Daniel Kim, a University of Toronto student, filed a claim with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal after his Women’s Gender Studies professor, Sarah Trimble, failed him for never having attended the class with the exception of the first day. Kim felt like he was discriminated against because he was the only male in the class then never, ever came back. Now he is pissed that he failed because who knew you had to go to class in order to pass it.
HAHAHAHA. I am dying over here because it is so amusing to me when men freak out about the shit women have to deal with on a daily basis and then have the audacity to take legal action when anyone with a vagina would be laughed out of society.
“I felt anxiety,” Kim told The Toronto Star. “I didn’t expect it would be all women and it was a small classroom and about 40 women were sort of sitting in a semicircle and the thought of spending two hours every week sitting there for the next four months was overwhelming.”
You mean you felt exactly how women must of felt when universities first opened their doors to them and they were the only women in class during a time of extreme and explicit sexism? Or do you mean you feel similarly to how women, who are often the only women, feel in male-dominated fields like STEM or how women board members, leaders, senators, firefighters (the list goes on!) feel or how Janet Yellen, the first female chair of the Federal Reserve, felt when she had to make it clear to her underlings that they should refer to her as Chair (as they had did her male counterparts) and not Chairwoman? How exactly do you feel, Mr. Kim?
“I believe if you want to attract more males to these courses, you have to work with them. My request for accommodation was reasonable,” Kim wanted Professor Trimble to waive the necessary 15% participation grade because he was “too overwhelmed” to speak up. Shy students don’t get that shit waived, so why would she waive it for some dude who can’t handle being around so many ovaries?
The Human Rights Tribunal said, “The applicant has not satisfied me that his claimed discomfort in a classroom of women requires accommodation under the [Ontario Human Rights] Code. He admitted that his discomfort is based on his own ‘individual preference’ as a shy person.” They felt Kim provided no evidence of being, “excluded, disadvantaged or treated unequally on the basis of his gender,” because his discomfort was based on “mere speculation as he never gave the class, or the women, a chance.” No shit.
What people don’t understand is that traditionally when men have excluded women it has almost always been to exclude them from power (I am not talking a boys’ night out with the fellows, I am talking clubs, jobs, communities). When women gather in the absence of men it is typically for safety. We go dancing at lesbian clubs with our friends even though we aren’t gay because we want to spare ourselves a night of getting groped by creeps. It’s the same way some misguided people like to argue that the existence of BET is racist because it is “only for Black people,” when the reality is that the channel had to exist because of racism, because marginalized groups of people need to create safe spaces, which are often separate spaces, from the groups that choose to remain willfully ignorant and hateful towards them.
However, in the case of Daniel Kim and the Women’s Gender Studies class, this wasn’t even the matter, as he was happily welcomed into the class. It was Kim’s petty fear and underlying misogyny (Probably because he knows that when you’re the only girl in the room you get treated different, so he assumed women would treat him the same way.) that caused him to make himself the other and assume that he would be antagonized. If he had taken the class he probably would have learned a lot about his fear of women. Ah, well, too bad.
[Via. Raw Story]
