So a judge in Ontario has said “nuh-uh” to a deceased doctor’s plan, set forth in his will, to set up scholarships for straight, white, single students.
As the National Post reports:
[Dr. Victor] Priebe’s will asked the trustee to set up bursaries for students planning studies in science …
It said one should be directed to “Caucasian (white), male, single, heterosexual students,” while the other should be reserved for a “hard-working, single Caucasian white girl who is not feminist or lesbian.” …
There were other odd stipulations, too, such as that the male bursary should not go to anyone who plays inter-collegiate sports, and that the recipient should ideally demonstrate “they are not afraid of hard manual work in their selection of summer employment.”
But the judge, a known woman by the name of Alissa Mitchell, says she can’t let something so blatantly discriminatory to stand.
Naturally, the good folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit are outraged by this assault on all that is good and decent.
“I am a white heterosexual single male, and I quite like myself that way,” a fellow calling himself CompayViejo declared, in a comment that got more than a dozen upvotes.
And I associate with other white heterosexual single males, and I generally think my friends are really a great bunch of people to be around. Does that make me racist and homophobic too?
Although we’d really have to read the guy’s entire will for an informed opinion, it’s just harrowing that nowadays, apparently you’re a racist homophobe just because you want to do something for a certain defined section of society after your death. …
Men, white heterosexual men, really have it quite bad these days in many Western “civilized” countries and are increasingly being marginalized. In a world like that, if you really think that scholarships for white heterosexual men are against the interest of the state, then that’s just pathetic.
Maybe this video will help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ESgWlzQQag
H/T — r/againstmensrights
@ Bina
Possible TMI warning
We had one couple train with us. One time the guy had dropped his mrs with a well aimed knee. Rolling around the floor and through gritted teeth she just piped up “How come you can’t find that spot when we’re at home!”
Almost all universities where I live have lowered entrance requirements. Why? Money. Educating stupid people is profitable. I couldn’t get into a decent uni when I graduated because I didn’t meet language requirements-at the time you needed a grade 12 language that was not English. University used to be about higher education, no shit. Now it’s profit. I think everyone who wants to go should be able to, but if EVERYONE goes then it devalues a degree. A bachelor’s degree is nothing these days, you need at least a masters to be taken seriously in your field. It’s a total trap, people flock to it, force their unsuitable children into it at great cost with the hope and expectation that the wages earned after that effort will be worthwhile. Not so. And , universities across North America make it nearly impossible to get full time, tenured work as they pay associates a pittance. It’s a bad scene all around. Anyways, I’m just rambling at work .
“Educating stupid people is profitable.”
Pony’s Labia: That’s the thing, though. As long as people associate “stupid” with “not suited for university” there will be a lot of people trying to get into university who would be happier pursuing other education. I work at a technical college and those folks ain’t dumb, but there’s just not the same status as having a university degree.
Meanwhile, we associate literacy with intelligence in a way that’s not really accurate, so we think that someone who reads books for four years has to be smarter than someone who does hands-on, applied research. That’s just not the case. So, basically, we drive people into university whether they want it or not. Like you said, an undergrad isn’t much to crow about these days. Meanwhile, we keep that snooty stigma against skilled trades or “mere” technicians.
Anyway. It’s really not a useful word, “stupid”; it says more about class and a very narrow skill set than ability. “Gullible,” or “status-seeking” might be better words in that sentence. 😛
That comment is a mess and I’ve missed the editing window. Whoops. I have an honor’s degree and all… XD
Although I agree with you that the credential arms race is both a thing and damaging, the solution is not to make college extra-exclusive again. Recall that exclusive higher education runs to the advantage of the already-privileged, especially white and male privilege, but also socioeconomic privilege (which are, of course, not fully independent conditions). That privilege effect is still in place, although it takes other forms, such as requiring students to do internships or volunteer work in order to demonstrate their maturity and responsibility. Only the already-privileged can afford to work for free, or have the connections to land a paid internship.
For instance, if you need a grade 12 foreign language to get into a good school, where does that put young people who dropped out of school for whatever reason and got alternate high school diplomas?
