"SFU students up in arms over men’s centre" [View all]

In April, the Simon Fraser University student society voted to devote $30,000 of its budget toward the development of a men’s resource centre. The battle began soon after.

Resident feminists scoffed. Men? Needing a place to discuss their “issues?” Ridiculous. Men were the issue. Meanwhile, the SFU Women’s Centre had been fighting the good fight since 1974, and offering its small campus office as a haven.

As for a men’s centre? Declared the Women’s Centre’s website — which, curiously, offers a “Male Allies” link, as if to enlist them — well, “the men’s centre is everywhere else.”

In other words, it’s still a man’s world, even if female university students significantly outnumber male students across the country, including at SFU.

The Women’s Centre would, however, support a men’s centre on one condition, and I paraphrase: if the men used the centre to admit to their gender crimes.

“Our support,” it stated on the website, “would be contingent on that centre’s mission statement, vision, and mandate. If the centre were about challenging popular conceptions about masculinity, confronting homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, and ability issues then we would definitely be the first to promote and fundraise for such a group.”

More followed. A female student posted a YouTube video criticizing the idea of a men’s centre, in which one critic fretted that it might become “a highly masculinized space” — where, one supposes, there would be much arm-punching and farting — while another said there was the danger of it becoming “heteronormative.” (You can look it up.) Both critics were men. Or as they are known at the Women’s Centre, Male Allies.

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The Nanaimo Men’s Resource Centre has been offering men counselling and a place to talk for a decade. Its executive director, Theo Boere, said the centre last year had more than 5,000 calls and clients, with issues that included divorce, separation from children, depression, suicide and physical and sexual abuse.

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Funding is a struggle. Depending on the source, women’s organizations in B.C. receive between $80 million and $100 million from the provincial government. Men’s organizations, Boere said, receive $500,000. A couple of years ago, the Nanaimo centre’s funding was slashed, and last year it received $110,000 in gambling grants. It let two-thirds of its staff go and cut its programs.

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http://www.vancouversun.com/McMartin+barricades+students+arms+over+centre/6669021/story.html

They've received many calls about divorce (different issues for men and women), suicide (an issue that affects more men than women), separation from children (again, an issue that affects men more than women), physical/sexual abuse (an issue that also affects men but for whom there are virtually no resources, go find a men's shelter if you don't believe me), and so on.

And yet people are outraged because men have no need for such a center.

Oh and women receive about 180 dollars for every 1 dollar dedicated to men.

Would any sensible person describe this situation as male privilege? Men get to fight constant attacks to begrudgingly get 0.6% of the funding to address issues that primarily affect them. And all the while people are telling them they have no issues worth even considering.

Privilege.

Ha.