Instapundit is on a tear recently, boldly proclaiming those who might disagree with him are not credible.
Cute rhetorical trick, but it isn’t very useful. He seems to think boys are being kept down by THE WOMAN. That really isn’t the humorous part though. One can argue that we don’t take boys problems very seriously and I think there is something to that. Much like some African-American kids face pressures to not achieve, boys as a class face similar pressures. The funny part is the screed proclaiming those who disagree with him are ridiculous:
You can disagree with this if you like — though, frankly, I think doing so is a confession of utter blindness to reality — but quit telling me that this is some creation of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. It’s not, and you only diminish your credibility by pretending (or, more embarrassingly, actually believing) otherwise.
Most of what we see him cite with the exception of Christina Hoff Sommers are further screeds with little systematic support. Sure, some people say really stupid things, but that doesn’t make a dominant feature of a culture. One thing we do understand about human behavior is that humans tend to search out views that reinforce their impressions. This seems like a prime case of seeking evidence for what one wants to believe is true and not trying to evaluate the degree of the problem. Glenn would improve himself to understand that problems occur by degree.
There are lots of dumb things done on college campuses, but part of the educational process is learning to distinguish between strong and weak arguments and questioning assertions. Because one takes issue with an assertion or disagrees with a professor isn’t the sign of a hostile environment. It is a sign of a place where teaching and learning are taking place.
Colleges aren’t monolithic thought machines despite what some would like to insist. Students are, not surprisingly, quite capable of evaluating arguments made by those teaching them and often discard those they find silly.
The real problem with this line of argument is how men and boys are being made into victims. Saying they are not going to college because of anti-male bias misses the mark on several levels. One would need to look at the alternatives to college that many men are choosing. Are people seriously trying to argue that working a crappy half-ass job with low pay and little future is better than listening to people abstractly blame men? Or the horror of facing viewpoints they disagree with?
I always found the middle class orientation of feminism at college the most surreal. Discussions of who does the housework seemed a little strange to the guy coming from a single-parent trailer park household. The argument that college is so tough for men falls into the same category of class based ignorance of most people’s lives. Existing in a closed tunnel that ignores the rest of the world causese one to lose the alternatives.
Men who fail out of college or leave aren’t doing so because of anti-male bias at the college level. The problems of male educational achievement start before college and simply follow from there. There is a problem and it is how we socialize boys to value education. That doesn’t make men in college victims, it makes the ones not going victims of low expectations.
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