Ouch. . .

Apparently boys are toxic and the worst form of this toxic masculinity is being a man.  At least that is the perspective of some universities.  In this case it is a nominally Lutheran one -- Gettysburg.  They have taken the time during freshman orientation to warn boys of their toxic masculinity.

You tell me what this means:  "At a mandatory freshmen orientation training at Gettysburg College in August, male students had to watch a documentary which stated in part that the “three most destructive words” a boy can hear growing up is “be a man.” The freshmen also went through breakout sessions in which they were told mass shooting sprees are rooted in toxic masculinity."



A class at Dartmouth College entitled “The Orlando Syllabus,” identifies the cause of the Orlando shooting this summer as toxic masculinity -- in spite of the fact that the shooter identified ISIS and may have been gay.  At both the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Duke University programs are in place to help male students prevent their “violent masculinity” from showing its horrible face, embracing a “healthier masculinity,” and discussing issues like gender fluidity as alternatives to this offensive masculinity.   Claremont College warns that “masculinity can be extremely toxic to our mental health, both to the people who are pressured to preform it and the people who are inevitably influenced by it.”  Closer to my home, Vanderbilt University hosted “Healthy Masculinities Week,” led in part by Jackson Katz, the first man to minor in women studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

So apparently the job of the university is to demasculinize the boys on campus, keep them boys and prevent them from becoming the dreaded men, and focus on their feminine size.  In other words, the only good men are the ones who are not men. Hmmmm.  Women complain about men who act like boys but at college they are taught not to be men but to remain boys or to embrace the soft side of their masculinity or they are toxic!

Of course we all know that this goes on at college and that is why we send our boys there -- to eschew their toxic masculinity and to be more effeminate.   Right?