Men Respond to My Article about Violent Masculine Domination With TOTAL DOMINATION

On Resigning My Professorship at Presbyterian College

On September 11^th, I published a newsletter on my Substack that was republished by Ms. Magazine (writing for the press being key). In the piece, I suggested that Charlie Kirk’s killer was influenced by the violent ideas of masculinity that boys and men are surrounded by in the U.S., and in a half of a sentence, I wrote that Kirk himself promoted these ideas of violence (his methods very familiar to teachers and professors harassed and doxxed by Turning Point’s Professor Watch List).

My article and Substack piece were quickly picked up by South Carolina politicians who are running for governor and eager to appear the most MAGA-y to win the primary and Trump’s endorsement (Pamela Evette and Ralph Norman), and others, including a member of the SC Freedom Caucus (Thomas Beach) and a local Laurens County SC freshman House Representative Luke S. Rankin, who you might recall from a newsletter I wrote last year:

While SC politicians were busy pressuring the public schools and universities in the state to violate federal and state law by firing their employees for doing things like *reposting a post* about Kirk, Evette and Beach seemed to realize that while they could call for things like eliminating tenure and academic freedom, they probably couldn’t do much to openly compel PRIVATE COLLEGES to fire their employees.

U.S. House Representative Ralph Norman (SC-5) (currently polling at 12 percent for the governorship) stopped short of directly calling for my termination, but he is an alum of Presbyterian College. He fully supports the Trump administration’s plans to redistrict minority majority congressional districts, which would potentially make it impossible for SC to have the sole Democratic congressional district (represented by Black civil rights leader James Clyburn). He also, fun fact, once pulled out a loaded gun at a campaign event, and made a sexual assault joke about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

I really appreciate that Evette and Norman were merely calling for a radical transformation of higher ed and a purge of public intellectuals who might vote for Democrats or support gun control. Beach and Rankin, despite being elected government officials, decided to participate in ways more common of the troll-y masses by posting my name, image, school email and office phone number (Rankin apparently incensed to find my information removed from the PC directory to protect my safety and the safety of our students in his first letter to the Clinton Chronicle). In some circles, this is called doxxing. From the Tufts University police website:

Doxxing is a form of harassment that involves publicly exposing someone’s private information, such as their name, address, job, or other identifying info without their consent.

Beach’s post seemed to go pretty viral. After this information was shared, I received voicemails and emails, the least of which were calling me a “liberal POS” and the most of which was a death threat. Because of the threats, I had to get our local police department involved and notify my children’s school principal, which aside from the emotional toll, just seems like a waste of public resources and taxpayer dollars because people disagreed with a half a sentence in an article in a feminist magazine.

Eventually Beach joined the others in finally admitting that PC is a private school, but Representative Rankin continued his campaign, while in the meantime apparently helping to get a local man fired from USC Union for his social media comment implying that Rankin had sexual feelings for Kirk (please be careful South Carolinians if you make any social media comments about Rankin, yikes!!).

Rankin decided, really in the spirit of the current federal “compact” for colleges and universities, that if PC didn’t do what he, a young man who has attended very little public school in Laurens County, demanded that they do (fire me for doing my job—writing and publishing as an expert in my field) he would work to withhold state scholarship money for students. He first made the threat on a local radio show September 18^th. On October 6^th, he posted this letter (coauthored with other Laurens County SC House Representatives, including Representative McCravy, who also appears in this newsletter) on his official Facebook page:

And then, two days later, this post:

Throughout his campaign, Rankin has consistently misrepresented and lied about my published pieces, claiming that my feminist op-ed criticizing violence was “celebrating assassinations” and disparaging my professional reputation. He used these lies when his own supporters occasionally popped up in comments to ask: isn’t using your official government position to attack the freedom of speech and of the press a violation of the Constitution? Good question, people of Laurens.

And so, I have now resigned from my position at Presbyterian College, where the majority of my job was helping students learn to read critically, write professionally and conduct research. A small fraction of my job was occasionally teaching an elective class in Women’s and Gender Studies, but hopefully Representative Rankin can rest easy knowing he’s saved those handful of students from exposure to ideas like “women should have jobs that pay the same” and “women shouldn’t die in childbirth because Laurens County has no Labor and Delivery unit.”

The good news is I can now dedicate myself to writing about feminist and LGBTQ+ issues in the South and nationally. Hit me up for speaking or writing gigs! And please, please, please support the good work of Presbyterian College and help PC students afford to go to school by donating here. When politicians, alums, and community members attack institutions instead of following the law, civil practices and procedures (where’s that Southern decorum, people?!), it can be a huge drain on resources. Please help support the mission of PC that is dedicated to serving the underserved in South Carolina and beyond.