Dalhousie presents forum on misogyny amid dentistry Facebook scandal
Forum shifts talk away from the dental school and toward solving problems like sexism and racism
More than 350 students attended a forum at Dalhousie University on Thursday afternoon to talk about discrimination against women.
Participants spoke about how things need to change so it's not considered OK to make offensive, threatening comments on Facebook. The idea of the forum was to shift talk away from the dentistry school and toward solving problems such as sexism and racism.
"I'll bet my last dollar that if these were 13 men of colour or 13 black men, they would have been gone already," said Afua Cooper, a Dalhousie sociology professor.
It's not clear if the participants in the Facebook group were white, but for students at this forum, questions about race, class and gender were important. There was also a lot of talk about how to involve more men in the discussion.
Dalhousie sociology student Mike Candlish was happy he attended.
"It kind of helped me to understand exactly how much privilege I have, and what women and people who aren't white are experiencing and [that is] something I'm pretty ignorant to,” he said.
The forum was co-sponsored by the Dalhousie Student Union and the university's Gender and Women's Studies program, in the wake of a scandal involving a Facebook group made up of some fourth-year male dental students.
In one of the posts in the group, male students voted on which female classmate they'd like to have "hate" sex with and joked about using chloroform on women. In another post, a woman was shown in a bikini with the caption, "Bang until stress is relieved or unconscious."
There will be another forum held on Tuesday night.