Feminist Professor

S2, E 10: On Compulsory Sexuality In this episode, we are going to turn our attention to the social system of compulsory sexuality that mandates that we must experience sexual attraction and the desire for sexual activity. Compulsory sexuality is a set of both assumptions and demands that impact all people, regardless of how they define their relationship to sexuality. We will also begin to discuss asexuality, or the experience of feeling little or no sexual attraction to another person. There are a good deal of misunderstandings about asexuality, and the next two episodes will focus on defining and clarifying an identification with asexuality. SHOW NOTES The following texts discuss compulsory sexuality as well as asexuality. They are excellent texts for early reading on the subject. Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen): https://www.amazon.com/Ace-Asexuality-Reveals-Identity-Meaning/dp/080701379X Acing Science: Compulsory Sexuality and Asexual Possibilities (Kristina Gupta): https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295754260/acing-science Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture (Sherronda J. Brown): https://www.amazon.com/Refusing-Compulsory-Sexuality-Asexual-Sex-Obsessed/dp/1623177103 Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality (Ella Przbylo) https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/24390 (this is open source)

In this episode, we will consider the rising interest in civility discourse and norms. An increasing number of colleges and universities—as well as political culture more generally-are striving to help us disagree in more constructive ways and extend mutual respect as we do. It sounds benign enough, but we look at what civility often conceals: the demand for those who are already harmed to placate and reassure power. In fact, civility can be understood as a form of soft repression, and we consider how this is so.

S2 E8 On Complaint DESCRIPTION In this episode, we will explore complaint: as a response to an unacceptable and unwanted situation as well as a means of remedy when one has been harmed. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s work on complaint, we will think about why institutions and systems often work to block complaint, why we are made anxious by the act of complaining, and why it is important that we guarantee that our grievances are recorded for those who both came before as well as those who will come after us. SHOW NOTES I discussed two books by Sara Ahmed at some length: Complaint! (Duke U Press, 2021): https://www.amazon.com/Complaint-Sara-Ahmed/dp/1478017716 No!: The Art and Activism of Complaining (released on April 7th, can preorder): https://www.amazon.com/No-Activism-Complaining-Sara-Ahmed/dp/1558613684

In this episode, hope is not read as ‘naïve hope’ that wishes only for a better future; hope here is a more radical version, sometimes called ‘educated hope,’ because we must learn how to hope in ways that do not deny the intolerability of the present or the necessity of striving for a different future. We talk about the role of hopelessness and despair as partners for hope as well as make the case for a kind of hope that would rather fail or be disappointed than forfeit imagining a better future or ‘not yet.’ SHOW NOTES In this episode, I cited the following texts: The Principle of Hope (Ernst Bloch): https://www.amazon.com/Principle-Studies-Contemporary-German-Thought/dp/0262521997 ‘Despair is Not a Luxury’ from No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (Rebecca Solnit): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2517-no-straight-road-takes-you-there Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (Jose Manuel Munoz): https://nyupress.org/9781479874569/cruising-utopia-10th-anniversary-edition/ ‘Hope in Refusal: Feminist, Queer Futurity’ (Rachel Silverbloom) Signs: Vol. 49 (4): Summer 2024, 807-830.

In this episode, we will consider the rise of the ‘angry white man,’ the man who experiences aggrieved entitlement because he has not been delivered the social power, authority, and resources promised by patriarchy. The angry white man—who may resent downward economic mobility as much as feminist challenges to gender hierarchy—has been recruited as a voter, protestor, and warrior in the fight for normative masculinity (which, by extension, requires normative femininity). We talk about the political force of the angry white man right now as well as the many ways he is positioned as the last defense of patriarchy and white supremacy. Show Notes The following texts have been mentioned in this episode as well as earlier episodes in the series on masculinities: Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Angry White Men: Masculinity at the End of an Era (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Angry-White-Men-American-Masculinity/dp/1568585136 Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe): https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483 The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks): https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

