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Does the NUS have a man problem?

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Aaron Golightly, a journalism graduate from Bournemouth University, was disturbed to read of the NUS’ dismissive response to recent findings by a major think tank that universities need to do more to support male students. Here he asks, is this just one example of a pattern of NUS failures to support male students?

On May 12 the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) published a 64-page report that concluded young men were not performing as well as women in higher education. However if you imagined that the National Union of Students would respond to these findings with a resolve to tackle the widening inequality gap in this area, you’d be wrong.

On the publication of the findings, Nick Hillman, co-author of the report and the Director of HEPI, said: “Nearly everyone seems to have a vague sense that our education system is letting young men down, but there are few detailed studies of the problem and almost no clear policy recommendations on what to do about it.

“Young men are much less likely to enter higher education, are more likely to drop out and are less likely to secure a top degree than women. Yet, aside from initial teacher training, only two higher education institutions currently have a specific target to recruit more male students. That is a serious problem that we need to tackle.”

“Battle of the sexes?”

The response from NUS vice president Sorana Vieru, quoted in the Independent dismissing the findings, was that the report took a “complex and nuanced issue and turned it into a ‘battle of the sexes’.” It’s impossible not to reserve some admiration for an individual who accuses a 12,000 word report of ignoring nuance and complexity within the confines of a soundbite, yet I find it difficult to believe that if you replaced the words ‘young men’ with perhaps ‘young women’, their response to the report would be so glib and contemptuous.

The NUS do campaign against inequality in a number of different areas affecting women, LGBT and black and ethnic minorities. One group that it seems to constantly overlook however is men. If you trawl the website looking for various campaigns and issues that they’ve seen fit to promote over the years you’ll notice one rather glaring omission. Whilst there exists multiple references to their fight against ‘Lad Culture’, including their own 38-page audit report, there doesn’t appear to be room to address either the subject of male suicides or the widening gap between male and female university applicants.

The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) reports that in 2014 there were 4,623 male suicides in the UK, the single biggest cause of death in men under 45. Given that probably around half of all members are likely to be young men, it’s an issue that would seem a natural fit for the NUS to champion, but you’d be wrong. It’s difficult to find a single thing that anyone from the NUS has ever said urging prioritised concern for this issue, let alone evidence of a concerted and organised national campaign to raise awareness of it.

“Do they just not like men?”

It’s not just at national level where what might be described, at best, as willful ignorance of the subject matter exists. Recently Durham University’s Student Union rejected an application from students wishing to establish a Men’s society that sought specifically to create an environment where male students could address issues such as mental health and suicide where otherwise they might feel uncomfortable or perhaps even less macho doing so.

Does the NUS not care specifically that suicide is the biggest killer of their male members or do they just not like men? You could easily conclude the latter if you perused the Twitter history of NUS committee member Sarah Noble who last year was suspended from the Liberal Democrats for Tweeting her desire to “kill all men”.

If you’re gay and reading this and think that at least you’ll be immune from the blatant misandry then I’ve some bad news. Earlier this year the NUS called for all LGBT societies to drop the position of gay men’s representative in a motion that also concluded that gay males were the likely perpetrators of sexism, racism and transphobia. This assertion wasn’t backed up by facts and figures or even anecdotal testimony, so one can only assume that this conclusion was reached using the logic of: it’s men, innit.

A further, yet perhaps comparatively slight, example of how the NUS care little for the welfare of their male students is seen in their handling of domestic violence awareness. Nobody could or should seek to deny that domestic violence affects women disproportionately and that it is sensible to target awareness campaigns at them. Similar to how you’d imagine the NUS would target awareness on the issue of suicides on the group disproportionately affected (but don’t).

As part of their admirable ‘Recognise the Signs’ promotion of domestic violence awareness the webpage states:

“Domestic violence can also take place in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships, and can involve other family members, including children.”

