Opinion | Colleges don't marginalize, discriminate against men

Last week, in my women, gender and sexuality seminar (Psychology of Gender) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, my 22 students and I discussed a fascinating study of how women in college negotiate status and power through “slut-shaming.” The article is about a hot topic, for sure, but the reading was tough, and my students rose to the occasion by carefully and incisively dissecting the study’s rationale, methods and important conclusions about gender, stigma and social class.

This was a typical day in my classroom. I rarely lecture, because I personally prefer challenging the students to work through ideas with me as a kind of expert guide, as opposed to hypodermically injecting them with the “right answers.” My courses are notoriously rigorous and deeply serious. I ask my students to read quite a bit, write even more and harness the skills of feminist social science, because that’s my job and I take it very seriously. 

So it was alarming to read George Korda’s column about men being marginalized on colleges campuses, in which he uses courses like mine as a foil to advance an intellectually lazy and disingenuous argument that men are victimized by the mere existence of WGS courses. Korda’s logic is hardly original; members of dominant groups have long objected to curriculum, resources or programming that focuses on minority groups with facile claims of discrimination. The Frieson Black Cultural Center does not mean UT is an unsafe space for white students, and no one actually thinks that. The designation of months to honor women’s and African-American history serves as a temporary corrective to the white-washed, male-focused curriculum so many of us are taught, and no men or white people are harmed by these months. Likewise, WGS is not about hurting or demonizing men and boys. My students and colleagues know this, so why doesn’t Korda?

Part of the reason why Korda’s argument is popular and why it might sound good to even discerning readers is that feminists and feminism are so pervasively mischaracterized and lampooned in our society that it is nearly impossible to imagine how WGS courses would not be about man-bashing and brain-washing. The version Korda presents is a tired trope in which crazed university professors use their classrooms as incubators for radical ideology. 

But WGS is a thoughtful, socially relevant and critically important field, because it brings together transformative ideas from the humanities, social science and natural science (some scientists are feminists, too) to explore how gender, power and inequality affect all of us — even men. In my courses, no group is demonized. Instead, we work to understand how complex, often invisible forces influence the most pressing and vexing social issues of our time, including poverty, health care, democracy and international relations. My students learn how to become skeptical and informed consumers of scientific knowledge, as well as how to produce reasoned, evidence-based arguments.

The existence of WGS at UT is not evidence of discrimination against men. I am a man, and WGS does not hurt me or any of my male students. Like professors in any field, I hope to cultivate in my students even a fraction of the passion I have for the work that I do. The vast majority of my students won’t become WGS professors, and some will actively dislike my course — not unlike how I disliked calculus. But I got an A in calculus because I was evaluated not on my affection for it (or lack thereof), but on my proficiency. Likewise, I evaluate my students based on their mastery of the content — not their agreement with it — just like every other professor does.

WGS is not the scary, man-hating, discriminatory field that Korda describes. The “evidence” he presents, of course, is based on cursory Googling, rather than substantive engagement with the ideas. In a time when adults talking about sex on a college campus creates perennial crises in our state, it seems to me that WGS is as relevant and necessary as ever. Rather than fear-mongering about imaginary feminists trying to hurt undergraduate men, I suggest that Korda genuinely engage with the exciting scholarship in WGS. He is welcome to visit my class anytime, though he’ll have to follow the rules: Before you disagree with the day’s reading, you have to demonstrate that you actually understand it.

Patrick R. Grzanka, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychology and women, gender and sexuality at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His new book, "Intersectionality: Foundations and Frontiers," was published in January by Routledge.

George Korda:Are men the new marginalized minorities on campus?