Queer Feminism at Marquette University

Posted on | October 26, 2016 | 4 Comments

“To me as a queer activist and young scholar in the early 1990s, the term queer seemed to capture it all — the political urgency of combating heterosexism, my feeling and knowledge that the binaries of gender and sexual orientation were created through forced conformity and repression, the indeterminateness of my own experiences of gender and sexual attraction. . . . For twenty-five years or so, I’ve identified as queer — a queer person, a queer activist, a queer-theoretically informed sociologist.”
— Professor Dawne Moon, Marquette University

Marquette University is allegedly Catholic, and also has one of the worst records for suppressing free speech of any campus in the country. Marquette has a “red light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), meaning that the university’s policy “clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech” and “unambiguously infringes on what is or should be protected expression.”

Marquette is being sued by John McAdams, a tenured professor of political science who was threatened with firing because he blogged about the totalitarian climate on campus. FIRE reported in February:

Disregarding freedom of speech, academic freedom, and its own policies, Marquette University will attempt to revoke Professor John McAdams’s tenure and fire him. Marquette is taking action against McAdams, a political conservative and frequent critic of the administration, supposedly in response to his online criticism of a graduate student instructor who told a student not to oppose same-sex marriage in her class. Marquette had previously suspended McAdams without due process, treated him as though he presented a violent threat, and cancelled his current semester’s classes.

Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, compared Marquette’s policy to Stalinism:

“For blogging and defending an undergraduate student, Professor McAdams is being suspended. But it is worse than that. He is being told that he will be fired unless, in the manner of a Soviet show trial, he confesses guilt and admits that his conduct was ‘reckless.’”

To reiterate: Marquette is so committed to promoting a pro-homosexual agenda that students are not allowed to criticize this agenda in their classrooms, and when a faculty member calls attention to this policy, he is treated as a danger to student safety, suspended from his position and threatened with firing. This is happening at an allegedly Catholic school.

Annual tuition at Marquette is $38,470, plus $11,440 for room and board, so that parents are paying $49,910 a year to have this allegedly Catholic school indoctrinate their children with an ideology diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church. This ideology is not just pro-homosexuality but also pro-abortion:

A feminist group at Marquette University is denouncing the school for allowing students to engage in the “intolerant” act of publicly protesting abortion.
Last week, the student group Marquette for Life created a “Memorial for the Unborn” that consisted of 1,200 blue and pink flags to represent the roughly 1.2 million abortions in the U.S. last year. The memorial was promptly defaced. While the destructive stunt was praised by Marquette’s College Democrats, it was condemned by Vice President of Student Affairs Xavier Cole, who issued a statement saying “defacement is not dialogue.”
Now, Cole’s statement is being slammed by Marquette Empowerment, a student feminist group that claims the real problem is that Marquette students were allowed to protest abortion in the first place.
“Rather than fostering discussion and understanding, the display is damaging to the mental health of students and a disturbing act of public shaming,” the group said in an online statement. “In the past, students at Marquette have complained to university administration regarding the harmful nature of the display, which, until this year, employed crosses to emulate a ‘fetus graveyard.’”

This feminist group, Marquette Empowerment, describes its purpose:

The Mission of Marquette Empowerment is to engage Marquette students in discussion and social action devoted to intersectional feminism. Marquette Empowerment strives to maintain an environment in which each individual opinion is valued and each voice heard. We advocate for social change to alleviate the current suffering experienced by Marquette students and members of a global community of feminists alike. This suffering stems from oppressive institutions associated with intersectional feminism including, but not limited to sexism, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia.

Students are “suffering” from “oppressive institutions,” according to these feminists, and it appears that one of Marquette Empowerment’s members, a student named Clare McCullough, has taken credit for the vandalism that included plastering the pro-life display with slogans like, “We want healthcare not misogyny. Doctors not missionaries!”

‘Privilege, Power . . . Race, Class, Orgasms’

Marquette feminists are anti-Catholic and anti-freedom. They tolerate no opposition to abortion or homosexuality, and believe that even the criminal destruction of a pro-life display should be exempt from criticism. Feminist ideology is part of the Marquette curriculum, and students are indoctrinated by the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies.

The CGSS is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, dialogue, growth, and empowerment around issues of gender and sexualities. We place emphasis on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender and sexualities and educate others on the implications of such intersections.

