The College Fix

From simple political goals to ‘mass mobilizations’

One thing we’ve learned about campus politics over the years is: It’s never enough. Campus activism, no matter how radical or wild-eyed it may be, is always after something more extremist. Barry Goldwater, of course, famously declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” and he was right. Yet progressive campus politics are generally not done in the service of liberty but something else.

At Virginia Commonwealth University, a Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies professor there has written a book criticizing the “relentlessly corporate” state of LGBT politics. According to this instructor, where the movement used to be “explicitly leftist, anti-capitalist, critical of police violence, and was invested in resisting norms around sexuality,” activists are now more interested in hoary, fussy old ideals like settling down in the suburbs and “upholding norms around sexuality” rather than resisting them. Times ain’t what they used to be.

The actual state of LGBT politics is something rather less prosaic than this professor makes it out to be; indeed, LGBT politics tend to be among the most radical, particularly on campus. At Smith College, the “Queer Studies” program there seeks to “destabilize normative sexuality;” a course at UMass Boston has the same goal. One professor at the University of Arizona recently expressed the belief that elementary-aged children should be taught “queer theory.” Harvard University recently made an example out of a Christian student group for adhering to orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality. A few professors recently advised that doctors should take a “proactive” approach in giving gay teenagers advice on how to have gay sex. And so on.

These examples—the denormalization of normal sexuality, the targeting of children for propaganda, the political retribution—do not suggest a “relentlessly corporate” movement. Indeed it suggests one on the cutting edge of social disruption. But that matters very little in this case: Your average campus activists (professors included) are never satisfied with the status quo, even if the status quo is deeply radical and wildly transgressive. It always has to be more.

The point in this case isn’t really to effect any kind of social change; that is a goal, but it is mostly a secondary one. The overarching aim here is to make chaotic transition the norm; it’s to insist that current efforts are never enough, and to make (as the professor above put it) “mass mobilizations” a regular and acceptable feature of modern society. Some people just enjoy that type of disorder; to a certain type of activist, it is far more entertaining than following “norms around sexuality” and living in suburbia. Most of us, thankfully, feel differently.

MORE: Angry LGBT students, allies issue set of demands to divinity school

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