hurt when folks have reacted dismissively to my work: "Oh, he’s just a community college teacher, not a real professor." (I usually resist the urge to talk about my Ph.D. from a Top 10 program; after all, it seems years and years ago that I researched and wrote my long and dull narrative about the bishops of Durham and the Anglo-Scottish wars.) I know I could "write my way" into a different job; my teaching evaluations are (I note immodestly) generally excellent. But in the end, I know I belong here. Not having ever taken classes at a community college, it took me a while to grasp the vital importance of their mission — now, I am a fierce defender of two-year institutions.
Like the church I worship in, my college welcomes everyone regardless of their past. I honestly can’t imagine working anywhere else.
Oh, and another realization: As I’ve written before, I tend to see teaching as an act of intellectual seduction. Though the lively and engaged students interest me, I enjoy the challenge of the bored, the disaffected, and those who loathe history. I want to use every tool I’ve got to craft lectures that inspire, interest, arouse, and awaken! In my gender studies courses, I want to make a commitment to feminist principles seem vitally important; in my modern history class, I want to make the most unlikely of students care about the causes of World War One. Do I "get off" on what I do? You bet, and I’m a better teacher for it. And in the end, the community college, because of its enormous diversity and openness, has the greatest number of students for me to try and "seduce" into caring about the past and into making new and vital political and intellectual commitments.
How can I transition from being a lawyer to being a community college professor???
Actually, I am not serious because I really like my job — but you do make your vocation sound extremely appealing.
If I had a hat, I’d tip it to you sir!
I’ve been involved in two CC classes in my life–once as teacher, once as student–but I’ve long suspected I feel the same way as you. I’d really like to teach there more, but it’s hard to justify, given that my adjunct work at Universities pays a fair bit more, and adjuncts need to watch the bottom line. But if I’m still an adjunct next year, I’m going to pursue CC work a bit more vigorously, even if it means loosing out on a little money. It fits so well with my educational outlook.
Well, DJW, if we get any openings for tenure-track at PCC, I’ll let you know!
Community colleges are awesome, and needed as college prices go up and up.. Not to mention it allows people who have been shortchanged in high school to make up the courses that can allow them to go to a four year school if they so desire.
A Look Inside the Vast Left-Wing Campus Conspiracy
In Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth (WND Books, 2004), Harvard Law student and UCLA graduate Ben Shapiro spins a tale about how politically correct universities are turning young minds to mush by imposing a left-wing ideology. Shapiro’s story is a familiar one, told often before in far more persuasive ways by much better writers.
The foreword by David Limbaugh (brother of talk-show host Rush) calls Brainwashed “a sophisticated and firsthand critique of the university as an institution of ideological propaganda for the leftwing, secular worldview.”(xi) In fact, Shapiro’s critique is neither sophisticated nor firsthand. Shapiro claims that in order to prove the anti-American bias of his professors, “for three years, I sat in my classes and transcribed direct, in-the-classroom quotations from my professors, carefully noting the date of each quotation.” Astonishingly, there is little of any consequence to be found in what Shapiro writes.
Shapiro’s book follows a simple formula. He picks a public policy issue, and says that “professors” think something outrageous. Then he quotes three or four professors from some news account, usually saying something quite reasonable. Shapiro responds with snide remarks, dismissing them (sometimes quoting other professors who disagree, even though this undermines his argument that leftists control academia). Then he goes on to the next controversial topic.
Factual accuracy is a struggle for Shapiro. He starts his book with an error, misspelling Berkeley chancellor Robert Berdahl’s name in an opening quote (where Berdahl actually opposes indoctrination).(xv)
Consider this example. Shapiro asks rhetorically, “didn’t the American economy experience the largest peace-time economic growth rate in history under Reagan?”(9-10) apparently unaware that the answer is no, and the Clinton Administration was far more successful. Shapiro claims, “When Ronald Reagan pursued tax-cutting during his administration, median family income, median household income, and average household income all rose; from 1982 to 1989, the unemployment rate declined by 4.3 percent.”(10) Of course, when Bill Clinton pursued tax increases during his administration, median family income, median household income, and average household income all rose far more than during the Reagan administration, even though during Clinton’s time the Reagan-era deficits were wiped out. Economic growth during the Clinton Era averaged 4.0% per year, versus 2.8% during Reagan-Bush; unemployment dropped from 6.9% in 1993 to 4.0% in November 2000 (in one notable statistical deception, Shapiro cites unemployment in 1982, when it peaked during the recession sparked by Reagan’s policies, in order to exaggerate the later decline in unemployment).
