Michigan State University’s official campus bookstore is selling shirts declaring that “Gender Is a Social Construct,” turning school merchandise into a billboard for radical gender ideology.
The shirts, produced by LGBTQ activist brand The Phluid Project, feature the slogan in Michigan State green and are displayed alongside official university apparel.
This is not a generic Pride shirt or a call for tolerance. It is an explicit ideological statement about gender, branded in university colors and sold through the university’s official bookstore.
“This is clearly a waste of space in our bookstore on a taxpayer-funded campus,” said MSU Young Americans for Freedom Chairman, Aidan Haas. “It’s also telling that the bookstore isn’t selling shirts saying, ‘There Are Two Genders.’ At a university that is a leader in medicine and education, they’re instead selling shirts meant to lead those reading them into fantasies like transgenderism.”
The Phluid Project describes itself as a queer-owned business that seeks “to break down societal barriers and promote self-expression without limitation.” Its website also sells apparel reading “Protect Trans Kids,” “Defend Trans Youth,” “Stop Being Straight,” and merchandise celebrating the Stonewall Riots.
By choosing to stock the company’s products, Michigan State is lending the credibility of its official bookstore to a brand built around left-wing activism.
Millions of Americans reject the claim that gender is separate from biological sex. Many Michigan State students hold beliefs that reflect that fact. Yet the university’s official bookstore promotes one side of that issue while offering no merchandise representing the other, alienating thousands of students on campus.
That sends a message extending well beyond a single T-shirt.
An official university bookstore should reflect all students, not remind conservative students or even just students with traditional values that their beliefs are not welcome there.
Whether intentional or not, the display reinforces what many students already believe, that their views are tolerated only when they remain silent, while radical leftist ideology receives the university’s institutional backing.
For a taxpayer-funded institution that claims to value diversity of thought, those are questions worth answering.
The New Guard reached out to Michigan State University for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
