A new program at the University of Texas is dipping its toes into the roiling waters of man bashin’.
The Austin-based school’s Counseling and Mental Health Center wants male students to “take control over their gender identity and develop a healthy sense of masculinity.”
So, the centre is treating masculinity as a mental health crisis and armies of counsellors are ready to go to war and encouraging students to develop a “healthy model of masculinity”.
The program is against so-called “restrictive masculinity,” adding that men suffer because they are told to “act like a man.” Traditional gender roles like being “successful” are also frowned upon.
The problem, according to MasculinUT, is stuff like wanting to take “care of people” and being “active.”
These are very dangerous attributes the centre maintains, saying that “traditional ideas of masculinity place men into rigid (or restrictive) boxes [which]… prevent them from developing their emotional maturity.
“If you are a male student at UT reading this right now, we hope that learning about this helps you not to feel guilty about having participated in these definitions of masculinity, and instead feel empowered to break the cycle!” the program says.
Now, the centre is looking for a “healthy masculinities coordinator” for the job, PJ Media reports.
It appears to be the first “masculinities” program run through a mental health centre.