I’ve heard about this from about 15 different sources and I tried to ignore it, but it looks like it is not going away anytime soon. So there was a conference last week at Wagner College (where?) that launched a new discipline called Male Studies. According to the FAQs section, male studies was created to specifically focus on “males as males” and to address the growing problem of misandry.
Their argument is that male studies needs to exist because men’s studies only focuses on men not boys, research needs to pay attention to sex as well as gender, multiple disciplines like biology, psychology and anthropology need to contribute, and focus must be on males across the lifespan. Several topics of interest were also discussed on the site including boys’ performance in education, suicide among males, psychological disorders and the declining numbers of males entering and completing tertiary education must be explained.
Basically, their argument is that no field is paying attention to these issues in these ways, which is absolutely not true at all. I think what they are doing is creating a field because they don’t agree with how current research is framed and potentially because no one wants to publish their stuff.
There are over a hundred scholarly, peer reviewed journals that examine men, masculinity, gender, males, physiology, and sex differences covering all of their topics of interest and more. Here’s an example. I searched on the University of Iowa e-journal database and in five minutes I found the following journals.
- American journal of men’s health
- International journal of men’s health
- Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality
- Journal of Men’s Health
- The journal of men’s health & gender
- Journal of Men’s Studies
- Men and masculinities
- Men’s Health
- Psychology of men & masculinity
and the other 120 journals that deal with gender and sex. Plain and simple. Everything that is listed on their reason for existing list has been covered or is being investigated by men’s studies during the past 30-40 years.
Click here for a look at Inside Higher Ed’s article about Male Studies.
The Sexist blog posted their reaction to male studies and potential differences with men’s studies.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
[...] Have you heard about male studies? « Men's Anti-Violence Council's … TagsClick any tag for more posts Categories: Celebrities Tags: celebrity, Fashion, Men’s, Niche, Triggonomics Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback [...]
April 25th, 2010 at 2:35 am
have i heard?
why yes. yes i have.
I love this post. I really do…
What is so offensive about taking a fresh look at masculinity? Must all research be framed in a particular way for it to be helpful to PEOPLE?
Must we always look at masculinity through the lens of feminism and the patriarchy? Is that even helpful – in order to achieve feminism’s claimed goal of “equality”? Aren’t we all after the truth about men and how to help them love themselves and love the people (the other women and men) in their lives? Aren’t we all after kinder, gentler, more peaceful, more loving brothers/fathers/husbands/sons in our lives?
I mean – how dare they try and get to the bottom of male instigated violence? How dare they try and prevent your sons and brothers and boyfriends from killing themselves in record numbers? (Which by the way – all this current research that you mention – has done such a stellar job of preventing – applied as it is so often in our schools).
These internationally recognised experts on men and masculinity should take a good long hard look at themselves…
April 25th, 2010 at 6:11 am
I appreciated the comments. I think I am going to respond to it in another post, instead of just replying to the comment. I hope you don’t mind. I think you brought up some great points. I want to post my response in a way that others can read the dialogue. Thanks!
April 26th, 2010 at 8:43 am
[...] Leave a comment Go to comments I received a comment in response to my post Have you heard about Male Studies? and I wanted to address some of the issues. My first post was brief and reactionary instead of a [...]