The Wyoming Senate has voted 16 to 14 to eliminate the U. of Wyoming Gender Studies program. (Bill below). This will not only eliminate not only the gender studies department, but also courses and non-academic programs related to gender.
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This is an unlawful government overreach and attack on academic freedom that would affect 30 academic programs and 105 courses, and limit the ability of students to learn about the many ways gender affects our past, present, and future
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The bill is vague enough that it’s almost unenforceable, but also I’m sure that’s the point.
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It’s meant to cast a chill over faculty speech so that we’re afraid to teach the reality that gender is complex, historically contextualized, and inevitably part of any honest interrogation of our past and present.
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What am I supposed to do as someone who teaches the history of Buddhism and other world religions to undergraduate students? Not discuss gender? Pretend it doesn't exist? Or pretend that gender was something that mattered in the past but no longer matters today?
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Or perhaps, to give the legislature credit it doesn't deserve, I should teach gender in a way that is "unbiased" or "neutral"? What does that even mean?
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Senator Cheri Steinmetz, who brought the amendment forward, was disturbed by descriptions of course goals that alarmed her. Those included "to gain knowledge on multiple forms of oppression and marginalization"...
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... "to understand historical and contemporary context in which women, queer and gender nonconforming individuals have exercised their agency"; or "to translate feminist and social justice theories into service and activism."
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Those seem... good???
Our past and present DO contain oppression (and not only of women), people who are marginalized DO exercise agency, and I'd be PROUD of students who go on to do service or activism work promoting equality.
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Meanwhile, even our students who don't go on to study or work on gender in any professional way should be equipped to understand how gender affects our world.
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Healthcare workers should understand how gender affects treatment, teachers should understand how gender affects education, parents should understand how gender affects household labor + child development...heck, even business majors should understand how gender affects marketing
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Some people would like you to believe that gender studies is somehow hateful or anti-man. But the majority of people in gender studies that I know want to understand where we've come from, and create a shared future that benefits women, men, and gender non-conforming people
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Some people would like you to believe that rogue profs are indoctrinating students with crazy nonsense. But the university has rules and procedures governing what gets taught and how. Trust me, nothing too radical is getting passed by our curriculum committee.
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But these decisions about what gets taught are made by the university, and specifically by the faculty.
This is not something for politicians (who by the way never reached out to anyone in gender studies) to decide.
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Imagine a future where the legislature votes against the University teaching biology because evolution is taught, religious studies because non-Christian religions are taught, or against economics because capitalism is taught?
I don't want to live in that world.
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I haven't seen any national coverage of this yet. I hope that if enough people see this, it will be blocked.
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, the Wyoming Senate voted to eliminate gender studies at the University of Wyoming.
You and Jean know that struggles for race, gender, class, and worker equality are all intertwined. Let's stand against authoritarian state censorship!
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Reflections and responses 24 hours after going semi-viral with this tweet thread:
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A lot more people saw this than I was expecting.
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With lots of impressions, comes lots of responses. These were mostly supportive of my thread, but a decent chunk of responses were people celebrating this move by the Wyoming Senate. Most of these seemed to be trolls who hadn't read the thread.
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A few directed personal attacks towards me, my appearance, my being "unfulfilled as a woman" (weird), or my qualifications. Some even clearly searched me and sent hate-mail to my university email.
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To the trolls and hate mail senders: 1) Who has this kind of time on their hands? 2) Spell my name right, dweebs. 3) If you're going to call me an ugly bitch, please respect the years I spent at Harvard and call me Dr. Ugly Bitch.
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But while it's unpleasant to get hate mail, I can't complain. So many people get it so much worse (especially if they are of some minoritized identity), and are still out there every day doing the work.
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And as I type in my nice office, Ukrainians are risking their lives fighting authoritarian takeover of a democracy, and democracy, human rights, and free speech advocates are being imprisoned. Twitter is not real life. (Thank God)
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However, I do think there is a connection between governments trying to ban gender studies and the situation in Ukraine. Authoritarian governments in places like Hungary, Russia, and China strictly limit academic freedom and free speech. This often starts with gender studies.
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In Hungary, for instance, Viktor Orban went after gender studies as the first step towards broader crackdowns. These authoritarians whip up populist anger against "elites" and "academics" and then use that to exert greater control over citizens.
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Not incidentally, these same authoritarian regimes then engage in kleptocracy.
We should not overlook these very real threats to freedom.
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(Note that some commenters are well aware of this similarity and support it nonetheless. Yikes.)
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I'm generally not interested in getting into internet arguments with trolls who aren't reading the thread or acting in good faith, so I'm not responding directly to any of that.
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Especially because my response to many people is: "That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works!"
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