- Fourth Reason, IT IS CREATING A SKEWED CULTURE. HIGHER EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION?
“A 2008 study on university campuses found that a whopping 87 percent of “emerging” adult men (aged 18-26), and 31 percent of emerging adult women report using porn at some level. Slightly over two thirds of young men, and nearly half of young women believe that porn consumption is morally acceptable. This statistic of acceptance is particularly interesting because it is pulled from our generation, which often defines right and wrong in terms of consequences. Consequence-based morality maintains that if something doesn’t hurt yourself or others, it’s not wrong. …passively accepting pornography overlooks the very real consequences of porn consumption”[1].
As we saw briefly in the previous chapter, another area where young minds are being indoctrinated is on our college campuses. These students are legally permitted to be included in the adult entertainment industry, but not allowed to drink alcohol. Here again, law may not be able to stop the behaviors, but selling pornography to students should certainly be unacceptable. Is this the state of American higher learning institutions, allowing the pornography industry to teach impressionable young men and women? These are American businesses. Is this the future of American business ethics?
In an article describing Yale “Sex Week”, the author describes what takes place, “During Sex Week, porn stars and sex industry CEOs are invited on campus for a marathon of sex-related film screenings, seminars, and product demonstrations–all sanctioned by the university as “sex education”[2]. Another article shares the agenda for Sex Week 2013 at Yale, “featuring workshops and discussions, including one on “sexual fantasies about family members” and another to learn about masochistic sexual practices such as those depicted in 50 Shades of Grey,” the best-selling “erotic romance” novel[3]. Several other colleges have followed suit with this marketing of porn under the guise of education.
Probably the most alarming workshop at Yale Sex Week is the one including sexual fantasies about family members. Where can this agenda go? Recall the discipleship at CSUN as a direct result of Kinsey’s work. “His work influenced American Universities where some of his disciples, some being members of pedophilia societies, taught from his perspective and used pornography as mandated course work. Some students from California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and the Institute for the Advanced Study of human sexuality in San Francisco have engaged in public speaking and even appeared as expert witnesses in court cases defending crimes against women and children citing Kinsey’s work”[4].
University of California, Santa Barbara features a website that “encourages parents to react positively when four-year-olds touch each other’s genitals and says young children should be allowed to watch porn”[5]. The university hosts an online platform run by students, called “SexInfo Online”. A statement in a section entitled, Talking to your Children about Sex”, the advice they give is clearly bias and harmful to children. “It is important that children understand that viewing pornography is a normal habit, and that they do not need to be ashamed of it”[6].
Age of consent in some countries is as low as 11. Women and children’s advocates in France recently went through a battle dealing with age of consent and in the end the government did not enforce one, but instead added some language that might help victims, but could also be used against them. “In March Equality minister Marlene Schiappa announced to widespread support that the government planned to make 15 the age of sexual consent after a public outcry over two cases involving 11year-old girls”[7]. After public consultation and the recommendation of a panel of experts, the government decided to make this law, but then in May recanted its’ decision. “Instead of introducing a minimum age of consent the new bill creates a new offence of “sexual violation of a minor by penetration”[8]. This bill calls for longer prison sentences than the sexual assault law previously used in these situations, but shorter sentences than a rape violation. Critics call say this bill leaves muddy waters. They fear offenders will get away with a lighter sentence after committing an act of penetration on a minor if “surprise and coercion” cannot be proved, which is what is required in the sexual assault law. “The new bill states that surprise of coercion “can” be characterized by the abuse of the victim’s vulnerability, who doesn’t have the necessary discernment to consent”[9]. The use of the word “can” leaves a loophole for someone to argue that the victim was “mature” for their age. Clearly, the people did not have their way in this issue. Is America ready for this type of politics?