One example of Shapiro’s shoddy use of statistics is his attempt to use polls to prove that colleges brainwash students to become more liberal. Shapiro declares in his introduction, “In an informal exit poll conducted by the UCLA Daily Bruin during the 2000 presidential election, Gore garnered 71 percent of the UCLA student vote, with Bush receiving a mere 20 percent.”(xvi) Noting that national polls of entering college freshmen show only a 10-point gap, Shapiro repeats the exact same “fact” eight pages later, even though an “informal” poll by a newspaper isn’t statistically accurate. But according to Shapiro, it proves that “By the time students become upper-classmen, a ten-point political gap often becomes a fifty-point canyon”(6) due to college brainwashing. Shapiro’s point makes no sense (because many of those polled by the Daily Bruin weren’t upperclassmen), but it also reveals how poorly educated he is, since he misleadingly compares a national poll with a campus “poll”. Why would anyone expect students in one of the most liberal cities in one of the most liberal states to vote the same as students around the country?
According to David Limbaugh’s foreword, Shapiro “cites surveys and exit-polling data showing that while slightly more college freshmen identify themselves as liberal than conservative, that gap widens substantially as they become upper-classmen.”(xii) The fact that this highly dubious reasoning is cited three times in the opening pages of Brainwashed shows how weak the argument of the entire book is. Of course, it is possible that students will change their political values in college (particularly when Democrats are more likely to support funding for higher education). To assume that brainwashing is the cause, rather than a sincere rational belief, is to dismiss most college students as idiots.
“Idiots” is a term that Shapiro likes to throw around a lot, along with other insults like “knee-jerk liar Stanley Fish”(12) or clever remarks like, “The far left of the university faculty are as red as overripe tomatoes.”(24) With his McCarthy-style red-baiting, one can almost read Shapiro’s book and imagine that we’re still living in the Cold War.
The Marxist Threat
Among the various crimes of professors, Shapiro writes, “Professor A. Belden Fields of the University of Illinois leads the socialist group on campus in monthly discussions.”(23) Gasp! No, not something so horrible as a monthly discussion! When will somebody stop this tragedy? Shapiro is appalled to report that “Classes on Marxism exist at major universities across the country,” listing dozens of colleges that actually dare to teach a class about Marx.(22)
According to Shapiro, “Students often graduate believing in the mythic power of Marxism and hating the ‘racist American system.’”(xv) Shapiro, of course, has no evidence to support his point. In fact, there’s no evidence that a significant number of college students ever read Marx, let alone believe in some “mythic power of Marxism,” whatever that is. Far from hating the American system or thinking it racist, most students desire nothing more than to get a good-paying job.
Shapiro condemns Joel Blau of the State University of New York at “Stoneybrook” (sic) for “communism” because Blau called Bush’s tax plan “a proposal that caters to the wealthiest segment of the population.”(10) Of course, that’s a completely objective statement of Bush’s tax proposal: it benefits the wealthiest more than others. Conservatives are free to argue that the wealthiest should benefit the most from tax cuts, since they pay the most taxes and supposedly create wealth; but Blau’s statement itself is simply a fact. To not only dispute it, but accuse anyone who utters it of “communism” puts Shapiro on the loony right, an example of invoking McCarthyism from someone who barely was born before the demise of the Soviet Union.
“Communists” are not the only targets on Shapiro’s hate parade. As Shapiro put it in one column, “If you pay tuition, you’re sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If you pay taxes, you’re sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If your child majors in English, you’re sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda.”
