It is worth asking what feminists will accomplish by claiming that masculinity is toxic or that it is harmful to mental health? These days, it is impossible to imagine that a faculty member at the university be allowed to claim that femininity is hazardous or deranged. And yet when it comes to masculinity, Duke University and now Claremont College have created “safe spaces” to operate what are essentially reeducation camps for indoctrinating young men into self-hatred and misandry. Although these efforts may appear isolated, they actually follow an Orwellian development after Title IX’s crackdown on campus sexual activity.

Again, what are feminists and Title IX activists hoping to accomplish by using negative metaphors that treat masculinity as polluted and pathological? Calling maleness a poison or a disease seems to be part of expanding two areas of feminist power – political and economic.

Political. In attempting to expand political power, feminist activists have turned to the college campus. Higher education has been a widening vortex for gender equality activity. Whether gender studies programs, feminist sciences, or Title IX activism, the focus on equality has shifted to misandry. For instance, Duke and Claremont’s reeducation programs are new footholds for increasing some sense of misandry’s credibility and activism. Even though these programs share brainwashing techniques with the troubling “conversion therapy” so cruelly used to treat homosexuality, having these reeducation programs on campus still grants credence and political access not known before.

Economic. When a political group does not have the means of production to dominate an economy, then it has no other choice than to produce a separate means to gain power economically. Such reversals only work for a short time since they are typically unrealistic in their expectations. For anti-masculine feminists, generating as much ideological and social dominance on post-secondary campuses is meant to make college less appealing to young men. And with fewer males enrolling in colleges nationally (60:40 female-to-male ratio currently), feminism seems aimed at excluding more males from attaining college degrees. Even as this goal becomes more of a reality, the typically indebted American college grad has begun to believe that the economy is not that forgiving for such a sizable investment. If the economic division increases, where women fill college campuses and men run to the trades and tech, it may only be a pyrrhic victory for feminists as they separate the genders further while making their economic future less clear.