#'break out of traditional gender roles' should NEVER exclude trans people

[songs-from-the-basement]

gentle reminder that you don't need to be cis to be gnc

mtf tomboys who are super jacked and only wear gym clothes or tank tops are still women

ftm femboys who present as very soft, and like doing their makeup and wearing dresses are still men

[dkettchen]

On the debate about cis-actors playing trans-roles

I am a non-binary writer/director. I am studying animation atm, but I’ll be in industry in less than a year. I have about 5 big projects (movies, series, short films) planned that revolve around trans(-binary) characters that I wanna make at some point. Projects that I will have to cast actors for.

Before we get started I’d like to point out that actors playing characters of genders other than their own has a long tradition in the performing arts, from theatre (greek men in dresses and women playing peter pan), to sketch comedy (Kate McKinnon playing just so many dudes), to voice acting (women voicing boys (eg every cartoon-boy ever), men voicing deep-pitched women (eg Edna Mode)), and nowadays even mo-cap (there’s a lot of people mo-capping one character usually, just watch some of the bts for Detroit:BH) The argument that characters should be played by someone of the same gender doesn’t apply to cis-roles, so why should it apply to trans ones (mind you, I know why people make the argument, I’m not asking why would it, I’m asking why should it, because I believe we shouldn’t have to be excluded from something just because we’re trans, I wanna be allowed the same genderbending fun as cis-people, thank)

First off let me clarify: I think post-transitional roles should ALWAYS be played by trans-actors, like, obviously, there’s no question about that. 

The issue starts with characters that are pre-medical transition. 

Trans people transition because of a condition called gender dysphoria. Basically, if your assigned gender doesn’t match what you identify as, usually you will feel very uncomfortable in your own skin (dysphoria=the opposite of euphoria). Transitionning (social and medical) (so changing the gendered characteristics of your social and physical gender that you might feel dysphoric about) is done to alleviate dysphoria.

So saying only pre-med trans folk can play pre-med characters is like saying only someone who has cancer at the time can play a cancer patient. 

Most bigger pre-med roles are historical trans figures. This is because back in the day people didn’t have the option to medically transition.  Trans people are different from other minorities in that they look different from 100 years ago. Any POC or queer people can play their historical counterparts no problem, because they look the same. A trans-person today has access to medical transition their historical counterpart didn’t, so they either won’t look the part or still have dysphoria.

Also movies and series can take a long time to complete (from months to years), meaning someone who is pre-med might wanna transition during that time, which, if they were hired to play a pre-med character who doesn’t, would defy the purpose of their casting, and I don’t wanna keep them from transitionning, but I also don’t wanna have to adapt my production and story around my actor’s personal life. 

And even if I have a comparatively shorter project, and I find an actor willing to not transition for the time of the production (like in one of my projects the main character is a pre-transitional teenager, I should be able to find a voice-actor who is young and waiting for treatment or trying to earn some money to fund their transition or smth, who would be willing to participate in such a thing), they’ll still have dysphoria and here’s why that’s a problem:

Pre-transitional characters will almost by default be dealing with their gender dysphoria. I believe that playing someone of a different gender will already take a toll on a cis-actor, who has never had to deal with dysphoria (this is actually something I want to ask Eddie Redmayne about if I ever get to meet him), but they can go home and live their truth and get a break (I see Hiddleston growing that beard everytime he doesn’t have to play Loki). A trans-actor can’t do that. If I make them face their dysphoria all day long, and then they go home, they can’t escape it, they’ll have a breakdown, because it’s their reality. And I know this because I’ve been through it, when I had to defend my dysphoria and my choice to seek medical treatment against my mom. I don’t wanna do that to other people.

Most people getting outraged whenever a cis-actor gets cast in a trans-role will never be faced with having to make that decision. I will. Plenty even. If I fuck up my actors’ mental health while they’re under my care, that is MY responsibility. I can fuck with my own mental health for my cause but I can’t decide to sacrifice someone else’s.

Saying cis-actors should NEVER play trans-characters not only limits creativity, it also limits the ability to produce certain stories in the first place. I think that one day we’ll be at a point where trans people will be normalised and writers will come up with more post-transitional roles, and there’ll be more trans-actors cast in non-specifically-trans roles, but we are not there yet.  We need to try and take steps in the right direction (no matter how small) rather than say we won’t move unless we get to skip to the finish-line.  I believe that the more stories about trans-people we have, the better, regardless of who plays them. An actor’s job is to play someone other than themself. I don’t see a fundamental issue with that. 