Professor McAdams has explained that Marquette’s Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies (CGSS) “was set up as a sop to the campus gay lobby” and “has consistently pursued a leftist secular agenda.” In 2013, Marquette’s CGSS sponsored a “FemSex” seminar:

The Female Sexuality Workshop (FemSex) is a 12-week workshop that aims to create a mindful, respectful, and open environment for participants to validate their experiences, challenge their ideas, and learn with and from others. Evolving from the long-running, student-led courses at UC Berkeley and Brown University, FemSex seeks to bring the values of empowerment, diversity, and community to the university setting.
FemSex encourages exploration of identities, boundaries, desires, experiences, power, and privilege. . . . Themes include pleasure, health, gender, consent, boundaries, privilege, power, body image, communication, race, class, orgasms, masturbation, sex, kink, and sexual identities.

Required course materials for this CGSS-sponsored workshop at Marquette University included the “C–t Coloring Book.”

 

“FemSex empowers (participants) to understand, respect, and appreciate their own sexuality,” according to Professor Amelia Zurcher, whose faculty profile lists her as Director of Marquette’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program, in which she teaches “Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies” (WGST 1001). Stating the plain truth about Marquette’s “FemSex” workshop, Professor John McAdams said:

Quite obviously, a program that endorses implicitly (and often explicitly) abortion, sadomasochism, prostitution, homosexuality, masturbation and promiscuity is way beyond questionable at a Catholic university — and even at a university that pretends to be Catholic.

Contrary to the rhetoric of Marquette feminists that they are “suffering” from “oppressive institutions,” no one is forcing them to attend this private (and allegedly Catholic) university in Milwaukee. The taxpayers of Wisconsin provide higher education at schools that include the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), where annual in-state tuition is a mere $9,429 — nearly $30,000 less than Marquette. UWM also has a Women’s and Gender Studies program, so why don’t these feminists go to UWM instead of Marquette? And why should Catholic parents send their children to Marquette, if the school promotes the same feminist “empowerment” agenda as the (much cheaper) state university?

Like many other allegedly Catholic universities, Marquette is engaged in a subversive enterprise we might call spiritual counterfeiting, promoting secular ideologies that are unmistakably anti-Christian, while claiming that this worldly “gospel” is somehow consistent with Christian faith.

Dawne Moon is a sociology professor at Marquette who teaches courses that include Sociology of Sex and Gender (SOCI 4450/5450). The syllabus of this course is available online, and deserves careful study by anyone who wants to understand how feminist gender theory is being promoted in an allegedly Catholic university. The very first day of this course is devoted to “Introduction: Rethinking Sex, Gender and Nature,” and the second day’s assigned reading is from Anne Fausto-Sterling, who denies that the categories of “male” and “female” are facts of nature.

‘Male and Female Created He Them’

Now, it may be helpful here for me to explain that I am not Catholic, but quite adamantly Protestant with a deep streak of Calvinism, and I was raised in a Southern Baptist church where as a boy I diligently studied scripture in BTU (Baptist Training Union, which met Sunday evenings) so as to learn to quote the Bible “chapter and verse,” as it was said. The old Protestant ideas of sola fide, sola scriptura (“by faith alone, by scripture alone”) were very much a part of Christianity as I learned it in childhood. The authority of the Bible as the believer’s guide was absolute: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20 KJV). And thus we may contrast what Professor Moon teaches with The Word of God.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply . . .”
— Genesis 1:27-28 (KJV)

“The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
— Matthew 19:3-6 (KJV)

One does not need a Ph.D. to understand this. The meaning is clear, and the teaching is consistent. Jesus was the “word made flesh,” the human incarnation of God, and He made clear the purpose of His ministry: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17 KJV). The very first reference to human beings in the Bible is that God created us male and female, and the very first commandment of God to human beings was to “be fruitful and multiply.” Do these facts not seem significant to you? Whether or not you are a Christian, certainly anyone who reads these Bible verses must recognize how fundamental this understanding of human nature is to anyone who would claim to be a Christian.

