“The excitement around [Jessica] Valenti’s visit ignited activism among Women’s Studies Program faculty and students. . . . The students enrolled in WMNS 250: Feminist Methodologies felt inspired to join the national and international viral movement called ‘I Need Feminism Because’ . . . University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire feminists felt that Valenti’s visit was a good time to get their fellow students talking with their own signs and a video. . . . The weather was chilly, but Women’s Studies Program majors and minors dressed warm and stood on the newly opened campus sidewalks leading to Davies Center with their signs.”
— Women’s Studies department newsletter, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 2014
More than 10,000 students attend the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) of whom 85 were enrolled in the Women’s Studies/LGBTQ Studies program in 2014. “The good news is that with thirty-one minors, sixteen majors, thirty Women’s Studies certificate students, and eight Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ) Studies certificate holders, our program is flourishing,” Professor Asha Sen wrote in the department’s newsletter. “The challenge, though, is to sustain and grow us in a time of budgetary crisis.” Exactly why this department has any budget at all is something of a mystery.
Fewer than 1% UWEC students are pursuing degrees or certificates in this program, and the offerings are replicated in many similar programs on other campuses in the University of Wisconsin system. Among these choices, one could pursue this subject in the Women’s and Gender Studies program at UW-Green Bay, or the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at UW-La Crosse, or the Gender and Women’s Studies program at UW-Madison. Is it really necessary — “in a time of budgetary crisis,” as Professor Sen says — that Wisconsin taxpayers support so many similar programs at campuses all over the state?
Of course, efficient use of taxpayer dollars has no part in the agenda of Women’s Studies, which is basically a full-employment program for women with Ph.D.s. Perhaps someone in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature could undertake an investigation of exactly how much is being spent to support these programs in the state’s university system, how many professors are employed in these programs and what they are teaching. If any Republican in Wisconsin cares to examine this 2014 newsletter from the UWEC Women’s Studies program, I’m sure there would be some questions that come to mind.
For example, “What’s the point?” A recent UWEC Women’s Studies graduate, Gretchen Bachmeier, wrote to praise the program:
The women’s studies courses I took were truly transformative. Being raised in Eau Claire, I came into college with a limited perspective. I quickly learned my white, middle-class, Catholic, heterosexual background left much room to examine and challenge the privileges in my life. For me, as for most people, challenging my privilege hasn’t been the smoothest of roads. It’s been a road filled with much guilt. I’ve learned to redirect that guilt and to learn privilege does not prohibit me from being a good-enough or a true-enough feminist.
I’ve been blessed to have many opportunities as a women’s studies undergraduate. The summer after my freshman year, I attended the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders. . . . The last three semesters of my academic career, I had the incredible opportunity to intern in the Women’s and LGBTQ Resource Center.
And what has she done with this “transformative” feminist education?
In June, I will be starting a job with Target in the Minneapolis area.
Working for a discount retail store isn’t necessarily a bad job, but why did she need a Women’s Studies degree to do it? Was the whole point to teach Ms. Bachmeier to feel guilty about her “white, middle-class, Catholic, heterosexual background”? Can’t privileged white kids learn to hate their middle-class backgrounds without spending four years (at $8,744 annual tuition) to get a diploma in Guilt Studies?
Guilt isn’t the only thing taught at UWEC, however. The Women’s Studies newsletter reports the 2013 program award winners, including the Helen X. Sampson Graduate Research Paper or Project Award, which went to Christopher Jorgenson for his thesis, “Like a Girl: A Gay Man’s Theoretical Exploration of Identity.” Whatever the value of this “theoretical exploration” to Mr. Jorgenson personally, we must ask, “What benefit did the taxpayers of Wisconsin derive from it?”