I don’t know who I’ll end up casting for that movie about the pre-transitional kid, I’ll try to cast a trans-kid, I’ll use it as an experiment to see if it can be done, casting a pre-med person to play a pre-med character, I’ll try and prove myself wrong, but I am terrified out of my mind that I will break them in the way I’ve broken myself. 

[heartists]

headcanon: on showcases and gender.

it’s a well-known fact that in canon, only females are allowed to participate in showcases. this is the gateway to a huge can of worms, which i’ll talk about here.

Showcases as a Feminist Initiative

the first showcase was actually held for quite the opposite purpose as showcases are held today. instead of being a field dominated mainly by wealthy women who sought to please the male gaze, it was a movement by lower-middle class and working-class women. in an age where many women were forbidden from using pokémon at all, and in which pokémon use for entertainment was seen as a properly masculine domain, this was seen as an important step toward womens’ empowerment. the original reason why showcases are women-only is because it was a place for women to show that they were capable of handling pokémon just as well as their male counterparts.

however, as time wore on, pragmatics began to weigh on the burgeoning movement. not a lot of people were interested in or wanted to support the “antics” of these working-class girls who thought they could control their pokémon better than the men they worked with. when the derosier family offered to give them a future, the head of the showcase industry--a woman named michelle bisset--couldn’t say no. she and her girls loved performing so much and more than anything they wanted a chance to show the world that they were good performers, so they had to make a concession: pretty themselves up more, and do it for the men. the most notable change became to get rid of the battling phase, as women battling was still considered unladlylike. the joke was on the derosiers, though--nowadays, contests with battling phases are much more popular than showcases without them, and female coordinators are often more popular than showcase performers. moreover, showcases did make an impact that allowed women to be more accepted in traditional battling--and later paved the way for contests to become an accepted genre of pokémon entertainment for women.

(side note: the showcase industry has changed hands multiple times before falling back into the hands of alexandre derosier. more on that later.)

Monsieur Pierre’s Past And Showcases’ Future

i’ve always headcanoned that monsieur pierre, the main emcee of all major showcases, is the child of palermo, a world-famous kalos queen and the biggest name in showcases today other than algerian-born lalla mokrani, the founder of pokémon contests in kalos and the most notable kalos queen of the modern age. as a child, he won the title of junior kalos queen, and as a teen, he competed in the regular competition so that he could reach his mother’s height. but as he continued to perform and to strive for the title of kalos queen, he always felt there was something wrong. though he loved being in the spotlight, he never quite felt comfortable with being a girl. he wanted to dress up not in frilly skirts but in suit and tie; he wanted to not be known as michelle, like the woman who’d “sold out” the showcase industry, but as pierre, like the grandfather he so admired.

after years of wrestling with these feelings, he closed his eyes and hoped that his grandfather would be smiling down from heaven at his choice: he publicly came out as trans, and stepped down from the stage. 

his mother refused to speak to him for years.

he tried to forget about all that by diverting his energy and his performative talents into the coordinating industry, which was inclusive of all genders in terms of who could go onstage. meanwhile, his mother tried to forget that she even had a child, always changing the subject when people brought up pierre, always referring to him by his birth name and as “my daughter.” simply by not filling her shoes he had disappointed her; not to mention, this was long before the trans identity started to become more accepted, so she could hardly understand her son’s decision. but as the years went by, pierre found that he could not brush away his mother so easily--he thought of her and her rejection constantly, to the point that he wanted to die. but unbeknownst to him, palermo’s heart was starting to change--she missed her son desperately, and the fact that as the years passed cis people grew more accepting of trans people weighed on her mind a lot. every day she looked herself in the mirror and thought, am i really going to push away my only child because he’s trans?

and finally, she decided the answer to that question would be no.

she was the first one to reach out to him. she called him by his proper name and said she couldn’t be sorry enough for what she’d done to him, and that she wanted another chance to be his mother like she should have been. there was a part of pierre that wanted to just push her away and be done with her, but he had missed her so much that he couldn’t bear to do it. shakily, the two of them embraced. she allowed him to return to the pokémon showcase scene as emcee, where he gladly stepped up to show that trans people do have a place in showcases and to help young girls achieve their dreams. nowadays things are still tense between them, but at the very least, they seem to be getting better.

