Small number of students
Aw how sad. It turns out that gender dogma that fails to attract paying customers will be shown the door.
An honours course covering “queer and trans geographies” has been dropped by Edinburgh University one week into the semester as the institution seeks cuts of £140 million…Edinburgh University said it had paused the unit due to the small number of students who had signed up.
It’s not a good combination, is it – small number of gullible customers plus utter nonsense.
Part of an undergraduate geography degree programme, the “Queer Geographies: Spatialising Sexuality and Gender” class was described as an opportunity for students to “critically, and self-reflexively, consider how sexuality and gender inform and unfold in the everyday spaces we inhabit”.
What the hell is “self-reflexively” supposed to mean? The fool who wrote that probably meant “reflectively” but wanted to make it more pretentious, so stumbled into incoherence.
Assessment was in the form of a 4,000-word journal.
Oh yay! Your homework is to talk about yourself!
Self-reflexively of course.
Martin Zebracki, chair of the Space, Sexualities and Queer Research Group at the Royal Geographical Society, said: “This type of course would help students understand the processes of social marginalisation, including in relation to legislation, and encourage students to consider how social norms could be challenged — not only in theory but also in everyday life. Courses like this really seek to develop critical thinkers of the future.”
Chair of the what???
And how would this type of course do any of that? And what does obsessing over one’s very own personal “gender” aka idenniny aka soul have to do with developing critical thinkers? If you want critical thinkers you want them to look outward, not inward. The world is there, other people are there, and they’re not about Me and My Ego.
He warned that losing the unit risked further marginalising minority topics and groups…
When your minority topic is so minority that it’s just about the self-involvement of the students signing up to your minority topic, you’re just engaged in flattering the students and encouraging them to be even more self-obsessed than teenagers usually are.
A university spokesman stressed that the course had not been permanently closed. He said: “The university regularly reviews and refreshes its degree programmes and courses to ensure that they meet the needs of our community. We have made the decision to pause Queer Geographies: Spatialising Sexuality and Gender for the 2025–26 academic year due to the level of demand not being sufficient to enable us to deliver the course and ensure an excellent student experience. Students who had enrolled on the course will be reallocated to another within their programme.”
The university did not disclose how many students had registered for the unit this academic year.
Five? Two? One?
Zero?
I think by “consider how social norms can be challenged” they mean “become an activist”.
I don’t even think they meant that. I think they meant just “become more and more self-obsessed forever.”
I would imagine that more people come out of that non-binary than enter the program. Self-reflection, self-crit, choose your weapon.
Of course, schools all over the place are canceling programs because of Trump’s cuts to education. And small classes are death to schools when bottom lines are the only important thing. Butts in seats matters more to most college administrators than quality in education, so cancelling this one bogus class definitely wasn’t for the purpose of maintaining high standards.
The school where I taught got rid of Botany. And Genetics. And Physics. And Physical Geography. They gutted science.
Translation: “When you can’t use the public restroom which matches your gender, that’s oppression; the law now says they’re segregated by sex, not gender; it’s great if you ignore that and march right in anyway.”
Iknklast:
That’s horrible.
‘how sexuality and gender inform and unfold in the everyday spaces we inhabit’ Too bad they’re not actually using ‘gender’ to mean ‘sex’, because there is a lot of worthwhile research about how women occupy space, particularly allegedly public space, differently than men.
I was just listening to an interview with this woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Hewitt
who’s been researching and writing about how men have pushed women out of public space, outdoor space, sports and other activities which used to be for everyone and are now coded male. She was very blunt on the subject of how this exclusion is enforced – anywhere men remove women from formerly shared spaces, the enforcement mechanism is always the same; sexual violence. ‘If you enter this space, we will rape you.’
I’m social meeja friends with Rachel; she’s a brilliant writer. Hits nails bang on the head over and over again.
Can you link to the interview?
https://www.subjecttopower.com/banning-women/
I just got the book she was talking about – the interview was excellent.