Opposing Views
The Protest Of Warren Farrell At The University Of Toronto in 2012 - Where are these kids today?
"Education is best served when the whole range of ideas are presented to the person, and the individual is allowed to make up his or her own mind, and that individual is given the tools with which to make that decision – in other words, an ideal educational situation would give a student the criteria by which to judge……and then that student or that adult need never fear exposure to any idea because that person will be able to sort the data out" – Frank Zappa
I like to revisit events from the past. I wonder what becomes of the people who took part in a protest movement or crusade. What was the goal, and what was achieved?
In the mid-2010s, I was deep into the excesses of the political left. They were encouraged with the political victory of Barack Obama. It was interesting to see what cultural changes came about during his tenure and what policies resulted from his presidency. The “Dear Colleague” letter was one significant change stemming from the election of such a liberal president.
On the same day President Obama formally announced his reelection bid in 2011, his administration's Department Of Education reinterpreted Title IX, a law enacted in 1972. Following an investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity on-campus assault, the Obama administration Office for Civil Rights wrote a "Dear Colleague Letter."
Colleges were thrust into the arena of addressing issues about sexual harassment and assault. They were told to not only educate all students, but they must micromanage their campuses to ensure they weren’t environments hostile to women. Obama’s administration suddenly gave the federal government authority to dictate the specific procedures that colleges must use to adjudicate student-on-student sexual assault allegations.
A subsequent clarification of the letter created no uniform policy for how schools should decide cases. Still, it offered recommendations like having schools inform students that drinking "never makes the survivor at fault for sexual violence." It discouraged colleges from allowing either party to cross-examine the other in investigations directly. Schools that failed to uphold standards risked losing federal funds.
Colleges responded by creating new Title IX offices and drafting individual policies that varied from school to school. Some universities used hearings; others employed a "single investigator" model, in which a school designee is responsible for both investigating and deciding.
Campus reporting of sexual misconduct spiked significantly. The day the Office for Civil Rights sent its letter, it appeared as if the federal government subsequently made all sex unsafe on campus.
This event was the beginning of a new wave of radicalism on college campuses. I saw it all. I paid particularly close attention because I was a few years removed from a contentious divorce and was in the middle of researching what the hell happened to me. I asked myself, why was I treated so horribly in family court? This led me down a path of educating myself about feminism.
I learned that there is a difference between the suffragist movement, the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970, and the madness of the 2010s. I discovered men's rights groups, pick up artists, sexy radicals like FEMEN, what TERFS were, that rag they call Jezebel, and I even read a few of the seminal feminist books of the era.
The women's movement of the 1960s was needed and justified. There are clear parallels with their progress and the Civil Rights Movement. They eventually become radicalized and fizzle out, even if they don’t achieve any of their purported goals.
The women’s movement and Civil Rights movements changed society in multiple ways. Many of them for the better. Today's movements? Very questionable.
I wonder what people are even fighting for. With rape on campus, I agree with people struggling to end it. The question I have for those groups fighting on campus; what about the people off-campus? Any issue these highly educated, middle to upper-class kids are protesting for, or against, I wonder if they will fight for those same issues when they graduate.
Well, these kids in the video below are now part of the workforce. Many of these kids seem to be working for major news outlets (NY Times, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post). Their jargon has become part of the lexicon.
I saw a direct link from the Dear Colleague letter, the madness on college campuses due to fiascos about rape and non-rape, the rise of third-wave feminism, and the downfall with the Trump election, Kavanaugh hearing, and the dismissiveness of Tara Reade.
What is going on with modern feminism? I've been turned off by the people who call themselves feminists today because they seem to be totally out of control.
Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers see the changes in the feminist movement and have been outspoken critics. However, when a man speaks out, we are seen as instant misogynists. Most people don't even understand what that word means. The act of speaking out and challenging women does not say we hate women. I am the kind of man who likes an open dialogue to learn from each other. Being challenged intellectually does not mean that I hate you; I might disagree. It is great when we can come to some common ground, but there might be times when I just flat out disagree. We can still get along.
Where radicals go wrong is their inability to listen and exchange ideas. What radical feminists are doing today is just that. Not willing to hear anything that challenges their worldview. I feel what they are doing destroys all of the work that feminists have achieved over the past 40 years.
There was an initial incident that exposed elements of the modern feminist movement.
In 2012, radical feminists blocked students at the University of Toronto from hearing an on-campus speaker named Warren Farrell, bestselling author of The Myth of Male Power.
The video below shows protesters not allowing people to see the speaker disseminate vital information that will help both men and women in the long run.
What they attempted to do was engage in a technique called priming. Priming is a known psychological control technique. With subtle hints of words or concepts, priming can trigger profound changes in behavior. Priming is concerned with the perceptual identification of words and objects. It refers to activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task.
The use of certain words and phrases, in this case, was an apparent attempt at priming. They also used their bodies to block the entrance. It is disturbing to see the words' rape apologist' and 'hate speech' thrown around before anyone has even had a chance to hear someone speak. Where do the protesters get this stuff from?
Blogger Joshua Kennon wrote: These protesters just assured that several mental models are going to kick in, which will ultimately help Warren Farrell. The forbidden fruit mental model, which causes people to want to know about and have access to what others are trying to keep them from discovering or enjoying, is powerful. The mere association mental model is going to result in people working to attend the lecture out of curiosity ascribing a range of violent, hateful, anti-intellectual traits to feminism in general, much to the movement's detriment. The mental reciprocity model means that some people may take actions against these protestors, perhaps even covertly, to undermine their cause as retaliation for the abuse they dished out to innocent passers-by.
It's a self-defeating way to behave.
Think Things Through; are these modern feminists? When someone says they are feminist, is this who they want representing them? What exactly do they want to achieve?
Also, where are these people today? What do you think they are doing? Are they the ones still protesting in the streets, or have they moved on to hashtag activism?
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit broadway and off-broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.