Why Australian Universities Need Male Studies Curriculum and How it Would Help Fathers and Children

MRA Position Paper - January 2011

Male Studies should be included in the curriculum of all universities in Australia.

Although male studies would counteract the many strange and misandric views of men and masculinity sold by extreme feminist academia, there’s more to the idea of a Males Studies curriculum than that.

Men tend to play certain roles in society and be viewed in certain ways and those roles and ways are worth analyzing and understanding by all of us. As worthy as Women's Studies.

Extreme feminists and female supremacists react strongly against including Male Studies at universities. Their reactions lacked any understanding of the concept or of empathy with men.

Feminist reactions to Male Studies is usually “we don’t need Male Studies because the material is already covered in Women’s Studies,” now called Gender Studies. They also falsely claim that Australian universities are full of the study of men, so a Male Studies program would be redundant.

To some extent masculinity is a gendered construct. It should come as no surprise that culture plays a role in our identification as sexual beings. But masculinity and femininity are not exclusively cultural; biology plays its role as well. We’re still finding out exactly what roles nature and nurture play in our male and females selves.

But the idea that Women’s or Gender Studies are about understanding men as men is far from the truth. Those courses are full of misandry and can't constructively function in providing impartial studies of men or boys. Young men have a way of coming out of Gender Studies curricula with an understanding of men as violent, controlling, sexually obsessed and destined to destroy the world.

That take on men began with the misandric wing of the female supremacists branch of feminism and has never recovered. Male Studies would seek to understand men biologically as well as culturally and above all with a less condemnatory stance than the current offerings controlled by feminists. It is about absurd as having masculists controlling Women's Studies or as they are now called Gender Studies.

Feminists also argue that we don't need Males Studies because men are already studied enough. It's easy to test that claim is establish if it is true. Just ask university students or recent graduates what they know about the realities of men in society.

Consider the following issues as a starting point for Male Studies issues:

According to Australian Government statistics, more women are going to university today than they did a decade ago, while the percentage of men attending college is decreasing relative to women. The number of females enrolling in universities after high school increased by 65 percent from 1967 to 2010, while the number of men has decreased by 27 percent.

The psychological and sociological consequences of this need to be fully assessed and Male Studies would be involved with the better understanding of these issues. and the potential harm to our society.

According to the SafeWorkAustralia report of December 2010 which has the latest statistics which are 2007-2008, there was 289 working fatalities.   262 of the 289 deaths were men and  23 were women. You can read the report for yourself. Safe Work Australia - Work Related Traumatic Injury Fatalities, Australia 2007-2008

The suicide rate for males is 354% higher than that of females, according to the Australian statistics. But the Australian government hides the statistics on men who commit suicide as a result of family law situations. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Suicide Statistics Report, of the 2,000 or so suicides in Australian per year, 78% are men. That's about 1,560 men dying each year from suicide. Who's studying the cause of those deaths? How many are related to family law issues? Male Studies would study such issues. Also, according to that report. the number deaths from male suicides each year significantly exceeds the total number of deaths in motor vehicle accidents.

International politics continue to require the service of Australian males in the military. Those who die or are maimed become an outgrowth of the attitude that males are disposable.

Our legal and family systems fail to honor the importance of men in families by awarding 90% of residency of children to mothers, effectively limiting fathers from family participation.

Boys now represent 78% of children diagnosed with learning disabilities and 72% of those classified as emotionally disturbed—according Australian statistics.

8 out of 10 children being medicated for behavioral problems are boys. Often these drugs are prescribed to quash the kinetics of boys in schools, while the real problem lies in the schools themselves—geared to the learning styles of girls.

And there are other issues related to Male Studies, like 72% of Australia's homeless are men and substantially less is spent on their health care services than are spent on women.

It would be interesting to question those who claim to already be sufficiently educated about men to find out if they know these and other basics. If they don’t, it strongly suggests that universities generally and Gender Studies specifically haven’t been doing their jobs. If they do know those basics, the questions “Does it concern you?” and “If not, why not?” immediately follow.

Many of the difficulties fathers encounter in their efforts to get parenting time with their children stem from culturally-biased misunderstandings of men. Some of those are straight out of the misandric part of academic feminism. Others come from cultural/societal roles men have played since time immemorial.

But whatever the source, Male Studies can play a role in helping both sexes and all ages understand the complex realities of masculinity and men and boys. Only when we cast off the misandric ideology that underpins so much of Gender Studies will we better understand men and boys

Male Studies seek to do just that and it can’t come too soon. Fathers and their children need what Male Studies have to offer.