Colleges and universities are walking a tightrope as they accept the burden of molding student values, sometimes finding themselves in conflict with Americans committed to a more traditional worldview.
In 2015, the University of Texas at Austin rolled out a program, MasculinUT, that aimed to teach men how to reduce sexual and other forms of interpersonal violence, the rates of which are striking. An average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. On the Austin campus, 42 percent of students said they had experienced sexual harassment from their peers since enrollment, a university survey revealed last year.
Conservative media had a field day with MasculinUT, protesting that the university was treating masculinity as a “mental health crisis” because the program was housed in the UT Counseling and Mental Health Center. The attack began in April of this year when PJ Media, a conservative website, accused the school of foisting lefty ideas on students and encouraging gender play.
Right-wing pundits have decried efforts to enforce standards of political correctness on campuses — standards against which the Trump administration has mutinied. This summer, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said schools were creating “a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes.”
Rather than dismissing the criticism, as some schools have done, the University of Texas backpedaled.
In a statement soon after the conservative drumbeat began in the spring, the school said that it stood by the goals of the program but that “it has become clear that some of the communication and discussion surrounding MasculinUT did not convey this fully or clearly and was not effective at reaching the broad audiences the program envisioned.” A committee assembled to review the initiative and recommend changes. In the meantime, the program went on hiatus.
It is now kicking back into gear, according to a Sunday article in the Daily Texan.
Media criticism did not guide the committee’s review, the conclusions of which are being implemented this semester as part of a re-branding effort, the campus newspaper reported. The program has been moved from the Mental Health Center to the Office of the Dean of Students. A new Web page is still virtually blank, after the old site, associated with the Mental Health Center, was scrubbed of the offending counsel to male students. “We don’t ever want anyone to think that we’re treating masculinity as a mental health issue,” said Chris Brownson, the center’s director.
But right-wing disapproval was the impetus for the adaptation, which is also expected to include a reorganization of the “dense” academic resources lampooned by right-wing pundits.
“UT needs to prioritize bringing back MasculinUT instead of bowing to pressure from the press,” wrote a student in the Daily Texan.
The aim of the initial effort, observed another student, was to “promote healthy masculinity” and shared responsibility for the prevention of sexual assault. “These goals are not radical, but the program does stand out in its willingness to institutionalize these conversations,” the columnist wrote. “In the nearly three years since its inception, MasculinUT has held events, discussions and movie showings, but the last straw for Rush Limbaugh and other ultraconservative journalists was a poster campaign that displayed various forms of unorthodox masculinities in the name of acceptance.”
The poster campaign last fall drew attention because it made visible the program’s ideology. It aimed to expand understanding of masculinity and its “diverse expression,” as a group member told the Daily Texan at the time. One poster featured a male nurse, who declared that he, too, could be “loving and compassionate.” Another subject said he “felt more comfortable” as he eschewed “rigid definitions of masculinity” requiring that he play sports and pick on others.
PJ Media mocked individuals appearing in several posters for not appearing sufficiently masculine, observing in May: “There is nothing masculine about the person in that poster. Nothing at all.”
The question of what masculinity looks like has been a quandary raised by the #MeToo movement, as some advocates seek to shift the conversation from how women can escape assault to how men can better comport themselves.
The issue is broader than what happens in the bedroom. It also involves understandings of work and parenting.
Piers Morgan, the British television personality, was scolded Monday on social media after suggesting that Daniel Craig, the James Bond star, was “emasculated” for appearing in public carrying his infant daughter.
Oh 007.. not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond pic.twitter.com/cqWiCRCFt3
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 15, 2018
The shift in attitudes and expectations was apparent in Tuesday’s debate between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
“I think the #MeToo movement has done an incredible amount of good for this country,” affirmed Cruz, whose statement was notable because he has dug in his heels on other cultural fights.
But for Limbaugh, the conservative talk radio host, the masculinity program at the University of Texas was a bridge too far. Soon after the appearance of the PJ Media story, he said in April that he had printed it out and was “chomping at the bit.” It cited material put forward by the university suggesting that such inclinations as “taking care of people” and being “active” reflected “traditional ideas of masculinity” that could “place men into rigid . . . boxes,” the website claimed. Another right-wing outlet described these ideas as “man-hate dressed up with psychobabble.”
“What are the odds that a bunch of women are running this?” Limbaugh said.
Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host forced out over allegations of sexual harassment, also weighed in, apparently finding the program’s mission statement so inscrutable that he read it aloud twice. The health center aimed to help men “take control over their gender identity and develop a healthy sense of masculinity,” he said, incredulous.
He let out a chortle as he described the posters showing “the guys wearing nail polish, dresses and makeup.”
“And this is sponsored by the university — this is not some little group that’s out for a few chuckles,” O’Reilly said. “All right, sign of the times.”
The criticism from outside commentators seems not to have been echoed by campus conservatives. The College Republicans at Texas were advertising an event with Evan McMullin, the conservative independent presidential candidate in 2016, as PJ Media was preparing its probe into MasculinUT.
While students took to the pages of the campus newspaper to defend the initiative, the university put it on hold.
The campus committee that had designed the project reconvened over the summer to suggest changes. In addition to tweaking how the program presented itself online, the committee mostly recommended boosting the efforts. It called on the university to hire a full-time employee to support MasculinUT and said the administration should “publicly support” the program’s work.
It also suggested removing from the website “any response to the allegation that the university ever treated masculinity as a ‘mental disorder’ ” — an apparent attempt not to give credence to this charge.
But the effort to evade criticism can be seen in suggested revisions of the program’s guiding principles.
“We recognize privilege and oppression impacts experiences and expressions of masculinities,” one principle originally stated, according to an “impact statement” reproduced in the committee’s report.
A rewrite avoided two lightning rods — “privilege” and “oppression” — arriving at something so uncontroversial that its meaning is ambiguous.
“MasculinUT recognizes that an individual’s identities and experiences influence their expressions of masculinity,” a new version might read, the committee suggested.
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