Your local aussie radfem

Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? (Celeste Davis, Oct 6 2024)

"White flight is a term that describes how white people move out of neighborhoods when more people of color move in.

White flight is especially common when minority populations become the majority. That neighborhood then declines in value.

Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry—the men leave. That industry is then devalued.

Take veterinary school for example:

In 1969 almost all veterinary students were male at 89%.

By 1987, male enrollment was equal to female at 50%.

By 2009, male enrollment in veterinary schools had plummeted to 22.4%

A sociologist studying gender in veterinary schools, Dr. Anne Lincoln says that in an attempt to describe this drastic drop in male enrollment, many keep pointing to financial reasons like the debt-to-income ratio or the high cost of schooling.

But Lincoln’s research found that “men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries.”

Her research shows that the reason fewer men are enrolling in veterinary school boils down to one factor: the number of women in the classroom.

For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied.

One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition! (…)

Since males had dominated these professions for centuries, you would think they would leave slowly, hesitantly or maybe linger at 40%, 35%, 30%, but that’s not what happens.

Once the tipping point reaches majority female- the men flee. And boy do they flee!

It’s a slippery slope. When the number of women hits 60% the men who are there make a swift exit and other men stop joining.

Morty Schapiro, economist and former president of Northwestern University has noticed this trend when studying college enrollment numbers across universities:

“There’s a cliff you fall off once you become 60/40 female/male. It then becomes exponentially more difficult to recruit men.”

Now we’ve reached that 60% point of no return for colleges.

As we’ve seen with teachers, nurses and interior design, once an institution is majority female, the public perception of its value plummets.

Scanning through Reddit and Quora threads, many men seem to be in agreement - college is stupid and unnecessary.

A waste of time and money. You’re much better off going into the trades, a tech boot camp or becoming an entrepreneur. No need for college. (…)

When mostly men went to college? Prestigious. Aspirational. Important.

Now that mostly women go to college? Unnecessary. De-valued. A bad choice. (…)

School is now feminine. College is feminine. And rule #1 if you want to safely navigate this world as a man? Avoid the feminine.

Men of the Right and men of the Left have an undying allegiance to prostitution as such, regardless of their theoretical relationship to marriage. The Left sees the prostitute as the free, public woman of sex, exciting because she flaunts it, because of her brazen avail­ability. The Right sees in the prostitute the power of the bad woman of sex, the male’s use of her being his dirty little secret. The old pornography industry was a right-wing industry: secret money, secret sin, secret sex, secret promiscuity, secret buying and selling of women, secret profit, secret pleasure not only from sex but also from the buying and selling. The new pornography industry is a left-wing industry: promoted especially by the boys of the sixties as simple pleasure, lusty fun, public sex, the whore brought out of the bourgeois (sic) home into the streets for the democratic consumption of all men; her freedom, her free sexuality, is as his whore—and she likes it. It is her political will as well as her sexual will; it is liberation. The dirty little secret of the left-wing pornography industry is not sex but commerce.

The new pornography industry is held, by leftist males, to be inherently radical. Sex is claimed by the Left as a leftist phe­nomenon; the trade in women is most of sex. The politics of liberation are claimed as indigenous to the Left by the Left; central to the politics of liberation is the mass-marketing of material that depicts women being used as whores. The pimps of pornography are hailed by leftists as saviors and savants.”

— Andrea Dworkin

This post is not mine, but one radfem woman from our community. She works as a sexologist and shared her experience in her work. If you too are a sexologist, or even better, have some statistics on this topic, please share your experiences or links. ---------------------------------------------------------- "When I first started working, I discovered that many men had never experienced the need to refuse intimacy with a regular partner. That is, a man in counseling complains that his partner often refuses him, he attributes her refusals to personal dislike and faded feelings, and when he tries to turn the situation around and remember when he himself had to refuse her, he does not understand what we are talking about. Because he has never had to - he responds to the initiative of his partner every time and considers it a sign of love and attraction on his part.

I heard this very often, I couldn't catch the lie and at the same time I couldn't interpret it. They are not robots, after all, to be available 24/7 at all hours of the day and night?

One day a client in a session literally opened my eyes with one phrase.

She said: “I CAN SEE WHEN HE'S NOT UP TO IT.”

That's the secret. The notorious emotional service. Subsequently, and many other women have confirmed this in a targeted survey: when the desire for intimacy arises, a woman assesses her partner's condition BEFORE taking the initiative. If she sees that her partner is tired, sick, in a bad mood, or preoccupied with something, she does not consider it appropriate to offer sex. I have also heard from many women that in a situation when she can not clearly assess the state of the partner, she prefers to flirt, as if casually get naked, as if accidentally do something that usually arouses the partner. If there is no reaction to this, the woman usually refuses to take the initiative and solves her problems on her own, without forcing the partner to conflict and feel guilty.

