After completing her transition, a transgender professor was denied tenure and terminated. The professor also experienced harassment specific to her situation: she was told that she could only use one bathroom on the campus, a restriction that was placed on no other faculty member. After her tenure review, the professor was told that the dean and vice president of academic affairs found her “lifestyle” inappropriate, so she was going to be made to leave. There are no transgender anti-discrimination laws in the state of Oklahoma, nor are there specific laws about hate crimes based on gender or sexuality. Thus, there may not be any recourse for the professor, even though the president of academic affairs has openly stated that the professor’s lifestyle “offends his Baptist beliefs.” Continue Reading →
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Can Educators Write Erotica?
A high school English teacher has been outed as a romance novelist, leading parents to question whether she’s fit to teach their children. The teacher writes under a pen name, and had not received complaints about the appropriateness of her teaching before someone recognized her from her writing publicity photos. This raises the question: is it appropriate for an educator to also be involved in a profession that involves thinking and writing about sex? One parent complained: “Now my son knows so how is he thinking when he’s sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side.” This isn’t the first situation of its kind: in an earlier MSP post on sex work and academia, I discussed standards of appropriateness specific to the educational workplace. Continue Reading →