It’s not that too many people are going to college. It’s that our society has sold itself the lie that the key to success is a college degree. Weak unions mean low wages for people without degrees (not that unions are perfect; they have their own racist and misogynist failings). Poor worker protections mean that Wal-Mart is free to crush down compensation while while raking in epic profits, and discrimination remains consequence-free.
A living wage would be a good start, but it’s only a start. Regulation of capitalism needs to change, and also people also need the freedom to fail. I would change social welfare in the United States and just get rid of almost all of it (pretty much everything except Medicaid) and replace it with government-run barracks that provide basic housing, food, and necessaries that are open and free to anyone without requiring any proof of need. Kind of like the military, but without the military component. It would give everyone a fallback position if shit gets real and provide folks with room to fail without lifelong consequences.
Then you’d see, I think, people going to college because they want to learn things, rather than as a means to a living wage.
Good points, Policy of Madness. It’s a complex issue.
I do think that a part of it is learning to value different educations though. Around here, it takes at least four years to be certified as a journeyman tradesman, for instance. Why is that not as prestigious as a four year college degree? You learn differently — more hands-on, less reading — and you learn different things — heavy on practice, lighter on theory. But why is one better than the other? Society needs both thinkers and doers, surely.
Yeah, while I’m only 2/3 of those, I’m still gonna have to call bullshit, I don’t exactly feel like I’m getting shafted because the system isn’t as blatantly rigged in my favour as it used to be.
This brought back a memory I wish could have remained locked away, but since it’s resurfaced, I’ll share. Back in high school there was this super skeevy guy who thought he was popular with the ladies and would relentlessly try to hit on the prettier ones. I remember one day he wore these shorts that were incredibly short, without anything under them, and he kept getting girls’ attention to show them his [insert clever euphemism here] sticking right through the leg hole. Of course nothing wrong with that in the dress code, and attempts to report him were ignored, but the girls weren’t allowed to wear tank tops (the boys were allowed to wear tank tops, of course).
Now I need some kind of brain shower.
@kupo
I think I’m gonna be sick. Just…fucking wow.
@Policy of Madness @darkstatistic – where I live (Quebec), university is fairly cheap, at least compared to other provinces and certainly compared to the US. I have noticed that university degrees don’t seem to be as valued in the job market here as job experience, but it’s a bit of a catch-22 when you need a certain degree to get job experience in the first place. At the same time, the more “technical” schools such as Ecole Polytechnique and ETS are quite well respected.
As an aside, many people from outside the province who aren’t engineers only remember the name “Polytechnique” from the 1989 antifeminist murders. It’s somewhat jarring when I think that’s where a couple of our engineering tutors (at my workplace) are doing their degree, and then compare that with all the associations people have.
In Ontario, the other place I’ve lived on this earth, “colleges” are considered lower-status than universities. They offer degrees as well as certificates, but usually in 2-3-year programs instead of 4-year ones. (Someone more familiar with this can correct me if I’m wrong.)
Anyway, it’s a shame that there often seems to be a ranking placed on type of education. Of course, more education or experience in a particular area usually means people will be better at said thing… but it doesn’t have to be just traditional university education. A PhD candidate I know said something like, “I don’t respect people simply for having a PhD. It just shows they were able to stick with doing the same thing for a long time.”
Dr. Victor Priebe seems to have been unacquainted with the fact that at one time colleges were closed to women. It took pioneering feminists to change that.
Up until the early 1970s, my own college–a public university, supported by taxes–admitted only one third women. Other colleges had similar quotas for women. The solution? Lawsuits.
Legacy admissions are also a thing at a lot of colleges in the US, particularly Ivy League schools. You get preferential consideration if you’re the child of an alumnus which obviously skews heavily toward white people.
I take it none of the whiny dipshits in that thread noticed the link in the friggin’ article about a judge in the very same province using the very same law to strike down a black man’s will for being bigoted against his own mixed-race grandson, proving that the law is completely equal?
Of course not. It doesn’t support their narrative.
Awwwww, poor puddin.
@PolicyOfMadness:
As you say, the problem isn’t university; the problem is competition between people for a fixed number of “more comfortable” positions in society. It’s a sort of predatory Lake Wobegon effect: in the rush to make sure that we’re above average, we trample into meaninglessness the very concept of “average.”
