Ohio State offers sexist, racist class: ‘Be a Man! Masculinities, Race and Nation’
Ohio State University added a new class in the Spring semester which will review reasons why white heterosexual masculinity is allegedly problematic. The syllabus points to deconstructing the topic of racial issues, bullying, pop culture and societal expectations.
The course is titled “Be a Man! Masculinities, Race and Nation,” which includes a variety of readings to that end, including its required textbook “Dude, You’re a Fag!” by C.J. Pascoe, which analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process, but sexual one. Check out the full Amazon description states.
The College Fix listed some assigned reading excerpts: “Masculinity as Homophobia” by Michael Kimmel; “Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity” by Jackson Katz; “Dude Sex: Dudes Who Have Sex with Dudes” by Jane Ward; “Looking for My Penis” by Richard Fung; “Sodomy in the New World” by Jonathan Goldberg; and “Teaching Men’s Anal Pleasure” by Susan Stiritz.
Videos to be screened include: “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” the dashcam footage of Philando Castile’s murder, Key & Peele’s “Hoodie Skit,” and an episode of “The New Normal.”
The course is presented as a study in “feminist masculinity” that seeks to explain how ideas about masculinity “simultaneously harm yet privilege” men. The syllabus also that the class aims to explain how “beliefs regarding masculinity serve to justify certain kinds of violence by men against others, and violence against particular groups of men.”
The syllabus states that the class meets “on land taken by force from Native Americans” and on the first day of the “Be a Man!” class in early January, students went over a “male privilege checklist.”
The course was created and is taught by Jonathan Branfman. Branfman is a doctoral candidate in Ohio State’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a recent recipient of a 2017-18 Presidential Fellowship, the most prestigious award given to students by the OSU Graduate School, according the the department’s website.
Branfman is also author of the new children’s book “You Be You!” intended for 7- to 12-year-olds that gives parents a “simple and accessible way” to introduce children to gender and sexual identity “in hopes of decreasing stigmas associated with the LGBTQ community,” the Lantern campus newspaper reports.
Racist poster from 1866 – Library of Congress