now how does this influence the performing industry? for one thing, trans girls, gender-neutral and genderfluid people were historically not allowed to compete in showcases, but pierre has been advocating for their inclusion. he’s also a big supporter of men getting to take part in showcase activity, and thinks it would be nice for young boys to learn that it’s okay to be interested in something so greatly associated with femininity. far from being just the guy who announces stuff, pierre plays a very active role in the showcase community in trying to assure more inclusion and more breaking down of stereotypes--he was instrumental in lifting the ban on trans girls in showcases. he sees this as a pathway back to the original spirit of showcases: proving that everybody can be a capable performer and deserves a place onstage.

Alexandre Derosier’s Dark Influence

things took a dark turn, however, when alexandre derosier bought the showcase industry from its previous owner. adam charpentier knew that alexandre was a transphobic, xenophobic, classist fuckwad who would send the showcase scene back into the dark ages into which it had fallen--but he sold it to alexandre anyway because he also sensed that the showcase industry would take a sharp decline in popularity and he didn’t want to be at the head of the ship when the industry finally failed. things happened just as adam had predicted: alexandre reinstituted the ban on trans girls in showcases, and upheld the bans on gender-neutral and genderfluid people participating. he also stripped pierre of his junior kalos queen title, the same way people tried to strip caitlyn jenner of her olympic medals. apart from that, some of the worst things he’s done include: subtly implying that nonwhite contestants don’t deserve to be kalos queen (in spite of palermo being jewish and lalla being algerian). hiking up performer registration prices to turn a profit and exclude those from working-class backgrounds (whose performances he insisted were always worse in quality). making inappropriate sexual comments about teenaged contestants in private, and appearing backstage in the changing rooms à la trump at the miss universe pageant. the list goes on.

overall, ursula doesn’t give a crap about who is and isn’t allowed to compete. in fact, she thought it was better that so many people are excluded based on gender because it means less competition for her. she would never say that out loud, and she isn’t particularly vocal about her transphobia re: showcases, but everyone knows it’s what she’s thinking on the inside since she’s always deafeningly silent whenever the debate about gender inclusion comes up in the showcase community. at home, however, when nobody’s listening? monsieur pierre is the subject of some extremely nasty jokes by the derosiers, and palermo gets dragged down with him because she chose to take his side. as the successor to the showcase industry, ursula is poised to be just as bad as her father with regards to social justice--that is, unless someone can get her malleable young mind to see differently.

[gender-media-3420-blog]

Common Themes

Women are Sexualized in Media with Little Emphasis on their Other Capabilities

The first theme that our posts revealed was the over-sexualization of women in the media. We first started talking about the sexualization of women in the media regarding clothing. Siberry once posted about how she felt she had to dress up “cute” for classes each day putting in time and effort into her appearance. She spoke about keeping up with fashion trends seen in media such as advertising, television, movies, and social media. We as a group felt that men's sexualization in media was not nearly as noticeable, although present at times.

Samantha posted about the sexualization of female characters in video games, noting that female avatars often had an unrealistic body shape, dangerously small waist, large breasts, and perfectly round and detailed butts. Characters are often depicted wearing little to no clothing and overall unfit for the gaming environment.

A final example of this sexualization of women can be seen in the Victorias Secret fashion show. Much controversy surrounds the show for showing only those who identify as feminine females, never any other gender identifying human being. The show erases all that the models are except for the body that they are sculpted in. They are asked questions about how they train and more horrifying, what they are excited to eat after the long-awaited fashion show. These women have paraded around in elaborate lingerie costumes for millions to critique and gawk at, without knowing anything more in-depth about the models.

The significance behind this is that the media are spreading the idea that it is okay for women to be sexualized first and foremost diminishing all else they have to offer. There is not a balance of this sexualization in gender, it happens primarily to women, not to men, transgender, or any other gender identifying person. In the current political and societal climate, women continue to be mainly based on their looks with some exceptions to the rule. We saw this theme carry out throughout the entirety of our observation of gender in media.

The Masculine Binary: The True Man Vs. The Fumbling Fool

Another theme we noticed was that there are typically two portrayals of men in media the real man who executes the hegemonic ideal of masculinity and the pathetic goofball. For example in many commercials that feature cleaning product men are portrayed as incapable, we see this in a post that mentions a Clorox commercial. A dad is struggling to put a diaper on a screaming baby, on the kitchen counter that has food and drink spilled all over it, and a kettle howling in the background. The mom walks in stressed out about the scene unfolding in front of her, she pulls out Clorox wipes and saves the day.

