Masculinity started its downward spiral sometime around when that harlot and presumed feminist, Eve, convinced poor old gullible Adam to eat the apple. I mean, after Michael kicked them out of Eden, it was all sharing feelings and antiquing and man purses.

But even though masculinity has always been on the decline, its most feared opponent — skinny jeans — has sent manhood into an all-out death spiral.

So says Jane Gilvary of The Bulletin: Philadelphia’s Family Newspaper.

Jane begins her article with the following strange and more-than-slightly-homophobic diatribe:

Despite what feminists might argue, real men don’t wear skinny jeans. Real men also don’t wear V-neck tees, or accessorized scarves, and they avoid purple and pink like the plague. The mere idea of a pedicure or waxing makes a real man nauseous. If a woman hangs out with this kind of girly-man routinely, it’s only because she wants to share his wardrobe and his non-fat caramel macchiato. A woman can’t imagine a man reloading his double barrel shotgun or chopping wood when he’s donned in Donna Karan and drinking an Appletini. Men were meant to wear rugged Wranglers, leather jackets and boots, like they belong in a James Dean movie and not an episode of “Will & Grace.”

We feminists just love ruining things for those cross-stitching, pie-baking “real women” who want their men sweaty, hairy and gassy. Need I remind Jane that many of the men Grace actually dated were not scarf-wearing, latte-sipping “quasi-queers,” but the very manly-men that she describes? The point of Will and Grace was that Will and Jack were actually gay — not her metrosexual boyfriends.

I am so endlessly sick of the “decline of masculinity” argument. Masculinity will be on the decline when men, on average, make less money than women. Masculinity will be on the decline when “paternity leave” isn’t considered silly. Masculinity will be on the decline when the phrase “You throw/hit/drive like a girl” is no longer an insult. Masculinity will be on the decline when the United States has had 45 female Presidents. And even if masculinity is declining — and it’s not — studies prove that even the very metrosexuals that Jane fears get chosen for jobs over female candidates.

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The increasingly popular website JuicyCampus.com is totally changing college life (and I refuse on general principle to either visit it myself or link to it here because of the utter repugnance I’m feeling). The site, founded by Duke University graduate Matt Ivester, is a forum for college students to anonymously post the latest gossip about their postgraduate peers. There are horrible stories coming out, some lies, some gross exaggerations, and some, worst of all, the private confidences given by classmates to someone they believed to be their friend.

Perhaps the most extreme example is that of Vanderbilt student Chelsea Gorham, who was violently attacked and raped while getting a cup of coffee on a Nashville street. The devastated young lady, whose experience has heartbreaking shades of Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky, left college for the rest of the semester to come to emotional grips from the comfort of her home. She returned to college in the fall, determined not to let her horrible experience ruin her education.

From ABC News:

“It was very difficult to go through the routine of going to classes, going to my different activities. I had a few panic attacks. I wouldn’t go anywhere by myself after 5, and I sort of felt detached from the rest of my friends, even the ones who knew, because there were some of them that I still hadn’t told about what happened,” she said.

“I wasn’t ready to tell anybody about it yet. My friends that knew respected my decision, and I needed to be OK with myself before I let anybody else know.”

It turns out that Chelsea Gorham’s faith in her friends was horribly misguided, as she learned to her grief that spring about her status as hot gossip on JuicyCampus.com.

At first she was shocked that someone could be so ignorant as to blame a rape victim. Then she felt betrayed, knowing it must have been someone close to her because so few people knew. She said it felt almost like a second rape — a total loss of control over her situation, just as the wounds were starting to heal.

The post started to spread, and soon the whole campus seemed to know about the girl who’d been raped, and the posting on Juicy Campus.

“That was probably the hardest part — that people would come up and ask me about the post. In one case I came up to a group of people that I heard talking about the post, and they had forgotten whose name it was, but they were talking about the post that they had read on Juicy Campus, about somebody who had been raped,” she said.

“It takes the control away again,” said Chelsea. “It’s my story to tell, and no one else has the right to tell it. And that something like this was considered gossip is disgusting.”

