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. |
|||||||
This poster was found in the hallway
of a girls’ dormitory. |
|
||||||
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
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. |
|||||||
|
|||||||
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?) |
|||||||
|
|||||||
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. |