Excuse me, miss. Is this where I register for the gender studies conference? Thought so. It smells like frigid women desperate for the forceful touch of a dominating male. What’s your name? Mary, huh. Mary, Mary. Going by that third-wave feminism look you got goin’ on, you ain’t no virgin.
Let me introduce myself. I’m Dr. David Ian Coxley. Surely my name rings a bell. Does the term “reconstruction of post-industrial hypermasculinity” mean anything to you? Don’t worry — you’re young.
Hey now, don’t be shy. Come closer. I wanna whisper something into your cute little undergraduate ear:
I put the “stud” in gender studies.
Got plans tonight, Megan? Or whatever your name is. Make yourself free. I want to play a game of house with you. We’ll call ourselves the Halberstams. I’ll be Jack, and you can be Judy, and then we’ll switch.
Baby, I’ve been all around academia, picking up women’s studies coeds since before you were born, genderless into a gendered world. Who needs Jacques Lacan when I put the “man” in woman?
You think I don’t know that gender is performative? Honey, masculinity was created the moment I took the stage. Just look up “heteronormative patriarchy” in that little book of yours and you’ll see a photo of me, my objectifying gaze fixed on you.
Meredith, I put the butt in Butler, the fuck in Foucault. So many female-identified grad students beg me to supervise their theses, I pass them along to adjuncts.
You don’t believe me, Mariah? Oh, you want to see my long list of publications? Bibliographies are for babies, baby. I’m a maverick scholar, I cite myself, and then I cite myself citing myself.
Come on, let’s go to my place and I’ll bend your body like Virginia Woolf did to Orlando’s gender.
Where are you going? Don’t you like gender studs?
Dr. David Ian Coxley is a professor of English literature at Yale