Heh. On the campus where I did my masters and doctoral work (a major Tier 1 research university) the Take Back the Night chicks wouldn’t let men march with them, and even violently opposed men when they tried to so. Those ‘tolerant’ and ‘diversity-loving’ women even got violent when a MTF transexual who wanted to march; not only did those ‘promoters of peace’ actively oppose the person based on their male genetic sex, but they beat the you-know-what out of them when he/she/they tried to participate in the march. It caused a real scandal which was mostly swept under the rug by the administration and campus news media, but not before the GLBT community ‘outed’ the feminists for their intolerance and violence on a local radio show.

Misandry and intolerance from feminists is very real, even if you insist on taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the issue. Those of us who are not in denial see it regularly.

labyrus said: “If there is a gendered “distrust and fear” on campuses, I haven’t seen it. My social group at university includes men and women, people of many orientations, and we don’t have any distrust and fear that I’m aware of.

I don’t think focusing on rape as a serious problem is ever “disproportionate to reality.”

The only necessary response to that statement is “Duke LaCrosse.”

labyrus said: “Mind you, I don’t live in residence, so maybe there’s a part of that experience I’m just not exposed to, but I think the idea of campuses as powderkegs of gendered aggression doesn’t reflect reality. For the most part, men and women have classes together, hang out together, talk to eachother, and seem to get along a lot better than they do in many sectors of society. “

I agree with the above. Rape on campus is extremely rare, on the order of one or two incidents a year (and many times they are so-called “date rape,” which much of the time isn’t even real rape because the woman doesn’t even consider it rape; it’s usually some professional third-party sexual assault busybody), so IMO the issue of rape on campus is far, far overblown.

But then, YMMV.

labyrus, what do you think of gender ‘agitators’ like on-campus feminists who hold ‘take back the night’ vigils and focus all their energies on issues like rape and sexual harrassment? Do you think their focus is entirely disproportional to reality (which everyone seems to be in agreement here), and that they are in effect placing distrust between men and women (the distrust and fear we talk of in this thread)?

I’m pretty supportive of anti-violence and anti-rape work, but I’m often a bit uneasy about the direction “Take Back The Night” rhetoric takes, since a lot of the time the image of a stranger in the night as a rapist is brought up, and in reality most rapes are commited by someone the victim knows, and women can be in as much danger in their own homes as when they go out at night.

I have never seen men feel victimised or ostracized by take back the night events. Sometimes people are a bit upset to be excluded, but I think viewing this kind of agitation as threating to men is just plain senseless. The on-campus feminist club at my school are a quite friendly group of people and I’ve never seen them engage in any kind of blanket statement negative stereotyping about men.

I don’t think focusing on rape as a serious problem is ever “disproportionate to reality”. One rape happening on a university campus is too many. I think people can often take precautions against it too far, but it’s up to them to decide how much they want to protect their safety.

If there is a gendered “distrust and fear” on campuses, I haven’t seen it. My social group at university includes men and women, people of many orientations, and we don’t have any distrust and fear that I’m aware of.

Mind you, I don’t live in residence, so maybe there’s a part of that experience I’m just not exposed to, but I think the idea of campuses as powderkegs of gendered aggression doesn’t reflect reality. For the most part, men and women have classes together, hang out together, talk to eachother, and seem to get along a lot better than they do in many sectors of society.

Then again, we tend to be pretty relaxed about the housing arrangements. Lots of people don’t live where they say they live. I didn’t realise it was as unusual, though, as the other comments here seem to suggest.

Amp, just send a link here – I’ll have a look. I won’t discuss it any further in this thread for the sake of this thread

I suspect that this is mostly based on the historical reality that feminists have been exploiting minorities – especially racial and sexual minorities – for years in order to advance their system of special privileges for women. Feminists have been piggy-backing their causes (petty and otherwise) on the back of real injustice for many decades and you certainly would not be the first to be suckered into to supporting them; been there, done that. Further, my experience is that women – particularly feminist women – are the quickest to throw the slur of “fag,” “gay,” “girlie-man,” etc., if/when men don’t succumb to women’s advances and other exploitation when women try and use their sexual currency to manipulate men. I haven’t heard regular homophobic slurs from men in decades; on the other hand, I hear such things from women at least weekly. IMHO men who are “insufficiently masculine” are deeply threatening to women vis-a-vis their sex-based power and currency, while for het men such guys are at most annoying.

Thus, from my experience it is women, especially feminist women, who are most prone to not only sexism, but homophobia as well. Obviously our personal experiences are quite different.

That remains true today. Complementarily, students often temporarily or semi-permanently move into friends’ dorm rooms when they’re having trouble with their roommate, often without bothering to ask for reassingment. I know at least one current student who recently did this for exactly the reason you describe: trouble in a relationship (and sharing a dorm room with partner).

Hugo wrote:

My first thought, writing as someone nearly two-decades removed from undergraduate life, is that we’ve really come a long way; if the most salient form of oppression that young feminists and their allies can find is the absence of gender-neutral bathroom policy, then we have much for which to be thankful.

Hugo, just because some young feminists are working on this issue doesn’t mean that they think bathroom policies are “the most salient form of oppression.” There are many reasons that particular issues end up being worked on at particular times; salience is only one of the relevant factors.

Ideologically, I agree with the idea of gender-blind housing being available, even to froshes. But I worry about practical problems.

There’s a real problem with what happens when young lovers live together in college housing. Of course, this already happens with same-sex relationships; but it would happen on a much larger scale if the heterosexual majority were permitted to move in with their lovers. Are college housing authorities really prepared to deal with a huge increase in the number of students who have an urgent need for room reassignments due to a relationship having broken up, for example?

(When I was in college, heterosexual lovers often did, in practice, live with each other; one would move into the other’s room, leaving their own room more-or-less unused. But this unofficial system did mean that everyone – or, at least, everyone heterosexual – maintained their own residence which they could return to in case of breakup).

Mr. Bad wrote:

I wonder if maybe – perhaps, just maybe – the reason that post-Third Wave feminists and so-called “pro-feminist” men get are ostracized by us regular folks is because you-all have embraced an ideology that is shamelessly sexist?

In my experience, this reverses the direction of causality. I was rejected by you “regular folks” for being insufficiently masculine many years before I became a feminist.

Preferential treatment of recognised victim groups is nothing new. You try making an official complaint about it and then see yourself labelled a ‘homophobe’ simply because you dare question the double standard.