I understand the hesitation, but I think a men's center that deconstructs conventional masculinity is a good thing. Men have to get a conversation going about that amongst themselves. I think if feminist men had a network of men to go talk to when it got tough rejecting privilege, stereotypes, and media, it would be easier for them to stand up in the first place.

I think that transgender male students should be welcome, just as transgender women should be welcome in spaces available to women. However, the transgender community could probably use their own group, too.

As for establishing gender binaries, I think groups based on gender should be more about establishing a place for people who share similar experiences to come together and talk about those experiences. I also think it is important that these groups branch out and intermingle with other groups so everyone can learn from everyone else instead of being segregated.

Your reaction isn't unreasonable. The problem is that a mens center could be a terrific ally to the other focus groups on campus, or a complete nightmare. The form it takes will really depend on the people who are running it, their motivations and willingness to work with others. The best thing to do would be to get in early with some suggestions about things the various centers could do together, such as a weekly discussion group or health seminars.

The only part that gives me pause is "... is treating other minorities as privileged above men"

I can't really speak to your campus and the context that this rises from, but I think Men's Centers are a GREAT idea. There needs to be a place for men to gather on campus that isn't centered on the hypermasculinity of sports or fraternities. And, if the leaders and members really have the mission, as stated, in their hearts, they are doing a GREAT service to both the men and women of campus. By creating a safe space for men to be who they really are, not what society tells them, they are giving a lot of guys a chance to avoid becoming misogynist a-holes because that's the only option they see for acceptance and inclusion in a peer group.

I've seen a few Men's groups among my adult peers that have served as a great space to safely and honestly talk about what it means to be a Man in today's society.

I'm surprised so many loved the idea. When I first read that it sounded like the interviewer wasn't expecting people to come out and say they love the idea. Hmm.
A men's centre could be a good idea but I think it would be hard to implement properly and to get men to use it?

"By not having a Men’s Center UCSD
* is treating other minorities as privileged above men.
* is facilitating misconceptions about men as being misogynistic, homophobic, or racist."

That sounds a lot like the antifeminists that come on this website and I see why it concerns you. It actually pisses me off pretty bad.

I agree with other commenters who think it could be a good thing if it was run properly by people with good intentions, but it would be a diaster in the wrong hands. From what you have posted these people seem like reactionaries.

How are (white, heterosexual) men one of the "minorities" anyway? And how is forming departments to address the issues of oppressed groups in universities "privileging" these oppressed groups over men? I also don't see how these departments make (white, heterosexual) men look racist, sexist or homophobic, unless men are refusing to attend the classes or saying really oppressive things when they are in class.

I surprised that no one else at the meeting had similar feelings.

Like some above commenters, I feel that this could either be great or a complete disaster. Some of the stuff in their mission statement makes me lean toward the "disaster" side, and I can see why it worries you. A place for men to consider their concerns is, in theory, a perfectly good idea. But it seems like they're building this up from a misconception of the reason for things like Women's Centers and GLBT centers. Women's centers etc are necessary because the standard curriculum at most colleges comes from a canon that assumes that men (white, hetero, class privileged, etc) are the default, universal human being. Women have traditionally been excluded from canon through such measures as not studying the accomplishments of women, giving more credence to certain kinds of accomplishments that are more available to men, and using informal methods of making women students uncomfortable and unwelcome on campus. Although men suffer unreasonable standards and other difficulties based on gender and hegemonic masculinity, they are at an advantage in institutions of higher learning because the curriculum was built from the ground up with them in mind as both students and as future leaders. The key difference here is about power. Yes, there are negative stereotypes about men. But women do not have as much power to reinforce those stereotypes and use them to cause harm as men do. A Men's Center, if not set up properly, has the potential to erase these power differentials and make it seem as though the original problem didn't exist (the problem of women being systematically excluded from academia and college curricula). I'm also very disturbed by the use of past tense in this sentence: "We accept them as fact, men did oppress and discriminate against women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities." DO. Men DO oppress and discriminate. Not all men do, not all the time, men are not evil. But oppression isn't over yet, by any means. As for treating minorities as more important than men: see my original point. This comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the origin of women's centers, and reinforces my feeling that they believe this kind of discrimination is completely over and done with. Much better now, yes--over and gone, no. If the women's center and other named centers are, in fact, somehow "facilitating misconceptions about men as being misogynistic, homophobic, or racist" then that is indeed a problem, and could be dealt with at the level of the entire university, or within the women's center, or by the creation of a carefully crafted men's center. But the mere fact of the university having a women's center but not a men's center does not imply this- all it implies is a historical and ongoing problem of social inequality, and one group's attempt to correct it. The problem is, they've got it set up so that you'll appear to be a hypocrite if you reject the idea of a men's center- you're supposed to want equality, right? If I were in a position of power within the women's center, I might try to organize a series of discussions with the men's center advocates explaining the history of women's centers and asking what the men's centers hope to accomplish. I'd be very frank about the fear that this is based on a misunderstanding of history, and I'd back it up with as much data as possible about how women still fare worse than men on the whole, even though we've come so far. But as yet I'm only a grad student, I don't know how that would play out in practical terms. Good luck- I share your nervousness, to say the least.

