(Texas Scorecard) – Texas A&M University-College Station offers several courses focused on gender ideology. However, these courses may need to be re-examined in light of a presidential order and a recent decision from the university’s board of regents.
Last week, the regents of the Texas A&M University System resolved to ban on-campus drag shows across all A&M campuses due to their demeaning and inappropriate content. In their resolution, the regents also acknowledged the biological reality of two sexes and recognized President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars to promote “gender ideology extremism.”
The following spring 2025 courses offered by Texas A&M-College Station may contradict the new directions from the board of regents.
LGBTQIA+ Literatures is an upper-level course that can satisfy an English or Women’s and Gender Studies credit. The course includes learning modules like: “It all began gay,” “Sex, Kids, Future: Queer Temporality,” “Trans, Drag, and Queer Art,” “Troubling Gender,” “Gay, Nation, Race and His/tory: Queer Negativity,” “Female Masculinity and Lesbian Experiences,” and “Queer(ing) Friendship.”
Sociology of Gender is an undergraduate course in Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies. The course, particularly its week two and three modules, revolves around teaching the “Social Construction of Gender.” The following two weeks touch upon intersectionality then continue on the theme of gender with modules like “Gender and Embodiment,” “Gender, Race and Politics,” “Sexuality & Family,” “Gender, State and Citizenship,” “Gender and Work,” and “Gender and Globalization.”
The instructor’s course objectives involve teaching students to “apply feminist concepts and theories to everyday events and ongoing social debates” and to “understand how race, class, sexuality, and other social categories intersect with gender and produce complex inequalities.”
Gender and Communication is a Communication and Women’s and Gender Studies course examining “how we perform gender and how we become gendered through the processes of social interaction.”
Students are asked to write an assignment called “Gender Credentials” to reflect on their respective gender identities and their “intersecting identities” for an assignment worth 15 percent of their grade.
Additionally, the class spends a week on the module “Policing and Performing Gender” which teaches that “transgender” individuals are effectively whatever gender they want to be perceived as.
Gender, Race, and Media is an upper-level undergraduate Communication course. The course teaches that there is a need for “queer representation” and devotes a week to a module entitled “Let’s Talk About Gender,” requiring students to read “Transgender Transitions.”
It also devotes a week-long section to teaching students how to critically analyze conservative media and “white males.”
In the syllabus, the professor wrote that students will learn how to “effectively read, discuss, and reflect upon topics relating to the role of media in social power, privilege, and oppression.”
Queer Theory is a senior-level course in the Women’s and Gender Studies department with two sections. It is currently being taught this spring semester. A learning outcome of the course is to “apply queer theory to various social issues and analyze how queer theory contributes to our understanding of society.”
Feminist Theory is an upper-level Women’s and Gender Studies course. Its instructor aims to teach students to “appreciate the connection between feminist theory and feminist goals for social change.” It asks students, “How do feminists theorize gender and what dilemmas does it present to feminist theory and praxis? Who is afraid of gender?”
The course teaches through a lens of critical theory and identity politics, highlighting a founder of critical race theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw.
It also focuses on intersectionality—an ideology that asserts certain identity categories like sexuality, race, disability, etc., marginalize people and concludes that educated, well-to-do, white men are oppressors.
Human Sexuality is an undergraduate Psych and Brain Science course which can be taken as a Women’s and Gender Studies Course. It also satisfies a required international and cultural diversity credit. The course uses nearly the entire month of February to assess “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” Students are quizzed on this content, according to the syllabus.
It invites students to see sex in the world around them and gives them two optional project assignments. The first option is to create a project that “takes action” using information in the course and the second is to write a “Sexual Self-Analysis” paper on aspects of the student’s sexuality.
Introduction to Gender and Society is a Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies Course that is taught in four sections by two different professors.
Course objectives involve teaching students to “recognize how gender intersects with race, class, nationality, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation.” Another aim is for students to “have a robust understanding of gender as a social construct.”
The course satisfies the university’s core curriculum requirements under social and behavioral science and language, philosophy, and culture.
One final project requires students to create a presentation on “an issue related to gender at work.” Another section of the course focuses on modules like “Sexism, Power, and Misogyny” and white privilege, and directs students to take a Buzzfeed privilege test.
Students must then write a response to their test results for the rest of the class to read and respond to. Section 502 of the Sociology course tells students to write a one-to-two-page letter to their 13-year-old selves telling them what they wish they had known about sex.
Texas A&M-College Station did not respond to Texas Scorecard‘s request for comment.
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