The Sexual Experiment at the Ivy Leagues

By Abigail Anthony

Sunday, July 24, 2022

 

Until very recently, most people were unaware that asserting that only women can menstruate and become pregnant could be controversial, or that pronouns could be incendiary. Yet today, gender ideology dominates the news cycle. Netflix employees protested Dave Chappelle’s comedy special with “transphobic” jokes. Avid Harry Potter fans boycotted J. K. Rowling’s work because of her supposedly “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” views. It’s not merely a culture war. The State Department recognized International Pronouns Day. Recently, President Biden signed an executive order to “advance LGBTQI+ equality,” which in part promotes “expanded access to gender-affirming care,” even for minors.

 

How did such radical social change happen so quickly? As incubators of gender fundamentalists, universities are equipping students with ever-expanding terminology for sexual orientation and encouraging activism without cultivating a sense of intellectual humility. Graduates become the directors of corporations, editors of newspapers, and staffers to politicians, thus occupying powerful positions that shape American culture. To help readers understand the college-campus dynamics, National Review compiled academic coursework, extracurricular programming, and institutional resources related to gender and sexual ethics at the eight Ivy League institutions, which serve as exemplars of higher education and train the country’s future elites.

 

Brown University

 

Brown’s Pembroke Center houses various academic initiatives, including the gender- and sexuality-studies department, which offers an undergraduate major. In April, the Pembroke Center hosted Tufts University professor Kareem Khubchandani, who responds to “any pronouns” and performs as the drag queen “LaWhore Vagistan,” a pun on Lahore, Pakistan, and a nod to Khubchandani’s research on South Asia.

 

At Brown, one also finds the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender, whose mission is “to engage the campus community through a feminist praxis of activism and academics.” The center’s FAQ page includes: “I don’t identify as a woman. Is the Sarah Doyle Center for me?” The center responds in the affirmative: “Yes! The Sarah Doyle Center welcomes people regardless of gender identity, presentation, or sexuality.”

 

Brown recently offered the course Pornography. The “course agreement” subsection of the syllabus clarifies that “this course will involve our viewing and discussing sexually explicit material” and that, by enrolling, students consent that “I have read the syllabus for Philosophy 1576, Pornography, and understand that the course will include both discussion of and viewings of sexually explicit material (i.e., pornography).” Students would be expected to “practice analyzing pornographic media” and “to watch one film per week, privately”; in addition, the syllabus notes, “every other week we’ll devote a class to discussing two films.” Upcoming Brown courses include Queer Dance, Black Queer Life, and Latinx Social Movement History.

 

Brown University affirms that it is “committed to supporting trans students, staff and faculty and the LGBTQ Center is here to help provide our campus community with information, education, support and resources.” The LGBTQ Center’s recent programming included a voguing workshop and a “Disability & Sex” series, which consisted of “discussion covering pleasure for non-normative bodies & sex toy accessibility.” The center shares various infographics on social media, such as endorsements of phrases like “people with penises” and “people who menstruate.”

 

Columbia University

 

Upcoming Columbia courses in women’s and gender studies include Indigenous Feminisms, Decolonization and Feminist Critique, Practicing Intersectionality, Abolitionist Feminism, and Theorizing Activism.

 

In 1889, Columbia University refused to admit women and founded the affiliate women’s-only school Barnard College, whose mission was and remains “to provide generations of promising, high-achieving young women with an outstanding liberal arts education in a community where women lead.” In 2016, Barnard began accepting “applicants who consistently live and identify as women, regardless of the gender assigned to them at birth,” specifying that “the applicant must identify herself as a woman and her application materials must support this self-identification.” This policy disqualifies applicants who are female but identify as male, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming.

 

The Columbia “identity-based group” Conversio Virium is described as “the oldest university student-run BDSM education group in the United States.” The club stresses that one of its “community pillars” is to honor preferred pronouns, including “xe.” The club says it is welcoming and emphasizes the need for respect: “Sometimes people have kinks that you do not personally share, and that is okay—please don’t disrespect people based on their kink.” Previous events include “Rough Sex for Nice Folks” and “Discreet Public Erotic Role Play: How to Do It Safely and Get Away With It.” Participants in the 2018 “YesFest: Beat-a-Bear Workshop” event “practice[d] negotiation, spanking, and usage of other impact-play implements.”

 

Cornell University

 

The program in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Cornell “offers students the opportunity to study a wide range of fields from the perspectives of feminist and LGBT critical analysis, in a global context and with the purpose of promoting social justice.” All undergraduates pursuing the major or minor in the department must fulfill a course in each of the three distribution areas: “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies (LGBT); the study of intersectionality; and geopolitics and transnationality.” One upcoming course is Nightlife, which focuses on “queer communities of color”; students “interrogate the ways in which nightlife demonstrates the queer world-making potential that exists beyond the normative 9-5 capitalist model of production.” Additional upcoming courses include Beyoncé Nation: The Remix and Queer Time and the Senses. Undergraduate students can also minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies.