Men don't want their partners all the time - it's just that no one gets in their underwear when it's inappropriate. No one forces them to think about sex when they don't want to think about it.

Men themselves don't usually check against anything but their own erections.

They don't care when to offer sex to a woman(the following is a real and far from complete list):

Who is asleep (well, seriously, I don't know any woman who would ever think of waking up a sleeping partner to satisfy her sexually);

who's back from her 24-hour shift;

who just finished cooking a holiday dinner for ten people;

who has a high fever;

who's been vomiting all day;

who is eight months pregnant with a complicated pregnancy;

who has undergone a termination of pregnancy that day;

who is in the terminal stages of cancer;

who's just had a pet die;

returning from the funeral of a beloved grandmother;

waiting for a call from the NICU where their (mutual!) child is (“Let's get a little loose while we wait”) - and so on and so forth.

After grieving a loved one, in particular when my grandma died in Mexico (I wasn’t able to go), and when a friend died from murder (It’s happened 3 times in my life). The excuse: “you will feel better from sex!”

Having a panic attack while smoking weed. Excuse: “Sex will ground you back to reality!!! You will feel safe when having sex!” (Spoiler: I didn’t, I had no idea what was going on)

Mental illness , depression , PTSD in general. There will be periods my libido will be lower than hell. Excuse: “Do you not love me anymore?? My ex’s never wanted to have sex with me :((( “ (I can see why buddy)

Took too much allergy medicine and I was so drowsy, I fell asleep. Excuse: there wasn’t any, I was raped in my sleep.

The worst one was when I wasn’t feeling well in my stomach, I told my ex moid I didn’t feel well at all, and in advance I said “I do not want to have sex”. Went to bed cause my stomach was hurting. He kept trying to touch my ass and my pussy and I kept shaking him off and moving his arm. He did this maybe 10 times, so fucking annoying. Then he stopped. Then I heard him crying, literally like a toddler, balled up his fists crying. I was like wtf. Turned into a 2 hour argument about how his ex’s hated him and now I hate him because I didn’t want to have sex. Literally because I refused that 1 time. I noped out of there and shortly after the relationship crumbled because I realized he didn’t care when I said “I don’t feel like your girlfriend, I feel like your sex servant because we never do anything and you always expect sex”

Acting like these girls didn’t get their ideas from you. They were listening when you were telling them how you should start your retinol treatment as young as you can. They were listening when you told them 30 step routine is a game changer. They were looking at you, at women on the billboards, magazine covers and in the TV shows with perfect skin, perfect eyeshadows, perfect hair and realised they should do the same, they should start as young as they can or it would be too late.

These girls are present when you mock other women for their age. Young women ages 20-30 get bullied for having normal faces. “Oh my god i thought you were 50” at a woman who is clearly in her thirties.

These “helpful tips” how to not get wrinkles which include don’t lift your eyebrows, don’t emote in general, use anti-wrinkle straws, don’t forget to get botox on time.

Red light therapy, sleeping with your mouth sealed, in one position on your back so either side of your face won’t get squished and swollen.

That is why when I see some white woman bragging about her choice to be a "trad wife" or adopting Hinduism as a religion, it disgusts me. These aren’t empowering choices for us - they’re tools of our oppression. Here, women are forced into arranged marriages, denied basic education and pressured into being docile housewives. Hinduism isn’t some liberating "girlboss" religion - it’s deeply rooted in Brahminical patriarchy.

After doing some reading in postmodern theoretical texts, several things about the theory suddenly struck me as incongruous. I have been trying to see not just what postmodern theorists say about their theory, but more importantly, how postmodern theory functions in the world–what are the effects of adopting postmodern thinking and theorizing. What became clear to me after some reading was that the overarching effect of postmodernism is to silence thinking and speaking, both personally and politically. I am aware that this is a rather outrageous statement given the attention postmodern theory pays to privileging the voices of

marginalized people, to giving voice to those previously unheard, and to investigating the silences embedded in the dominant discourse (to sling a little postmodern verbiage myself). However, in a deep reading of how postmodern theory functions, I find that these claims are little more than lip service. The important thing to see is not what postmodernism says it does, but how it actually functions.