Yet despite acknowledging that domestic violence exists within gay and bisexual relationships, the only support information they provide are the National Domestic Violence Helpline and Women’s Aid, two services that exclusively offer help and support to female victims of domestic violence. This oversight on its own could be considered innocuous, but within the general context of how the NUS seems to view men and the inequalities they face, it’s hard not to view the omission to provide information of any service that would help male victims as part of the ongoing culture of not seeing men’s issues as worthy of concern.

“Drinking from a mug of male tears”

The awful truth is that when it comes to representation from their union, male students are at the back of the queue. Your student rep is far more likely to drink from a ‘male tears’ mug than they are to have ever led or taken part in a cause that promotes awareness of male health issues.

You only have to look at the Twitter accounts of those in senior leadership positions, such as Vice president (Higher Education) Sorana Vieru who in September Tweeted: “I’m no fan of cis white men”.

Or the account of Shelly Asquith, who is, incredibly, Vice President (Welfare) at the National Union of Students, and boasted she was “drinking prosecco from a mug entitled (sic) Men’s Tears” and that she was repulsed at having to “face disgusting men” on her commute to work.

It should perhaps come as no surprise then, that young men feel unable to ask for help on mental health issues when structures that should be there to offer help and support, seem preoccupied with mocking and dismissing their concerns based on historical patriarchy that they had absolutely nothing to do with.

The failure of the NUS to be a prominent voice in campaigns to raise awareness of the issues of male suicides and male educational underachievement cannot continue to go unnoticed. As an organisation it has failed men by refusing to champion issues that affect male students, including suicide and the growing disadvantage men from certain working class backgrounds face in higher education. It’s either that the NUS don’t feel comfortable championing these issues, or it doesn’t care about them.

Either way it’s never been a better time to ask: Does the NUS have a man problem?

By Aaron Golightly

Photo courtesy Flickr/rawdonfox

Wanted: Stupid male writers to say why women are more intelligent than them. Paid.

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At the end of last week, as I skimmed through a few of the people I follow in twitter, I came across a tweet from a glossy women’s fashion magazine — it was a RT, honest — asking for single male writers for an article on what it’s like as a man navigating the desolate wastes of the dating scene. I added the bit about desolate wastes.

Anyway. Not only do I happen to fit very neatly into that demographic — and when I say neatly, that’s in the sense that a noose fits neatly around a condemned man’s neck – the 140 characters included the only four that matter: Paid.

What’s more, I optimistically thought to myself, as an editor for a men’s issues magazine, this might even be a great opportunity to reach out to a new audience of women and offer them an insight into what it’s like when the Nike Air Classic is on the other foot, so to speak.

So, I cheerily fired off a quick email: “Totes. Can do. Wotchuafta? How much you payin?” (Or words to that effect).

Clooney and Amal

This came the reply:

“So basically I need to find a single guy to write an opinion piece about deliberately dating women who are cleverer than him – hooked off George Clooney’s comments about Amal being smarter than him, and some new statistics also saying that men deliberately date women who are cleverer than them too.

“If this sounds like something you can relate to, and you’re interested, could you write me a few quick sentences about what you think on the subject and wing over a headshot, and I’ll pitch you to my editors this afternoon!”

Having read and carefully considered this offer, my first impulse was to “wing over” a couple of other four-letter words, connected with a couple of three-letter ones.

Instead, I decided to ask if I could see the research she was referring to, and having noticed they were also looking for a single woman to describe her experiences of dating, I asked what angle they’d be looking for in her dating story.

Teachers now mark down boys

For some reason they ignored my questions and said they’d found someone else.

Now, I know it’s a stretch to try and base some kind of devastating social commentary on this squalid little exchange, but let’s face it, it wouldn’t be the first time and it’s way too much fun for it to be the last, so just bear with me on this.

You see, I couldn’t help but notice that just the day before the magazine’s interest in smart women and stupid men, there was a major news story that addressed exactly the same stereotypes.

According to the BBC, an international report found that not only are boys falling behind girls in education across the globe, there is evidence of widespread prejudice against boys by teachers, who are marking down boys in comparison to girls, even if they are of the same ability.