Wow. Just … wow. The thing is, it isn’t just like someone wrote, “This girl at Vanderbilt got raped. Sucks to be her.” No, it went like this:

“Chelsea Gorman Deserved It.”

and

“what could she expect walking around there alone. everyone thinks she’s so sweet but she got what she deserved. wish i had been the homeless guy that f***** her. [sic]“

Gorham’s story is especially horrific, but she’s not alone as a victim of this disgusting site that exists “under the guise of ‘entertainment’.”

Want to find out who does drugs? Who’s gay? Who has STDs? What about the most promiscuous girls? The prettiest? You can find all of this information and much more on JuicyCampus.com.

Names and sometimes phone numbers and addresses are posted on the site, which has now spread to about 60 schools around the country. It was an instant hit, jumping from a few thousand to more than 250,000 page views in a matter of months. Students across the country couldn’t get enough of what was being written, and many were constantly checking to make sure their names didn’t appear.

“People can say things about someone they don’t know and there’s nobody out there to stop them,” said Rachel Wilkerson, a student at Michigan State University. “A lot of things I read on there are calling girls fat, or saying girls are sluts. Those are horrible things to say about women, and any Web site that promotes it and any person who would say those things, I just feel like is incredibly sexist and it just plays on girl’s insecurities, and I thought we left that behind after high school graduation.”

You know, I love the internet, I really do, but …

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An Ohio first grader is facing disciplinary action after peeing on a female classmate in the school lunchroom.

From Fox8:

“[My daughter] told me that some boys had exposed themselves at school. Other children had witnessed what happened and one of the boys had urinated on her pants,” said the mother.

The little girl said, “We sat down. He said, ‘I got to use the bathroom’ and he peed on my knee.”

Okay, so let me get this straight. This little girl had been exposed to male genitalia by her classmates … but what really got the school’s attention was when one of them whipped it out and took a piss on her? I have two daughters, and I have to tell you, I’d be angry and upset if some kid took a leak on them—but I’d be bullshit over a boy exposing himself (and yes, I realize you sort of have to expose yourself in order to pee if you’re male, but you know what I mean). To me, the exposure is a far bigger deal than the peeing.

Principal Terry Lipford said, “We’re not denying that happened. Unfortunately, situations like that happen, we take it very seriously.”

Lipford said he met with the girl’s mother to discuss the incident the following day. He also spoke with the little girl and made sure she talked with a guidance counselor. Lipford says the school does not tolerate “bullying” and is looking into whether the alleged harassment is an on-going issue.

The girl’s mother says her 7-year-old daughter has endured bullying by several classmates throughout the school year. “For the past six months, one of the little boys for sure has been bullying her, pulling on her hair.”

Despite several meetings and conversations with the teacher, the mother says the harassment has continued.

“We are going to investigate her concerns. If there was bullying concerned, we will deal with that,” said Lipford.

I’m probably going to take some heat for this, but the concept of “bullying” in terms of schools has become out of control. Yes, it happens. Yes, it’s horrible. No, this girl should never have been doused with bodily fluids. However, using the recent buzzword “bullying” attracts media attention, sets up lawsuit opportunities, and in general creates bedlam–and kids (and their parents) KNOW this.

Hear me out. I’ve worked in the education field for ten years. I have seen horrible examples of bullying, but the ones that were truly appalling (and had a clear victim) were few and far between. Generally, it goes something like this:
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Chicago’s new chief officer of public schools hopes $60 million and statistical analysis can reduce murders of public school students in the city, according to The New York Times. The NYT reports that Ron Huberman hopes to shift the focus from security efforts to prediction and prevention:

Financed by federal stimulus grants for two years, the $60 million plan uses a formula gleaned from an analysis of more than 500 students who were shot over the last several years to predict the characteristics of potential future victims, including when and where they might be attacked. While other big city school districts, including New York, have tried to focus security efforts on preventing violence, this plan goes further by identifying the most vulnerable students and saturating them with adult attention, including giving each of them a paid job and a local advocate who would be on call for support 24 hours a day.

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