Shapiro is horrified that “New York University students get the chance to enroll in ‘Race, Gender and Sexuality in US History.’”(39) According to Shapiro, “Sex is promoted non-stop in the classroom….Pedophilia is acceptable, if a bit weird. Statutory rape is laughed off. Bestiality is fine.”(54)
Shapiro’s book is particularly strange when he tries (and fails) to prove how much smarter he is than his fellow student. Shapiro reminisces about when a student in his geography class where Shapiro gave a presentation on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge asked, “Why can’t we get rid of cars, and like, all ride bicycles and stuff?” Shapiro reports, “I was stunned. This was a first-grade question coming out of the mouth of a college student at a highly respected university.” Shapiro responded, “Bicycles aren’t going to cut it….If the Chinese were to attack us with tanks, could we fight them with bicycles?”(73) Who imagines that China is going to invade the US with tanks? And why does Shapiro think that Americans would defeat Chinese tanks with our cars?
According to Shapiro, “Those with a leftist mindset assault the English language.”(44) His evidence: a UCLA class on language where he was “stunned” to be told that the phrase “It’s me” is acceptable: “Grammar clearly requires that we say ‘It’s I,” and yet here the students were being told it is just as correct to say ‘It’s me.’ Incredible.”(45) Shapiro doesn’t explain how saying “It’s me” leads to the leftist takeover of the world, but in his world, even an obscure grammar dispute is a thinly veiled part of the vast ideological war on campus.
When a UCLA professor called Darwin’s Origin of Species the most influential book ever written by one author and a student mentioned the Bible, the professor declared that religious texts are written by multiple authors. Shapiro writes, “Last time I checked, God is not ‘multiple authors.’”(87) Of course, God didn’t write the Bible, human beings did (hence the four Gospels written by different authors).(87)
Even widely-acknowledged misstatements from the Bush Administration are treated as sacred writ by Shapiro. He writes, “Even after Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Left’s favorite cabinet member, made his highly-regarded speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, peaceniks whined that they needed more evidence.”(125) That was probably because virtually all of the key evidence in Powell’s “highly-regarded speech” turned out to be wrong. But Shapiro seems not to be in touch with reality, preferring to dismiss criticism of the reasons for war in Iraq with a single word: “Wrong.”(124)
According to Shapiro, to professors “Saddam Hussein was not an enemy, but a strong and principled leader.” He writes, “Many professors felt pangs of joy as they saw three thousand Americans dying…(100) Exactly who these professors were, Shapiro doesn’t say. He does object to Noam Chomsky’s criticism of US policies, and proclaims, “Next time, Professor Chomsky should volunteer to fly the suicide missions.”(102)
Shapiro sees political debate in warlike terms: “What these professors want is a jihad against God, a crusade against traditional morality. And their battlefields are lecture halls full of innocent civilians.”(84) At the end of one chapter, Shapiro even seems to urge the mass murder of academics: “The professors are the intellectual terrorists. May they reap what they sow.”(114)
Washing the Brain
Shapiro’s title, “Brainwashed,” reflects a bizarre idea of what brainwashing is. According to Shapiro, “At Wayne State University, professors rushed to brainwash students to oppose war and President Bush.” And what was this brainwashing? A call for a day of reflection on the war “to raise questions about this war drive and its potential consequences.”(115) Is it really brainwashing to ask questions?
Shapiro concludes, “professors are supporting labor by brainwashing their students”(31) based on reading a 1996 New York Times article about how a few academics were holding teach-ins about organized labor. Shapiro considers it “scary” that some students helped unions during Union Summer programs.(32)
Shapiro also denounced Brian Foley of Widener University School of Law for indoctrinating students because he proclaimed, “I will teach my class in the hope that the skills my students learn will make them better citizens, who will ask questions and demand answers before they let their country be led into war.”(116) Is this a betrayal of academic integrity, to teach students to ask questions?
Like David Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights,” which prohibits “indoctrination” without defining it, the far right sees any criticism of the political status quo as illegitimate “brainwashing.” Shapiro calls the Academic Bill of Rights “a monumental document” and adds: “Students for Academic Freedom is doing a tremendous job on campus. I’ve never seen the conservative movement on campus as cohesive or powerful as it has become. Conservative students don’t feel like they’re alone anymore, and they feel like they have a real purpose, a real fight to fight, and the resources to fight it.”
