Ancient Greek poets explored homosexuality in epics over 2,000 years ago. Scholars have widely researched sexuality’s ties to 20th century politics, like in Gayle Rubin’s 1984 essay, “Thinking Sex.” Yet in 2025, the teachings surrounding gender and sexuality — and their corresponding literature — are increasingly under attack in higher education. 

On Oct. 16, USC declined the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which included, among other propositions, a portion demanding that universities adopt a strict definition of gender in exchange for preferential federal funding and other benefits.

Specifically, the compact stated universities should “commit to defining and otherwise interpreting “male,” “female,” “woman,” and “man” according to reproductive function and biological processes.”

If this definition of gender were accepted, it may have directly conflicted with the teaching and course materials within the more than 25 courses in the department of gender and sexuality studies at USC — the restrictions being an issue that some USC community members are strongly against. 

“Studying sex and sexuality, irrespective of what kinds of times we live in, is an important form of engaging — it’s an important part of humanistic studies,” said Vinky Mittal, a teaching assistant for the “Social Analysis of Gender” course.

Mittal said the goal behind the different academic discussion sections and the research done within the department of gender and sexuality studies is to reach a consensus that gender is “not absent from anything.” 

“These discussions in our class, they help students make sense of the world around us, things that they see in culture, things that they see in popular media,” Mittal said. “It gives them a standpoint from which they can understand the object better, and I think students are very open to that.” 

In her discussion section of 25 students, Mittal said that it’s been “incredible” to see students of varying familiarity with feminist ideas engage with texts that center on sexuality and gender ideology from authors like bell hooks. When she sees students dissect such texts, Mittal said she views it as a “productive struggle” that students are open to. 

Cordelia Janow, a senior majoring in American popular culture, recalled reading works like “Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk” by Henry Jenkins, “The Right to Sex” by Amia Srinivasan and “Uses of the Erotic” by Audre Lorde, in different pop culture and gender studies classes.

“It’s cool to talk about in classes and I don’t generally find that it makes students particularly uncomfortable,” Janow said.  “I’ve had some really awesome class discussions about ‘taboo’ topics, and everyone’s just laughing and enjoying themselves.” 

She said that hearing other students’ experiences was also interesting, especially when sitting with stories from those who identify as queer since “everyone does have such different experiences.”

“These are topics that affect everyone, even if they think that they’re not interested in it or don’t care, they’re still experiencing all of these things,” Janow said. “I just wish everyone took gender studies classes, but that’s just because I think that they’re fun and cool.”

Censorship in classrooms became apparent in Texas where the Texas A&M University System regents voted in November to restrict how professors may teach subjects, like gender identity, while implementing a prior review system of course materials. This vote comes one year after the university removed the minor in LGBTQ studies.

In general, these new administrative efforts are due to Texas A&M wanting to assert control over its teachings as Republican officials accuse public universities of “indoctrinating” students with liberal ideologies on race and gender. 

Mitchell Jacobs, a writing instructor for the Thematic Options’ “Writing Seminar II,” remains against classroom censorship or requiring prior approval of course materials. He believes that censorship would promote a limited view of what humanity is by treating these topics as “morally corrupt” or “unspeakable.”

Jacobs said that the consumption and sharing of literature — even the kind that may not be directly relevant to one person’s lifestyle — brings the opportunity to showcase respect for cross-cultural understanding.

He plans to utilize his course to further research the interdisciplinary dynamics of situationships — a romantic or sexual relationship whose participants haven’t formally defined it or officially committed to it — while showing texts from a variety of time periods as well as foreign films, like the 2022 Pakistani film, “Joyland.”

“It’s not high school anymore. We’re adults. These are aspects of life. There are aspects of society,” Jacobs said, regarding bringing academic or artistic perspectives on sexuality and sex into the classroom for open discussion. 

In an age of high political polarization, Jacobs said cracking open books or watching a movie based around gender and sexuality is a good thing. He said the more perspectives shared, the more people can directly receive the human experience of a certain sexual identity, which is the true “power of narrative.”

“It’s important to be able to have these types of open but also rigorous dialogs about these types of things, so I very much believe that talking about them has a role in the classroom,” Jacobs said.