The students at University of California, Santa Barbara are clearly being indoctrinated by courses in advanced topics in human sexuality offered at the university. One course, taught by Dr. Constance Penley professor of film and media studies and author of, “The Politics of Producing Pleasure and Teaching Pornography” problematizes the historical relationship between art and performance through an aesthetic of international avant-garde cinema and hopes to sync pornography into the same category as all other forms of film and popular culture. The course features speakers such as porn star Jessica Drake and studies Penley’s own film which entails hardcore sex, as a married couple explores an open relationship. Another of Penley’s books is co-authored by Mirelle Miller- Young, who specializes in pornography and sex work. She is also known for being arrested for attacking a pro-life student at a protest.
[10].
Northwestern College’s class entitled, “Female Pleasure Feminism and the sexological tradition distinguishes between multiple theories of the nature of female pleasure and the assumptions about gender and sexuality that inform each. The works studied have an obvious bend toward liberalism. Authors include, Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, Emma Goldman, Anne Koedt, and Gayle Rubin.
“There are routes into the erotic communities which mark trails through the propaganda thicket and provide some economic shelter along the way. Higher education can be a route for young people from affluent backgrounds. In spite of serious limitations, the information on sexual behavior at most colleges and universities is better than elsewhere, and most colleges and universities shelter small erotic networks of all sorts”[11]
Gayle Rubin’s essay, “Thinking Sex” clearly states my argument on universities being a breeding ground for liberal ideologies on sexuality. We will study this essay in great detail later in this discussion, but let us start with a few of the other authors studied in this course.
A quote from Havelock Ellis gives us insight into the types of reading that will be studied in this course. “Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex”… “It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could nee have dared to be great”. This reminds me of the party of exposure in the work we studied earlier by Rachel Gurnstein. Sex was definitely a major issue in Ellis’s life. According to his two wives, his experience did not match his expertise. He was sexually inactive much of the time and maybe even impotent[12]. This reminds me of Hugh Hefner and some of the comments made by his partners. It also reminds me of Kinsey’s obsession with understanding sex, although he used experimentation rather than words. His works are studied in the course also, and we have already seen enough to know they are not credible.
Alfred Kinsey studied Freud and took some of his ideas to heart. In his quest for experience with sex, self-mutilation became a part of his studies. Sigmund Freud’s works are also included in this course. Of course, Freud did make major contributions to the study of sexuality but some of Freud’s ideas are clearly controversial. For instance, Freud linked sadomasochism to childhood spankings. In his theory of erotogenic masochism, he theorizes that we all have a deeply rooted desire to mix pleasure with pain and this desire is present in all of the developmental stages of the libido[13]. “A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is always at the same time a masochist”.
Emma Goldman, a woman known as an “anarchafeminist”, and one of the first women to advocate a lifestyle predicated not on marriage, but on free love, ended her famous piece entitled, “Marriage and Love” by recommending that people should abandon marriage and embrace “love”, the defier of all laws, of all conventions”[14]. The definition of love to this woman comes from a hedonistic viewpoint, not one of sacredness, sacrifice, and compromise. Imagine if we treated parenting in this way and called it love. This goes back to the idea of individual rights verses societal rights. Even in the institution of marriage, there has to be some give and take. Neither person is totally free to do what they what, when they want without affecting the other for the mere idea of seeking pleasure. In my opinion, the best definition of love comes from the Bible, but I do not think you’ll see that in this course. Although most married couples fail to completely live up to the ideal, it carries pure and sustaining principles.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”[15]
This is in sharp contrast to the “hookup” trend in American Universities……
Another one of the works studied in this course, Anne Koedts’, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm”, focused on the issue of where the orgasm physically comes from in a woman because she believed Freud had led education in the wrong direction on this issue. Her contribution to the issue may be important in women understanding that sex should be enjoyed by both partners, however this kind of dialogue usually ended up dividing, rather than uniting, and therefore promotes the idea of being anti-marriage. “Koedt advocated new sexual techniques mutually conducive to orgasm and urged women to insist on their own sexual satisfaction. A contemporary group called The Feminists also disavowed the vaginal orgasm but saw heterosexual sex itself as a social act reinforcing male domination”[16].