On the flip side of the fumbling fool, we have the hegemonic ideal of masculinity that is regularly portrayed in media. The ideal masculinity, according to media, is a white, heterosexual male, with a powerful position in his career, handsome, and charismatic, independent and not emotional unless showing aggression. Countless media texts portray this ideal, and it has proven to be damaging to men in our culture as we have discussed in class.

The hegemonic ideal of masculinity is deeply rooted in media today. There is the exception to the rule however when masculinity that is not seen as dominant is portrayed. This portrayal, however, is usually in some kind of mocking or comedic tone, not to be taken seriously as a legitimate masculine ideology. As we have discussed in class, having one hegemonic ideal is damaging to those who self-identify as males. This is important to study because the effects, as we have seen are damaging and excuses some behaviors for men. Such as being incompetent communicators, caregivers, and cleaners. As we have discussed in class, this contributes to the formation of men’s groups both profeminist and promasculinist. Some profeminist men want to help prevent negative behavior towards women and thus try to dismantle the masculinity narrative our culture sells. On the other hand, we have promasculinists fathers rights groups, promise keepers, revalorists, and men's rights who feel lost and frustrated about men’s current position in society. The media only perpetuates this idea further, deepening the damage as a result. Luckily, there are slowly more representations of masculinity in media today however the visibility is slow but steady.

Gender in the Workforce 

A significant topic we discussed was gendered ideals in the workforce. Many posts throughout the observation period discussed how men and women are portrayed in media and specifically what career role they had. Several industries were mentioned such as sports, reality television shows, movies, the music industry and more. One area of focus was the “shock factor” when people identifying as the opposite gender find out that his or her coworker is performing a job that is not traditional to their gender, shock or surprise ensues.

Samantha once posted about a reality TV show on Bravo called Below Deck. The show follows the crew of a mega yacht and what happens between the other crew members and those that are chartering the boat. The crew is comprised of interior stews (primarily females) who keep the ship clean, cater to the guests, and serve them anything they need; and the deckhands (mostly men) who wash down the ship, put water toys in the ocean, carry the guest's luggage, and help dock the ship. Each season there is typically one female deckhand and one male steward. The rest of the crew always makes a fuss about how a female is a deckhand, and they worry she won’t be strong enough or “have what it takes” to be a deckhand. In this example, we see normative gender tales invoked and disruptive gender tales rejected by several of the crewmates.

Steph posted about a book she was reading to a child she was babysitting, the book portrayed a female as a police officer. This sparked our conversation about how those in “hero”  positions such as police officers and firefighters are almost always depicted as men, seldom women, and practically never transgender. This brings forth the idea that men are most fit for those kinds of positions and that women cannot perform on the same playing field as men, and for the trans community it is almost as if they are discouraged from even trying.

The media portraying images and scenes such as the ones mention above perpetuate gender norms in a broader societal context. Not only is it important for adults to see every gender represented in all job positions, but it is detrimental for children to see that they can achieve any career path they set their minds to without worrying about discrimination or being out of the ordinary. By portraying such narrow job roles on specific genders, we limit ourselves from growth as a society.

Messages Sent to Children

One surprise that came to our group was how much we talked about how the media sends gendered messages to children. A conversation that came up multiple times surrounded Disney’s portrayal of men and women in Princess movies and the upcoming film Ralph Breaks the Internet. As you can see in the trailer posted below, at 1:35 into the clip, one of the young female characters in the film encounters all the Disney Princesses. They are questioning whether or not she is a princess and finally ask “do people assume all of your problems got solved because a big strong man showed up?” she answers yes and the princesses exclaim “She is a princess!”

While this example pokes fun at the continuous trope of princesses needing rescuing it draws attention to a significant problem Disney has propagated time and time again. On September 17th Steph posted about Disney she mentioned the Incredibles II where Mrs. Incredible is portrayed to have the “ideal body shape” with “small waist, curvy hips, and big boobs” Steph goes on to mention Disney Princesses who have similar features. In this post, Steph fears the message this unrealistic beauty ideal has on young women, especially girls. The rest of the members continued the conversation mentioning that when a character in a Disney film does not have an ideal body type, they are “cast” as the mean girl, loser, or bad guy. This is a subverted way of telling kids that if you don’t look a specific way people will think of you as lesser than, mean, or wrong. After talking about women in Disney, the group transitioned to men.

