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.