Islamophobia and Legitimization of Homophobic Research

*** I took out the professor’s name from the original submission. ***

In an Abnormal Psychology class (paraphrased for brevity):

1) [Shows image of women in Burqa getting their photo taken in front of monument] “Now look at this; doesn’t this just seem ridiculous to you? I mean why get your photo taken if you can’t even tell who you are?” [laughs]

2) [Shows this image] “I walked up to this woman and told her she had three beautiful daughters, and she got mad at me [laughs] I don’t know why; I was just trying to give her a compliment.”

3) [Summarizes this study, often cited among the most unethical in Psychology’s long history, wherein a homosexual man is “cured” by getting Deep Brain Stimulation] “So as you can see, even behaviours which we typically think of as innate can be changed by manipulating the brain” [no mention of the study being unethical is given].

I am white, cis, male, hetero, anglo. All 3 or of the professor’s micro (macro?) aggressions made me feel angry and sad and horrified with him and our school for letting him teach. There was a girl three rows in front of me in Hijab, and after incident #1 (the first day of class) I never saw her again.