 Negative messages are overtly and subtly portrayed about male Disney characters as well. Typically the male Disney character is hypermasculine, the hero, with a big ego. The Incredibles II shows Mr. Increbile as having to stay home with the kids while Mrs. Incredible goes out to fight crime. Mr. Incredible fails horribly and is miserable while taking care of the kids, little boys can interpret this message as it being wrong to stay home and unmanly. Marina and Steph had a conversation about children's books and how the ones they have read as children and now to kids as babysitters both invoke normative gender tales. Typically a similar pattern ensues, a male character goes on adventures and saves the day while female characters are excluded or act as a burden to the main character. In children's books with female leads they take on a caregiver or homemaker role. However, this is changing as more attention is drawn on how adults should encourage their children to do whatever makes them truly happy.

While progress has been made to alleviate some of the pressure to be the right type of boy or the right kind of girl, the transgender community still has very little representation in children's movies such as Disney films, as well as children's books.

[dareread]

Meet Scott Yenor.

Yenor is a mild-mannered, bald, bespectacled professor of political science at Boise State University, a college known more for its blue football field and run-and-gun offense than for its history of philosophical debate. Yenor’s intellectual credentials are spotless: He has never received complaints from students or faculty about his classes or his papers. He’s a teacher and a thinker by trade, fully tenured.

But Yenor, you see, is also the devil.

At least, that’s the new public perception of Yenor at at Boise State. That’s because Yenor published a report in 2016 with the Heritage Foundation titled, Sex, Gender, and the Origins of the Culture War. The central thesis of the piece was simple and rather uncontroversial in conservative circles: that radical feminism’s central argument decrying gender boundaries between the sexes as entirely socially constructed has led directly to transgenderism’s attacks on gender itself as a social construct. As a philosophical matter, this progression is self-evident. Yenor’s report was academically worded and rather abstruse at times, filled with paragraphs such as this one:

For Beauvoir, the common traits of “immanent” women result from pervasive social indoctrination or socialization. Beauvoir identifies how immanence is taught and reinforced in a thousand different ways. Society, for instance, prepares women to be passive and tender and men to take the initiative in sexual relations. Male initiative in sex is “an essential element” in patriarchy’s “general frame.”

Yenor later translated his extensive report into a shorter, less jargon-y article for Heritage’s Daily Signal, titled, “Transgender Activists Are Seeking to Undermine Parental Rights.”

Again, his contentions were not merely consistent with mainstream conservative thought—they were self-evident to those human beings with eyes and the capacity to read. (Ontario, to take just one example, has recently passed a bill that could plausibly be read to identify parental dissent from small children seeking transgender treatment as “child abuse.”) Yenor’s rather uncontroversial article was then posted at the Boise State Facebook page.

That’s when the trouble began.

Leftist students took note of Yenor’s perspective. And they seethed.

Actually, they did more than seethe: they complained, they demanded that the piece be taken down, and they insisted that Yenor had personally insulted them. All of this prompted the pusillanimous dean of the school, Corey Cook, to half-heartedly defend Yenor’s right to publish. But then Cook backtracked faster than Bobby Hull defending a breakaway, saying:

Our core values as a School include the statement that “collegiality, caring, tolerance, civility and respect of faculty, staff, students and our external partners are ways of embracing diverse backgrounds, traditions, ideas and experiences.” As has been pointed out by several people in their communications with me, the particular language employed in the piece is inconsistent with that value.

Cook didn’t say exactly why Yenor’s writings had violated this inconsistently-enforced value. In fact, Cook’s attacks on Yenor violated this value far more significantly than Yenor’s original writing. But as shoddy as this statement was, other leftist faculty members thought Cook didn’t go far enough—even though he had pledged to “begin reevaluating our approach to social media.”

And so a knight arose to challenge Yenor’s nefarious, patriarchal dragon: Francisco Salinas, a man with the Orwellian title “Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion.”

