Does a gal with gonads better blow a flute? Might a fella with fallopian tubes more fantastically finger an organ? They just may, and a college course will soon probe the possibilities.
In case you're unfamiliar with private university The New School, here's a bit of info from its site:
Since our founding in 1919, The New School has redrawn...the boundaries of intellectual and creative thought as a preeminent academic center. Our rigorous, multidimensional approach to education...helps nurture progressive minds.
Inclusivity is key:
Our legacy of commitment to creating a more equitable, inclusive, and socially just environment continues to drive our mission...
The academy trumpets itself as a place that "reimagines the future," where "scholars, designers, artists, and innovators come together in [New York City] to bravely challenge convention and create positive change."
Speaking of trumpets -- or, apropos of horny pursuits -- this fall will see the school dive into underwear, instruments, and arrangement. Via an arts class, music will merge with modernity.
Burning question, prepare for a put-out:
LMUS 2035: Why Do Trans Women Make Awesome Music?
“Why do trans women make awesome music?!" So begins a recent Reddit thread. This course posits that part of what makes trans women's music "awesome" are the lyrics and sounds of their political demands in transmisogynistic cultures determined to silence them. To explore this question further, we will consider how music expresses transfeminist politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the post-"Trans Tipping Point" era of today.
The investigation -- rewarding enrollees with four college credits -- will feature work from some of the XY-chromosome'd transgender genre's juggernauts. They are women; hear them resplendently roar:
With a mixtape of songs by Ms. Boogie, Transcendence Gospel Choir, Arca, Susy Shock, SOPHIE, Ah-Mer-Ah-Su, Anohni, and more, we will explore how contemporary trans musicians have used music to amplify transfeminist politics as a soundscape that transmisogyny cannot drown out.
The exploration is heartily at home with academia's overarching embrace. Sexual politics are out and proud, while gender identity enjoys a jubilee:
University Warns Trans Students They're Targets, Comforts Them With Cotton Candy and Crayons
How Gay Are Gables? Ivy League School's Architecture Program Goes 'Trans*'
Medical School Dean Fights the 'Stereotype' That Women Have Vaginas
Christian University Calls Transgenderism 'Fundamental' to Its Mission
Woke Middle Ages? University Trumpets the Transgenderism of Medieval Times
There's a sense to the shift, considering an unprecedented portion of college students are soaking in rainbow rays. Per Gallup:
[E]ach younger generation is about twice as likely as the generation that preceded it to identify as LGBTQ+. More than one in five Gen Z adults, ranging in age from 18 to 26 in 2023, identify as LGBTQ+, as do nearly one in 10 millennials (aged 27 to 42). The percentage drops to less than five percent of Generation X, two percent of baby boomers and one percent of the Silent Generation.
RELATED: When Gen Z Hears Boomer Music for the First Time
Back to musicians who identify as the opposite of their sex, PRIDE-centered New School students will make like Mama Cass and make their own kind of music:
The course will culminate in our own transfeminist album of original music inspired by the political aspirations and demands in the music we hear throughout the semester — a transfeminist chorus [of which] students are a part.
That should be fun.
Pertaining to the inquiry at issue, do the sexually sophisticated make amazing music? In some cases, unquestionably. There are magnificent male musicians; if any were to announce their transhood, their talent would remain. The same would go for newly-minted musical men who menstruate. Moreover, the arts aren't known for hefty heteronormativity; flamboyance often intersects with first-rate fruition.
As for whether buxom banjoists with back hair make better music than cisgender saxophonists, the jury might be out. Perhaps there's just enough transmisogyny to fuel their supremacy, but not enough to impede the creation of a college course.
Either way, incidentally, old-school biology has been debunked. Scientific American offers an update:
From the moment we are born -- or even before -- we are definitively labeled “boy” or “girl.” Yet science points to a much more ambiguous reality.
Binary, be gone:
A host of factors figure into whether someone is female, male or somewhere in between.
That complication aside, New School students keen on discovering the dulcet tones of tootses with testes should sign up soon. The course has a maximum capacity of only 18. It's an exclusive endeavor, though indicative of America's new academic normal.
The 1960s saw a sexual revolution, a fair amount of which swept the country's colleges. We're in the midst of another wave; and for wokesters who admire melody and relish rhythm, an upcoming course in New York will surely be music to the ears.
-ALEX
See more content from me:
Wokus Pocus: Feminist Professors Celebrate Witchcraft As a Curse on Whiteness and Masculinity
New York College Schools Students on the 'Ethical' Art of Non-Monogamous Sex
Find all my RedState work here.
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