"Former student sues LSE over its 'gender bias' against men"

[NormaStanleyFletcher]

here

unlikely anything will become of it

I saw this today and thought the guy was a complete twunt.

We used to get guys like this in my women's studies lectures at university. They'd ask "Where are the Men's Studies classes?".

What they failed to realise was that practically ALL of the other courses at the uni were flippin' Men's Studies! You had to work very hard indeed to find much female content in my politics or economics lectures. And by 'female content', I mean women and their ideas.

Hmm- he does sound like a twunt -and clearly won't get anywhere - however there are issues that do negatively effect men - what about men not living as long as women, more likely to commit suicide -

We had someone similar on my course at uni. The first English Lit module, we foocused entirely on male poets and authors. We had one lesson with a feminist approach, and a little voice piped up with "what about teh menz"? (Or words to that effect)

no don't think it is only biology may be partly don't know enough biology to be sure- think is about things like drinking more, less likely to visit doctors if they think it is an issue , smoke more -although that is changing of course

I don't think it's as simple as just biology actually; the gap is narrowing as women take up a lot of the unhealthy habits that used to be more male-dominated, like smoking and drinking too much. There are definitely aspects of culturally constructed masculinity which contribute to it, like men being encouraged towards risk-taking behaviour more than women (driving too fast, fighting....) or men not tending to go to the doctor as much. The whole thing could be (and I'm sure has been) looked at very fruitfully from a feminist perspective.

x-post!
IIRC women are more likely to attempt suicide but men are more likely to have access to the means (eg all these poor farmers who shoot themselves due to the lethal combination of difficulty making ends meet, and having lots of guns round the place).

What a try-on. He left after 6 weeks, I notice. Hardy enough time even to know how the course was shaping up. And am I the only person who finds it pretty sad that a mature student of 39 could not persevere and advocate his position within the Uni rather than flouncing off? Is he hoping to be paid off via a commercial settlement?

he's representing himself because no lawyer would touch it with a barge pole. he's talking absolute twaddle. The idea of his arguments being put before a judge amuses me greatly. Such gems as

"The core texts we had to read before each class were typically packed with anti-male discrimination and bias - heavily focusing on, exaggerating, and falsifying women's issues perspectives, whilst blaming men, to justify ignoring men's issues."

""They simply refuse to acknowledge the research which contradicts the 'women good/men bad', or the 'women victims/men perpetrators' storyline."

these leave me wondering how anyone so thick got a place at LSE. it's generally packed with the very brightest.

I'm seeing that the course was called Gender, Media and Culture, and he reckons it was mostly about feminism (which he obviously sees as a pile of man-insulting poo). He sounds like a tosser, and I don't believe for one minute he couldn't have found out more about the course content before it began. And I agree with the points made above that there are very few places where you can study gender or culture that isn't masculine as default.

Having said that, I would have a bit of an issue with a course of that title if (and I don't want to take his word for it that this is true, of course) it didn't cover masculinity as well as femininity. My beef with this is totally different from his - I don't like it because it implies that masculinity just happens naturally, whereas femininity is a construct. Both are constructs, and people need to know this. IMO.

Something that never ceases to piss me off is the way that, if you so much as mention women in many areas of academia, you have to justify it beforehand. I'm writing about how women did a particular job at one time. It's well known they did it, I can back it up with masses of sources, and it's been the subject of loads of scholarly publications. But do they want me to write 'women did this job, and ...' and carry on with the rest of my topic? Do they fuck. No, I'm supposed to do a stupid explanatory 'well, much research has shown that women usually did this job, and of course we don't have all the evidence so there may have been a few men there too, and naturally it's quite possible women didn't always do it very well, and ...'.

There is a large increase in the amount of binge-drinking girls. The gap will narrow. Not that we want this of course, but it is innevitable

Inevitable?!

Hardly. And I really hope binge-drinking ceases to be such a big factor for both men and women soon. I do hold out some hope that it will, as I think even five or ten years ago, we knew much less about how much more damaging binge drinking is for women than for men.

Yet it seems to be on the increase. We are educated about it in school and how it effects women more, but it's down to the individual what they do

True, very much is down to the individual. Though I think education helps too - an awful lot of boy and girl teens drink because they're not socially confident, and we can try to do something about that. Medical advances could help too, of course (it's a negative way to look at it I know, but prior to liver transplants, alcoholism killed some people faster. ).

'Inevitable' is very pessimistic, IMO.

I have to say that I read this sitting on the number 24 bus, and probably got a few looks as I snorted at the story.

It reminded me of the saying

"He who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client"

And this after he failed to represent his own point of view in a whole 6 weeks on the course

Btw, you may be younger than me? I wasn't educated at school about binge drinking being worse for women - I don't think it was generally known back then, and certainly wasn't known to my teachers or parents of friends.

NSF - never heard that saying but it does seem pretty apt!

I'm definately younger than you. One problem I think is that it doesn't seem to matter what problems may arise from drinking, the NHS is here to make it all better

I am happy though that pubs are putting up posters saying "don't accept drinks from strangers"

I don't know if that's had an effect or not but again the warning is there

I think there is probably room for a debate on what masculinity actually is, and what it means. At the moment, it's just a default against which everything else is measured - we don't really know what it is.

However, unless any of the people who profess to care so much about the subject, such as the whinger in the article, get up off their arses and start writing books and developing theories, there's not much to debate with.

Oh, be fair - there's enough to teach a MA course on masculinity! It's not hard.

What I suspect is the point is that this course, had he bothered to do more than minimal research on its content (esp. beyond week 6!), made it quite clear what would and wouldn't be covered. I simply do not believe he could not have found out what it included before signing up - so why did he assume it'd be about masculinity? There's no reason it should be the default. It'd be like me looking at a course called 'Medieval Poetry' and assuming it'd be in French because I hadn't bothered to check which language.

• Sorry, to clarify: I do not in the least men to suggest that it is easier to teach/study masculinity than femininity. I just mean it wouldn't be hard to find an MA course's worth of material already written. There's masses of stuff out there.