A few years ago Mount Holyoke College announced it would no longer permit any presentation of The Vagina Monologues because,
“at its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman … Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive.”
Fast forward to now, and the College has taken another “small” step toward eliminating other forms of thinking which are inherently reductionist and exclusive.
“When discussing the student body, say ‘Mount Holyoke students’ rather than ‘Mount Holyoke women,’” it instructs professors. “Avoid making statements like ‘We’re all women here…’, or referring to ‘…the two genders…’”
The guide claims that “many students spend the first day of class braced against various types of disrespect,” such as “professors who mispronounce their names, call them by the wrong name entirely, misgender them, and so on.”
Because why would you address students who deliberately chose to attend a women’s college as women?
That’s just stupid. And so is this.
The college also released a companion guide on “Intersectionality in the Classroom,” which encourages professors to take an “intersectional approach” in the classroom by “becoming aware of the multiple forms of oppression and privilege each individual faces and how they interact with one another.”
For example, “two transgender students from different class or racial backgrounds are going to have different perspectives and life experiences, even though they have one identity in common.”
Why doesn’t this sort of thinking see higher education (or education of any kind) as reductionist and exclusive?
Think about it. How is any curriculum by its very nature not a form of oppression? The ‘Degree’ resulting from such study not a discriminatory symbol of exclusivity and privilege?
Ban higher education altogether, I say, and end this waste of resources whose sole purpose is to label human flesh as “Graduate” or pigeon-holing them in a non-binary occupational prison predicated on some non-women’s women’s college template. Issuing (or not issuing) BA’s and a lot of BS, whose only succor is a few more years (and a bit more debt) at Holyoke, or some other institution of educational oppression.
Stop the madness. End the cis-education monopoly. Join a trade school instead. We actually need those jobs and they probably pay better.
Are you with me my sisters?
