Outraged parents in Central California are demanding answers from a local high school district after kids as young as 14 were shown content featuring a bloody abortion and men wearing strap-on genitalia.
Sanger High School students ages 14 to 18 were exposed to graphic abortion imagery and explicit language while taking a summer dual-enrollment art course at Reedley College taught by professor Jose Soria.
The class, titled “Art 2 Introduction to Visual Culture,” was a dual enrollment class that featured content from an art installation called Wo/Manhouse 2022. Inside the installation was a “At Home D.I.Y. Abortion” room that showed a statue of a woman sitting on a bench bleeding with a coat hanger nearby.
Another room showed pictures of women breastfeeding alongside a cow statue pumping out breast milk while a bathroom named “Trans Bathroom” featured a “TESTOSTERONE INJECTION SITES” sign and compression underwear.
Other graphic language such as “DON’T FORGET FOREPLAY” was also taped on walls. An “ENCOURAGING BANNERS FOR ORGASMS” plaque was also attached to the wall.
Parents voiced their concerns to the school, prompting a response from the school board.
“While the curriculum for these courses is established by Reedley College and is not modified for high school students, we believe parents should have the information necessary to make an informed decision regarding their student’s participation,” Sanger Unified School Board Superintendent Dennis Weichmann said in an email obtained by the San Joaquin Valley Sun.
Wo/Manhouse 2022 was an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first “openly Feminist art installation.” Opened in 1972, an abandoned mansion was transformed into an exhibit filled with artistic representation of female experiences.
As for the teacher, Soria, he describes his work as being “informed by the complex relationships that exist between religious, sexual, and cultural identity” and that he “pulls personal memories and religious imagery from his youth and incorporates it into his life size figure paintings” as a former closeted bisexual, according to his biography.
Students at Sanger High are able to take dual enrollment classes at other junior colleges such as Fresno City College and Clovis Community College. The courses are free and the program allows students to receive college credits while attending high school.
