Anti-Male Bias in Contemporary Academia: My rejected letter reply at ‘Advances in Physiology Education’
[Editor’s note: This article was first published on March 20th 2025 on the Substack of James L. Nuzzo, and reprinted here by kind permission].
Recently, in a piece titled, Men Putting the Brakes on Exercise Science Degrees, I explained the results from my research on numbers of exercise physiology degrees earned in the United States (U.S.).
For the research, I collated data on degrees earned in exercise science since 2002. I presented the data in a sex-segregated way such that separate trend lines are shown for male and female degree earners. The analysis revealed that the field has experienced substantial growth over the past 20 years and that the number of women earning bachelor’s degrees in the field has exceeded the number of men earning bachelor’s degrees every year since 2002. In the 2021-22 academic year, which was the last year from which data were available, women earned 59% of all bachelor’s degree in exercise science. Interestingly, across all academic majors in the U.S., the proportion of female degree earners is also 59%.
“…around the 2016-17 academic year, the number of male exercise science graduates started to plateau and has remained the same since. On the other hand, the number of female graduates has continued to rise”
One the most unique findings from the analysis was that around the 2016-17 academic year, the number of male exercise science graduates started to plateau and has remained the same since. On the other hand, the number of female graduates has continued to rise, such that the continued growth in the field is due to increased numbers of female not male graduates [Editor’s note: for graphs of this, see the original Substack article].
In the Discussion of my paper, I put forward potential explanations for the significant difference in numbers of male and female graduates at U.S. universities. This list of explanations included males having lower high school grade point averages than females, males having higher high school dropout rates than females, males having poorer reading and writing skills than females, males having less access to financial aid and scholarships than females, and fewer initiatives designed to increase male enrolment in areas of study where they are less represented than females.
I also mentioned that men might believe that they are better off financially by entering the workforce directly after high school and that perhaps they do not want to enter a feminized academic culture where they are bombarded with messages about gender identity, “male privilege,” and “toxic masculinity.”
My paper was well-received by the two reviewers who assessed it. However, after the paper was published, a group of four authors wrote a letter to the journal’s editor challenging the conclusions that I reached about men and education. The four authors were Nisha Charkoudian of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Jill Barnes of the University of Wisconsin, Sandra Hunter of Marquette University, and Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic. The full-text of their letter is shared below, and I encourage everyone to read it.
Image: The letter by Charkoudian et al (2025)
Before I continue with my reply to the authors, I want to first say some positive things about two of the authors.
In the current climate of academic cowardice, both Michael Joyner and Sandra Hunter deserve praise for many of the papers that they have published – often together. This includes reviews on the biological basis of sex differences in performance published in the Journal of Applied Physiology and Exercise and Sports Science Reviews. This also includes an important case study, which showed that after two years of taking feminizing hormones, a male swimmer’s relative ranking in the female category of sport was still higher than his previous relative ranking in the male category of sport.
Michael Joyner also deserves credit for his legal battle against his employer, the Mayo Clinic, who suspended the doctor without pay based, apparently, on comments he made about transgender athletes and COVID-19. According to the Mayo Clinic, Joyner “failed to communicate in accordance with prescribed messaging,” which the institute said, “reflect[ed] poorly on Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation.”
Sandra Hunter, whose research interests significantly overlap with mine, also deserves kudos for her impressive scientific resume over many years, particularly her research on the neurophysiology of muscle strength and fatigue. Hunter has been one of only a handful of female exercise scientists who have had the courage to publish on the biological basis of sex differences in performance and their implications for men competing in women’s sports. For that, Hunter deserves a tip of the cap. However, Hunter has also been a part of the “female underrepresentation” movement in exercise science, whereby she and others suggest that the primary driver of fewer female than male participants in exercise studies is bias or discrimination against women. This view is problematic on a few different fronts, and I have rebutted it in academic papers and in essays on Substack.
Regarding Charkoudian and Barnes, I had not heard of them prior to receiving their letter. So, I will not comment on them or their research.