 

Cornell’s Women’s Resource Center (WRC) supports “women-identified students” and “strives to be a welcoming space for people of all genders and identities.” The center “especially encourage[s] women of color, Black feminists/womanists, queer and trans folks, and people with disabilities” to be involved. In 2019, a WRC post said, “We recognize trans women as the women that they are,” emphasizing that “the Women’s Resource Center is a safe space on campus for members of the trans community and has an array of resources for members.”

 

In 2020, the WRC posted a statement: “We are angry, frustrated, and shaken by Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Those among us who are women and gender marginalized; black and brown; queer, trans, and gender non-confirming, immigrants; have mental health challenges or are of varying abilities; and, and, and . . . we are anxious and scared and angry.” The accompanying photo shows both Justice Barrett and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with the quote “expand the court” attributed to AOC. The WRC has shown a different attitude toward other female justices. In April 2022, it posted a photo of Ketanji Brown Jackson with the celebratory “CONFIRMED!!” In 2021, the WRC featured Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the “Woman of the Week.”

 

The WRC annually hosted the event “I Love Female Orgasm” and encouraged people “to come learn about everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot.” The advertisement affirms that “all genders” are welcome, “whether you want to learn how to have your first orgasm, how to have better ones, or how to help your girlfriend.” The 2021 event “Sex in the Dark” was a “lights-off virtual event” that allowed attendees to stay anonymous and have their “deepest, darkest questions” answered by “professional sexperts.” In 2022, the WRC sponsored “Decolonizing the Body” and explained that, “when we look at menstruation through the lens of our current colonial, capitalist society, we often see pain, shame, discomfort, & disposability.”

 

Dartmouth College

 

Dartmouth’s Center for Professional Development lists resources for “womxn students.” Upcoming courses offered by the program in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies include Social Justice & the City; Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness, and Fabulosity; and Sex, Celibacy & the Problem of Purity. Previous courses include #BlackLivesMatter, Black Consciousness & Black Feminisms, and Queer Popular Culture. The department sponsored the lecture “I Was a Queer Child and So Were You: Kissing, Queer Children, and Structural Change.” Other events hosted by the university include “Decolonization in the 21st Century,” “Decolonizing Environmental Politics,” and “Gender Equality in the Arctic.”

 

The religion department hosted the drag show “Dragmouth” with the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, which describes itself as dedicated to “the values, needs, strengths, and practices of marginalized communities” and lists “intersectionality” as a core value. The office also hosted “Transform,” a drag show that “actively disrupts the cultural gender policing, cissexism, and heterosexism on campus.”

 

Harvard University

 

Harvard offers both major and minor undergraduate degrees in studies of women, gender, and sexuality. Spring 2022 courses included Leaning In, Hooking Up: Visions of Feminism and Femininity in the 21st Century, and Indigenous Feminisms: Environmental Justice and Resistance. The spring 2021 course Topics in Advanced Performance Theory: Gender and Sexuality addressed “racialized and gendered structures of feeling; queer transnational social histories; technosexuality and mutation; and minor keys of Black unruliness and fugitivity.”

 

Like Brown University, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics hosted the Tufts professor who performs as “LaWhore Vagistan,” dubbed “everyone’s favorite academic South Asian drag queen auntie.” The professor regards his “greatest accomplishment” as “teaching a semester-long undergraduate course called ‘Critical Drag’ that birthed 21 new baby drag artists.” In courses, he “brings the nightclub to the classroom and vice-versa by teaching critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories through lip sync and lecture.”

 

The Harvard College Women’s Center addresses the question “What’s with the ‘e’ in Women’s Center?” The center explains its decision to refrain from the word “womxn” but affirms that “we emphatically welcome people of all genders and no gender into our space and invite you as collaborators in our work towards gender equity.”

 

The Women’s Center offers a land acknowledgment: “We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory, and honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land.” It touts its “justice commitments,” namely reproductive justice, anti-fetishization, racial equity, and environmental justice. Among the workshops the center hosts is the “Gender 101” workshop on gender as a “constellation framework.”

 

The Harvard Women’s Center condemned the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade and committed to partnering with student organizations that are “pursuing reproductive justice goals.” These include Sexual Health Education & Advocacy throughout Harvard College (SHEATH), but not Harvard Right to Life, the pro-life student organization.

