The latest in a long line of university conferences purportedly supporting inclusivity by ostracizing straight white men recently concluded at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Campus Reform reported that the university held a two-day “Hate/Bias Response Symposium,” which featured such engaging sessions as “Got Solidarity? Challenging Straight White College Men to Advocate for Social Justice,” “Fat is a Social Justices Issue, too,” and “Navigating Masculinity through Trans Identity.” The first session listed probably neglects to tell willing participants that they will be told to sit down and shut up if they try to advocate.
The following are the descriptions of the selected sessions:
Got Solidarity? Challenging Straight White College Men to Advocate for Social Justice
This presentation introduces my book about how 92 straight white college men around the country experience campus and community diversity issues. I discuss their upbringing in families and schools, their perspectives on privilege and oppression, and their attempts to challenge oppression. Written especially for straight white male college students and educators, the book underscores the need for whites to raise critical consciousness, activate empathy, and build solidarity with members of minoritized groups. Given our current American predicament, the book makes a timely contribution to our understanding of masculinity and how white disengagements hinders progress toward a just society.
Navigating Masculinity through Trans Identity
This workshop discusses the regulation of gender, specifically expectations regarding masculinity, through a narrative of transmasculine identity. This narrative will include examples of gender bias and how this bias evolves over the course of transitioning from female to male. The regulation of masculinity will be explored via group activity along with potential consequences when healthy masculinity is not reinforced. Finally, these consequences will be complemented with data from statewide and national trends related to mental health, class, and violence. Possible outcomes include: increased understanding of gender bias and the acquirement of tools to promote healthy masculinity.
Fat is a Social Justices Issue, too
Despite the fact that fatphobia in the United States has always been intimately connected to other systems of oppression like sexism, racism, and classism, those of us who are otherwise engaged in social justice work so often exclude it from our research and our activism. We fail to acknowledge that fat is a social justice issue, too. In this presentation, I begin by providing a brief history of the ways fat has been pathologized and medicalized in the United States. I will then discuss some of the ways fat is connected with gender, race, and class in particular and offer some strategies for how we can move forward by engaging in fat activism.
Other sessions offered at the symposium are filled with social justice buzzwords. The word “hate” is thrown around quite a bit. Campus Reform spoke to the National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood, who suggested that just about every issue is being turned into a social justice cause.
“Looked at with the right kind of squint, almost anything can be turned into a ‘social justice’ issue: fat, residence life, policing, masculinity, Islam, etc,” he said. “The ‘campus climate coordinators’ and their fellow activist-administrators need not worry they will run out of monsters under the bed. It is a very big bed with room for an endless nightmare of new monsters. I am confident the conference ended with a generous round of self-appreciation for the important work these folks are doing to keep the Godzilla of dust bunnies at bay.”