I like your idea of a free minimum level of life; in my mind that’s what a good welfare state would be. Do you know if any studies have been done on the affordability and the economic impact of such a thing? I know some economics, but I’m painfully out of my depth when it comes to ideas like that.
Dear, sweet, precious, adorable, wonderful Paradoxical Intention,
You will always be the cheeseburger slut for me. Beyond this, words fail me and I can only sqeeeee. <3
Sincerely,
Everyone Smart
Aww I’m so sad for him. The odds are stacked in his favour and now those meanie meaniepants SJWs want to stop things being *even more* stacked in his favour.
How could we? It’s like we’re monsters or something.
It is just so sooper dooper hard to be a white, heterosexual, able bodied, cis man these days. No legal slavery, fewer subservient women and now there are no scholarships available to only him. He’ll have to actually work his ass off like everyone else. It’s so unfair. Waaaaah!
Wow! That is a classic ‘the feminazi stole my icecream!!!!’ scenario if there ever was one! What an over privileged little man baby. It never ceases to astound me when the most privileged complain about being hard done by less privileged individuals finally being given a fair go. It’s pathetic.
Kupo-Eewwwwwwwwww!!!!!! The fact he was allowed to continue doing that shows how fucked up and sexist school dress codes are. Just eeewww!
I don’t quite get this scholarship thing. Aren’t they very often reserved for some particular demographic. How is that not discrimination?
@kupo:
That’s disgusting. That man not only has no class, but also sounds like he’s got no self-respect or respect for anyone else either. Ewww.
Obviously it didn’t occur to Dr. Priebe that a man might be feminist. Also, “not lesbian or feminist” is easier to write than “heterosexual who is not a feminist”.
Obviously trans people or people with non-binary gender or sexuality are also not a consideration. Imagine if an applicant was a hetero transsexual person.
“Single” might be interpreted as “not married” but Priebe probably meant “committed to not marrying or dating intimately until it’s time to have children”. Although it shouldn’t be too difficult for gays to fake heterosexuality, if you must not date openly anyway.
Also, no religious requirement? I suspect Priebe was the sort of casually Christian conservative who thinks religion is not an issue among white people because “everyone” is Christian.
And no inter-collegiate sports? Someone had a grudge with “jocks”.
@Arctic Ape:
That, or he thinks Jews aren’t white.
Digression geekery:
Interestingly, the term “caucasian” was brought into American political circles for precisely this reason. In the nineenth century the phrase “white” was defined to exclude Italian, Hispanic and Jewish people (and sometimes even Irish.) Later writers such as Carleton Coon realised that in order to prop up the mechanism of a racist society it was necessary to extend privilege to these ethnic groups. Rather than drop or redefine the word “white”, they picked the word “caucasian” from relatively obscure nineteenth-century taxonomy and used it to refer to the new, wider class of privileged people.
To someone who believes in this sort of early-to-mid-20th-century American usage of the words, Jewish people are not white but are caucasian. Then again, people who believe in this sort of thing would also insist that Mr Obama is a “mulatto”, so fuck them.
This is also why the phrase “caucasian” is far less commonly used in Europe (and is presumably not often used in the Caucasius mountains themselves, whose inhabitants include large numbers of Chechen, Iranian, Azeri and Turkish Muslims.)
The male student has to be planning to major in science (because only men can STEM, obvs) but “not afraid of hard manual work in their selection of summer employment”. So the ideal candidate would be a software engineer who spends summers doing road construction or working on a fishing boat? Yup, that sounds like solid preparation for a science career. Especially for the not-athletically-inclined.
Well, by gum, it was good enough for Grandpappy! Young college whippersnappers today just don’t appreciate character building.
Keep it classy, Ontario. Let’s hear it for activist judges! 😀
Yes, white heterosexual men have it quite bad indeed these days.
Here in the USA, take a look at Congress. Not a white heterosexual man (WHM) in that august body. No WHMs on the Supreme Court. No governors are WHMs. No WHM movie stars, athletes, or rock stars.
Last hired, first fired: Such is the fate of the luckless WHM in the USA.
Internationally, there are no WHM heads of state, even in Europe, land of white people. No WHM inventors, theologians, or authors.
I understand that Queen Elizabeth’s husband is known as Prince Philip. But she gave him that title and can just as easily take it away.