The Daily Bruin Suspension
Shapiro’s main claim to fame is being suspended in 2002 as a columnist from the UCLA Daily Bruin. According to Shapiro, “When I attempted to expose the fact that the Muslim Student Association at UCLA is treasonous, I was fired from the Bruin.” Shapiro says that he had written two columns about Muslims at UCLA, but his editors rejected them. A viewpoint editor reported that the editor-in-chief “thinks that it doesn’t add anything to the debate and that we need fresh opinions on this debate.”(152)
Rather than go to the editor-in-chief and ask him to reconsider, Shapiro contacted national radio host Larry Elder and went on his show May 20, 2002 to denounce his employers at the Daily Bruin as censors with a “pro-Muslim bias.”
He was suspended for six months for violating Daily Bruin rules that require permission for outside interviews and failing to mention that he was not a reporter and his views did not represent the paper. The Daily Bruin told Shapiro that he could reapply in six months and “he’ll just need to reassure us that we’ll be notified before he speaks with outside media.”(155) Shapiro decided to quit instead, concluding, “That’s how free speech works at college newspapers.”(155)
Actually, that’s how free speech works at corporations and the corporate-run media, where free expression is often restricted (few reporters who go on a national talk show to denounce their editors would be allowed to keep their jobs). Although it’s unfortunate that the Daily Bruin followed this corporate model in restricting political activism by its reporters and columnists, conservatives were not targeted. The Daily Bruin has dismissed staffers for being involved in liberal groups, including a columnist who was fired for involvement with the Bruin Democrats.
The Daily Bruin may have been understandably leery of printing a column accusing Muslims of being traitors. Shapiro’s fear of Muslims is extreme: “Here’s the scariest part: there are over five hundred Muslim student organizations on campus in the United States and Canada, with a constituency of over one hundred thousand.”(173) He called the Muslim Student Association “devious.”(173) He even condemned an Arab student magazine for printing ads for organizations Shapiro regards as supporting terrorism: “This is clearly in breach of federal anti-terrorism law, punishable by deportation.”(174) Urging that students should be thrown out of the country for what they print is not exactly the position of a strong supporter of freedom of the press.
While Shapiro denounces the left for “a strong stench of victimology,” he used his own form of victimology to launch a national syndicated (if obscure) column and a book deal with a right-wing publisher, WND Books.
Aside from deporting Muslims and denouncing liberal professors, Shapiro is vague about his proposals for the solution to the problem of “brainwashing.” Shapiro proclaims it “a decent idea” for conservatives to pull money from universities he deems too liberal, but bizarrely contends that foreigners will take over, claiming that “Saudi Arabia buys up American universities like they’re going out of style” based on a handful of funded chairs and scholarships.(179-180)
Shapiro believes that “conservatives should redirect their funds from liberal colleges to conservative start-up colleges.” Shapiro urges the Wall Street Journal to rank conservative schools and measure the financial status of graduates. Then, he says, conservative business can hire students only from the conservative colleges.
It is difficult to find anything worthwhile in Brainwashed aside from the danger of believing uncritically in the far right’s attacks on academia. But Shapiro is right when he writes, “Swallowing whole what your professors say doesn’t teach you to think—it teaches you to think what they want you to think. And that is indoctrination, pure and simple.”(183) It’s too bad that Shapiro was too busy swallowing right-wing propaganda to consider the possibility that some of his professors might have been right.
Yet Shapiro admits, “I don’t believe that large numbers of conservative students are purposefully targeted for grade penalization.” Shapiro, who seemingly cannot write a paragraph without making a factual error, a distortion of a statistic, or a specious argument, somehow managed to get good enough grades from all of his left-wing brainwashing professors to be admitted to Harvard Law School.
If Brainwashed is any indication, professors are bending over backwards to give fair grades to conservatives who, imitating their political talk show idols, have only a remote familiarity with accuracy. Brainwashed is a badly-written, badly-reasoned book that promotes a plainly false picture of higher education, but one that is increasingly popular among those who want to launch a crusade against the Marxists, communists, and militant homosexuals whom they imagine to be in charge of a vast left-wing conspiracy controlling American higher education.
