High School Reunion 2018
Politics and Gender

I went to my 45th high school reunion recently and had a great time, seeing many classmates for the first time in many years. Everything went smoothly, except that I noticed a disturbing undertone of emphasis on gender issues and left-leaning political doctrine, which in turn can damage students regarding careers and marriages unless properly challenged.

Poster on wall in Adams Hall

This poster was found in the hallway
of a girls
dormitory.

All people are equal.

People should have equal rights. I agree. When a male person gets badly drunk and is sexually assaulted by a woman, even if he is still a boy, he must pay child support. Stealing semen from a condom and impregnating oneself with it, then demanding and getting child support, is legal. For the same crime with the same criminal record, a woman will get a lesser sentence than a man.  Male prison guards having sex with girl inmates is properly illegal and the guards are severely punished if caught; female prison guards having sex with boy inmates is illegal and there is no enforcement. Shelters for abused women exist; not so for men. An abused woman can easily get sympathy from society at large; not so for an abused man. No professional textbooks, for the mental-health student, are devoted to how to treat abused men. Media portray women as skilled and intelligent, meanwhile portraying men as buffoons. Violence against and disparagement of men in a non-serious setting within the media is comedy and against women is forbidden. Yes, all people should be treated equally. We aren't.

Love wins.

It sure does. Sometimes, as any parent knows who has had to punish a naughty child, love is expressed in ways that feel unpleasant or painful. Consistent accommodation regardless of the circumstances is not love; it
s enabling.

Black Lives Matter.

They do, and I’m sure you've encountered the repiies blue lives matter and all lives matter. All people are equal, of course. But these counterarguments miss an important point. When black people get into scuffles with law enforcement or get shot dead during robbery attempts, there is an important difference of thought process to consider. We the law-abiding know that refusing to comply with lawful law-enforcement instructions is dangerous and so is robbery. When the other person has a gun, cooperation is vital. But in a fatherless household, female thought patterns reign. Male thought patterns rely on logic and exactitude, in which ordinary facts are supreme and feelings and their expression must be subordinate to them. The female thought pattern (unless tempered by a good upbringing including constructive schooling and good parents) relies on communication of emotion, in which the literal content of words is less important than the emotions thereby expressed. Use of props is legitimate in that language. A gun is merely a tool to emphasize how strongly its user (a robber, for example) wants something; the surprise when a gun is used in self-defense is genuine. That's female thought processes run amok. To protect black lives, let them learn male thought processes, if not at home with single mothers then at school. Certainly a gender-studies curriculum that seems designed to erase male thought processes, or at least to celebrate untempered female thought processes,  is destructive.

Immigrants and Refugees are Welcome.

If people will improve lives for the citizenry, by peaceably producing more than they consume, then it
’s good business sense to let them into our nation. If they are political refugees, then we can offer them freedom. But the days of imperialism and colonizing distant lands are over. No nation rules the world, which means that no nation is responsible for the economic strife of the world and for bailing out the destitute. Furthermore, we have the right to keep people out who intend to ruin our nation. Perhaps immigration laws should be reformed. Meanwhile, treating illegal immigrants the same as legal immigrants is essentially the same as announcing open season on government treasuries and, if there is a known ethnic group that believes in female genital mutilation and rape and honor killings, open season on women. Defend women; guard the borders.

Celebrate Diversity and Respect Disability

Agreed! I am a spinal-cord injury survivor and, after my recovery, entered a rehabilitation medicine residency to help manage people
s disabilities. Living with a major disability often induces differences in perception, personality, and skill; interacting with someone thereby afflicted can teach a new perspective on life. Diversity is important in a learning situation, and prejudice and bigotry are awful. But much of what passes for a demand for diversity nowadays is in fact a demand that various political and social ideologies be accepted even though if they received fair debate they would be easily debunked. Diversity should include diversity not only of skin color and gender but also of political and ideological viewpoints. Other items on the poster make me fear that the diversity sought is one of anatomy only and not of beliefs.

