COLLEGES AND MEN: Adam Magazine says I’m wrong about anti-male bias at colleges. Some of his points are right, but I don’t think they refute my position, which is that colleges have — quite deliberately — been made a hostile environment for the typical (or stereotypical) male student.

Magazine’s point is that not all male students are typical, which is true, but I don’t think it matters: it’s the typical students who are being deterred. (In fact, I’d almost say that Magazine is, like many oppressed individuals, identifying with his oppressors and saying “I’m different from those other men.” Would that make him an “Uncle Tim?” No, too Pythonesque.) I’m hardly a typical male either, but so what? That doesn’t change the effect — or motivation — of many of these policies. Sure, some men will be more comfortable in a feminized environment, just as some women are more comfortable in a masculinized environment. The latter is considered sex discrimination, though, so why not the former?

I got a bunch of email on this subject — I’m going to post a roundup tonight.

UPDATE: Reader Jennifer Fuller says Magazine is wrong, too:

I have to agree with you, that Magazine totally misses the point. It’s not that less date rape is a bad thing, it’s that most colleges (and I just got out of college, Texas A & M in College Station) don’t just teach that rape is bad and to be nice to minorities. They tell you flat out that ALL men are potential rapists and lynchers, and that only much, much education and many, many workshops will prevent this. Most men are neither rapists or lynchers, and don’t think that they need to be re-educated on this point. Magazine’s cluelessness about other men is striking – he really seems to think that either you’re a sensitive theater major or a hulking brute, with nothing in between.

And don’t discount the absolute disconnect that the anti date-rape movement has wrought over the last 15 years. Men are now being told that they can go out drinking with women, flirt with them, offer to take them home, both voluntarily get undressed, make out, kiss, touch, fondle and have sex – and yet if the next day, the woman regrets it, then the man is the one who is fully responsible for that terrible mistake and must pay for it. Many, many women’s advocates on campus consider the described scenario to be an actual rape, and that the man must be punished as a rapist. It’s asinine, and stupid, and utterly counterproductive, since the legitimate victims of a true date rape come across as identical to the brainless irresponsible sex-regretters, and men in general get sick of the whole game. I went to one of the more conservative colleges in Texas, if not the United States, and if that was the situation there, I can only imagine what it’s like everywhere else.

Jenn Fuller

Austin, Texas

Yes, the bureaucratic imperative that has led womens-center types at many colleges to push the envelope of sex-harassment farther and farther has done a great deal of damage. Say — now that men are a minority on college campuses, where are the men’s centers and men’s-rights-advocates in paid fulltime campus positions?