Dr. Pat Washingto-by Mitch Bruss

Dr. Pat Washington is a contemporary and highly verbal women’s studies scholar and an active participate for the advancement of eradicating social inequalities across the United States. Dr. Washington is a rather unique feminist because of the vantage point that she takes to approaching women’s rights. Moreover, Dr. Washington to renowned and known for taking a “gender specific” viewpoint to examine the social separation in the United States, and across the world. She has published an ecliptic group of publications that included such varied topics as: social location on the nature and quality of services available to survivors of sexual violence; within-group oppression in communities of color and in mainstream lesbian and gay communities; and resistance/social justice strategies—most notably the utility of community-based service learning in advancing academic scholarship and social activism.
The unfortunate series of events that put Dr. Washington the public eye began at San Diego State University. In 1996, Dr. Pat Washington was hired as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Women's Studies at San Diego State University. She was the first lesbian, black professor in the Women’s Studies program at San Diego State University. Problems began in May of 2003 when Dr. Washington was denied tenure despite going above and beyond what San Diego State University expected from her as a professor. Moreover, Dr Washington came out with numerous publications and was award the “outstanding faculty” award three times. Dr. Washington was later fired for undisclosed reasons.
Since being fired and denied tenure, Dr Washington has focused her efforts on the protection of gay women minorities. She has concentrated her efforts into helping gay women minorities in the forms of: helping them find jobs, protecting their place in society, trying to pass anti-discriminatory legislation in California, and supporting the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Lastly, before researching this woman for this project, I had never heard of her. However, after the completion of this project I have realized that in order to be successful in life you must come to grips, as sad as it may sound, that the contemporary U.S. culture is not colorblind. There are still older generations that are sexist, racist, and homophobic, as seen in Dr. Washington’s case. So, in order to be successful, you must realize that these older generations are still capable of discriminatory acts, and therefore you must be prepared to encounter such situations, deal with them in a professional manner, and eventually overcome them for the future advancements of America’s people.

- www.patwashington.org
- www.patwashington.org/news_20050208.shtml
- sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2004/08/105525.shtml
- sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2006/03/114308.shtml