Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was recently the scene of a forum on misogyny titled “Transforming our campus and strengthening our community.” The discussion, hosted in part by the Canadian university’s Gender and Women’s Studies Program, and featuring a panel of professors and local “gender justice” activists, gave rise to solutions that are as sexist and racist as the problems they claim to be addressing.
What seems to have sparked the forum’s focus on misogyny is a scandal involving the Dalhousie dentistry school, whose Class of DDS 2015 Facebook page (which seems to have been taken down) reportedly featured sexually explicit posts from some male students, such as voting on which woman they’d like to have “hate sex” with and jokes about using chloroform on women. While this was highly inappropriate to say the least, the forum participants seemed oblivious to how inappropriate it would be to respond by punishing all male students at Dalhousie by essentially sending them to the back of the bus.