One of the things that has made me especially curious about postmodernism has been my experience working with interns, for the most part, undergraduate college students, at off our backs. Often, as may well be imagined, in the midst of getting a mailing out, shipping out back issues, or some other tedious office chore, I tend to get involved in discussions of feminism with interns. More frequently than I wish, after offering my perspective on a particular event or theory, interns will reply to me, “You can’t say that.” My usual reply is, “I just did.” I don’t mean to be flip in my response, but I am trying to communicate that you can in fact state your opinion without self-censorship or an overexaggerated reluctance to say something that others disagree with. You can in fact state things clearly and concretely, however controversial. Others can disagree, but you do, after all, get to say things

One intern, assigned to cover an anti-choice event, became confused about how “You can’t say that anti-choicers are wrong–they have a viewpoint too. You really can’t say any viewpoint is wrong.” She actually became confused about her stand on abortion after hearing the fervent beliefs of anti-choicers. Not that she was convinced by the merits of their arguments–that would have been at least an honest mistake. It was her inability to hold any argument as being more valid than another, so that as long as there are competing positions on any topic, she seemed unable to take a stand on it. This, as I see it, is the cumulative effect of postmodern academic teachings on students of women’s studies these days. They are rendered unable to take even the most obvious of stands with any conviction.

The advent of postmodernism as the prevailing academic theory is of great significance, not only within academia but for feminist as well as progressive social movements. There are several problems with postmodernism, the first of which has to do with the way it has coopted some of the key insights of radical feminism, but stripped them of their political impact.

Radical feminism, diluted

One of the core insights of postmodernism is that everything is socially constructed–gender, race, class, personal attributes, etc. Postmodernists take great pains to elaborate on every nuance of every social system that has been constructed. There is great emphasis on constructions arising from particular places in the social order–a white rich American man will ascribe to a worldview that confirms and legitimizes his position. This is nothing new–radical feminists had this insight years ago–social systems profoundly shape and determine people’s lives in ways that don’t seem readily apparent–even intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives such as gender roles, sexuality, even their sense of self.

What is really interesting is the way postmodernists theorists write as though this is big news. Radical feminists have been saying this for years. And in a classic patriarchal reverse (a la Mary Daly), postmodernists accuse radical feminists of being essentialists, that is, believing that gender and other qualities are biological. That is precisely the opposite of what radical feminists have been saying all along–that since gender is so thoroughly socially constructed, it can be constructed differently, more equitably. Where radical feminists do part ways with postmodernists is their understanding of just what a difficult project this is to undertake. And the radical feminist view that this has not yet happened nor could it happen so facilely is why they are accused by postmodernists of being essentialist–because although it does not arise from biological differences, there is now a significant difference in the ways women and men are raised and socialized, hence there is currently a great difference in some ways. I think of postmodernists as a brand of “you’ve-come-a-long-way-baby” feminists–blithely in denial about just how deeply patriarchal conditioning runs and patriarchal institutions are entrenched.

Subverting the subordinate paradigm

In addition to the cooptation and subsequent dismissal of radical feminism, another even more insidious way postmodernism subverts the subordinate paradigm is the way some of the key insights, while claiming to allow more voices to speak, actually silence all voices, causing proponents of postmodernism to be muzzled and muddied in their speech and writing.

Postmodernism: the master’s tools

The hallmarks of postmodernist thinking are tools and methods that serve to reinforce the way things are now. Even while espousing radical politics, the cause of marginalized people, working against all oppressions, the tools of postmodernist thinking foil the project from the start. Some of the primary tools that have the effect of silencing speech are as follows:

Writing style–Although the obtuse writing style is an easy mark for criticism, it must be emphasized again that even highly educated people struggle with its nuances and meanings. As I have struggled to make it through the painfully dense and clumsy prose that is characteristic of postmodernist writers, I have discovered that the thinking underneath the layers of prose absolutely does not merit such convoluted presentation–the ideas are no more complex or complicated than ideas in progressive, marxist, feminist or other theories. This writing style is more than inconvenient and cumbersome–it has an effect.. As Katja Mikhailovich writes in Radically Speaking (see review in this issue) “My first response, and the response of many women I have talked with since, was to doubt my own intellect and ability to make meanings of these texts.” The effect (presumably unintended but effective nevertheless) is to create self-doubt in the intellectual abilities of the reader and to discourage students from theorizing about their own experiences and lives thereby making the connections necessary for radical consciousness and activism. The ability to create theory is relegated to those in authority–professors and their ilk. Even thoughtful and analytical students come to see theory making as excessively complex and out of their reach.