There is no difference between the Catholic and the Protestant in this matter. The Protestant reformation arose from the belief that Christians did not need the intercession of a mortal priest, that faith and scripture were sufficient guides to the believer, for in Christ we have “a great high priest” (Hebrews 4:14 KJV), a “high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (Hebrews 6:20 KJV), and I will refer the reader to Hebrews 7 and Genesis 14 to understand what the Apostle Paul was saying. If Christians are heirs to the covenant of Abraham, through the intercession of the Son of God, having the law and testimony to give us light, as Isaiah said, then our faith and salvation are not dependent on any earthly priesthood. The Bishop of Rome has no authority except insofar as his teaching is consistent with the Word of God, and it is not the man who occupies a particular church office, nor any council of cardinals, but rather the Word of God, which is the actual source of authority. So when it became apparent that the church was corrupt and teaching false doctrine, men of faith protested against this falsehood and corruption, and thus I call myself a Protestant as an heir of those protesters.

Many of my friends are Catholic, and because my writings about marriage, family and other related issues are very much in accordance with traditional Catholic belief, sometimes readers mistakenly think I am Catholic, too. Oh, no — my Scots ancestors were Covenanters, and I cannot betray that proud inheritance. Nevertheless, as I say, when it comes to marriage and family, I find the famous encyclical Humanae Vitae to be useful in understanding the damage inflicted on society — and particularly the harm to women — by what I call “Contraceptive Culture.” Protestants have too readily abandoned what we know about human nature; some Christians seem to imagine that the commandment of Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply,” has somehow been repealed, and that we can follow our own selfish desires without suffering the consequences, i.e., “the wrath of God” (Romans 1:18 KJV).

We return, then, to Marquette, and what Professor Dawne Moon is teaching at that allegedly Catholic university, where the first meeting of “Sociology of Sex and Gender” (SOCI 4450/5450) is about “Rethinking Sex, Gender and Nature” and before the second meeting of this class, students are required to have read the strange and controversial theories of Anne Fausto-Sterling. We may summarize Fausto-Sterling’s bizarre doctrine by saying that she makes the existence of hermaphrodites the basis of claiming that the categories “male” and “female” are an illusion. Feminist gender theory, to employ the terminology of Professor Judith Butler, locates the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix . Well, most people are not hermaphrodites, such genetic anomalies are rare, and it is a fallacy to assert that the exceptions (so-called “intersex” conditions) disprove the rule (“male and female created he them”). What the proponents of feminist gender theory are actually doing with their pseudo-scientific abracadabra jargon is justifying homosexuality by denying the created order:

What we are witnessing in the 21st century is the revival of an ancient heresy, a postmodern version of Gnosticism. The theologian Peter Jones first described this weird phenomenon in his 1992 book The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age. Jones further explored the neo-Gnostic trend in his 1997 book Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America. This steady drift toward syncretism suggests that many Christian “leaders” and institutions are now “giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron” (I Timothy 4:1-3 KJV).

The Catholic Church has long been a target of these latter-day Gnostics, and I strongly recommend Donna Steichen’s 1991 book Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism to anyone who wishes to study how radical feminists have sought to subvert Catholic institutions.

‘Securing My Place Among Queers’

We must ask, who is Professor Dawne Moon, and what does she believe? Earlier this month Professor Moon offered these revelations:

For twenty-five years or so, I’ve identified as queer — a queer person, a queer activist . . .
Looking back, as certain as I was that I was bisexual, I was afraid in some ways to be identified as bisexual. In college, I was a charter member of the [University of Chicago] Bisexual Union (UCBU, which I pronounced uck-boo), and published a letter to the editor of the student paper about bisexuality. Closeted isn’t what I’ve been.
My college sweetheart was a man and as sweet and fun as that relationship was, it was almost unbearable for me to be thought of as straight by virtue of having a “sweetie” whom others simply saw as my “boyfriend.” When that relationship ended amicably, I determined never to have a serious relationship with a guy again. Feeling a sense of home and commonality with other queers, who mostly identified as gay or lesbian, I didn’t want to be an outsider, and I especially didn’t want to be an outsider exiled back to “straight” space. . . . Foreclosing a real relationship with a man was for me a way of securing my place among queers, a way to belong fully. . . .
As “queer,” I could study queer theory, study how conformity was reproduced and enforced. I even wrote about how bisexuality was among the things ruled out of existence both by Christians who viewed homosexuality as sinful, and by their liberal Christian interlocutors who insisted that same-sex relationships were okay because gay people “couldn’t help it.” I vocally and repeatedly challenged that “can’t help it”/“bad choice” language everywhere I could. . . .
I had thought of myself as an uncompromising, unabashed queer feminist scholar. I let myself be denied tenure rather than make my work less threatening and more innocuous. I would not be cowed by people who preferred their gay and lesbian colleagues to mind their place.
And all of a sudden I saw how compromising, how unqueer, how afraid I had been for my whole career. I wasn’t afraid of heteronormative straight people. I was afraid of gay men and lesbians relegating me to the realm of straight people, fancying themselves queerer than I, paradoxically because I was less invested in the gender dichotomy than they. . . .