Women Control Their Own Bodies

A woman with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy is often distraught regardless of the availability of an abortion. Often, such a pregnancy results from refusing to address the need for contraception. Becoming pregnant is a major event, and the tendency to make it trivial can lead to great despair. Any chain of reasoning that rationalizes irresponsibility regarding contraception is harmful. Men shouldn't have sex without awareness of the parental consequences and are properly punished with child-support assessments when they do wrong. Women, also, have responsibility.


During my visit to the school, I went to the gender studies building where a discussion was in progress.

I asked carefully if there were any courses or other teaching on how to screen a potential boyfriend or girlfriend for abusive tendencies, so that bad relationships could be prevented.

The reply was evasive and emphasized that help could be obtained from the student health service department.
I have no reason to doubt the existence and effectiveness of such help, but that attitude is one of reaction after a problem has already begun,
which makes about as much sense as waiting for a burglary before installing a lock on the front door.

Furthermore, it assumes (falsely) that people are aware that exploitation and abuse are occurring.
People with distorted upbringings or who have had bad experiences or are otherwise confused can easily believe that their attitudes and feelings are normal for the circumstances
 and that they are not being abused when in fact they are.

I am an example. I have strong feelings about this issue. They will show.

At the end of the presentation, I talked briefly with a few young women and expressed dismay that the attitude seemed to be that there are women who in turn have gender issues and there are men who in turn have no gender issues.

I mentioned that such an attitude was unfair and that men had gender too. I saw their faces light up with happy awareness; that attitude had not been suggested to them.

I infer that the facility has a bias about how gender issues are taught: it
s about how women have a need to study gender and men do not,
therefore the gender studies program seems to be an apology for women
’s weaknesses relative to men.

This atittude is dramatically opposed to my opinion, which is that gender issues afflict all genders and so do the varying thought processes that people can have. Tolerance of how people think, if different from how we ourselves think, is vital. But it can be effectively learned only in a setting in which all gender issues, afflicting male and female and other alike, are discussed with equal tolerance and interest.


A friend, whose political beliefs differ from mine but whom I nevertheless respect greatly,
made the very sensible observation that the school class Facebook group is not a good place for a political debate.

He's right.

A woman in the class has strong feelings about the gender studies facility and warns me that I might offend some people if I say anything against it.

Hmm. Let me review my priorities.

During my internship, I saw a fellow intern on a hospital gurney with his chest cut open and saw his heart beating. (A psychotic person stabbed him in the chest.) He later died. See https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/13/nyregion/mortally-wounded-physician-jots-down-clue-to-his-attacker.html
for details.

In 1995, I banged my head on the ocean floor, breaking my neck, and was face down in the water without being able to move.

When driving on a slippery highway in Maine during a slushstorm,
aware that if I stopped I could not be sure I could start driving again and that in that desolate area mobile phone service was poor, I noticed that my heart started skipping beats.
My only option was to hope that by keeping the pressure in my chest high I could keep my heart beating regularly, so I turned on some music and sang for my life.
It worked.

Years later, I felt weak and had chest pain and did an ECG on myself. It looked bad. I rested (no medical insurance) and it got worse. It was a heart attack, and I got a helicopter ride for emergency repair. My estranged wife, aware that I had no money or credit cards with me, refused to get me and refused to make arrangements for anyone else to do so.
I though nothing of her attitude.

These are things to worry about. Fear of offending someone by telling the truth is not something to worry about.
Anyone who thinks it is is someone who has had a very sheltered life. Check your privilege, and all that.
Here is my reply. Incidentally, as I upload this website and revise it weeks later I have had no further feedback from this person.

My reaction to the gender studies program a decade ago (2008) was a letter to the headmaster, which you can read here.

Someone else is heard from.
There is a presentation about masculinity.

It is based on black masculinity as inferred from the media.

It is NOT based on black masculinity as inferred from the ordinary black people

 as they struggle with broken families
and with self-serving welfare systems
and with socially destructive public-school curricula that lead to illiteracy and essentially no job skills
and with a culture that glorifies fighting and crime.

Wrong emphasis, if you ask me.
There is also a presentation about sex trafficking.

This is an important problem.

Unless the students are being taught how to detect and fight sex trafficking,
for example by learning to identify distraught girls near truck stops,
the major lesson here is that girls are in this setting victims.

