Marquette Withdraws Job Offer To Lesbian Dean Candidate Jodi O'Brien
I took Jodi O’Brien’s Sexual Politics class in my last quarter at Seattle U. We covered basic feminism, sex work, gay marriage, and more—but mostly, she demanded that we deal with gender theory. In that class, I had to think about what it meant to be female, to be feminine, to be a person in a heteronormative world. She made us think about the concept and the realities of sex work, about the ideal and the limitations of gay marriage. She made us buy lesbian pulp fiction. She told us that nothing kills an academic career faster than romance.
She wasn’t closeted, and she straightforwardly challenged our concepts of gender and family and sex. She was, without a doubt, one of the best professors I’ve had, and her class shaped how I think about gender about everything.