You can read that whole crazy 1,500-word essay, and decide for yourself if someone so profoundly confused is fit to be teaching young people anywhere, much less at an allegedly Catholic university. Someone should ask the alumni and trustees of Marquette why it was deemed necessary to hire “an uncompromising, unabashed queer feminist scholar” like Professor Moon, and why she was entrusted to teach “Sociology of Sex and Gender” (SOCI 4450/5450) at this allegedly Catholic university.

Go read the syllabus for this class, in which Professor Moon assigned her student selections from The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader and The Sex, Gender & Sexuality Reader, including “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity” and “Sexual Science and the Law: Regulating Sex — Reifying the Power of Heterosexual Men.” Does anyone suppose that Professor Moon teaches her students a biblical perspective on these subjects?

“Phallocentric visions of ‘woman’ and the conflation of ‘woman’ with ‘sex’ directly influence many arenas of material practice, in which the physical body of woman is regulated and controlled. . . .
“If we examine the way in which ‘sex’ is legally and scientifically defined . . . we can see how phallocentric images of ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ are enshrined and legitimated in the machinery of the state.”
— Jane M. Ussher, “Sexual Science and the Law: Regulating Sex — Reifying the Power of Heterosexual Men,” in Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex (1997)

This article by Professor Ussher was required reading for Marquette students in Professor Moon’s class. Anyone who reads this article (Chapter Four of Professor Ussher’s book) will find that it directly attacks “the doctrine and decrees of the early Christian church” (p. 210), specifically condemning Augustine, the Apostle Paul and Thomas Aquinas, and on page 226, Romans 1:26 is invoked as Professor Ussher scornfully rejects “the fears of Paul outlined in the New Testament.”

Now let the reader recall what we know about Professor Moon’s identity as a “an uncompromising, unabashed queer feminist,” her determination to avoid relationships with men, “securing my place among queers” so as to avoid being “exiled . . . to the realm of straight people.” Considering all that Professor Moon has told us about herself, what do you think was her purpose in assigning Professor Ussher’s article to her Marquette students? Does anyone imagine that Professor Moon’s students were encouraged to criticize this anti-Christian, anti-heterosexual treatise, which was required reading? Do you think any Marquette student in Professor Moon’s class was permitted to defend the Bible against the claim that it wrongfully imposes “phallocentric images” on women?

Don’t be absurd. Professor Moon’s entire 25-year academic career has been inspired by “the political urgency of combating heterosexism.” Professor Moon is a “queer feminist” who believes “the binaries of gender” are an artificial illusion, who rejects the categories of male and female as “created through forced conformity and repression,” who feels nothing but contempt for “the realm of straight people.” Professor Moon is a fanatical devotee of the Death Cult of feminist ideology, and her only goal in teaching at Marquette is to sabotage the Christian beliefs of her students. But this brings us to the really important question: Why would any student who is a Christian enroll at Marquette?

What does Marquette offer the Christian student? I honestly cannot say, and I doubt anyone in the university administration could offer a sound argument for why parents should spend $38,470 a year for tuition, plus $11,440 for room and board, to send their children to Marquette.

Remember: Professor John McAdams was punished for supporting a student’s right to defend Catholic doctrine at Marquette, a school that clearly seeks to destroy the Catholic faith. Marquette is not only heretical, nor merely heterodox, but it is now quite literally anti-Christ.

“Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5) was the false promise of Satan’s original lie. https://t.co/t77KB9H1NI pic.twitter.com/xkCzVSBGDR

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) July 4, 2016

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The Sex Trouble project began in 2014 and reader support is vital to this research into radical feminism. Contrary to what feminists claim, patriarchy is usually just another word for “paying the bills.” And remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

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RELATED:

• June 3: Stereotypes Are Accurate (and Feminists at DePaul Are Man-Hating Witches)
• April 16: The Queering of Feminism and the Silencing of Heterosexual Masculinity
• April 5: Gender-Neutral at Notre Dame?
• April 1: The Radical Theology of Feminism
• March 24: Gnostic Feminism

 

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