Woman rolls eyes. Cut.

In another study in 2010, this prejudice was found to start very young, with both girls and boys believing girls are more intelligent than boys by the time they are seven or eight years old.

Meanwhile, there is the near-universal media trope in adverts, TV and film, of smart women and stupid men. (It’s so pervasive in fact, that there’s now a visual shorthand that tells us everything we need to know in a split second: woman rolls eyes. Cut.)

So why I wonder, would the editors of a women’s magazine think their readers would be interested in reading about men who fancy women who are more intelligent than them?

Could it be that the magazine’s readers now believe men in general are less intelligent than women, and despairing of finding a partner, want to be told there are men out there who don’t mind this intellectual power imbalance? Or perhaps, less charitably, these women like the idea of a nice-but-dim hunk, who looks pretty but won’t answer back?

Who knows. Whatever the reasons, none of them seem very pleasant for either women or men.

By Dan Bell

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Are “toxic” ideals of manhood why Jamaican boys are falling behind at school?

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In January this year UCAS reported that there were now a third more girls applying for university than boys, leading the head of the organisation to call for boys to be treated as “a disadvantaged group”.  But this is not just an issue for the UK.

Here one of our readers, Wayne Campbell, an educator and social commentator from Jamaica, argues that what underpins the crisis in his country is the pressure on boys to reject anything that is deemed “feminine”, right down to the language of learning itself.

From as early as primary school there is concrete evidence which clearly distinguish our girls outperforming our boys in all the national examinations. For example, in Jamaica, the Grade Four Literacy and Numeracy Tests, as well as, the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) clearly points to girls outperforming boys.

The crisis affecting our boys is not unique to Jamaica. Other Caribbean islands are also experiencing similar issues. Societies such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia are also grappling with the plight of boys and scholastic underachievement as well as how to address the problem.

‘Boys see school as for girls’

In my view, male underachievement is more a socio-political issue than an educational one.  Social and cultural factors have influence and continue to do so the various ways in which masculinity is defined not only in the Jamaican society but societies all over. Masculinity and what it means to be a man does impact on the education of our boys.

Many boys view the school experience as feminine. Our boys’ life choices are severely circumscribed by the dominant notions of masculinity competing with “multiple masculinities” in the society. For many boys especially in a homophobic and transphobic Jamaican society they are forced to remove themselves from any association with the feminine or curriculum areas related to same. One glaring example is the persistent poor performance of our boys in English Language in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination.

Boys who speak or attempt to speak Standard English are called derogatory names and ridiculed almost daily by their peers. The dominant notion of masculinity in the wider Jamaican society is one in which to speak Standard English is tantamount to being isolated by one’s peers and the accompanying question marks which undoubtedly will follow surrounding one’s sexual orientation.

Wayne Campbell is an educator from Jamaica

Our schools mirror the wider society and also suffer from this. Not surprisingly a significant number of our boys do not readily code switch between the languages, instead they prefer to use and remain with the language of what defines a man to be a man.

The school experience for many boys is already traumatic and therefore who can blame that boy for just fitting in, rather than face the hostile treatment and name calling from his friends. Interestingly, even boys from privileged backgrounds and from homes where Standard English is spoken are now struggling with the English Language as we continue to see the intersection of class and gender and how this impacts the school experience for our boys.

This is compounded by the fact that our boys learn from quite early that having an education is not vital to be successful in life. In fact if we assess success in terms of material possessions in the Jamaican context, the overwhelmingly majority of those men who are successful are those who did not excel at scholastic pursuits.

In fact, many of the men in our society who are seen as “successful” in the eyes of teenage boys, are in fact those who have dropped out of school and fallen foul of the law.

By Wayne Campbell

Wayne Campbell is an educator, poet, blogger and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues.

Lead image: woodleywonderworks

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Where are young men’s voices in the gender debate?

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Young women’s voices are at the forefront of our cultural conversation around gender issues.

