Duke recruits men for program to fight 'toxic' masculinity

Article here. Excerpt:

'Duke University is recruiting male students for a nine-week program that pledges to “destabilize masculine privilege” and “interrogate masculinity.”

The program, known as the Duke University Men’s Project, seeks to help men examine how their masculinities exist “often in toxic ways” while beginning “the work of unlearning violence.”
...
Over the course of the nine-week program, men will participate in weekly discussion groups conducted through an “intersectional feminist lens,” with the hope of helping male students learn an “intersectional understanding of masculinity” and creating “spaces to destabilize masculine privilege.”

Organizers warn that the program isn’t for the faint of heart, explaining that the discussion groups will make men feel “vulnerable” and “will be challenging,” and should thus be “taken seriously.”
...
Upon successful completion of the program, participants will be dispatched across campus to host events for other students on topics such as “pornography and rape culture, male privilege and taking up space, and gender disparities in emotional labor.”'

Like0 Dislike0

Comments

In the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, I cant believe anyone can devalue masculinity.... Thank god for men!! Please stay just the way you are.

Could a class be taught that questions feminist theory and points out how destructive it is?

What I don't understand about feminist theory is how they can, on one hand, say that a woman' chastity is not to be valued. They want to diminish slut shaming and suggest that a woman should celebrate the fact that she can have different sexual partners every day of the week. Then, on the other hand, if a woman is raped, they feel it is the worst crime ever as if the woman lost something extremely valuable. If a woman's sex is not valuable, then why not treat rape the same as any assault or theft especially if no physical harm, STD or pregnancy occurs? How devastating could it be for a woman who has sex with strangers often, to have "date rape" sex with a man who mis-interpreted her signals or did not get full verbal consent for penetration? Take mattress girl and the man she accused, for example, they had sex previously, Emma exclaims on FB that she loves anal sex, on the night in question she gives consent for vagina sex, but claims the anal sex was "rape". If the accused missed her signals, how traumatized could she be by it? Seems like he should just say "sorry" like you do when you accidentally bump in to people, and move on.

I think it is feminist that create all the psychological damage. Sure seems like they want women to feel victimized.

I also want to point out how destructive slutty women are. They destroy families and destroy society. Feminist don't value families and they claim that no one owes society anything. But they sure think society owes them, look at all the handouts they need (matriarchal societies, or ghettos, need more welfare and social services like police, jails and courts). What one owes society may make a healthy debate, but society sure counts on men to uphold it....just look at what is expected of men and all the rescuing men are doing after the hurricanes. It will be men who rebuilt and women in supporting roles.

Society owes men a big "thank you" not all the shame that feminists have for them.

Like0 Dislike0

I've had the same question about date rape. How much harm is actually done to a woman if the guy misunderstands her signals, especially is she's had sex with him or someone else lots of times before. Is she really harmed, if, as you say, there's no physical harm, no STD, and no pregnancy? For me, forcible rape is quite different: if a guy forces himself on her, threatens her, or gives her a drug, yes, I can very much see the harm in that.

And why is only he required to get her consent but she is not required to get his consent? Apparently it's a crime for him to treat her the same way she treats him--his consent doesn't matter. If his consent doesn't matter, why does her consent matter?

And then there's the common case where both are drunk. He is treated as responsible for his actions while she is treated as a minor who cannot give legal consent, and since he needs her consent, he's suddenly a rapist.

Feminists also say we can't "blame the victim"--so telling women how to avoid getting raped is verboten. It's almost as if they want women to get raped.

And your last sentence nails it.

Like0 Dislike0

. . .thing about this program is that it is being hosted on the campus of a university where a woman (Crystal Gail Mangum)--who was later convicted of murdering her boyfriend--falsely accused three members of the lacrosse team of rape.

The staff and students of the university instantly vilified the team members, even going so far as parading around campus with a banner that said "castrate" on it. When it was later proved that the woman made up the whole thing, no apology was given to the men. The attorney representing Mangum lost his job, but apart from that no one faced any repercussion for the unjust way the boys were treated.

It seems to me that Duke University is clearly dripping with far more toxic femininity than masculinity. What's worse is that the toxic femininity is enabled by institutions like Duke university. Oh, the irony.

Like0 Dislike0

"I also want to point out how destructive slutty women are. They destroy families and destroy society."

WTF? Kris, where do you get that from?

A "slut" is a woman who has the same sort of sex drive any given man has: both relatively strong (relative to the average woman's) and not nearly as particular as the typical woman's. Just what is wrong with that? Tell me, if a man presents with the average woman's sort of take on sex, ie, he is unusually picky in re sex partners for a man and/or has a sex drive akin to the average woman's, is he not adjudged to be... "weird"? By the sorts of standards you are appealing to, yes indeed. For in order for there to be "sluts" (ie, women with a stereotypically male take on sex), there must be a contrast between not just women who are sluts vs. ones who are not, but also between the sexes. One must expect men to be generally more inclined to promiscuity than women, and to be willing to act on that inclination, in contrast to the standard you hold for women.

Thus in the judgment of woman as "slut" entails the judgment of man as "sissy", or something similar, all because he has a below-male-average sex drive and/or interest in women, despite being straight.

