Weird and Wacky Women’s, “Gender,” and Sexuality Courses Stricken From UT’s Core Curriculum

Would you pay for your child to be “educated” with “Is the Rectum a Grave?” or “Sex in Public”? How about “Trans, Feminism: Or, Reading Like a Depressed Transsexual,” “Homonationalism in Queer Times,” or “AfroQueer Art Worlds”?

No, this isn’t satire. The above are actual readings/courses in the University of Texas’ Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Yet they’re also now about to be something else: de-emphasized.

This is because while women’s, “gender,” and sexuality studies currently can count toward the University of Texas’ (UT’s) core curriculum, this will change next semester. Moreover, in 2028, students may be required to take classes in Western civilization.

As the Austin-American Statesman reported yesterday:

On Tuesday, department chair Danielle Clealand told faculty in the Social and Cultural Analysis Department that the provost’s office rejected all women’s and gender studies courses from counting toward UT’s core. … The provost’s office also eliminated dozens of courses on race from counting toward the core.

All undergraduate students must pick from a menu of courses to fulfill their core requirements before graduating.

The provost’s decision affects courses including Mexican American Women from 1940 — present; Women and the Holocaust; Intro to African American Women’s History; LGBTQ Literature and Culture; and Native American Women’s History.

In fact, the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) itself has been nixed. It was consolidated into the Social and Cultural Analysis Department along with three other departments. They are: African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and American Studies.

Re-educating Education

This is just a start, too. After all, while no longer core-qualifying, the morally degraded courses are still available at UT. In contrast, Hungary banned “gender” studies from its universities completely already back in 2018.

And even that was late, as this academic decay is nothing new. As I wrote in “Diploma Disaster?” in 2013, as

pointed out in “The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses” (12/9/2006), academia has descended into course offerings such as “The Phallus,” “Queer Musicology,” “Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration,” “Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism,” “Native American Feminisms,” “Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco,” and “Lesbian Pulp Fiction,” just to name a handful.

Yet while not new, it’s also a far cry from higher education’s original mandate. Up to 90 percent of the American colleges and universities existing in the 19th century were founded as Christian institutions. UT, opened in 1883, wasn’t one of them, but it did value educational seriousness. It had two departments, Law and Academic, and the latter had six “schools”:

• Chemistry and Physics
• Mathematics
• Ancient Languages (Greek and Latin)
• English Language, History, and Literature
• Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Science
• Modern Languages (French, German, Spanish)

No frivolity there. (“Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Science” can be suspect. But it hopefully was taught back then with more of an eye toward Truth.)

And now, UT is taking at least a baby step in the right direction. As the Statesman also informs, the university

is refining its academic offerings as part of a transition to a new core curriculum that will launch as soon as fall 2028, pending approval. That model will require all students to take classes in Western civilizations, humanities and artificial intelligence, and narrow which courses can qualify.

The Western civilization requirement is significant. This is for a simple reason:

Western culture has forged the greatest civilization to ever grace our planet.

To not understand it is to forget the recipe that created all that is great and good we hold dear. And forgetting the recipe means being unable to recreate the dish for tomorrow’s hungry generations.

Perspective

Of course, there is pushback against even UT’s modest move toward tradition. For example, Lisa Moore, former chairman of the WGSS, condemned the changes. The Statesman tells us she called them “‘blatant’ viewpoint discrimination and a ‘singling out’ of her field.” This is nonsense.

Oh, she’s correct about it being “discrimination”; that is, choosing one or some from among many. Yet this is inevitable. Was every single UT offering ever part of its core curriculum? Of course not — “core curriculum” implies discrimination. You’re always picking and choosing what university courses will make the cut. In fact, you must pick and choose what courses will be university courses to begin with.

As for Moore, if her complaint reflects her reasoning ability, she doesn’t belong in academia.

What does belong there, however, is missing. Question: Since we must pick and choose, how do we do it correctly? What yardstick do we use to assemble a proper curriculum?

The Better Way

First we must dispense with the childish relativism sweeping our time. The notion “Everything is a matter of perspective” has led to emotion reigning and delivering the worst perspectives. The idea “Who is to say?” has led to the worst among us “saying” and discriminating against the sublime and sane. Rather, we must be focused on Truth.

To be specific, we must re-embrace what once guided education: the virtues. What are they?

Well, if morality came in a jar, the virtues would be on the ingredients label. They are, essentially: Faith, Hope, Honesty, Charity, Courage, Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Chastity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Forgiveness, Humility, and Love.

It is then much as when teaching tennis. You learn the principles of the game and then develop a curriculum based on them. Anything contrary to those principles is rejected.

Likewise, the virtues are the “principles” of right and wrong. Proper education will consequently align with them; any proposed element contrary to them must be discarded.

This would include women’s and “gender” studies as well as identity-politics (racial or otherwise) courses. These are contrary to a host of virtues, Chastity and Wisdom among them.

We must also realize what is not a virtue — “equality” — and what is not a Deadly Sin: discrimination.

For when you stop discriminating against evil, it eventually gets to discriminate against you.