 

SHEATH hosts an annual “Sex Week” in the fall and “Sex Weekend” in the spring. The 2021 Sex Week included “Feel Those Good Vibrations: Sex Toys 101,” “Come Together, Right Now: Orgies 101,” and “What What, in the Butt! Anal 101.” The “F*** Fest” event celebrates Sex Week, and attendees are encouraged to wear lingerie. The 2022 Sex Weekend events included “Feelin’ Chemistry: Psychedelics and Sex,” “Pussy Portraits: Celebrating Genital Diversity,” and “Banging Beyond the Binary: Trans Sex 101”; meanwhile “oh-mazing toys” were raffled after each event.

 

University of Pennsylvania

 

On May 3, after the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion, several UPenn units issued a joint response to the “disturbing” document and asserted the following: “Reproductive rights are essential. Reproductive rights are an economic justice issue. Reproductive rights are a racial justice issue. Reproductive rights are a trans rights issue.” In June, the Women’s Center sponsored “processing” spaces to cope with the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

 

UPenn’s Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies supports “scholars of feminist, queer, transgender, disability, and environmental studies that center a history of U.S. enslavement, genocide, settler colonialism, and exclusionary immigration policy—all of which continue to shape gender and sexuality in the present—as well as those who stress the colonial, imperial, transnational, and global frameworks within which gender and sexual categories and identifications take shape.”

 

The UPenn Women’s Center works with “students, staff and faculty of all genders and identities” and strives to “include voices of gender, sexual, and racial minorities, acknowledging that feminism has historically been white and cis-centered.” The LGBT Center at UPenn published a glossary of gender terminology that begins with a section “What Are Pronouns?” The center’s Leslie Townsend Fund supports students by providing grants up to $500 to be “used for expenses related to making the transition, such as hormones, therapies, surgeries, legal matters, or for school-related costs.” The LGBT Center hosted a RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant for “Drag Queen Bingo,” while the Queer Student Alliance annually hosts a drag show.

 

UPenn was the subject of both praise and condemnation for allowing male swimmer William “Lia” Thomas to compete on the women’s swim team; Thomas set numerous records in the women’s division and was recently nominated by UPenn for the NCAA 2022 Woman of the Year award.

 

Princeton University

 

Princeton’s gender- and sexuality-studies program offers an undergraduate certificate, akin to a minor. Previous courses include Power, Profit and Pleasure: Sex Workers and Sex Work; Yaass Queen: Gay Men, Straight Women, and the Literature, Art, and Film of Hagdom; FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body; and Drag Kings: An Archeology of Spectacular Masculinities in Latinx America. Recent events include “How to do the History of Trans Femininity” and “Epistemology of Hoodies: Reflections on Blackness and Nonbinariness.”

 

On June 27, the director of the program in gender and sexuality studies released a statement condemning the Dobbs decision and arguing that overturning Roe “caters to and plays upon the worst impulses of the American people.” The department asserts that “political conservatives and those on the Christian Right have since the 1980s made abortion the single issue on which to galvanize their movement, brilliantly masking the racist and sexist motivations behind it.”

 

The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center, a student-life center, “fosters a supportive and inclusive campus community for women, femme, trans, and queer Princetonians through collaborative programming, education, advocacy, and mentorship.” The center “actively resists sexism, cissexism, heteronormativity and other intersecting forms of oppression on campus and beyond.”

 

In 2020, the Women*s Center (now housed within the Gender + Sexuality Resource Center) honored Women’s History Month, International Women’s Day, and the 50th anniversary of undergraduate women at Princeton University by hosting Mj Rodriguez, a male-to-female transitioner who has no academic affiliation with Princeton.

 

Yale University

 

Yale students pursuing a major in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies must take two of the following four courses: Bodies and Pleasures, Sex and Genders; Transnational Approaches to Gender & Sexuality; Gender, Justice, Power, Institutions; and Feminist and Queer Theory. Forthcoming courses include We Interrupt This Program: The Multidimensional Histories of Queer and Trans Politics; Queer of Color Transits and the Imaginaries of Racial Capitalism; Privilege in the Americas; and Decolonizing Europe.

 

Yale Cabaret, a student-led performing arts club, hosts an annual “Dragaret,” formerly called the “Yale School of Drag.” DivOut, a Yale Divinity School organization “dedicated to the full and equal participation of homosexual, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in church and society,” sponsored the 2022 event “Divinity of Drag: Pride Week Show.”

 

In February, the Yale Women’s Center hosted an event for Rafia Zakaria’s book Against White Feminism, which is “a counter-manifesto to white feminism’s alignment with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals to center women of color.” The Women’s Center hosted a “consciousness-raising workshop” with the New Haven organization Sex Workers and Allies Network.