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Syracuse scholar: If Trump limits LGBT topics, I have nothing to teach about

Syracuse professor says queer and sexual topics are her focus, worries about Trump limiting what she can say

A Syracuse University professor is worried President Donald Trump will limit her ability to talk about “gender” and “sexuality” and related topics.

The Syracuse student newspaper covered Trump’s recent executive orders to affirm that sex is binary and immutable. President Trump has also ordered an end to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the federal government while criticizing its use in the private sector. He also removed pro-LGBT content from federal websites.

This has Professor Erin Rand concerned.

“All of us are feeling pretty uneasy about what our jobs are going to look like, especially those of us whose work is centered in questions of gender, sexuality, race and ability,” Rand (pictured) told The Daily Orange. “If I’m not allowed to talk about that stuff, I don’t know what to do anymore.”

According to the student newspaper, the professor “feels the risk is compounded because she also identifies as queer and much of her teaching focuses on queer sexuality and women and gender studies.”

Rand’s “research is concerned with rhetorics of gender and sexuality in public discourse, and focuses particularly on queer and feminist modes of agency, dissent, and social protest,” according to the professor’s faculty bio.

It also includes “queer youth suicide, child pornography legislation, sex education for Black girls and femmes, resistant fashion for queer, trans, racialized, fat and disabled bodies, and contemporary tactics of queer political organizing,” according to the bio.

In a 2019 paper, Rand criticized a 2008 Supreme Court decision upholding a prohibition on real and virtual child pornography. The professor wrote that the decision “circulate[s] a strategic figuration of the child that emphasizes its sexual purity, vulnerability, and whiteness, and disavows the queerness of childhood desires.”

Other Syracuse affiliates have found ways to cope, such as through crafts, according to the student newspaper.

However, Lavie Bunnage, who takes transgender drugs, is worried.

“It’s a constant misery,”​​ Bunnage said. “So many of my friends are direct targets of what he’s doing,” referring to Trump.

The newspaper reported on a “700%” increase in calls to the pro-LGBT Trevor Project’s “hotline” since Trump’s election.

“Many LGBTQ+ students are worried about not only anti-trans legislation, but also anti-trans rhetoric that will affect them under Trump’s second presidency,” the student newspaper reported. “As anti-LGBTQ+ legislation continues to pass, the LGBTQ+ community only suffers from more stress.”

MORE: Fire alarm goes off at Turning Point USA event

IMAGE: VPA Syracuse/YouTube

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