LOL, there ARE differences between men and women deeper than physical appearance…perhaps we start there rather than presuming men and women can be the same? When you have children that will become self evident. When the kids were little my babysitter, who ran a pretty gender neutral daycare setting where the kids came in as little, tiny babies and stayed with her until they could stay home alone, and I used to sit at her kitchen table over coffee and ponder this very real truth. You can influence the environmental factors but you can’t change the genetic factors. Without genetic engineering men and women will never be the same. If they were, we wouldn’t have people that are trans. Those folks KNOW they don’t match and that is not environmental.
Posters keep grabbing onto the term “toxic masculinity” when it appears to be a term mentioned in passing in an interview by one of the men who are leading the program. Here’s what I think is the advertisement for the program and nowhere does the term “toxic masculinity” appear:
http://www.dukechronicle.com/multimedia/24862
Seems some want to create a male/female divide relative to this program that I do not think exists. And if men want to use the term “toxic masculinity” then why can’t they? Let men define their own programs any way they so wish.
Harvest…I’m sure there will be a segment of men that won’t be offended and I’m pleased they are not using the word “toxic” anymore. I just think it is a very limiting term that some men will find offensive. If you genuinely want to engage a cohort you really shouldn’t start with something that will offend some of the very cohort you are trying to attract.
They say they want to end violence in men. Oh really…Just how many violent men does Duke grant admissions to every year?
I don’t think they ever were using the phrase in advertising the course. You were the first to mention the phrase in your post #9 and I assume you picked it out of the article quoting one of the men organizing the program. And then you go on in your post #12 and drag women into it implying they had something to do with this program, when they in fact did not. Quite frankly I viewed that post as chumming the waters and trying to create some male/female divide.
I think men should speak for themselves on issues relating to their own masculinity – they certainly are more qualified to do so.
After reading all the links I just fail to see how this course is worthy of outrage and deserves criticism.
I’m not outraged, more amused. My criticism has more to do with the positioning of this class - from an adult looking in - I find it ironic that it was crafted from the Women’s Center and I find it amusing that violence and toxic are used in descriptions. As an adult it reads to me that there is something inherently wrong with men that needs fixing. I’m not a college student so have zero idea how college age males at Duke are reacting but it would not surprise me if a strong majority think it sounds like there is something wrong with them that needs fixing…but I’m not there and I’m not a male and I’m not a college student. Like I said, they will find their 15 men for the project I’m sure but as a marketer, I think they could have gotten a whole lot more involved in the project by positioning it entirely differently.
But I do have to agree with this Duke student whose thoughts are similar to mine and I wonder why they felt they need for a “mens project”…In addition to my other musings, why not a project where they bring men and women together, hear lectures, read books, have open discussions about what it means to be a female and what it means to be a male and all that “stuff” that they are going to learn between 18 and 30 anyway…seems like it would be good for women to listen to the men and for the men to listen to the women because they sure as heck aren’t listening to each other on the campus I suspect. Because as a parent I can assure you for the most part, your son doesn’t understand women and your daughters don’t understand men and this is something you can’t “teach your children.”
From a student comment:
Again, my understanding is that the Women’s Center is allowing them the use of their space.
Wednesday evening was the first meeting and I heard they hosted a male speaker addressing the damaging effects of pornography on today’s youth. Sounds like a valuable presentation to me.
I personally don’t care if they get 5 or 500 peopled to attend – 5 men felt that had something valuable to contribute so they started the project. Good for them I say.
I’d be curious to know what kind of turnout they got, and what the gender make up of the audience was. Despite the hype and media attention, who found the event interesting enough to attend? Did the audience get a benefit from it?
I find this discussion interesting, but please don’t parrot a misleading claim based upon a limited survey to support your argument. Even the authors of the study never made that claim.
http://time.com/3633903/campus-rape-1-in-5-sexual-assault-setting-record-straight/
The 1 in 5 has been debunked. You don’t see anyone parroting it anymore. I just posted on another thread a study form one of our flagships on sexual assault reporting. The campus as 50,543 students and 461 filed reports, most were unfounded for adjudication, but that is 461 students who “thought” they had been assaulted…even if another 400 never reported, the statistics it is no where near 1 in 5. There are many great threads on the 1 in 5 analysis that occurred in the past two years and I suspect this is pretty true across the country as various colleges do their year-end reporting.
HarvestMoon1 it is a “program” of the Duke Women’s Center.
https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/wc/programs-services
which is why I said it should have come out of the college - or some neutral office of inclusion or something.
@momofthreeboys, I was referring to runswimyoga’s post at 59 which repeated the claim. And unfortunately the claim is still frequently parroted as fact.
The program was founded by and is led by 5 men. I think they should be able to affiliate with whomever they choose. Why should they be concerned that you think it should have come out of the college or anywhere else for that matter? It is their program and they don’t answer to anyone but the college administration I assume-- perhaps they are hoping that some women might attend as well.
I could see the first speaker as being of interest to both men and women.
If it came directly from the college, I’m pretty sure someone would have objected to that.
And it seems that these men got the idea to do this independently, found a space to host it, and there you go. Pretty typical of a lot of programming that happens on college campuses. Should the school have stepped in and said “Oh, no, it will look better if this comes directly from us?”
Frankly I don’t care all that much. I already said repeatedly over 6 pages I found it amusing and that some of the language I found offensive and why I was amused, why I didn’t like the language and the fact that I was looking at it from adult eyes. It is what it is and somewhat typical of what academia is up to these days with parents tuition money. I don’t have one at Duke so I have no personal interest other than observational. Carry on.
23 of the posts on this thread are yours.
Re men acting different from women…
Everybody buys off on the theory that humans came from other species, right? Do the males and females of other species act differently? Yeah, pretty much. Then why would it not be natural for human sexes to have differing roles, preferences, or behaviors ingrained in them? Did we cross some boundary where all traces of such roles were extracted from from our DNA?
By the way, I think that “intersection of maleness and masculinity” line was social science lingo for “Just cuz you HAVE one, it doesn’t mean you have to BE one.”
I’m looking at it with adult eyes and find none of the language offensive nor anything amusing about it, in anything I’ve read so far. I would have no problem with my sons participating if they were in school there. I’d be interested to hear all about it. My boys did gender studies course work in college, and did bring readings home to share and discuss with me.
“Just cuz you HAVE one, it doesn’t mean you have to BE one.”
Which is true.
It is easy to sucked into the conversation 
“I heard they hosted a male speaker addressing the damaging effects of pornography on today’s youth. Sounds like a valuable presentation to me.”
This, actually, is a very real issue. Porn is so ubiquitous these days that neurologists believe that constant consumption of it is re-wiring the brains of males, so that they are unable to get any sexual arousal from anything but porn. Which, in plain language, means that they can’t get it up when they are with a real woman in flesh.
I am a liberal and a huge supporter of free speech, so I will never suggest banning porn. But I do worry as I have a son. Not sure what the solution is (talking in college campuses is good but not enough).