In this episode, we are rejoined by Dr. Suzanne Ashworth for a conversation about the rise and rules of ‘bro culture.’ She will discuss the shaping force of ‘guyland’ for white, college bound or college educated young men as well as the ways in which the extended adolescence offered to men generates entitlement, requires silence, and affords protection. She will also discuss the ‘killing paradox’ that defines dominant masculinity and the use of ‘fag discourse’ as a form of social control for young men. Together we will think about the elevation of ‘bro culture’ in modern political life and the forms of complicity it encourages from the larger public. Show Notes Dr. Ashworth mentions the following texts in her discussion: Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe): https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483

In this episode, we will launch the first of three conversations on masculinities with Dr. Suzanne Ashworth. We will discuss why masculinities should be understood as plural even though our culture seems to ignore all but the most dominant and idealized version of it. We will also discuss boyhood and the ways in which mainstream culture begins to ‘boy’ our boys in the direction of emotional indifference and cruelty. Throughout the three-part series, we will constantly return to the questions: what does masculinity feel? And what more might masculinity feel? SHOW NOTES The following texts were cited in this episode: Masculinities (R.W. Connell): https://www.ucpress.edu/books/masculinities/paper Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Niobe Way): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674072428 Perverse Feelings: Poe and American Masculinity (Suzanne Ashworth): https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/perverse-feelings-9781978798533/

DESCRIPTION In this episode, we will complete our discussion of selected policy objectives in Project 2025. This week, the focus is on LGBTQ equity and personhood. Project 2025 is consistently invested in diminishing or denying the personhood of LGBTQ individuals, and it details the legal, political, and economic levers that will help normalize this. We discuss the loss of legal protections as well as the right to non-discrimination, the assumption that gay marriage and family are defective versions of what is biologically and morally desirable, the effort to relabel the trans person as potential political extremist and terrorist, and the conflation of LGBTQ-supportive materials with pornography.

In this episode, we will continue our close look at the key objectives of Project 2025. This time, we will focus on the plan to restrict and deny access to both contraception and emergency contraception. More contraceptive forms (i.e. hormonal birth control, IUDs) have been reframed as abortifacients, or drugs and devices designed to terminate pregnancy. They do not terminate pregnancy; they prevent pregnancy. But Project 2025 is intent on erroneously redefining them so that they can be folded into larger efforts to regulate and ban abortion. Listen to hear more about how this is—and will—happen.

As the second season of Feminist Professor launches, we begin a multi-episode and closer examination of Project 2025. In this first episode, we focus on the larger plan to regulate, obstruct, and ultimately end the provision of abortion services in the United States.

DESCRIPTION As the second season of Feminist Professor launches, we begin a multi-episode and closer examination of Project 2025. In this first episode, we focus on the larger plan to regulate, obstruct, and ultimately end the provision of abortion services in the United States. SHOW NOTES You can find a PDF of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership at https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf You can find the Project 2025 Tracker at https://www.project2025.observer/en The mentioned article, ‘Education Policy Reforms Are Key Strategies for Increasing the Married Birth Rate’ (Jay Greene and Lindsey Burke) can be found here: https://www.heritage.org/education/report/education-policy-reforms-are-key-strategies-increasing-the-married-birth-rate

In this episode, we discuss the important political and personal necessity of rest. Because we live in a grind culture that insists on incessant productivity and normalizes exhaustion, we have lost the capacity to define and defend rest. Thanks to Tricia Hersey’s work in Rest is Resistance, this episode describes how we are damaged by the ‘cult of urgency and busyness’ and how we might begin to reimagine the radical potential of learning how to rest.

