Wesleyan University in Connecticut recently decreed that fraternities with on-campus houses must become co-ed residences within three years. Sadly, this is no politically-correct prank or National Lampoon movie pitch.
No college woman wants to live in a frat house. Even the hardiest gal is unlikely to find an environment of perennially “up” toilet seats (or worse: urinals) and constant litter from half eaten-bags of Doritos attractive. Likewise, most women would eschew a decor of well-used pool tables, tattered La-Z-Boys, walls festooned with flags and banners, and paintings of dogs playing poker. They’d probably rather sleep in a tent.
Yet in the name of “equity and inclusion,” a well-known liberal arts college has set a dangerous precedent that will affect far more than its own fraternity life. It may even push all fraternities toward chick-a-fication. Say it ain’t so!
Fraternities and big-time pro sports are the last bastions of male dominance. But even the testosterone-fueled NFL recently caved to feminization by hiring four irrelevant female executives as ‘sensitivity’ advisers.
Then there are those perky female reporters invading male locker rooms to recap performances. As a woman, I am expected to applaud that as well. I do not. Women should NOT prowl around with a microphone in men’s locker rooms any more than they should move into fraternity houses.
These examples of women infringing on appropriately all-male domains show the continuing feminization of our culture. Call it the War on Men. Yes, you read that right. We’ve heard much lately of a “War on Women,” which somehow applies to every slight social difference between the sexes (and often becomes a political weapon). But my generation inhabits a reality created by 50 years of women’s liberation: The ever more aggressive War on Men.
The education system is this war’s most pronounced front. Starting in grade school, teachers punish the fidgetiness of little boys and reward the attentive obedience of eager-to-please little girls. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 82 percent of teachers at primary and middle schools are women, so a feminine sensibility prevails early on. This unequal treatment of boys and girls, moreover, affects their academic aspirations and college success. Women now outnumber men on most colleges campuses (outside engineering colleges and military academies). Even Hillsdale’s student population is 47 percent male and 53 percent female. This accords with U.S. Census Bureau data that while 74 percent of female high school graduates enroll in either two- or four-year colleges, only 66 percent of males do.
This gender gap gapes even wider by graduation. According to a 2013 BLS report, 25-year-old women are 33 percent likelier to graduate than 25-year-old men. Some of this comes from men deferring college until after military service or other work, but the overall percentage of bachelor’s degree attainment among men at any age is headed south, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Even so, the U.S. Census also reflects that 3.5 percent of homes have a stay-home dad while 33 percent have stay-home mothers. We are still a long way from matriarchy.
Yet decades of political correctness and social engineering continue to blur gender lines. From steam rooms to golf clubs, service organizations to smoking lounges, women have an all-access pass. In my home state of California, people of either gender can choose the men’s or women’s restroom in public schools from kindergarten through college.
A culture that still has real Ladies’ Rooms with icons of stick figures with triangular skirts and that forbid men — that is MY feminist movement. I want to live in a society that maintains the part of its masculine character that understands how to treat women well, not just equitably, that allows boys to be boys, and that trains them to become gentlemen. In the name of equality, we’ve become so reflexively hostile to men that we no longer understand how best to relate to one another as the opposite sex. Perhaps what we have now is a War on Gender altogether. That is a war neither side can win.