Is there a trick to pronouncing your name? I always assumed it rhymed with “miser.”
Reading your blog has made me look forward to the idea of teaching at CC (or a lower-tier 4-year school) when I finish my PhD. But don’t tell my advisor that!
All right, what the hell kind of spam is that “Brainwashed” comment?
Great sentiments, Hugo. In my five years as a teacher, I’ve been at relatively small, lower-tier regional universities, and I’ve found a lot of pleasure in that niche. (Not the same niche as that served by communities colleges, obviously, but not all that different from them either.) Of course, I also sometimes get carried away in worrying about my “potential,” perhaps especially because I’ve constantly been on the market, and always have to be looking at where everyone else is going. That’s why I was enjoying Arkansas so much, and was sad to leave; whatever my complaints about the place, I’d been there long enough to put down some roots, to really see being a teacher in the way you describe it: as the opportunity to lead and push a little those particular students who may have the ability to go in new directions, but have no idea such directions are even there.
Hugo,
I love this post. I am in grad school and have been thinking a great deal about what professors at community college contribute. The job is no doubt harder: much less assistance and institutional support, students at strikingly different levels in the same class, and less appreciation from society at large. But what you offer is at least as important. Thanks for doing what you do.
Lies, damned lies and Hugo Schwyzer
In the aftermath of Glenn Sacks’ latest radio program this past weekend, I’ve gone over his exchange with Hugo Schwyzer. In my blog I’ve described this as with a sense of mounting horror bordering on the Lovecraftian. The adjective is used to describe a sense of unearthly wrongness to Hugo’s embrace of the hate movement that is called “Feminism.”
The only analogy I can think of is that of Martin Luther King introducing David Duke as his nomination for “Man of the Year.”
It is difficult in a column to address the missteps and tortured logic, let alone apparent cognitive dissonance that exists in Hugo’s world. A point by point analysis and refutation would be too long. At the same time, it is unnecessary, and even undesirable.
It is the tendency of demagogues and intellectual types to wish to bog down debate in a series of quibbles and set of posturings on trifles. To engage in such a manner is, then, to play their game under their rules. This is what makes a point by point analysis undesirable.
What makes it unnecessary is simple: Hugo proceeds from staggeringly false premises, ones that make his whole dog and pony show utter nonsense.
Such forms of argument are common, and if anyone has ever taken a logic course, they will understand the form, to wit: A) Black people are lazy. B) James is black. Conclusion: James is lazy. This is a perfectly sound and valid syllogism. The trouble with it is, it rests upon the truth of its premises; with premise “A” being incorrect, the whole of the argument collapses.
So it is with Hugo Schwyzer; it is pointless to argue over the details. And Hugo’s whole philosophy rests almost solely on the premise that there is something wrong with masculinity, or more narrowly, traditional masculinity. It is unfounded, unsupported, and utterly untrue.
Before I proceed further, I have no doubt some armchair logician is sitting back and protesting, and set on writing some insipid email to me saying that “Hugo Never Says That! Show Me Where He Says That!” Well, that’s correct – but a half truth. Hugo has throughout his work a theme that “Men must change.” This begs the question, “Why? Is there something wrong with Men?” The inference to be drawn here, and it is thusly an extremely fair inference, is that his answer is yes.
All Hugo has to show for his support is a series of anecdotes about some men behaving badly. Well, it’s not news. There are a lot of scumbag humans running around and who have run around, and about half of them are men. We in the Men’s Rights Movement do not commit the fallacy of division, that because Masculinity (Or Femininity) is good, that this trickles down to each and every person in that group. We also do not commit the fallacy of composition, and argue that because there are men and women who are scum, that all of any gender are scum. Dr. Schwyzer, unfortunately, clearly implies and commits both.