From the banning of Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ by university student unions, to Pussy Riot and the Femen phenomenon, as well as the unexpected up-rising of #WomenAgainstFeminism, young women are speaking out and being heard.

The silence from young men, however, is deafening.

What do they think about this conversation that is, by default, being had about them? Equally, what do they have to say about issues such as suicide, street violence and educational underachievement, that primarily impact upon their own gender?

Here teenage vlogger Josh O’Brien gives his take on the situation.

Why do you think so few young men are speaking out about the issues they face? What do you think the impact might be on young men of not engaging with the discussion of gender that goes on around them and about them? Tell us what you think in a tweet or a comment.

Feature image: flickr/floeschie

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To watch more of Josh’s videos, check out his YouTube channel here.

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The problem with leaving boys out of the results day picture

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It’s not just the red tops: An image in the Guardian before results day

Yesterday saw the publication of this year’s A Level results and along with them the inevitable rash of Front Page Leaping Blondes ™.

The fact that newspaper photographers are so skilled at seeking out A Level and GCSE students who are also pretty, middle-class girls, is now such a cliché that articles like this one are published about it almost as often as the pictures themselves.

These articles tend to argue that FPLBs ™ are another example of our society’s objectification of women – girls prized for their looks not their brains.

There’s obviously some truth to this – where are all the less attractive girls? And for that matter, where are all the black and Asian girls? Don’t they do well in exams too?

Where have the boys gone?

But this is a selective analysis both of who’s missing from the front pages on results day and why it’s a problem. The primary omission isn’t unattractive girls, or girls from minority backgrounds. It’s boys.

And it’s also boys who really are missing out on educational achievement. In January this year UCAS reported that there were now a third more girls applying for university than boys, leading the head of the organisation to state that boys are becoming “a disadvantaged group”.

Now the year’s results are in, this gap has reportedly widened even further.

What does it say then, if “a disadvantaged group” is consistently left out of the images that show who is and can be successful? Results day pictures that only show pretty girls may objectify women, but they also tell boys academic success isn’t for them in the first place.

story about clever girls

Photo: Duncan Hull

And this comes in context of other images of young men that are pervasive. A 2009 media analysis of news reports found depictions of teenage boys were overwhelmingly negative — with young men most likely to be portrayed in a positive light if they had died.

Meanwhile, recent high-profile anti-sexism campaigns now routinely portray the young men who do get into university as misogynists and sexual predators.

‘Gender Expectations and Stereotype Threat’

But all of this, including the pictures of FPLBs ™, may in fact be a manifestation of something boys have already been told from a very young age indeed.

A 2010 study of boys in primary schools – with the sinister title of ‘Gender Expectations and Stereotype Threat’ — suggested that under-performance among boys in most national exams could be linked to adult’s lower expectations of them.

Bonny Hartley, the study’s lead author, told the Daily Mail: “By seven or eight years old, children of both genders believe that boys are less focused, able, and successful than girls – and think that adults endorse this stereotype. There are signs that these expectations have the potential to become self-fulfilling in influencing children’s actual conduct and achievement.”

‘Reading not seen as masculine’

Her study found that girls as young as four think they are cleverer, try harder and are better behaved than equivalent boys. By the age of seven and eight, boys agreed with them.

The study was reflected in the findings of a 2012 report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Literacy, which found reading was not seen as a “masculine thing” by boys – leaving them lagging behind girls from the age of four. It found boys are held back by a “number of gender stereotypes which seem to kick in early”.

None of this should come as much of a surprise. It is now widely accepted that if you consistently have low expectations of a certain group, those expectations tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The puzzling thing is why this awareness is so rarely applied to underachievement among boys.

By all means be concerned about the objectification of female students in today’s newspapers. But you should also be just as concerned about the boys who aren’t there at all.

By Dan Bell

Do you think leaving boys out of images of academic success is a problem? What impact do you think negative portrayals of young men may have on their educational achievement? Or do you think we should be more concerned about the objectification of female students in these pictures? Tell us what you think in a tweet or a comment.

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