Traci Parker, Author at Ms. Magazine https://msmagazine.com/author/traciparker/ More Than A Magazine, A Movement Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:27:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-ms-logo-32x32.jpg Traci Parker, Author at Ms. Magazine https://msmagazine.com/author/traciparker/ 32 32 The Politics of ‘Audit’: How Texas Is Using Bureaucracy to Erase Gender Studies https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/11/texas-gender-studies-audit-university-college-feminist-studies/ Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:00:00 +0000 https://msmagazine.com/?p=387832 Professor Melissa McCoul was dismissed in September after teaching LGBTQ+ themes in her children’s literature course at Texas A&M. Just this week, a faculty council determined McCoul's firing violated her academic freedom.

But politicians and activists who oppose what they call “woke gender ideology,” are galvanized and doubling down, using this Texas A&M case to push for curricular reviews aimed at eliminating women’s, gender and sexuality studies from public colleges and universities across Texas.

Framed as bureaucratic oversight, conservatives seek to eliminate gender studies and related fields through procedural mechanisms that evade public scrutiny. The assaults on gender studies in Texas are not just a local issue; they are a national bellwether. They signal a coordinated effect to dismantle feminist and queer inquiry and remind us that silence, in the face of repression, is complicity.

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