According to Charlotte Allen of the Los Angeles Times, college
students shouldn’t be exposed to the messy, scary topics of
race, class, gender and sexuality.
Last Sunday, Allen wrote an editorial bemoaning the inclusion of
icky subjects such as oppression, politics and lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender perspectives in university curriculum.
She obtained her information from the Young America’s
Foundation’s newest list of the top 12 “most bizarre
and politically correct college courses.”
UCLA came in second on the list, for its “Queer
Musicology” class. At No. 1 was Occidental College’s
course called “The Phallus,” which discusses, among
other topics, “the relation between the phallus and the
penis, the meaning of the phallus … the lesbian phallus … and
the relation of the phallus and fetishism.”
In a statement revealing her laughable ignorance of the gay
community, Allen wonders “how a lesbian can have a
phallus.” Clearly, she hasn’t looked through my top
drawer.
Allen’s article shows exactly why we need classes that
focus on sexual and racial minorities ““ most people are
woefully misinformed about the experiences of cultures to which
they don’t belong. And many would prefer to remain in the
dark because it is easier to dehumanize, abuse and exploit members
of a group they do not understand.
Furthermore, Allen’s other claim ““ that these
classes are merely trendy and non-academic ““ should sound
specious to those who have read even a page of race or queer
theory.
Just because a class isn’t about Greek philosophy
doesn’t mean it isn’t serious, important or worth the
tuition money.
On the contrary, courses providing standpoints that are not
exclusively white, male and heterosexual fill the cavernous gaps in
an educational system which prefers to limit any discourse on
“the Other” to one month out of every year.
You want men’s studies? Take a science class.
Can’t stand the thought of learning about gay people?
Major in engineering.
Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you read
Foucault.
It isn’t, after all, about being “politically
correct,” although that is the language Allen and others on
the right use.
The existence of classes such as “Taking Marx
Seriously” and “Cyberfeminism” ““ at Amherst
and Cornell, respectively ““ contributes to that trusty
American ideal known as the marketplace of ideas. And even if some
of these titles sound slightly out of left field, most people would
agree that scholarly thought should be free to change and
evolve.
Perhaps Allen would prefer if we didn’t study anything
written after 1950.
We could all make Styrofoam models of the solar system with the
earth in the middle, represented by a flat piece of cardboard.
And then we could talk about how white Europeans have the
biggest brains, gay men are mentally ill, and women can’t do
math.
Don’t worry, I’ll leave my lesbian phallus at home.
(Hint to Allen: It’s detachable.)
Cohen is a fourth-year women’s studies
student.