Thread: Teacher fired for teaching men's rights course

""""The Gazette (Montreal)
6 October 2001, Page B5


The matriarchy rules

Termination of CEGEP course on Men's Lives eliminated a challenge to
feminist domination

By Jeffrey Asher, The Ottawa Citizen

In autumn 1994, I offered students at Dawson College the only course in
Canada on Men's Lives. One young woman asked me, "Is this another
man-hating course?" I assured her that we would examine men's and women's
lives objectively and treat them with equal respect. She smiled and
chirped, "I'm in."

Father taught me to respect ladies and that human rights were indivisible.
In the 1970s, I lectured on sexual equality of opportunity and equality
before the law. Like most men, my naivete about feminist politics was
sustained by raging hormones.

By 1980, the women's movement was increasingly co-opted by the lunatic
fringe. Germaine Greer pontificated, "Women have very little idea of how
much men hate them ... men do not themselves know the depth of their
hatred." Further incitements to anti-male hatred and violence exuded from
Dworkin, McKinnon and others. They remain required reading in feminist
courses, which exclude male faculty or authors, brainwash young women and
ostracize young men. This paranoia remains unchallenged by human-rights
commissions and is financed by governments. Sunera Thobani's recent "hate
speech" is protected by her University of British Columbia women's-studies
professorship.

Critics of their approach pay for their dissent with their careers.

I proposed Men's Lives because the three largest departments (humanities,
English and the social sciences) offered more than 83 courses with feminist
titles and content, but nothing objective about men. The sisterhood
attempted to neuter the contents and then stalled registration for Men's
Lives. I threatened to appeal to the Ministry of Education and the media.
The few colleagues who still dared to speak to me (off campus) warned me
that my career was in peril. I responded with righteous indignation about
equality, fairness and academic freedom. Such naivete.

Two-thirds of Men's Lives students were women and, like the men, typically
open-minded, morally brave and delightfully quick-witted. They welcomed my
course as deliverance from years of classroom male-bashing. In feminist
courses, young men were condemned before their classmates as stupid,
patriarchal exploiters, batterers and rapists.

From my course outline: "We will examine men's values and experiences, and
the cultural meanings for men of courage, duty, fidelity, success, family
protection, career and sexuality. The intellectual, political, scientific
and cultural achievements of men will be surveyed throughout history.
Reasoned and compassionate analysis will be used to search for
reconciliation away from sexual confrontation, so that men, women and
families may live in harmony." Four universities regularly welcomed me as a
guest lecturer. The matriarchy went apoplectic.

Disrupt Classes

Students warned me about agent provocateurs incited by teachers to disrupt
my classes. One accused me of being paid by Playboy magazine (I wish) and
my answering machine recorded anonymous accusations of sexual abuse and
death threats. One night, the chairman of women's studies vandalized my
bulletin board, in front of a surveillance camera. On the front page of The
Gazette, she and my department chair defended her bullying. I requested
management terminate her supervision over my courses. A year later, she
ordered that my course outline exclude the term "anti-male hysteria."
Management suspended me from teaching until I removed the politically
incorrect insight. I appealed and lost.

A Men's Lives assignment on sex bias in the media required students to
search the periodical indexes for article titles with the word "men" and
"women." They were astounded to discover that the ratio of female to male
articles is 10:1, and often 20:1. Students scoured StatsCan data; they
learned that men comprise 68 per cent of homicide victims, 80 per cent of
suicides, 92 per cent of AIDS deaths, 97 per cent of deaths on the job,
double the female rate of heart diseases and die six years prematurely.
They learned about sex differences in the brain, hormones, abilities,
perception and behaviour. My students delighted in the power of statistical
research.

The sisterhood denounced scientific methodology and slandered my
reputation. Every semester, management incited the worst of students to
complain they "felt uncomfortable" and failed my excessively high
standards. They even passed a confessed cheater. Truthfully, I was not
demanding enough. Students failed who should never have graduated from high
school. To management complaints of excessive dropouts, I requested their
retention requirements. They indignantly denied quotas, and reprimanded me
yet again. According to union grievance officers and lawyers, never before
had a teacher been so relentlessly persecuted.

Feminist courses impel polarization and "dumbing down" of the curriculum,
to maintain their enrolment. Evidence is plentiful in their course
outlines, typically ungrammatical, illogical, filled with jargon and often
incoherent. Since the mid-1990s, female students and competent professors
increasingly abandoned the sisterhood for the search for useful knowledge
and successful careers.

In May 2000, the head of women's studies, in collaboration with management,
convened a committee that announced "a significant number of students" in
my classes felt "belittled and marginalized if they voiced their opinions
or try to substantiate any interpretation of data that may be different."
(sic) They again refused to show me the complaints. They canceled Men's
Lives and ordered me to prepare - within 12 days - three new courses on
"critical thinking," technology and business ethics, for which they knew I
had no training. I protested and demanded that Men's Lives be reinstated.
They threatened to fire me.

Shrewd Timing

Their timing was shrewd. My students were dispersed and unavailable for
protest. Of all colleagues who postured in their classes on freedom of
speech, only the president of the union rallied to my defence. I refused to
capitulate and retired early.

In six years of evaluations, students praised Men's Lives as among the best
courses in the college. More than 85 per cent reported that I treated them
fairly, with content and teaching that was "superior" and "outstanding."
One hundred per cent agreed I treated them with "courtesy and respect." For
30 years of evaluations, I ranked as one of the most popular, fair and
interesting teachers. I rated highest in "enthusiasm, approachability,
tolerance, responsibility, availability, treating students with courtesy
and respect and in a fair and non-discriminatory manner" and "motivating
students to do their best." How I miss my students' intellectual energy and
curiosity. Teaching was my life.

The termination of Men's Lives eliminated the only rational opposition to
political correctness and feminist domination at Dawson College.

Half of the human race remains unexamined, except for condemnation. In
2000, Canadian universities listed two courses on men, neither taught that
year, and more than 1,617 feminist courses, offered in programs from
undergraduate to PhD degrees.

Throughout higher education, the matriarchy rules.

Radical feminists continue to win their government-subsidized war against
men, heterosexuality, the family, religion, merit, objectivity, justice and
reality. Long after the defeat of totalitarianism, radical feminism
indoctrinates students to discriminate by sex and race and enforces
censorship and repression on what is acceptable to think and feel.

Citizens must demand reconstruction of the foundations of objective
education and liberty. Freedom of speech is essential to maintain the
ability to search for the truth. Students' minds must be trained to
challenge dogmas if democracy is to survive. The time is long overdue for
universities and colleges to eradicate feminist intolerance and return to
reason and objectivity. Dedicated teachers are eager to reconstruct an
educated and tolerant society. Give us the call.

---
Jeffrey Asher, formerly of Dawson College, taught on the statistical merits
of sexual politics. """