Cathy Young: "Wie Feministinnen auf dem Campus Frauen schaden"

Die USA und Kanada verfügen über den qualitativ hochwertigen Journalismus, der Deutschland, wenn es um die Geschlechterdebatte geht, inzwischen weitgehend fehlt. Die US-amerikanische Journalistin Cathy Young etwa beleuchtet in einem aktuellen Artikel für den Boston Globe, wie die aggressiven Feministinnen an Universitäten auch Frauen zu schaden beginnen. Dabei wendet sich Young vor allem gegen das Bild von Frauen als machtlosen, verängstigten Opfern von gefährlichen Männern:

Sadly, it also reflects a mindset all too prevalent in the feminist classroom. Author Jessica Valenti credits a women’s studies class for teaching her that women live on a constant "rape schedule" — a hyperbolic metaphor for precautions against sexual assault. Never mind that men are hardly safe from violence, or that in a 2011 Washington Post poll women were only slightly more likely than men to worry about being victims of a violent crime. No one disputes women’s far greater vulnerability to sex crimes, but how "feminist" is it to turn it into the dominant fact of their lives?

A leading gender-studies textbook, "The Gendered Society" by State University of New York sociologist Michael Kimmel, offers young women a constant litany of how victimized they are by patriarchy and men more generally. Girls experience "systematic demolition of [their] self-esteem [and] denigration of their abilities" (in fact, claims about teenage girls’ self-esteem drop are strongly disputed by mainstream psychologists, and girls now outperform boys academically at every level). Women are so brutalized by men that "domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the nation" (in fact, government health statistics show women suffer about five times as many injuries from accidental falls and twice as many from car accidents as from all violence). Working women lose nearly half a million dollars in a lifetime to pay inequity (in fact, much of that gap is due to educational and employment choices the text barely mentions).

(...) While not many students take gender-studies courses, their dispiriting and polarizing message seeps into other fields. It is also amplified by extracurricular programs, from student life workshops that convey a skewed, blame-the-males view of gender relations to performances of "The Vagina Monologues," whose main focus is not female sexual empowerment but female victimhood.

The academy is a place to discuss and explore ideas — which makes the intellectual corruption of campus feminism especially unfortunate. Unlike many conservatives, I believe there are still important ideas and issues to explore when it comes to gender equality, from work-family balance to attitudes toward sexuality to stereotyped media images. But for such discussion to be productive, it must be free of dogma, committed to fact, and open to different sides of complex issues. And it must be willing to recognize that not all gender-based biases disadvantage women, or are perpetuated by men.

Unfortunately, at present, academic feminism fails on all of these counts — to the detriment of women and men alike.

Anderes Land, andere Journalistin, dasselbe Dilemma: In Kanada blickt Barbara Kay zurück auf die immer aggressiveren Versuche der feministischen Front, Männer zum Schweigen zu bringen, die an Universitäten auf ihre Probleme aufmerksam machen möchten. Kays Fazit lautet:

If they’d listened instead of protesting, those angry activists might have come to appreciate men’s viable concerns. But acknowledging men’s humanity is ideologically untenable for extremists. It’s sleazier, but easier to keep screaming, "Shut the f–k up!"

Angesichts der gleichen Situation hätten erfahrungsgemäß viele deutsche Journalisten die "Shut-the-fuck-up!"-Fraktion unterstützt. Und die deutsche #Aufschrei-Hysterie prägte genau jenes "Bild von Frauen als machtlosen, verängstigten Opfern von gefährlichen Männern", das Cathy Young beklagt. Immer alarmistischere Journalisten schüren diesen Unsinn, statt ihn kritisch zu hinterfragen.