I should like to refer you to Sex At Dawn, a book by two anthropologists (one male, one female). Short version: Through more than 99% of human history, we were all sluts. And thank goodness for it. Women had sex with men more or less all the time (several times a day), and different men, too. Men they knew, grew up with, were protected and loved by. And so they screwed them frequently, had kids with them, and if it were not for this fact, none of us would be here. The human race is frail, not unlike housecats, requiring a huge amount of cooperation among members of groups to survive. Humans were lucky to make it to 30 through most of our history. Infants and children died often, to the tune of 8/10s of the time. For one woman to produce kids making it to adulthood twice, she'd need to give birth 10 times at least. She'd need to be getting pregnant frequently. Humans do not get pregnant easily. Put 2 and 2 together. Frequent sex, promiscuously, was a necessity of life for nearly all of Man's existence. Gangbangs were the rule, not some down-low swinger party exception. Female chastity only became considered important when female reproductive capacity was monetized, which happened at about the same time what we call modern civilizations appeared: modern ideas of property ownership, agriculture, etc. None of any of this stuff grew up in a vacuum.

Thank God for sluts. None of us'd be here without them.

Now as for slutty women destroying "the family" and "society"? Well, as I pointed out, w/out them, we'd have no society. We'd've died out a long time ago. As for "the family"... a slut is only successfully slutty if guys go ahead and bang her. I imagine you believe that a slutty girl putting the make on a married man is a travesty stemming from her sluttiness. But it takes 2 to tango. Why so slow to condemn a man's giving in to his WILD AND UNTAMED BARBARIC sexual urges to bang her? Possibly because you know as well as I that asking men (or women) to *not* screw people they find attractive is a rather silly idea. It's not unlike asking a cat to refrain from napping. It's in the nature of cats to nap. It's in the nature of people to enjoy screwing each other... often... and many.

A family need not be destroyed because dad (or mom) has decided to screw the neighbor/a co-worker/a friend/etc. In fact, a fair number of people in America/the world today accept that an LTR between 2 people can work fine yet even if the two people involved give each other blank hall passes to screw anyone they want to. I'd argue that a strategy like this increases substantially the likelihood that the LTR will in fact remain an LTR. Now, there are less-than-blank-passes arrangements in the poly world. Many involve triad or quad exclusive relationships. Blank passes are the minority, but the point here is that three (or more) need not be a crowd when those involved are dealing with reality, not some fairy tale ideal. Heck, it's even been discussed here, and not unflatteringly, too.

When you consider how many otherwise perfectly decent relationships/marriages have ended merely because one or both parties simply did what Nature has programmed them to do: screw someone else... it becomes apparent that monogamy as a rel'p standard is unrealistic, unfair, counter-intuitive, and more than a bit nutty. Slutty women (and men) have not failed monogamy. Monogamy has failed them.

Admittedly, at 8 billion and counting, one could argue that MORE screwing is not what is needed. It's less more screwing and more pregnancies that are what are not needed. I can't speak for the third world but here in the first world, there are numerous ways to avoid unwanted pregnancies and they are cheap. There's no excuse, really. And in any case, one of the fastest known ways, if not THE fastest known way, a person can live a sexless/near-sexless life is by getting married, esp. so after one or more kids is produced.

Like0 Dislike0

Men and women are not the same. When it comes to sex and reproduction men and women have different motivations and different consequences. These motivations and consequence make all the difference in what is good and bad for the formation of families and society.

This little ditty sums it all up:

"When it comes to sex, men are the keys and women are the locks. A lock that can be opened by any key is a shitty lock. A key that can open many locks is a master key." -author unknown

The double standards are there because of motivation and consequences set by nature.

Matt, you seem very dedicated to your position, I doubt I can change your mind, but I don't think you have statistics on your side. I dont have time to research or debate, but I also very strongly believe my position and stand by it. I'm not buying your example of 99% of historical times, you say that woman had sex and children with many different men. Sex occurred several times a day to increase birth rates (daily "gang bangs" is how you described it), which means that alpha males shared women with weaker men and happily raised other men's children in a communal setting without the fathers nor the children knowing their true paternity......Instead, I believe there was hypergammy and survival of the fittest - which makes it so the strong genes survive. The alpha males had more wives and more children the weak males had few or none. Men took care of their own kids unless there was an orphan situation. I believe being certain of paternity has always been important to men as it creates a strong father-child bond.

Children of promiscuous women have it very bad, including those from poly-relationships or "open marriages". They are either killed before birth or they have no fathers in the home and we can all see how that destroys society.

For any young man that hopes to form a family, my advice is to not choose a slutty girl (or past slut) to be the mother of your child.

BTW, my definition of "slut" is a woman who chooses to have sex with men on a whim, without any basic commitment to each other's well being and with no proof that he is willing or able to raise children. My definition particularly pertains to women of child bearing age, and has nothing to do with a woman's sex drive.

Like0 Dislike0

We aren't likely to sway each other but that's ok. We're MANN, not NOW. But please take the time to read the book I referred to, or listen to the audio version. A fair bit of what is discussed is not actually news, not to anthropologists. But to people at large, it is.

Like0 Dislike0