California Catholic Daily exclusive.

On Tuesday, March 7 and Wednesday, March 8, 2017, the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco will host their annual “Global Women’s Rights Forum.” The event will be held in the University’s McLaren Complex.

The “Global” in the name is a misnomer, unless one believes that the majority of women find “Feminism of Color and the Politics of Print” or “the intersections of sexuality, race, and gender with different forms of citizenships and borders” or “Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Left” to be synonymous with their rights.

The March 7 program is “Hookup Culture, Culture, Sexual Politics and Campus Rape: A discussion with Leah Fessler and USF students Angela ‘Anju’ Kasturiraj and Kay Nilsson.” The page includes short bios of the panelists:

Leah Fessler: “… is initiating an important national dialogue on how young people really feel about modern sexual expectations, the intersection of hookup culture and feminism, and more broadly, campus sexual politics.”

Anju Kasturiraj “..a third year Critical Diversity Studies and Sociology major, the Intercultural Center Arts Intern, and host of Lyricist Lounge. She uses her poetry to express her identity as a queer woman and diasporic identity…”

Kay Nilsson  “…a poet and performer currently attending the University of San Francisco. He’s performed at poetry slams and readings across the Bay Area. He has featured as a literary performer at Queer Rebels Festival, Radar Productions, the San Francisco Queer Open Mic…”

The workshops and workshop presenters on Wednesday, March 8  are:

“Not Your Mother’s Feminism: New Intersections in Media, Art and Activism: Talk + Q&A by Kim Tran of Third Woman Press: Queer and Feminist of Color Publishing.”  From the description: “Kim Tran, UC Berkeley, works on race, gender and coalition building. Her writing has been published locally and nationally in Vice News, Vox and Mic. In 2008 she helped establish the LGBTQ Youthspace, a safe-space and therapeutic program for queer youth of color…”

That’s followed by: “’Writing the Walls Down’: Poetry/Spoken Word Performance.” From the description: “Helen Klonaris, Amir Rabiyah, Celeste Chan, and Janine Mogannam will read their excerpts from the collection Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, which brings together poets exploring the intersections of sexuality, race, and gender with different forms of citizenships and borders…”

The day’s final workshop is “Contesting the Transformation: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Left: A Panel Discussion.” Panelists are Constanza Tabbush of the University of Buenos Aires, who will discuss “LGBT Rights Yes, Abortion No: Explaining Uneven Trajectories in Argentina under Kirchnerism (2003-2015)”; Rachel Elfenbein of Simon Fraser University, “Towards Feminist Socialism? Gender, Sexuality, Popular Power, and the State in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution”; and Annie Wilkinson of UC Irvine, “Ecuador’s Citizen Revolution (2007-2017): A Lost Decade for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality.” The panel is moderated by Elisabeth Jay Friedman of USF.

The day will close with a theatrical performance by Monique Jenkinson, called “The F Word.” From the USF website “The F Word is FEMINISM! No longer unmentionable, now on everyone’s lips – let’s hear it from the painted mouth of a lady drag queen….Monique Jenkinson (Fauxnique) is a multi-genre performing artist and choreographer whose work uses drag to consider the performance of femininity as a forceful, vulnerable and subversive act.”

In the years that CalCatholic has been covering USF’s “Global Women’s Rights Forum”, (see “Abortionfest at USF” or “Queer Art & Abortion”; it has grown ever more bizarre. The increasing search for ever more remote categories of aggrieved victims brings with it a corresponding shrinking of general relevance to women in general. At the same time, the subject most universally, one might even say ‘globally’, relevant to university-age women, marriage and family—which would also be of interest to any genuinely Catholic university, is completely ignored.