The paper is part of a wider study into how women's studies was introduced in the academic curriculum in the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA. It looks at the sexual politics of the academy during the 1970s and 1980s, and at how they are now remembered. Women's studies was inextricably bound up in the politics of feminist activism in the period, including the ideal of working collectively in women-only groups. But the academy was male-dominated and the consent of male colleagues was indispensable. There was a further challenge to separatist practice if men wished to enroll as students. The paper starts by setting the research in the context of influential texts such as Kate Millett's "Sexual politics" (1972) and the framework of patriarchy. Using recorded interviews with key activists, the paper traces interaction with male colleagues. The second part reflects on how, thirty years later, the concept of patriarchy has been developed by intellectual work on gender, and by a more complex understanding of sexual identity and its interaction with sexual politics, now reflected in the curriculum, and in the re-naming of women's studies as gender studies.