I recently came across a mewling article in one of Canada’s “progressive” mags, The Walrus, in which theatre critic Erika Thorkelson bemoans “the insidious sexism of the Canadian theatre world” and the comparative paucity of female actors and playwrights. Her theme is “gender imbalance” — the latest buzzword in the feminist war against men — which, of course, is owing to something like an exclusionary male commissariat intent on safeguarding its unjust privileges. That there may be other reasons for the supposed “imbalance” — lack of comparable interest, different distributions of talent — must not be mentioned since that would call her thesis into question. I certainly have not noticed any marked dearth of females on the theatrical, operatic, or cinematic scenes. And in the music world, come to think about it, females abound. No matter. The patriarchy strikes again.
At around the same time that I stumbled on this silly piece of special pleading and culturally ratified paranoia, I learned that the husband of a friend, a self-taught biblical scholar and an expert on the Gospel of John, is now serving time after having been accused by his disaffected stepdaughter of sexual assault, although the evidence is sketchy at best, the stepdaughter is psychologically disturbed, and his wife and his other children have testified on his behalf. The judge nevertheless found the daughter’s rather improbable story credible and the man was sentenced to a seven-year prison term. To compound the judicial felony committed against him, he was remanded to maximum security after his preference not to be housed with Muslims was discovered — he had good reason, having been stabbed by a Muslim for wearing a t-shirt stenciled with the legend “I Am an Infidel.” The fact that he was a believing Christian clearly did not help his case. In any event, this was another tainted victory for the feminist cause.
Like our literary community and our judiciary, our schools are equally engaged in promoting the feminist agenda to the disadvantage of deserving — indeed, of all — male students. A typical instance occurred at a high school in a neighboring town, as a friend whose son has just graduated and who attended the graduation ceremony informed me. My friend reports that approximately 90 per cent of the innumerable awards were distributed to female students for various obscure achievements such as offering encouragement to classmates, displaying enthusiasm for the subject, showing aptitude for commitment or evincing general improvement, in short, for enriching the parietal atmosphere by their very presence. Many of these awards came with the caveat “in the opinion of the teachers.” Two girls, the school was proud to announce on its Twitter feed, excelled in the technologies — “Times Are Changin’” reads the accompanying comment. But the vast majority of these female laureates demonstrated their accomplishment in the mainly “soft” subjects — the Humanities, social sciences, dance classes, and the like, where marking typically involves a high degree of subjectivity and teacher preference often plays a role. Only a comparative handful of male students were honored, all of whom majored in the “hard” disciplines where objectivity rules — science, math — and received top grades. The valedictorian, obviously, was a girl, with a high composite average enhanced, it would appear, by easy marks in the less demanding areas — and, I strongly suspect, likely with the help of grade inflation, since the principal is female, the vice principal is female, most of the teachers are females, and the school focuses in its Twitter feed, replete with the most cloying and vapid bulletins imaginable, primarily on girls. The high school is toxic for boys, who prudently kept out of full participation in most school groups and activities. Male students cannot but react with a mixture of bemusement and resentment — going MGTOW, going Galt — at the cost of our society’s scientific, literary and intellectual health, already in precipitous decline.
