English instructors were like that in the most old fashioned of universities in the Midwest during the ‘80s. They were hooked closely to women’s studies departments and other departments. There were even ties to nursing. Most people just didn’t want to hear about it or deal with it. Now look at the society of youth as a result of that.
I was an English Literature major at Penn State back in the 1980s, and this nonsense was just getting started back then. Hard to believe I emerged unscathed.
Anyway, some of the liberal female professors got together to form an organization they named AWE: Association of Women in English.
An iconoclastic male student decided to lampoon it by putting up posters depicting an organization called APE: Association of Persons in English, illustrated with a drawing of an ape eating a banana.
The feminists in the English Department were not amused.