I was a junior in high school at the time of the Stonewall rebellion in 1969. Like many of similar age and inclination, I suspect, I knew deep down that Stonewall had something to do with me, but did not know what.
Over the four decades since then, I have watched and participated in a remarkable social phenomenon �" the queering of American academia.
Today's situation would be virtually unimaginable to an LGBT student or academician before Stonewall. Many, perhaps the majority of, American colleges and universities have courses with LGBT content. Scholarship about sexuality has exploded. On some progressive campuses, the queer student association is one of the largest groups. Some students arrive at college now proudly and loudly proclaiming their queerness, or at least ready to explore it. At Oberlin, where I now teach, many are willing in class to discuss their own sexuality with breathtaking matter-of-factness, a matter-of-factness that sometimes leaves my head spinning. A few years ago, during a discussion of Catharine MacKinnon's theories of male domination, a young woman, much taken with MacKinnon's ideas, threw up her hands and said, "I just, I just, I just don't see why anyone would want a penis."
For the first time in many years of teaching, I was speechless. Luckily one of the gay men in the class came to my rescue. "I'll explain it to you after class," he said to the young woman, and everyone chuckled.
So the current generation of students, or at least a segment of them �" those lucky enough to figure themselves out early, those not overly influenced by evangelical religion, perhaps �" seem extraordinarily comfortable with sexuality and with queer sexuality.
But what about the professoriate? Many of our students may be open, accepting, and nonchalant, but what about our colleagues and the staff members with whom we work?
Within the last few years several incidents have led me to ask: How much have things truly changed in the American academy?
The incidents range from a fight at the American Political Science Association about holding a convention in an anti-gay locale to a fight with my graduate school adviser when I dared to attack as "homophobic" the argument that sodomy should be outlawed. The courses with queer content I taught at another institution were attacked and not considered relevant to American politics.
As these incidents accumulated, I was forced to ask myself uncomfortable questions:
Are we really living in a world that much different from the bad old days before anyone came out? Are we accepted, or merely tolerated, and what's the difference? Are we still, on some level, treated as second-class citizens?
One example.
It's the summer of 2005. I have just arrived at Oberlin, where I have been named dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. I am having lunch at a local restaurant, and I hear a conversation in another booth about me. I am referred to as "that faggot." There is much laughter. "It shouldn't be too hard to get rid of that faggot."
I do not know who is speaking, I cannot see him, and I don't want to. I stop eating, ask for my bill, and leave.
I go straight home. I collapse face-down on my bed, sleep for hours, only get up when Patsy, my sweet golden retriever, comes and nudges me awake with her wet nose around 7 p.m. I feed Patsy and I eat cold spaghetti out of the refrigerator and then collapse again at 8:30. I don't get out of bed until 9 the next morning.
I had just moved into my house, everything was chaos, boxes half unpacked. I stared at the boxes for a long time that morning. Finally I pulled out a random book: Queer Studies, an edited volume. I started laughing, so long and hard that Patsy grew alarmed. Over the next few days I walked around as if I had a bad case of jet lag.
I went to the grocery store and had trouble focusing on the task at hand; what did I need in the kitchen? I put too much laundry soap in the washing machine and created a flood of suds on the basement floor.
After this and after similar incidents, through some combination of orneriness and bravado, I forced myself to snap back, to reenter a normal state of being. But in each case a wound had been created, and there would be a scar, sometimes tiny, sometimes a huge gash.
I served as dean at Oberlin for only a short time, and then went back to the classroom, where I belong. I have, since then, found Oberlin to be a wonderful place. The students are engaged, serious, and a joy to teach. There are many queer members of the faculty, the staff, and the student body. There are courses with LGBT content, and students can major or minor in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. The administration is hugely supportive. All of this is real progress.
But one thing is clear, at least to me, after nearly 40 years in academic life: There are hearts and minds that we still must work to change, even in a small college town with a reputation for progressivism. Gay marriage is not the end of our struggle.
H. N. Hirsch is professor of politics at Oberlin College in Ohio and the author of Office Hours: One Academic Life (Quid Pro Press, 2016).