Engineering publication at U of M

Point?

I think these publications are the higher ed equivalent of getting your nose pierced to shock your parents.

My alma mater has "The Eyeopener", and pretty much every year, the Eyeopener tries, again, to push the envelope a little further.  I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's sort of a rite of passage or something.  There's much "cred" to be had by defying the sensibilities of the adults.

Does it add anything to say that I know about half a dozen engineers?

I think that pushing the envelope further is going to mean anything that gets a rise out of people.  I've little doubt there's some homophobia, and probably a bit of racism in there as well.  I don't think the point is hatred or intolerance of any one particular group so much as showing that they're badasses who do what they want.

Oh god, this is my faculty.  I'm so embarassed.

If you are self-hating enough to look at the history of this little publication, this exact same shit happens every 5-10 years.  Basically, what happens is once in a while someone notices the Red Lion (Loin), it gets a bit of traction in the media, it becomes an issue, some people apologize, nothing changes, next year it's the same shit, and the year after no one remembers.

While I don't want to waste any effort in my fingers typing a defence of the kinds of people who put things like this out, I would just like to say that not everyone in this faculty is this bad.  The problem is that we have a lot of dumbass frat-boy chauvinism amongst the more privileged members of our faculty - particularly those who are white and come from certain backgrouds (ie: father was an engineer), and these are the people who wind up running UMES and being the public face of engineering students.  All the normal people don't have time for the dumbassery of UMES and don't get involved - and why should they?  Fuck, I don't.

This frat-boyism and elitism (jokes about how everyone else's education is "useless") are reinforced every year at orientation for a new generation of first-year students.  And I think being a professional faculty does push some people to be elitist as a crutch - we may pay higher tuition and have harder classes, but as long as we keep telling ourselves that it's because we're better than everyone else and everything will pay off in the end, we get enough of a psychological wage to keep us from having a complete mental breakdown from the tons of menial intellectual drudgery that we're still hammering away at at 3:00 in the morning.

And after shit like this, people wonder why the male-female ratio in engineering is so low, or why after graduation the wage gap only keeps increasing with experience.

I think every engineering student should be required to take at least one women's studies course.  The level of understanding of issues like this in the faculty is abysmal.

Oh, and for the record, I was hating on UMES long before any of you.

Twenty years ago - a few minutes' drive from where I live - 14 young women - 12 of them engineering students - were murdered because their lives stood in contradiction with some man's hatred of "feminists".

Today, some creeps apparently still believe that it is ok to publish "satirical" material by and for engineers, about "how women can sexually please men."

The University of Manitoba should charge the people responsible for this misogynous publication and, if the charges are made out, should mete out penalties suitable to this offence.

With respect, just tell me if I should put down the keyboard.

What's a guy supposed to do?  I understand in light of the context that it's more disturbing but respectfully, there needs to be some discussion.  Can anyone shed more light on the content that's offensive?  All my female relatives agree it's a problem but we also agree it's not just a male solution.

I'm sure my words will be parsed and misinterpreted because I can't write well but I'll try to explain.

The system is the problem.  Going after small groups of men like this is silly.  Perhaps, I'm too naive but where I walk among professionals there's still plenty of this type of banter, male and female.

Keeping the class angle going:

And where I walk even more among non-professionals it is even more profound.  We can't be blaming this on men nor women.  The problem lies in the inherent belief of the society we are in.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't think for one second men nor women will stop thinking of each other sexually anytime soon. There's a reason why the women's magazine industry dominates the men's.

Unless I resort to medical intervention, I'm not going to stop waking up with morning wood. My sisters are much more sexual potty mouths than I.  They love to talk about it.  How do we unpack it?  How do we stop it?  Perhaps, the engineering types are much worse, I'm no expert and if I've chosen the wrong time to pose these questions, I apologize.

What say we put the equal expectation that if men are to put this stuff down, women put their fashion and celebrity mags down?  This needs a dual approach.  Personally, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.  It's hard to survive if you look like a prude.

I hope you can see the sincerity of my questions.

Thanks Unionist, I did read the article and found that strange.  As always you helped me clarify, I kind of got the publication thing but it didn't click in enough.  Just my baggage boys being boys.  Don't want to lose all my friends.

eta: I've lost many due to my politics and shrinks believe it is the cause of my struggles.  I'm supposed to conform.

Snert wrote:

My alma mater has "The Eyeopener", and pretty much every year, the Eyeopener tries, again, to push the envelope a little further.  I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's sort of a rite of passage or something.  There's much "cred" to be had by defying the sensibilities of the adults.

Yeah, but I find the Eyeopener doesn't do the same sort of things that Golden Words (from Queen's) or other Engineering rags do, with the jokes about rape, etc.  The Eyeopener is a guilty pleasure of mine. :)  I haven't noticed them being overtly racist or sexist, and I read it relatively regularly.  And it's a campus-wide paper with many contributors of both sexes, not an Engineering paper dominated by immature boys, so that's probably why it doesn't have that same kind of frat-boy-misogyny feel to it that some of the engineering rags do at other schools.

They have the Valentine sex issue every year, but it's not like the one in this story.  It's just basically a naughty, semi-pornographic (men and women, gay and straight, poly and mono) pro-sex issue that is, as you say, designed to titillate the students, push the envelope and "shock the grown-ups".  They also do an issue once a year talking about all the negative things they can dig up about the university.  Again, an exercise in rebellious, in-your-face student writing and reporting, but not the kind of nasty misogyny that makes the mainstream news.