A lady who posted a comment to my blog once said something to the effect of “The reason there are so few female Hitlers, Dahmers, and Bundys is the same reason there are so few female Einsteins, Pasteurs, and Schweitzers.” While many misandrists will cheerfully recite a litany of the sins of the male, they often forget that this same group is responsible for law, philosophy, science, healing, and so forth, and this litany is far, far, longer and with more profound implications.
Masculinity is about competition and risk taking, in a raw form. The male heroic archetype is full of both qualities, and in superabundance. Anyone who has ever raised or taught boys will no doubt agree that boys are more active and interactive with their world. They push the envelope in ways more overt than girls.
(Go write Larry Summers. He was right the first time. Men and women are different. It’s innate. It’s Biology. Get over it.)
Now, I’ll throw Hugo a crumb here – after all, even a blind squirrel can find a nut upon occasion – in where he says it takes a man to raise a boy to a man. Hugo misses the idea though in that the height of male achievement is when that masculinity is directed to productive ends. Over the centuries, the human male, left to his own devices, has done an excellent job of that. Male competitiveness, risk taking, curiosity, and even aggressiveness has been by and large harnessed by men to produce civilization as we know it. The exceptions to this, or at least the vast and overwhelming majority of those exceptions, has happened by the hand of improperly formed and dysfunctional men. We have reams of material written to support this; abused men becoming abusers, promising young men in poverty from a lack of education, etc. etc. ad nauseum, ad infinitum. In the years from the inception of feminism, this has been exacerbated by the driving of the father from the lives of their children.
I concur with Hugo – the idea of a woman alone raising a boy to be a man is ludicrous, as she has no idea of what being a man is. (Yes, Hugo, the reverse is true. This is why we in the movement like to say that both parents are needed.) Hugo’s answer is one of throwing the baby out with the bathwater – change men and make them more feminine. From the seats of those of us in the Men’s Movement, such a thing would be most probably futile and do incalculable damage in the process. Eliminate those elements of nurture which do the damage, and encourage that nurture which brings out the better nature, and one turns a young man from a David Koresh to a Billy Graham.
(Hint: Recognizing that a boy desperately needs a father for this, and removing obstacles from displaced fathers being part of their son’s lives is a really good first step. Just one of those misogynistic MRA suggestions.)
So, is the Men’s Movement misogynistic?
It’s a ridiculous canard. While some of them exist, and a portion of them initially gravitate to the movement, it’s again committing the fallacy of composition. As well, like many female rape victims initially are hostile to men, I’d also suggest that a goodly portion of these men are fresh from getting raped in the Family Court, and like most of those aforementioned women, the misogyny of those men would pass in time.
It’s very fashionable for feminists and their sympathizers to point to statements made by such men on the fringe, and ignore the fact (or dismiss it) that the anti-male statements made by feminists are made by their leaders, and by “authorities” whose works are required reading in women’s studies classes, and who are cause celebré in Feminist circles.
What is the truth of it, though?
Many men’s activists are troubled by routine circumcision of male babies; and perhaps rightly so when female circumcision, differing from the clitorectomy, is seen as genital mutilation.
Is this misogynistic? There’s no call to mandate female circumcision, only stop it being done on boys.
Men’s Activists oppose the drugging of boys to keep them quiet and compliant, a practice which at least coincides with dropping school performance in boys.
Is that misogynistic, especially when it is many times more likely to happen when a boy has a female teacher?
Men’s Activists oppose affirmative action and quota systems based on gender, saying that such things promote tokenism.
Is it misogynistic to suggest that? I myself have sat in on meetings where such women were spoken of as the “token titties” kept around to satisfy a federal contract requirement – and this by a female part-owner of the company. Does that really help women?
When only men are subject to a draft, subject to being impressed into military service, Men’s Activists oppose this. Sadly most feminists miss the irony when it is suggested that women be subjected to it as well, and also miss the opportunity to wear the other side’s moccasins.
I don’t think it’s a leap in intuitive thought to think that Hugo is against war. Is it misogynistic to suggest that one doesn’t want their daughters OR sons to be forced to go fight and kill for a cause they don’t believe in?
