WOMEN, GENDERS AND SEXUALITIES

As soon as the sign was hung for the ACSJL, feminists, survivors of sexual violence, LGBTQI students, faculty and staff in need, and students of marginalized sexual expression hiked up the hill to the Center. Their experiences of campus life and institutions were as diverse as their aspirations for justice, but very early on a nexus of needs came into focus.

Student survivors of sexual violence were trapped in a campus judicial system that didn’t work for them. The faculty had few resources or protocols to offer support to student survivors who turned to them. In fact, few survivor-defined resources or protocols existed. The campus sex culture was driven by a white, cis, male prerogative despite a superficial “gay K” overlay that included a problematic spring drag event that both celebrated and demeaned the history of drag as resistance in LGBTQI culture and movements for justice. 

In addition, white feminist students were struggling with their organizations and lack of engagement with feminists of color on campus. Feminists and LGBTQI students of color needed new organizations and social spaces to grow their own intersectional analyses and support structures. The Women’s Studies Program had received outside evaluation and reconsidering its foundational courses, disciplinary name, and the possibility of creating a minor.  

The Center took on all of these issues at once—creating a year-long collaborative dialogue on Sex, Power and Community (SPC) driven by faculty, students, and staff, and centering the voices of survivors of sexual violence. SPC culminated in a Town Hall on sex that led to several shifts in practices, including simplifying access to resources for survivors on the college website and creating a peer first responders network that served survivors’ needs outside of the campus judiciary system. 

It also invigorated student activism around sex and sexuality. New workshops on sexuality and pleasure that de-centered male-defined social and sexual practices were held and a revamping of study abroad sexual assault protocols per survivor were put in place. Beyond SPC, the Center was instrumental in the development of a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality minor (now a major) that added a feminist methods course and de-centered white feminisms.  We funded new experiments in women of color feminisms and BIPOC LGBTQi student activism. We helped create conversation, sex-positive approaches to ending violence, and space for queer and feminist intervention and creative experimentation.    

Over the past 10 years, new curricula, new and established faculty, engaged staff, and incoming students have grown vibrant spaces, projects, and practices in women’s, gender and sexuality justice. The Center is proud to have offered a receptive ear to faculty, staff, students, and community members as they have shaped their social justice aspirations and practices toward gender and sexuality justice in this period.