Before the letter from the four authors was published in the journal, I was sent a copy of it and invited by the editor to write a 500-word response. This is standard practice in academic publishing. A researcher whose ideas are challenged is given the opportunity to defend his work. The letter and letter reply are then published together, which allows readers to easily see the intellectual exchange of ideas.
I accepted the editor’s invitation, and I submitted a letter reply titled “Anti-Male Bias in Contemporary Academia: A Reply to Charkoudian et al.”
I was then surprised to receive an email from the editor a few weeks later informing me that my letter reply had been sent out for peer review, and based on the reviewers’ comments, would not be published.
“What?!” I said to myself. “Are you joking? You invited me to submit a reply, then sent my reply out for peer review, and then rejected it? What the hell are you thinking?”
So, that everyone can make their own judgments on this exchange, I have attached a copy of the editor’s and reviewer’s comments below.
There are multiple reasons why the decision to reject my letter reply was inappropriate.
First, I was invited to submit the reply.
Second, there is no reason to send letters, particularly letter replies, out for peer review. Both letters and letter replies are addressed specifically to the editor (not peer reviewers), and a letter reply is an author’s only chance to defend their work. So long as the author’s reply is at least somewhat coherent and does not involve repeated cursing or personal attacks, then it should be accepted for publication.
Third, letters and letter replies are largely opinion pieces. Thus, why is the reviewer’s opinion (of my work) given priority over my opinion? The fact that letters and letter replies are brief opinion pieces is why the threshold for accepting them for publication should always be lower than for original research articles.
Fourth, even if a reviewer and editor identify issues with the opinions expressed in a letter reply, this does not necessitate a decision of rejection. By virtue of the context that letter reply was invited and is an opinion piece, the author should, at minimum, be given the opportunity to edit their work or tell the reviewers why their opinion is incorrect. I was afforded no such opportunity.
“…what did I say in my letter reply that made the editor decide, against editorial norms, to reject my reply?”
Importantly, my views on letters – how they should be handled by editors and what their role is in science communication – is not simply the result of one bad experience at a journal. I have been involved in many letter exchanges over the years, including others on sex and gender issues that were handled poorly. I have also published four papers on the topic of letter exchanges and their importance in science. These papers have included examinations of sex differences in letter writing, assessments of the types of arguments made in letters, assignments for students to learn about letters, and an overview of the importance of letters in scientific communication and how letters should be indexed more consistently in PubMed.
So, given this background, what did I say in my letter reply that made the editor decide, against editorial norms, to reject my reply?
Here, I present the full text of my unpublished reply. You can be the judge:
Anti-Male Bias in Contemporary Academia: A Reply to Charkoudian et al.
Dear Editor,
Each year, about 300,000 fewer men than women graduate from United States (U.S.) postsecondary institutions (see Figure 1). I previously discussed factors that might be contributing to this potentially concerning trend in men’s educational attainment (8). Oddly, Charkoudian et al. (3) shifted the focus to women, who already comprise over 50% of graduates, professors, and administrative staff (6-8). Here, I address three of their problematic comments.
Figure 1.
1. “…the author appeared to suggest that the increase in women’s participation represents a negative impact on young men...”
I suggested little discussion has occurred regarding the reasons underlying men’s lower educational attainment. Men’s well-being warrants attention.
2. “Many academic faculties in exercise physiology departments (and in departments across STEM fields) are still made up of mostly men”
The authors prejudicially imply that greater male than female representation is problematic qua men/maleness. They also make no equivalent statements about departments comprised mostly of women (e.g., education, nursing, occupational therapy). Therefore, their application of representation importance based on faculty member sex is asymmetrical and insinuates gamma bias (12) or sexism (i.e., misandry).
3. “Both men and women suffer negative physical and mental health consequences from the existence of a set of behaviors that have been labeled toxic masculinity (10). To suggest that these behaviors don’t exist is to promote continued harm to all the people who are affected by them (10).”
First, I never said that problematic behaviors do not exist among some men.
