Proponents of the controversial “gender studies” discipline are now on high alert as Republicans move to do away with it on college campuses, arguing that it is less a legitimate academic field and more an instrument of left-wing politics.
Florida, which has recently been a battlefront of many culture-war issues, is once more causing stir with the news that the newly appointed conservative trustee board at the New College of Florida in Sarasota voted last week to scrap the university’s 28-year gender-studies program.
Trustee Matthew Spalding, a professor at the right-leaning Hillsdale College and now a trustee for New College of Florida, asserted in a statement to The Daily Signal that gender studies does not offer anything substantial that is not covered by other fields.
“Not only does gender studies fall well outside this focus, but its ideologically driven and tendentious character render it more a movement of cultural politics than an academic discipline,” Spalding said. “Any substantial topic taken up in gender studies may be found thoroughly treated in the ordinary academic disciplines such as history, psychology, or biology.”
He concluded, “Removal of gender studies as an area of concentration at New College is fully in accord with its strategic mission to be the state of Florida’s liberal arts honors college.”
Gender studies was born out of women’s studies, and places a focus on LGBT ideology. This emphasis has earned it the scrutiny of conservatives. Now that there is a nationwide momentum to push back against transgender indoctrination in K-12 classrooms, those in the higher education community anticipate a similar, far-reaching push against gender studies on college campuses.
Lisa Moore, professor of women’s and gender studies and the director of the LGBTQ Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Hill, “Those of us who are working in red states are on pretty high alert.”
Leftists in Florida are suing over a law, signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, that bans schools from offering programs that teach “that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”
Moreover, in the Sunshine State, K-12 teachers are restricted in the way they talk about sexuality and gender ideology in classrooms. The aim of the legislation is to prevent what many consider to be grooming of impressionable minors into the LGBT lifestyle — an occurrence that has often taken place behind the back and against the wishes of parents.
The restrictions recently resulted in another round of headlines when The College Board, the organization behind the SAT and high-school Advanced Placement courses and tests, announced it would be pulling AP Psychology from Florida, arguing it cannot adequately teach psychology under the restrictions on gender and sexuality discussion imposed by the law.
Max Eden, education research fellow for the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told The Hill that the impetus behind conservative action against gender studies is partly the realization of just how deeply it and related fields have shaped American culture — leading it toward the normalization of LGBT ideology and the erosion of traditional biblical norms.
“What’s different now than before is that the kind of ideas or ideology that has been developing and brewing within the collegiate level gender studies, majors and programs has really burst the dam and the common culture, and especially affected children and what we teach children,” Eden said.
He continued, “I mean, 10 years ago, the idea that you could be born in the wrong body and that the way to cure yourself would be to put yourself on a path towards medicalization … would have appalled almost every American.”
Americans who identify as LGBT, meanwhile, say they feel threatened by recent governmental actions. According to new polling from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a national LGBTQ rights group, 80 percent of LGBT adults in the United States — including 94 percent of those who see themselves as transgender and nonbinary — claimed they feel less safe because of state bans on “gender-transition” procedures. The poll surveyed over 14,000 LGBT individuals over the age of 18 in the United States.
Also per the polling, 81 percent of the respondents believe the bans are heightening stereotypes and discrimination.
“When anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is introduced, it not only aims to legislate LGBTQ+ people out of all spaces of daily life, it also codifies discrimination and stigma into law,” the HRC declared in its report.
Is the source of legislative push against LGBT ideology “hate,” as the “queer” community says, or is it Americans’ concern for their children’s future and frustration with those who hide behind terms such as “tolerance” to sexually groom children and intimidate those who hold a traditionalist point of view?
If the Rainbow Flag brigade doesn’t want to be the recipient of public censure, maybe they should stop trying to force their views on minors in the classrooms and via drag shows, and simply keep their sexual proclivities to themselves.