Another conspicuous feature of postmodern writing style is an abiding hesitancy and reluctance to say anything definitive. Witness the reflexive self-doubting parentheses and unanswered questions posed for effect. Also there is much “calling into question,” “moving toward a theory of…” and “calling for a discourse on…” in the place of definitive statements. Statements are frequently qualified out of existence. New words are made up almost daily (the old ones I presume are too precise in their meaning) which add mystique and uncertainty about what is really meant. Finally the advent of the irritating, unnecessary, and inappropriate “s” on the end of every other word rounds out the obfuscation (added even to nouns which are already plural)–”knowledges,” “discourses,” or “positionalities.”

It is ironic that with this prolific onslaught of postmodern verbiage and theory, hardly anything is in fact said. Sheila Jeffreys points out in Radically Speaking that “…in post-modernist feminist writing there is much agonising on how hard it is to speak or write.” The net effect of all this is to silence and muzzle speech and to inhibit taking a strong clear passionate stand on anything.

Denunciation of the meta-narrative–For the uninitiated, a “meta-narrative” is an explanatory statement–one that attempts to explain something as a generalizable concept rather than simply describe a specific individual situation without any generalizations. So according to postmodernists, any time someone uses the dreaded “meta-narrative,” they may be suppressing and silencing other voices. If you are willing to say something definitive, someone somewhere is bound to disagree. If you are saying something with which no one disagrees or no one feels is wrong, you are probably not challenging the status quo (or anything for that matter). It is a grave mistake, however, to conclude that you must self censor because, by speaking, you silence others’ speech.

The other feature of the denunciation of the “meta-narrative” is that it effectively subverts the meaning of the personal is the political. In postmodernism, the personal, rather than being the political, becomes only and exclusively the personal–any attempt to create bonds between oppressed individuals or to raise consciousness about how individual experiences are really reflective of larger social forces is reinterpreted as silencing other voices. Any attempt to make generalizations is seen as silencing and rendering invisible those people for whom the generalization does not apply. This defies a basic understanding of the concept of a generalization–of course it is not true for every single person in the group–it is, after all, a generalization. Exceptions alone do not, however, disprove the validity of generalizations. If I make a generalization that people stop at red lights while driving, certainly it is true that occasionally, some people do not; however it is an accurate and useful statement that people stop at red lights. It describes, with reasonable accuracy, a social phenomenon. To say that the generalization is not true simply because a few people do not fit it, is ludicrous and leaves us unable to describe or name even the most obvious social norms.

The overall effect of this turn away from “meta-narratives” is to stop people from being able to describe their social conditions, from being able to generalize about personal experiences in their lives, from being able to see the commonalities of experience that can mobilize them to see problems as political rather than personal. The net effect is a lot of women’s studies students saying, “You can’t really say that,” about even the most basic truths.

Denunciation of binarisms–Binary thinking involves thinking in dualistic mutually exclusive categories such as good or bad, gay or straight, woman or man, etc. In postmodern thinking, binarisms are bad (that in itself is an unavoidable binarism). Some theorists say that binarisms are the root of all oppression–that without them we could not oppress others. Unfortunately, without binarisms, we also cannot make a definitive statement. Making a statement, especially a political one, requires that we say one thing is better than (or worse than) in some way than another thing. If we avoid binarisms (a feat which some postmodernist writers do manage to approach in their flailingly uncertain prose), we cannot say, for example, liberation is better than oppression, being fed is better than starving, being healthy is better than being sick.

By demonizing binarisms, the effect is to stifle clear articulate speech. People become so mired in trying to avoid choosing one thing over another that they are rendered incapable of sustaining a passionate conviction on any topic.

Taking the social out of social constructionism–What is perhaps most fascinating about postmodern theory is that for all the talk of how things are socially constructed, they forgot the implications of “social” in social construction. After their supposedly new insight that nearly everything is socially constructed, they do not advocate much for transformation at the social level, ie. for changes in institutions, social norms, social structures such as the family, etc. Instead there is much attention to individual acts of transgression of conventional social norms as a way of highlighting that social norms are constructed and not natural or inevitable. This kind of rebellion in postmodernism is a very isolated activity–it consists of individuals taking it upon themselves to fight battles all alone. There is not an emphasis among postmodern theorists for building a critical mass of people united in a social movement which could begin to effect changes at the social level. There is instead a very superficial understanding of the how social forces work–a naive and libertarian emphasis on individual actions and choices as though the cumulative effect of each isolated individual choice or action will effect largescale social transformation. The net effect of such an atomization of individual activities serves to prevent rather than foster social change.

The curious timing of postmodernism

What I find most interesting about postmodernism is not what postmodernists say about it, but how it functions in the real world (and I’m assuming there is one) in terms of social change. The effects of the intimidating and obfuscating writing style, of inhibiting generalizations and so the formation of commonalities between people, of ruling out binary thinking and so eviscerating impassioned convictions, and of overemphasizing individual rather than collective action is to create a multilayered system of disconnection, silencing, and disempowerment.

