Lecturers in world-first male studies course at University of South Australia under scrutiny
POLITICAL EDITOR TORY SHEPHERD The Advertiser January 12, 2014 8:08PM
LECTURERS in a "world-first" male studies course at the University of South Australia have been linked to extreme views on men's rights and websites that rail against feminism.
The lecturers' backgrounds are likely to spark controversy, but organisers of the predominantly online course, promoted as the first of its type in the world, insist they are not anti-feminist and "it's very difficult for anybody who has opposing views to get a word in".
Two lecturers have been published by prominent US anti-feminist siteA Voice for Men, a site which regularly refers to women as "bitches" and "whores" and has been described as a hate site by the civil rights organisation Southern Poverty Law Centre.
The US site specifically welcomed the UniSA course as a milestone, editor Paul Elam saying it marked the end of feminists' control of the agenda.
One American US lecturer - US attorney and self-professed "anti-feminist lawyer" Roy Den Hollander - has written that the men's movement might struggle to exercise influence but that "there is one remaining source of power in which men still have a near monopoly - firearms".
He also argues that feminists oppress men in today's world and refers to women's studies as "witches' studies".
Another, US psychology professor Miles Groth, says that date-rape awareness seminars might be deterring men from going to university.
Mr Den Hollander has tried to sue ladies' nights for discrimination against men. He has likened the position of men today to black people in America's south in the 1950s "sitting in the back of the bus", and blames feminists for oppressing men.
The course, which has no prerequisites, begins this year and will canvass subjects from men's health to gender bias.
Course founder Gary Misan, from UniSA's Centre for Rural Health and Community Development, said they were "not anti-women" and that lecturers were associated with a range of groups.
"I wouldn't say any of them are extreme or anti-feminist," Dr Misan said.
"The aim of the courses are to present a balanced view and to counter some of the negative rhetoric that exists in society in general and in some areas of academe about men.
"It's very difficult for anybody who has opposing views to get a word in. As soon as somebody mentions anything they perceive as being anti-feminist, they're pilloried, and in some cases almost persecuted."
READ MORE HERE ->http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/lecturers-in-worldfirst-male-studies-course-at-university-of-south-australia-under-scrutiny/story-fni6uo1m-1226800150348
