Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Christopher Kilmartin" <>]

I am bothered by the trend as well.  It's an uphill battle, but the best we 
can do is to identify the assumptions behind the arguments and provide 
well-grounded data-based arguments.  For instance, when girls have a 
characteristic struggle, the rhetoric is around "how are we raising our 
girls?"  If boys are struggling in school, it's "how can we change the 
SCHOOL?"  it's the old "boys will be boys" thing - boys can't change; we need 
to change things around them, as in "boys can't control their aggression and 
sexual impulses; so we leave that up to females."

the whole Mansfield thing is absolutely ludicrous.  he's a professor of 
GOVERNMENT, who, as far as I can tell, has no particular expertise in gender. 
 But we all know that one way to sell books is to make inflammatory arguments 
and tell people what they think they know already.

Here is some information about men and college from my recently published 
book, The Masculine Self:

One of the debates that emerged was whether boys are shortchanged by schools 
relative to girls, with one author (Sommers, 2001) even claiming that 
"feminism" is waging a "war" against boys by demanding that boys behave like 
girls.  As evidence, supporters of this position cite statistics indicating 
that boys achieve lower average grades in school and are a shrinking minority 
in the college student population (Gurian, 2005).  Behind this argument are 
the assumptions that feminism is males' enemy and that the sexes are 
adversarial (i.e., attention paid to girls' problems leads boys to be 
"shortchanged").  On the other hand, males' standardized test scores and 
working-world achievement are as strong as they ever were (Sadker, 2000), 
demonstrating that, if there is a war, it is clearly not a very successful 
one.
One interesting part of the debate is the growing disproportion of male to 
female college students, with women making up 55% of those who earn 
bachelor's degrees (Argetsinger, 1999), which at first glance makes it appear 
that there is a higher education crisis among young men.  However, when one 
looks more closely at the data, a very different picture emerges.  Among 
White students from relatively affluent families, male students are a 
majority (52%)  The sex ratio is roughly equal for middle income Whites, and 
men are 46% of lower income White college students.  The statistics for 
people of color reveal large discrepancies.  For African Americans, males are 
32, 48, and 41 percent of college students from lower, middle, and upper 
income families, respectively, and for Hispanics, 43, 46, and 50 percent 
(Brownstein, 2000).  Therefore, income and race appear to interact strongly 
with sex.
The debates about how boys are harmed by various social forces will likely 
continue, but as many scholars (Sadker, 2000; Kimmel, 1999; Pollack, 2000b), 
have pointed out, we should be careful not to be lulled into playing a game 
of "boys against the girls."  It is clear that both boys and girls face 
problems that are somewhat specific to their sexes.  Addressing the typical 
male problems of poor school achievement, criminality, bullying, impoverished 
emotional lives, and suicide need not come at the expense of a focus on 
girls' struggles.

chris kilmartin


Christopher Kilmartin, Ph.D.
Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies
Klagenfurt, Austria, 2006-07
Professor of Psychology
University of Mary Washington
Fredericksburg, VA 22401
(540) 654-1562  FAX 540-654-1836


>>> "Gretchen Krull" 
>>> <>
>>>  4/22/2006 8:28 AM >>>
I am interested in others thoughts on the growing number of articles on
boys and men.  I am frightened by the current trend which in so many
words says that we have gone too far with supporting women; men have
suffered so now we need to focus on men by taking away from women.  We
see this in the following current issues- taking away choices related to
our bodies; colleges accepting fewer females to give men a greater
chance in admissions; taking away money for girls in math and sciences
at the elementary and high schools because boys are not thriving in
schools; students grabbing on the rhetoric of men such as Harvey
Mansfield in "Manliness" (which claims that women have taken away men's
manliness and thy need to reclaim it! 

 I particular, I would be interested in hearing from men who have been
working on men's issues as I feel this trend is not working towards a
more equitable society, but is backlash.  How do we work to get change
that will provide for the needs of both men and women without putting
the other down? 

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