Complaint, Free Speech, and “Inclusive” Campus Culture: One Transgender Student’s Experience

Abstract

This chapter describes the author’s work as an LGBTQ activist at two universities, using those experiences to situate a lesson unit on gender. Responding to ways in which her institution’s diversity language positioned her as an activist and teacher, the author establishes complaint not as an ad hoc criticism but as a process for reflecting upon the moments when people acquiesce to or resist academic cultural conflicts. Diversity statements have become omnipresent throughout higher education institutions (see Foste, Duran and Hooten 2022), but as the author illustrates, the potential of such statements to generate change is not always realized. In her critique of institutional diversity language in the context of gender activism, the author describes the professional penalties she faces as a student and teacher and may face from classmates and faculty who espouse diversity as a value.