Salinas believes that diversity and inclusion do not include perspectives disapproved by Francisco Salinas. Thus, he took up his fiery pen and wrote a post on the school’s website dramatically titled “Connecting The Dots.” Salinas explained that the Yenor controversy had preceded white supremacist rally and murder in Charlottesville, Virginia by a day. This was not, Salinas concluded, a coincidence. “Their proximity in my attention,” Salinas wrote, “is no accident.” How so? Let’s let Salinas sally forth:

There is a direct line between these fear fueled conspiratorial theories and the resurrection of a violent ideology which sees the “other” as a direct threat to existence and therefore necessary to obliterate. It is not an absolute succession and it is not a line without potential breaks or interruptions. Not every person who agrees with Yenor’s piece is likely to become an espoused Neo-Nazi, but likely every Neo-Nazi would agree with the substance of Yenor’s piece.

And so Yenor went from mainstream conservative thinker to neo-Nazi in the blink of an eye. Not just in the mind of Salinas, mind you—but in the minds of Yenor’s fellow professors and members of the student body, too.

A flyer suddenly began appearing around campus, reading “YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS SCOTT YENOR.” The faculty senate took up a measure that would initiate an investigation claiming that Yenor was guilty of some ethereal “misconduct.” Here’s what faculty senator Professor Royce Hutson wrote:

A large majority of the senators feel that the piece espouses deeply homophobic, trans-phobic,and misogynistic ideas. Additionally, some feel that the piece may be academically dubious to the point of misconduct. In response, the senate has created an ad hoc committee to draft a statement that repudiates the ideals expressed by Professor Yenor, without explicitly censuring Dr. Yenor, and reiterates the Senate's endorsement of the BSU's shared values as it relates to his piece.

Yenor was forced to hire an attorney. His fellow professors cast him out like a leper. In Yenor’s words, his colleagues engaged in “ritual condemnation and ostracization.”

If this reads more like a tragicomic Kafka novel than an honest discourse about ideas at one of our nation’s institutions of higher learning, that’s because it is. Except that it’s real: Yenor wanders the halls of an institution to which he has dedicated his life, condemned for a crime nobody will specify.

Unfortunately, Yenor’s experiences aren’t rare. Professors are now routinely hauled up before courts of inquisition in true revolutionary fashion for offenses contrived post facto for the sole purpose of ensnaring anyone who dissents from the current leftist orthodoxy.

Northwestern University’s Laura Kipnis—who isn’t even conservative—has been sucked into the maw of a Title IX case for having the temerity to write about “sexual paranoia” on campus and asking for evidence before condemning professors or students to the wilderness for mere allegations of sexual misconduct.

Professor Keith Fink found himself ousted from his part-time role at University of California at Los Angeles; Fink lectured on free speech and employment law from a conservative perspective. No real reason was given for UCLA’s failure to renew his contract.

Professor Bret Weinstein was forced to quit his position teaching at Evergreen State College after he refused to comply with a racist mob demanding that white professors not teach on a specified date.

Professor Nicholas Christakis resigned his administrative position at Yale’s Silliman College after he was abused by students who didn’t appreciate him telling them that they should get over their fears about diabolical Halloween costumes.

And people wonder why academia is leftist.

The suffocating leftism in American universities has arisen in large part because they are run by a self-perpetuating clique. To be excluded from such cliques can be professional suicide. And the price of admission is ideological conformity. Moreover, public pressure from students and outside media often prompts administrators to join in the chorus—better to be part of the mob baying for heads than to join a controversial thinker on the guillotine. The few conservative professors left tend to keep their heads down and pray for anonymity.

But that’s just the start of the problem. Decade after decade, the treatment of conservative professors has gotten worse as the leftist hegemony has grown stronger. And as older conservative professors have aged out of the population there are no sponsors for up-and-coming conservatives who want to join the professoriate.

As Yenor explains, “The process of getting a Ph.D. either makes conservatives into ‘careerists’—which means that they have to toe the line on sacred cows of the left—or conservatives at the undergraduate level see what academia would be for a career and decline to join.” So the self-perpetuating caste grows ever stronger. And louder. And more virulent. Anti-intellectual bullies like Francisco Salinas—enforcers of the revolution—exist on nearly every campus.

Conservatives tend to think that it can’t get much worse on campus. But it can. And it will.

The purge is on. When even Scott Yenor can’t be left alone in the middle of Idaho to write obvious truths about sexual politics, it’s a warning to every conservative professor in America that if they speak freely on intellectual matters they’re not doing their jobs—they’re risking their careers.