When men object to being identified, locked up, vilified, and denied due process on the basis of an allegation, allegations of rape and abuse which far too often turn out to be false, where is the misogyny? When you have divorce attorneys commenting that it almost borders on malpractice to not advise a woman to seek an ex-parte restraining order for advantage in a custody dispute, is this not a problem?
Is that really misogynistic to ask that men not be denied their civil right of “innocent until proven guilty?” To not have their good name dragged through the mud?
When false accusations of rape, abuse, molestation, and harassment are made – often referred to as “perjury” and “false reporting” - Men’s Activists are asking that such women as make them are held as accountable as men making them.
Is it misogyny to suggest that women and men be held to the same standard of behavior in the legal arena?
Men’s Activists argue for the rebuttable presumption of joint custody, in order to remain a part of their children’s lives and not relegated to the status of second-class parent. Nowhere in mainstream MRA writings is it suggested that such men should then not exercise their prerogatives as parent, or be exempted from caring for their children. Isn’t it, after all, more than just a little disingenuous for mainstream feminism to actively seek policies which prevent men from being involved as fathers, and then castigate the male half of the human race for it?
Is that misogynistic, to want to be a father? Or only misogynistic to point out the hypocrisy of feminism?
Men’s Activists have promoted and campaigned for the “Male Pill,” for non-intrusive birth control to allow men to take charge of their reproductive destiny; now that it is close to becoming a reality, I myself have been derided for “wanting to deny a woman her right to be a mother.”
But is it really misogynistic to not want to be a walking sperm bank?
As I move in the circles of Men’s Activists I get a sense of men being angry at being denigrated in the media, discriminated against in court, having their contributions discounted, their opinions discredited and their concerns dismissed. Is this anger misogynistic? It is surely directed against feminists and feminism, and Dr. Hugo Schwyzer claims that one cannot be anti-feminist without being anti-woman. Is this true? Or a convenient rubric from which he slings rhetoric? Or what? He surely holds Men’s Rights Activists in low regard, but claims to be pro-male – is this cognitive dissonance in action?
Was it racist for blacks of the early twentieth century to chafe under Jim Crow? Is it truly misogynistic for men of the Early 21 st century to chafe under John Crow?
I see no suggestion that laws against rape be repealed within the Men’s Movement. I see no suggestion that child abuse should be legalized, or wife beating. I listen for the hordes of angry red state men who want to remove the voting franchise from women, and hear silence.
Where, then, is the misogyny in all this?
Is it from the men who want women to be held as equally accountable as men under the law?
Is it from men who “kept it in their pants” and don’t want to be indentured servants for children they never made?
Is it from the participants in the apocryphal “Marriage Strike” who want no part of a Family Court system beholden to interests that are actively hostile to them?
Is it from those men who are so enamored of their “Male Privilege” to be drafted and sent to die, given harsher sentences, denied any meaningful voice in the reproductive process, to be forced to labor past their retirement age to support some indolent ex-spouse because of antiquated spousal support statutes?
Maybe it’s from “Homosocial” men who are so busy trying to -(ahem) – show off to other men as they are bombarded with advertisements every commercial break to “Please HER” this Valentine’s Day?
Dr. Hugo Schwyzer sure sees it in there.
And it doesn’t take `The Amazing Carnac” to see that sooner or later someone will come along and give a sad little condescending comment about how “bitter” such Men’s Activists are. Yeahsureyoubetcha. Tell that to the black men who have been driven so far from their own families that in any other time and place the actions of feminists – a club for rich old white lesbians – would be called a Holocaust; to the men who have placed bullets in their heads due to outrageous child support orders based on an imputed income they never made, let alone can pay; or to the children who grow up wanting their daddy to be allowed back in their lives.
What Men’s Activists want is nothing less than a fair shake under the law, to be considered and treated as equal parents, and with the rights and responsibilities inherent thereof. Men’s Activists have no problem at all with women who wish to play under the same rules, and share equally the responsibilities, to take the good and the bad.
That’s real equality. And when looked under that lens, it’s perhaps the real truth that Men’s Activists are the only real Feminists in the whole mix.
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Hugo, I think you have a Viking infestation. Might want to get that checked out. :P