Where are all the men? Part II

Big discussions going on all over the blogosphere about the sex ratio of college graduates; I even got a brief mention in the comments on Ann Althouse’s excellent blog (Quick, Bill, add a second digit to my hit meter!)  The commenters seem to be stuck on two major themes:  The War Against Boys
and Male Studies.  While I think these are ideas that deserve
discussion, I’d like to propose a slightly different idea, based on my
repeated, widely-spaced stints at several universities, first as a
student, and later as a lecturer.

Men–even grown men–respond to role models.  21st century
universities are qualitatively different from the ones I attended in
the 1960’s and 70’s; nowadays most of the male faculty aren’t very masculine.  Don’t get me wrong–they’re not gay or male-bashing gender traitors–they’re just not very manly.  Two quick examples.  One–it’s often easier to get the faculty women to go out for a beer-and-bullsh1t session than to get the men to participate.  Two–my pet peeve–at the University of Texas at San Antonio, I’m the only male faculty member who regularly wears cowboy boots instead of those wussy tassel loafers.

So my crackpot theory is that we’re not scaring men off with
male-bashing and Womens’ Studies and plays-quietly-by-herself
activities; real men ignore all that crap anyway.  No, we’re just
not showing them that academics is something that an admirable man would do.  Many of the young men have left the classrooms to be with other men.