Finally, we come to Gayle Rubin’s controversial and influential piece, “Thinking Sex”. Rubin’s main tenets in this essay are: She speaks a lot about the child pornography laws of the 70’s causing a moral panic…” The most important and consequential kind of sex conflict is what Jeffrey Weeks has termed the ‘moral panic’. She defends an assistant college professor at Cornell University, Jacqueline Livingston who was fired for exhibiting nude photographs of men, and some other photos of her 7 year old son masturbating. She sympathizes with and credits the Man/Boy Love Association for protesting the new child pornography laws. “It is easy to see someone like Livingston as a victim of the child porn wars. It is harder for most people to sympathize with actual boy-lovers. Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boy lovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation”[17]”
A couple more quotes from Rubin’s essay:
“Local police, the FBI, and watchdog postal inspectors have joined to build a huge apparatus whose sole aim is to wipe out the community of men who love underaged youth. In twenty years or so (progressive thinking), when some of the smoke has cleared, it will be much easier to show that these men have been the victims of a savage and undeserved witch hunt. A lot of people will be embarrassed by their collaboration with this persecution, but it will be too late to do much good for those men who have spent their lives in prison. While the misery of boy-lovers affects very few, the other long-term legacy of the Dade County repeal affects almost everyone”. [18]
“Sexuality is as much a human product as are diets, methods of transportation, systems of etiquette, forms of labor, types of entertainment, processes of production, and modes of oppression. Once sex is understood in terms of social analysis and historical understanding, a more realistic politics of sex becomes possible. One may then think of sexual politics in terms of such phenomena as populations, neighborhoods, settlement patterns, migration, urban conflict, epidemiology, and police technology. These are more fruitful categories of thought than the more traditional ones of sin, disease, neurosis, pathology, decadence, pollution, or the decline and fall of empires”.[19]
To be continued…
[1] Wagley, R.(2011, March 28) Pornographic Ethics: Why we must not shy away from candid discussion on pornography. Harvard Crimson. Retrieved from: http://www.thecrimson.com/column/democracy-of-the-dead/article/2011/3/28/porn-pornography-moral-doeful/
[2] L. Webb, “Yale’s ‘Sex Week’ Exposed as US Colleges Manifest Moral Decline”. Charisma News. (2013, March 14) Retrieved from: http://www.charismanews.com/us/38658-yales-sex-week-exposed-as-us-colleges-manifest-moral-decline
[3] Starr, P. “Yale Hosts ‘Sex Week’ to Explore ‘Sexual Culture,’ Including Incest and Prostitution”. CNB News. (2013), Retrieved from: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/yale-hosts-sex-week-explore-sexual-culture-including-incest-and-prostitution
[5] Parke, Caleb/ Fox News, June 13, 2018/California university’s website says it OK for children to engage in ‘sexual play’ and watch porn
[6] Ibid
[7] Ben McPartland, The Local, August 3, 2018, France gets tough on sexual violence against minors
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ben Parker, July 30, 2015, The ups and downs of UCSB’s 22 year old porn class, Univ of Penn, The College Fix, Retrieved from: https://www.thecollegefix.com/the-ups-and-downs-of-ucsbs-22-year-old-porn-class/
[11] Ibid
[13] https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/erotogenic-masochism
[14] M. Mcampbell, Emma Goldman and Postmodern Love, February 13, 2012, Anarchist Theory and History Independent, WordPress. Retrieved from: https://isanarchisttheoryandhistory.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/emma-goldman-and-postmodern-love/
[15] 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)
[16] https://www.enotes.com/topics/myth-vaginal-orgasm
[17] Gayle Rubin, Thinking Sex, Notes on a Radical Theory of Politics in Sexuality, Retrieved from: http://sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/files/2015/01/Rubin-Thinking-Sex.pdf
[18] Ibid
[19] Ibid
10 Common Sense Reasons to Reject Pornography 