Podcast Available On: Apple Spotify Featuring: Dr. Tammy Birk Show Notes: In this episode, we are going to examine the shortcomings and liabilities of resilience. We will discuss the ways in which resilience—as a social expectation and psychological ideal—can obscure the need for structural change and block larger forms of resistance. Resilience can easily become […]

In this week’s episode, I was fortunate to sit down for a longer discussion about trans athletes and gender in sport with Dr. Kristy McCray, a sports sociologist and Professor in Otterbein’s Health and Sport Sciences Department. This episode is twice as long as my solo episodes, but it is well worth the time (even […]

This week’s episode looks more closely at the increasingly normalized ‘fear of gender’ and the many ways that it is leveraged to reinforce the ‘biological reality of sex.’ The fear of gender, in many ways, is the fear of gender self-determination, or the right of a person to decide their own gender identity rather than […]

We will continue exploring the assumptions that underlie ‘woke gender ideology.’ This particular episode will focus on the purported ‘biological reality of sex’ as defined by the Trump administration’s Executive Order ‘Defending Women from Gender Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.’ More specifically, we will explore how a scientifically inaccurate understanding of biological sex is leveraged in anti-gender and anti-trans political efforts.

In this episode, we begin to discuss the new rhetoric of ‘woke gender ideology’ and the way that it is weaponized in the current political climate. We pay special attention to the concepts of ‘wokeness’ and ‘ideology’ this week; next week, we will focus entirely on the vilification of gender.  This episode also discusses how to allow for despair without falling into paralysis and what active hope might make possible.

This episode continues the conversation of last week, Preparing for Trump 2.0.  In it, eighteen speakers from the larger podcast community share brief and powerful insights into what they are doing differently or refusing to do in this volatile political climate.

In this episode, we consider how we might differently approach the second presidency of Donald Trump. How can we guard against overwhelm and dysregulation? How can we direct our energy and attention to meaningful projects rather than fall into another extended outrage cycle?

In this episode, we discuss the rise in trans panic, or the cultivation of widespread anxiety and fear at the very fact of trans existence. We talk about the ways in which trans panic serves particular political ends as well as underscores the phantasmatic nature of gender. Using gender affirming care as an example, we consider how much trans panic relies on fictitious stories about gender and ignores the lived realities of trans youth specifically.

In this episode, we discuss the shifting gender and sexual identities and practices of Generation Z. At least one in five members of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ, so they are the largest demographic of LGBTQ persons in the United States. We hear from various Gen Z voices in this episode and consider what their […]

In this episode, we will discuss different ways of understanding the motives of misogyny, or what is more commonly understood as the hatred of women, as well as examine the upsurge in misogynist rhetoric in the 2024 Presidential election.

In this week’s episode, we will approach patriarchy as a social system that overvalues maleness and masculinity at the same time it devalues femaleness and femininity. We will talk about the ‘logics’ of patriarchy that not only attempt to justify the system as inevitable and good but also encourage men to fear the judgment and reprisal of other men. In the last part of the episode, we will consider a handful of examples from the 2024 Presidential campaign that demonstrate the ways in which men police the masculinity of other men to defend patriarchal power.

In this episode, we turn to the work of Sara Ahmed to better understand how we become a problem for others when we expose or name a problem. Podcast Available On: Apple Spotify Featuring: Dr. Tammy Birk Show Notes: In this episode, I relied on the critical work of Sara Ahmed and cited three of […]

This episode focuses on the political usefulness of anger, especially as an appropriate and ethical response to injustice and mistreatment. We consider how anger is sanctioned for some groups rather than others, examine reasons that women might fear, deny, or suppress their anger to avoid conflict, and discuss the various ways that the expression of […]

This episode explores some of the anxieties and fears that keep us silent or unwilling to speak. Why do we think silence protects us when it doesn’t make us any less afraid? Let’s consider what Audre Lorde can teach us. Podcast Available On: Apple Spotify Featuring: Dr. Tammy Birk Show Notes: In this episode, I […]

This episode explores two ideas that deserve our early attention: unlearning and ignorance. Unlearning is crucial if we are to evolve our thinking, but we may need to learn how to unlearn. Ignorance has many motives, but I am most concerned about the ways that power benefits from our ignorance. Let’s understand how that happens.

Podcast Available On: Apple Spotify Featuring: Dr. Tammy Birk Topics: Show Notes: This podcast is for listeners who want to know more about gender, sexuality, and feminism. For listeners who want to better understand these complex and evolving concepts. For listeners who want to move beyond misinformation and persistent fear baiting. For listeners of any age and […]