Another thought- their usage of racism and sexism is off. If a women's center is teaching that all men are sexist and all White people are racist, they're using the sociological definition, which isn't the same as the commonsense definition. In casual conversation, people often confuse racism and sexism with personal prejudice. Anyone can have personal prejudice- feelings about entire groups of people that aren't necessarily based in fact and are usually negative. Racism and sexism, on the other hand, are part of the social structure and are dependent on power- according to this definition, only men can be sexist and only Whites (in this culture, anyway) can be racist. Also, according to this definition, all Whites are racist and all men are sexist- because all people in those privileged groups, regardless of their personal beliefs, will benefit from the system of inequality. For example, I'm a White woman, and although I try my hardest to treat everyone equally there's no denying that I benefit from racism- I don't get followed in stores, I don't get pulled over in traffic for looking "suspicious," etc. So although I do not hold personal prejudices, I am still racist because I benefit from an unfair system. This is a HARD concept to swallow, because people hearing it for the first time do not want this label attached to them, don't want to accept academic jargon, and don't want anyone to think they have overt prejudices. So the men's center idea may have come out of a misconception- the idea that men have to prove that they aren't prejudiced against women, aren't personally doing things like sexual harassment. The problem is, a good women's center was never accusing them of that in the first place. But it was teaching students about systematic discrimination, and anyone not taking Intro to Soc or Women's Studies 101 is probably not getting the definitional nuances. Of course, the burden is on them to do research into what they're reacting against, but it might be useful to be aware of this kind of confusion when explaining to people why we need Women's Centers and why the idea of a men's center makes some of us itchy.
Hope that's helpful and not too academic-geeky...

Ultimately anything funded by student fees needs to meet an equal access requirement. If male students, or Caucasian students do not have access to a service or a program which they are paying for then they have reasonable cause to form a structure providing similar services or to demand removal of the Women's center.

Perhaps the OP's issue is that she has a stereotypical view of what a "Men's Center" would be. Imagining a bunch of fratty rugby-shirted men swapping rufie recipies, just as some men might have a stereotypical view of a women's center being a place where the discussion revolves around mysandry and tampons.

I can assure you that the kind of men I'm friends with and who represent a lot of men my age or close to it are not stereotypes. We talk about our feelings, work out our troubles, try to reconcile our ideals for how things should be and how things often are, etc. Probably the same kind of stuff women do only with more scratching.

Caiis-

White, heterosexual men that are feminists are in the minority among men. I have no statistics to back me up on this, just based on my own interactions.

I don't understand the privileging language either, though.

There's been legal precedent set for allowing all women's sports teams to exist (in middle and high school), but not all men's teams if a woman expresses the desire to be on that team. The same precedents have been set for all women's college. There's a great feminist book to read called "Playing With The Boys" that deals with this topic.

So when I read your post, what came to my mind was that there are women's studies and GLBT studies because these deal with under-represented and traditionally oppressed groups. There's no justification for creating an equivilant men's studies. That's not to say that I think men don't ever experience gender discrimination, but the fact that we live in a patriarchy, I think justifies the fact that we can have women's centers and not men's centers.

YouCAn2, but what about a class or center that focuses on deconstructing historical and popular masculinity and talking about the challenges that feminist men face?

Couldn't the serious need to take a hard look at masculinity and stereotypical male culture serve as a reason to create such a study group or center?

I take issue with some of the language this men's center has put out there, but just witnessing my husband's struggles in this world gives me a lot of pause to think about how he is discriminated against within his gender and how women are not the only ones that need centers to rally at and allies to rally with.

Bianca, yes, if the center (or class) was specifically devoted to what you mention in your first paragraph. But look at what men's rights has turned into on the internet. It has nothing to do with human beings being able to reach their full potential regardless of gender, it's about how feminism is evil and how feminists have subverted men's masculinity and all that kind of stuff.