The University of Wisconsin-Madison is starting its six-week “Men’s Project,” a program designed to brainwash young men to not act like men because men are awful:

“The program operates on a transformative model of social justice allyship,” explains a news release from UW-Madison. “First, facilitators ask students to consider how the students’ opinions about masculinity affect their own perceptions every day. Second, they consider how those opinions affect the people around them.” One goal of the project, said Sam Johnson, a violence prevention specialist at the University Health Services, is to “prevent future violence” by analyzing “unhealthy interactions” caused by traditional perceptions of masculinity and their role in gender-based violence, alcohol, and relationships. The Men’s Project, which is in its second year of operation, begins with a weekend retreat and then continues with six weekly meetings lasting two hours each. According to past participants of the program, the Project helped them become more vulnerable and make masculinity a “choice” rather than the default option.

Wait — if being masculine is simply making a bad “choice,” then won’t women who make the choice to put motherhood ahead of career also get blasted for not stepping in line with modern feminist thought?

Yup.

In reality, virtually all men — because of their masculinity — are both disgusted by the abuse of women and feel duty-bound to put themselves in physical risk to stop it when they see it.

Both of these nasty ideas about how men and women must behave spawn from modern feminism, which seems to want no less than total control over how other people live their lives. Imagine the outrage if a university men’s movement tried to shame women for being “too feminine.”

To make life more confusing for the men who have gone down the vulnerability path this program recommends, they later find themselves being “shamed” by the women in their life for having done so. A number of women actually want strong, masculine men, not the whiny beta males the University of Wisconsin-Madison seems determined to crank out.

Why? It turns out masculinity is a positive, necessary survival attribute. Who knew?

University administrators can try to make this about “violence against women” all they want, but that argument is just a bludgeon used to beat down any criticism. Disagreeing with this program will get you labeled a misogynist who supports abusing women.

This movement to destroy masculinity has had traction for some time; for what it’s worth, I’ve written a book in defense of the institution of manhood. Hopefully, men can step up and recognize that it’s not the feminists’ place to define what manhood is, and take back that responsibility.