Men: Are We Chimps?

A sorry simian named Roy Den Hollander seems determined to prove so, if only by offering himself as proof positive. Just read this L.A. Times column by Meghan Daum and this New Yorker article by Lauren Collins and you’ll see what I mean.

Where to begin? This guy’s skull is like a fishbowl: the workings of its contents are embarrassingly obvious at a glance. The Collin’s piece demonstrates this better than I ever could, so I won’t even touch on the subject of his self-defeating vendetta against “ladies’ night.”

What I want to talk about is his more disturbing attack on women’s studies. Like both Hollander and Daum, I spent a few years at Columbia University, and have a couple of degrees to prove it, and while I was there I was peripherally involved with the Women’s Studies program that Hollander claims discriminates against men. As Daum makes clear, Hollander doesn’t actually know anything about the content of the Women’s Studies program there or anywhere else; he just wants to see all women’s studies programs eliminated because they promote feminism.

As an undergraduate at Penn State, I majored in Creative Writing and minored in Women’s Studies. I was one of two men enrolled in the Women’s Studies minor at the time. (They now offer a major, but back then there was only a minor.)

Although I’m certain it would make no difference to Hollander, I can testify that neither Penn State’s program nor Columbia’s program discriminated against men in the least. On the contrary, both professors and students were happy to have open-minded men in the classroom. I’m sure that’s even more true today than it was when I was at Penn State 20 years ago. (Back then, we were pretty radical. I helped arrange guest lectures by Robin Morgan and Mary Daly.)

These days, many universities are changing the names of their women’s studies programs to “gender studies,” which is probably a good idea if only because the study of men and masculinity (often by men) has become an important part of the field. But, as Daum quotes Harry Brod as saying, “If Roy Den Hollander really understood what men’s studies was, he wouldn’t be in favor of it.”

Hollander seems to be big into the single’s bar scene, and picking up (or rather trying to pick up) women. One great irony is that, with his 10th Century mindset, his ideal woman exists nowhere but in his own undernourished imagination. The greater irony is that if he actually tried to understand feminism and incorporate a bit of it into his own thinking and behavior, he might actually have better luck getting laid.