Second, the “toxic masculinity” movement within academia is disreputable. The American Psychological Association revised its original guidelines on male psychotherapy after receiving criticism that the guidelines framed masculinity in a negative and unscientific way (2). A new Toxic Masculinity Scale (11) is also biased, unscientific, and clinically useless.
Third, the authors’ greater focus on “toxic masculinity” than men’s education is strange considering that education presumably improves choices and behaviors. Moreover, education correlates with mortality (5), and life expectancy is 5.8 years shorter for U.S males than females (1).
Fourth, why do the authors associate toxic behavior only with masculinity, when women commit domestic violence at roughly equal rates (9) and partake in other problematic behaviors – some of which profoundly impact college men? For example, a few days after receiving the authors’ letter, a notorious campus sexual assault case, the 2006 Duke lacrosse case, was confirmed to be fabricated. Crystal Mangum, the woman who accused the male athletes of raping her, admitted she lied (13).
I wonder: when exercise physiology students are taught about “toxic masculinity” and “gender-based violence” (9), will they be told of Mangum’s false rape allegations and her later guilty convictions for abusing her child and murdering her boyfriend (4, 13)? Will the students be introduced to the inappropriate behavior of the 88 Duke professors who signed the newspaper advertisement that implied the male athletes were guilty?
Ironically, the authors’ letter exemplifies reasons why some men likely feel disconnected from universities. Academia continues to dismiss and mischaracterize men’s experiences.
We would know more if universities cared to ask.
References
1. Arias E, Xu J, and Kochanek K. United States Life Tables, 2021. Natl Vit Stat Rep 72: 1-64, 2023.
2. Barry J. The APA has changed its view of masculinity. Male Psychology Magazine 2003.
3. Charkoudian N, Barnes JN, Hunter S, and Joyner MJ. Regarding “Exercise physiology degrees in the United States: an update on secular trends” by J. Nuzzo. Adv Physiol Educ 2025.
4. Dalesia EP. Duke lacrosse accuser convicted of child abuse. NBC News Dec. 18, 2010.
5. Hummer RA, and Hernandez EM. The Effect of Educational Attainment on Adult Mortality in the United States. Popul Bull 68: 1-16, 2013.
6. National Center for Education Statistics. Digest of Education Statistics, Table 314.30. Employees in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by employment status, sex, control and level of institution, and primary occupation: Fall 2021. 2022.
7. National Center for Education Statistics. Digest of Education Statistics, Table 318.10. Degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by level of degree and sex of student: Selected years, 1869-70 through 2031-32. 2023.
8. Nuzzo JL. Exercise physiology degrees in the United States: an update on secular trends. Adv Physiol Educ 48: 923-929, 2024.
9. Nuzzo JL, Powney D, and Barry J. Comment on: "Gender-Based Violence is a Blind Spot for Sports and Exercise Medicine Professionals". Sports Med 53: 1495-1497, 2023.
10. Parent MC, Gobble TD, and Rochlen A. Social Media Behavior, Toxic Masculinity, and Depression. Psychology of Men and Masculinity 20: 277-287, 2019.
11. Sanders SM, Garcia-Aguilera C, Borgogna NC, Sy JRT, Comoglio G, Schultz OAM, and Goldman J. The Toxic Masculinity Scale: Development and Initial Validation. Behav Sci 14: 2024.
12. Seager M, and Barry JA. Cognitive distortion in thinking about gender issues: gamma bias and the gender distortion matrix. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health, edited by Barry JA, Kingerlee R, Seager M, and Sullivan L. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, p. 87-104.
13. Seminera M. Woman who falsely accused college students of rape in 2006 admits she lied. Associated Press Dec. 14, 2024.
Support James Nuzzo’s research
If you would like to support one of James Nuzzo’s research projects, please see his Go Fund Me page
Scroll down to join the discussion
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
Like our articles?
Click here to subscribe to our FREE newsletter and be first
to hear about news, events, and publications.
Have you got something to say?
Check out our submissions page to find out how to write for us.
.
