Newsletter

January 2002

Lynched by the Sisterhood

Jeffrey Asher

In Autumn 1994, I offered
students at Dawson College in Montreal 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 naïveté about feminist politics was sustained by raging
hormones. By 1980, the woman’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.” Marilyn French announced, “All men are rapists, and that’s all
they are … all men are the enemy.” Further incitements to anti-male hatred
and violence exuded from Dworkin, McKinnon and their cohort of vicious
bigots. They remain required reading in feminist courses, which exclude
male faculty or authors, brainwash young women and ostracize young men.
This paranoia is unchallenged by human rights commissions, and financed
by governments. Sunera Thobani’s recent “hate speech” is further protected
by her UBC women’s studies professorship.

Her academic critics pay
for their dissent with their careers. I proposed “Men’s Lives”, because
the three largest departments (Humanities, English and the Social Sciences)
offered over 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
naïveté.

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. Those young men loved women.

From the 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.

Students warned me about
agents 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 Chair of Women’s Studies vandalized my bulletin board, in front of
a surveillance camera! On the front page of the Montreal Gazette, she and
my department chair defended her bullying. I requested management to 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 to rebut hysteria over ‘relationship,’
‘domestic’ and sexual assault propaganda. From my published research, they
learned that men comprise 68% of homicide victims, 80% of suicides, 92%
of AIDS deaths, 97% 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, women students
and competent professors increasingly abandoned the Sisterhood for the
search for useful knowledge and successful careers.

In May of 2000, the Chair
of Women Studies, in collaboration with management convened a committee
which 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 cancelled “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
this injustice and demanded that “Men’s Lives” be reinstated. They threatened
to fire me.

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 defense (thanks, Peter). 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.
Over 85% of students reported that I treated them fairly, with content
and teaching that was “superior” and “outstanding”. 100% 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, approach-ability, 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 1617 feminist
courses, offered in programs from undergraduate to Ph.D. 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.

Op-ed
in Ottawa Citizen and Montreal Gazette, October 6, 2001.