It's easy to focus on that problem
and overlook the animal abuse,
vicious spankings that are child abuse,
rape of adults,
and other very important problems
if this one gets disproportionate attention.
If other problems are highlighted too, then my objection disappears.

Naïvely focusing on this problem can effect the inference that female people are victims.
This inference is very dangerous to society.
The last item here looks very interesting and extremely difficult to do properly.

Here, we have an example of a good component of gender study.
My response: my original concerns were not addressed by these posters of presentations and I got no reply to what I said right here.

Yes, my proof of the cognitive contradiction is in professional peer-reviewed literature (so don't try calling me a nutcase; it won’t work).

Here is the link: http://www.jpands.org/vol22no3/correspondence.pdf
Upset about all this, I wrote to various people at the school and to share my concerns. The link is here.

After a while, I got a reply from the Dean of the Faculty thanking me for my letter. See it here.

What is interesting and very distressing is the response I got when I posted my having received that reply on Facebook. Details follow.

Here is what my friend posted after seeing the above portion of this webpage (before I got a reply from the Dean of the Faculty).

Is my reaction overkill? I don't think so.

No riot, no vandalism, no disruption.

If I choose to vent my frustration here, then I will do so.
The presentations on which I commented represent scholarly research.

Debates over a millennium ago about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin constituted scholarly research, too.
But that does not mean that they have any practical application nowadays.

The thought processes of scholarly research may be good, or even perfect; but if the content is garbage then so is the outcome.

An irrelevant question looks as if someone is trying to set me up for an ad hominem attack.
Hint: do not try an ad hominem attack on me unless you want to look ridiculous.

And as for scholarly research, Galileo might have had a few words to say about trusting it implicitly.

My friend cautions me about getting too worked up about this gender-studies program and its consequences.

But someone has to do it, and I don't mind the mud as much as do some people.
I got a very nice e-mail from the Dean of the Faculty. Here it is.

I stand by what I said about the value of what I have done in writing my letter.

The female classmates who have given to a gender-studies center without first considering what it does and what it is supposed to do

demonstrate a singular lack of concern about the value of money
and substitute a costly and empty-headed gesture (giving money to a gender-studies program)
for the true giving that comprises identifying what is needed and arranging for that need to be met.

Notice to fake philanthropists:

If the effect of your giving does not include the improvement that you hope for, and you are or should be aware of that fact, then
1 you have wasted your money,
2 you have aligned yourself with a socially maladjusted group,
3 to anyone outside that group, you look like an idiot, and
4 you deserve to be told off vigorously if you ask for donations.
In case you didn't understand, I'll say it again:

THERE IS MORE TO GENDER ISSUES THAN SEXUAL HARASSMENT OF WOMEN!!!

No, I'm not minimizing that problem, but I am saying that there are gender issues other than ballyhoo about this-or-that oppressed class.

The possibility that someone is being abused but does not know it (thinking that the stresses he/she feels are normal for the circumstances) is conspicuously ignored.

And an attempt to teach children how to avoid potential abusers may fail, but I note an apparent refusal to even try.

(Hmm. Who benefits when society obstructs attempts to teach people how to avoid becoming abused?)
It's been seven weeks. A long vacation?

Regardless, there is a lack of followup.

There is also a presumption that if I was a boy and I didn't like the girls at the nearby school
then the cause of my dislike had to do with sexual behavior.


As if all objectionable behavior by female people has to do with sex. Or maybe all behavior by female people has to do with sex.
So much for women's liberation.


Incidentally, my website hosting is domiciled in Sweden. So if you're offended, don't even TRY to get this site taken down.


Please share this web page and get the word out. Gender studies can be legitimate, but they can also be a process of indoctrination in a very destructive manner.
I hope the gender studies program can add how to assess a potential boyfriend or girlfriend so as to help prevent bad marriages. And rapes. And unwanted children.

If students in a high school are expected to continue to college, at which there will be dreadful gender and indoctrination issues whatever the high-school administration does,
then the best policy for the students is to anticipate gender malfunction actions in college
and teach students to be aware and how best to respond to college pressures.
Pretending that there is no sequel to this kind of high school is naïve.

If you agree with me, then please do what you can to bring about improvement in school curricula.
Thank you for reading this material.