A Duke University feminist group is offering an extensive campus lecture series this fall about “toxic masculinity” which will include an address by pornography expert Matthew B. Ezzell entitled “Pornography makes the man.”
The Duke Men’s Project — a new, nine-week program sponsored and paid for by the Duke Women’s Center — hopes to redefine masculinity among men at the fancypants private school, where a year of tuition, fees and room and board costs $66,626.
“The Men’s Project is novel because it provides males a space (a safe space even) in which they can discuss their own gender,” The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, glowingly explained in an op-ed last week. “It is not a reeducation camp being administered by an oppressed group in the service of the feminization of American society, but rather a space by men and for men.”
The “safe space” for deep thoughts about porn is scheduled for Tuesday at 6 p.m.
“This next Tuesday, we welcome Dr. Matt Ezzell back to campus for this awesome talk on pornography, masculinity, and rape culture,” The Duke Men’s Project Facebook page announces. “Free food! Bring your friends!”
The Duke Men’s Project is dedicated to establishing “a space of brotherhood fellowship dedicated to interrogating male privilege and patriarchy,” The Chronicle explained in a separate piece which was ostensibly neutral news.
The “male-identified students” participating in the Men’s Project “meet weekly to discuss themes and learning objectives planned by the leadership team,” Duke junior Dipro Bhowmik, a leader of the initiative, told The Chronicle.
Bhowmik, who goes by the name “Dabba Baz” on Facebook, officially likes Duke Figure Skating, the LGBTQ Center of Durham, Lizzy the Lezzy, Bitch Media and Charlotte Uprising (a group related to the recent spate of police protests in North Carolina).
“Toxic masculinity” “encourages men to suffer in silence from depression,” The Chronicle’s op-ed goes on to insist.
The Men’s Project offers “a place for males to ask any questions about feminism, gender and intersectionality that they have always wanted to ask, but would have been embarrassed to in a different setting. Among other men in a space like this, there is no threat of judgment.”
The Duke program emulates a similar program at the taxpayer-funded University of North Carolina, notes Heat Street.
Neither Duke nor North Carolina appears to be offering a lecture series — or anything at all — on “toxic femininity” this year.
In 2015, Duke University’s big campus kerfuffle involved a plan hatched by employees of the Duke Chapel’s Christian interfaith ministries to make the chapel the site of a series of calls to Islamic prayer to be broadcast on Friday afternoons. Advocates for the sounding of the Muslim prayer call proclaimed that the iconic, 200-foot-tall chapel has traditionally accommodated events for a diverse array of religious groups and student groups, so why not Muslim prayer? (RELATED: CHRISTIAN Bureaucrats At Duke Plotted Broadcast Of Islamic Prayer Calls From Iconic Bell Tower)
The Muslim-prayer-call-from-the-chapel plan was rescinded at the last minute after massive public outrage.
Duke is most famous, of course, for student Miriam Weeks — the 2014 porn star who insisted that nobody report her adorably slutty porn name, which is Belle Knox.
Weeks did a slew of interviews about why she does porn. It’s all very empowering to have sex on camera for cash with random actors, she declared, and it helps to defray the excessive tuition costs at Duke. (RELATED: Duke Porn Starlet Says Hardcore Career Necessary To Defray $58,000 Duke Price Tag)
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