What is also interesting is the timing of the advent of postmodernist theory. As Somer Brodribb and Barbara Christian point out in Radically Speaking, postmodernism came into vogue in academia just when the voices of women and people of color began to assert a significant presence there. It seems that when groups other than those in power attempt to say things, suddenly truth dissolves into meaninglessness. This is a little too coincidental for my taste.

The coincidence becomes even more striking when it becomes apparent that this is not the first time this has happened. Right after the first wave of feminism, in the 1920s, when women had made some advances, had gotten the vote, and began to gain some access to academia, another nihilistic kind of theorizing became the rage in academia–relativism and existentialism. Again, just when women were trying to gain access, and to articulate our points of view, suddenly nothing was meaningful anymore, everything was relative, and meaninglessness was lauded as high theory.

I suggest that postmodernism is nothing more than the new relativism and that relativistic theories emerge as a new line of defense when power structures are becoming threatened. It is a very insidious and crafty defense because it mouths the words of liberation while simultaneously transforming them into meaninglessness. The real agenda is masked in clever obfuscation–to preserve the status quo by rendering dissent meaningless and ineffective, unable to gather any social or political power. Notwithstanding postmodernism’s purported intention to deconstruct social norms and by so doing, make way for changes, its actual effect is to atomize peoples’ experiences, obliterate the potential for solidarity, silence articulate and forthright speech, and render passionate convictions meaningless. It leaves us unable to condemn anything as wrong or oppressive with clarity, certainty, or conviction. Furthermore, nearly all of the so-called insights of postmodernism are simply rehashed and depoliticized versions of radical feminist ideas. Postmodernism is a theory which denounces the act of theorizing, it is speech that silences voices, it is writing that stultifies and obscures, it is a position which advocates no position at all, it is a politics which refuses to take a stand on anything. And we must see the politics of that–it is a viper that women’s studies and English departments have nursed to their collective bosoms. It is a theory, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is a stealth theory that contains a virus which, once incorporated, explodes all possibility of impassioned righteous collective action for changing the conditions of our lives.

"I'm pretty without makeup"

Radical feminism: "It doesn't matter if you're pretty at all. You don't exist to be pretty."

"Female body hair is okay"

"Female body hair is not okay"

Radical Feminism: "Female body hair simply exists and is completely neutral. Talking about whether its 'okay' doesn't even make sense."

"Presenting THIS way makes you a man"

"Presenting THIS way makes you a woman"

Radical feminism: "Nothing about the way you present makes you a man or woman. Gender isn't real."

I love that radical feminism just removes you from so many binaries of thought. It makes them completely nonsensical. Why would I analyze whether I'm pretty when it doesn't matter either way? Why is the acceptability of my body hair even a subject of discussion? It merely exists, just like the bark on a tree. Does society sit around and debate whether a tree ought to be able to keep its bark?

I have a deep disdain for looksmaxxing and everything it represents. I came across an account captioning a before-and-after transformation with the question: “Which version do you think is happier?”

This caption is a glaring example of how society conflates the distortion of facial aesthetics with emotional well-being. It perpetuates the harmful notion that happiness is directly tied to one's adherence to an idealized image. This line of thinking reinforces societal pressures, suggesting that altering your appearance to fit unrealistic beauty standards will somehow unlock personal happiness or fulfillment.

But the truth is, happiness doesn’t stem from conforming to external ideals. It is not a product of surgical enhancements, filters, or societal validation. Instead, happiness comes from within—rooted in self-acceptance, meaningful connections, and freedom from oppressive standards that reduce our worth to how closely we align with impossible beauty ideals. Promoting these ideas only deepens insecurity and fuels the beauty industrial complex.

I feel like I don’t hear that given enough as advice for writers block..just read? Watch tv? Movies? Find inspiration in media.

If I cannot afford to eat, it would be morally permissible for me to steal food in the eyes of most reasonable people… Water? Nobody would consider me a bad person for drinking from someone’s hose out the front if I had no other access to clean water. If I am unable to find shelter, it would be morally permissible for me to break into a disused building (even if it causes damage).

Why aren’t disabled men bringing up their fellow disabled women in these discussions?

Why can’t they just partner up with their fellow disabled women? Oh right, because they’re not “desirable” so you couldn’t possibly expect us to partner with them!

What about their right to purchase sex from men as well? Why aren’t they pushing for more men to enter the sex industry work force for these women? Oh right, because they don’t actually care.

the thing is either people do know they're Xist or they just found out because if you're Xist under pressure or drugs or drink