By Kristen Santer

Duke University recently began offering classes that supposedly question and deconstruct toxic masculinity. The nine-week seminar, entitled “The Men’s Project,” is sponsored by the Duke Women’s Center. According to Duke’s website, the class hopes to “create a space of brotherhood fellowship dedicated to interrogating male privilege and patriarchy as it exists in our lives, our campus and our society.”

Several opinionated websites have published articles criticizing Duke for creating unnecessary and coddling “safe spaces.”

“I hope conversatives at Duke channel their inner-Occupy Wall Street hippie, infiltrate these safe spaces and tweet, blog and document what is going on in these little group exercises,” Matt Vespa of townhall.com wrote.

However unnecessary some may believe this program to be, “The Men’s Project” is a step in the right direction towards identifying harmful societal aspects that men face everyday, and to foster better and healthier views of themselves and of women.

One of the juniors, Dipro Bhowmik, leading the initiative spoke to the Duke Chronicle about how the seminar is not only for the creation of healthier male brotherhood, but also to help young men embody and promote feminism in their life and others.

“The curriculum is about questioning how you can be accountable to feminism, to the women in your life and to the larger community,” said Bhowmik.

“The Men’s Project” comes at a pivotal time in higher education as sexual assault is rampant in universities across the country. and convicted rapists such as in Brock Turner served only a three-month jail sentence for raping a female student. Hazing traditions involving Greek life of alcohol have also turned deadly, such as when student Trevor Duffy died of alcohol poisoning at the University of Albany after he consumed a 60-ounce bottle of Belvedere vodka as a pledging ritual.

Lessons of respect and accountability are often not taught at home and may lead to “toxic masculinities” that encourage sexual assault or binge drinking. Although the details and results of “The Men’s Project” are still unknown, this type of initiative can help reeducate young men in ways that may prevent similar instances from happening again.

Unfortunately, this type of male attention and support has been lacking from universities. Women are often taught measures of self-protection against sexual assault and rape, ideas of self-love and positive body image. Conversation around consent and male body image appears to encounter far less attention, which can lead to uninformed thoughts, often constructed within toxic masculinity.

For Fordham students, such as Andrew Mazzie, FCRH ’17, a class that “discusses and deconstructs toxic masculinity, which permeates all of U.S. culture, would be extremely valuable at Fordham. We are taught to be emotionally closed off, but still have sexual process; someone who drinks a lot, lifts a lot and makes a lot of money.”

Mazzie also said that he feels he has certainly been impacted by toxic masculinity as a gay man.

“Purely because of sexual preference, I have many times seen a shift in view on my masculinity, something that could only be negated if I can have more sex, lift more or drink more,” he said. “This is because of society’s long standing views on what defines masculinity, which seems not to value honesty, courage and bravery like it ideally would, but instead your prowess at totally arbitrary facets of life.”

Mazzie says that programs like “The Men’s Project” will not only be helpful for heterosexual men, but also men of every sexual orientation. The leaders of “The Men’s Project” seemed to anticipate and plan for this, so they made sure to include an open invitation to all “male-oriented” students, so as not to exclude transgender students as well.

This kind of progressive measures will help ensure a more modern, feminist society. All universities should consider implementing a similar seminar or initiative to help combat toxic masculinity and promote the health of all male and female students.

Kristen Santer, FCRH ’17, is a communication and media studies major from Stamford, Connecticut.