The Backlash! - July 1997

For old Alma Mater

Are they biased against women?

by Chris Loy

I recently filed a complaint against my college with the US Dept of Education, Office of Civil Rights. I complained of sex discrimination by the college against men. I attend a community college, and as these things go, I'm sure any violations by my school are minor compared to the violations of almost any other public university in the country. Even so, the Office of Civil Rights ruled that my college had to make some changes. I bet you could file against your college and get similar results. I'd like to make some suggestions.

First of all, be patient. Even though nothing more was required of me after filing, my complaint took 10 months to resolve.

You will need to do some research -- how much is up to you. The basic complaint should only take a few hours. But certainly you could spend months looking into the details. Also, the OCR only considers violations that have occurred within the last 6 months.

My college offered a class and several workshops exclusively to women. Men were not allowed. No comparable classes or services were offered to men. The Office of Civil Rights ordered the school to stop such practices. If your school does something similar, you have an easy complaint.

But don't stop there. I complained about everything I could think of, and the school appears to have made some changes on it's own, without being required by the OCR. Here are a few other possible areas of complaint:

Even if men are not explicitly excluded from these activities, the fact that these activities come under the banner of "Women's Studies" or the "Women's Center" discourages men from participating. (This is a little like referring to the coed bowling team as the Men's Bowling team.) So even though men are not explicitly excluded, most men feel they are not welcome and do not participate.
Activities that do not explicitly exclude men but are of interest to women or serve women's needs (e.g., displaced homemakers, single parents) should be balanced by other activities that aim at men. (A representative of my school implied that women need more services than men do. Even if this were true, it is irrelevant. Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education and can be found in the United States Code at title 20, section 1681, makes no exception for higher need or interest. All of the court decisions in the sports area confirm that a higher interest or need by one gender should have no effect on funding. After all, men generally have a higher interest in sports, yet public funding for men's and women's sports must be the same.
Activities and services should be as ideologically neutral as possible. Feminists often claim that women's studies is the academic arm of feminism. But feminism is a political ideology, and public institutions should not be promoting ideology. It is my opinion that nearly all activities of women's studies and women's programs promote feminism or assume a feminist base. (Women's Programs offer little to conservative women.) This attitude also extends into other areas of most schools -- newspapers, student programs, lecture series, etc.
Lecturers, classes, and textbooks which continually bash men may be guilty of sex discrimination.
Please do not stop at these suggestions. Every school is a little different. Explore your school for any other examples of sexism.

I have gathered from the OCR ruling, that women's programs can do just about anything they want as long as they do not explicitly exclude men. However, most women's programs at public colleges exclude men de facto. By implying that men are not welcome, and offering services and programs that men have little interest in, women's programs have effectively excluded men. And this has allowed women's studies and women's programs to get away with a lot. To combat this, I recommend that men participate. Attend classes, seminars, lectures, etc. If you are a full-time student, there probably will not be an additional charge. Audit the courses if you need to -- this will allow you to concentrate on your other studies without fear of a failing grade in a women's studies course. Speak up when you hear sexism. Let your voice be heard.

Something else we all can do is to write our state and federal legislators to ask them to repeal gender equity grants to schools. The justification for these is to compensate women for past discrimination in education. If these grants were ever needed, they are certainly not needed now -- 54% of college students are female and 55% of those receiving bachelor's degrees are women. The U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation each also sponsor several grants to encourage women and girls to explore underrepresented fields. As far as I know, there are no such programs to help men and boys enter traditionally female areas. (My college is nearly two-thirds female, yet received at least $190,000 in these "sex equity" grants to promote and help women to attend college.)

Apparently, there are two ways to enforce gender equality under the current rules: Sponsor two separate but equal programs for men and women (this is how most collegiate sports are handled). Or sponsor one program open to all (the method for women's programs.) Oddly, men are getting the short end in both situations. Men's sports programs are being cut to allow expansion of women's sports programs to equal levels. And because a women's program does not explicitly exclude men, there is no requirement for a men's program. Perhaps we could work to correct this. (I suspect that women would complain if a college reversed this situation: separate men's and women's programs, with a single sports program made up of the best players of either gender. I also suspect that this is why no college would ever adopt this scenario.)

To be blunt, we've been had. Women have complained about the slightest injustice in education -- while men have quietly stood by and watched (probably the same) women begin and expand large injustices against men. Oddly, these injustices have all developed since the enactment of Title IX. Maybe it is because men do not want to come down to these women's supersensitive level on this. But the result has been women have totally exploited the situation. Start complaining. Keep women honest. It's relatively painless.

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