Wisconsin taxpayers might also be interested in the course syllabus for “Queer Theory and Sexual Politics” (WMNS 406) as it was taught during the spring 2014 semester at UWEC. Among the four assigned texts for this course were The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, edited by Donald Hall and Annamarie Jagose (2013) and Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking by Tim Dean (2009). Far be it from me to say that the “subculture of barebacking” (i.e., unprotected anal intercourse) is not an interesting topic, but the question is why this must be studied as part of a course at a state university. Let us quote the course syllabus as to the aims of WMNS 406:
Queer theory is an interdisciplinary set of approaches that resists categorization. In A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, Nikki Sullivan highlights the frustration that many students and scholars new to queer theory feel: She writes that queer theory “is a discipline that refuses to be disciplined, a discipline with a difference, with a twist if you like. In saying this, however, I don’t mean to endow Queer Theory with some sort of ‘Tinkerbell e!ect’; to claim that no matter how hard you try you’ll never manage to catch it because it is ethereal, quixotic, unknowable” (v). Queer theory can be so difficult to “catch” because of its interdisciplinary approaches and because it questions and critiques binaries, hierarchies, and assumptions that are commonly held, including those about the regulation of sexuality, gender and sexual identity, knowledge production, citizenship, rights claims, family, and ethics. In this seminar, we will attempt to “catch” queer theory by reading and responding to a variety of queer theorists.
Queer theory finds its genealogical roots in poststructuralist theory, feminist theory, and the grounded theory of queer activism of the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. We will begin by reading and responding to poststructuralist theory (Michel Foucault) and feminist work that began to address the categories of sex and sexuality in the 1980s and 1990s (Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler). From there, we will explore various approaches to queer theory: historical and temporal scholarship, psychoanalytic work, explorations of new relationalities, negative thinking and utopian thinking, critiques of the sexualization of citizenship, the mediatedness of intimacy and sex, critiques of heternormativity and homonationalism, relationships between theoretical work and explicit activism and social life, critiques of metro-normativity, anthropological approaches, critiques of liberalism and neoliberalism, and critical race and disability-based critiques of queer theory.
So with its “interdisciplinary approaches,” Queer Theory “questions and critiques binaries, hierarchies, and assumptions,” but for what purpose? How does this benefit the Wisconsin taxpayer, who seems to be on the receiving end, so to speak, of this “unlimited intimacy”? The total budget of the University of Wisconsin system is more than $6 billion — I repeat, SIX BILLION DOLLARS — and it was big news in July when Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill that reduced the taxpayers’ share of that budget by $250 million, which would amount to about a 4% cut. However, it seems this reduction did not cause anyone to question the necessity of Women’s Studies. In fact, UWEC posted a help-wanted advertisement for a “tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor . . . with an appointment in either the Department of Sociology or the Women’s Studies Program. . . . The successful candidate will contribute to both Sociology and Women’s Studies/LGBTQ Studies.”
The ad didn’t say whether the “successful candidate” will teach barebacking. Certainly the state’s university faculty have been know to pursue “interdisciplinary approaches” in the field of sexuality:
A UW-Madison African Studies professor was charged Wednesday with lewd and lascivious behavior for allegedly exposing himself last month to a student near campus, who, it turned out, had taken one of his classes.
Kennedy A. Waliaula, 47, of Madison, an assistant professor of African languages and literature, was charged with the misdemeanor for allegedly exposing his genitals to the woman as he walked past her on North Charter Street mid-afternoon on July 10, according to a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.
When police located Waliaula about two hours after the student reported the incident, he first said he discovered after seeing the student’s shocked expression that his zipper was down. But he later admitted that he opened his pants himself so that he could expose himself to women and that he had exposed himself to about five women, the complaint states.
Waliaula admitted to police that he has a problem exposing himself in public, according to the complaint.
Waliaula was placed on paid leave after his arrest, UW-Madison spokesman Dennis Chaptman said.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has canceled the summer school contract of a professor charged with sexually assaulting a minor . . .
Paul Miller, 47, of La Crosse and has agreed to remain off campus until the case is resolved.
Miller was charged [in July 2015] with second-degree sexual assault of a child younger than 16. The incident occurred June 13, when several children were staying overnight at Miller’s residence in preparation for a birthday party the next day, the complaint states.
According to a La Crosse Police Department report, a 14-year-old girl told investigators that Miller slept in the same bed as her, as well as kissed, fondled and performed oral sex on her.
Neither of these men were Women’s Studies professors, who are paid to expose students to indecent ideas and assault their minds.
Living in Anglo-America 