Northwestern students and administrators are defending an explicit after-class demonstration involving a woman being publicly penetrated by a sex toy on stage in the popular Human Sexuality course last week.The optional presentation last Monday, attended by about 120 students, featured a naked non-student woman being repeatedly sexually stimulated to the point of orgasm by the sex toy, referred to as a "fucksaw." The device is essentially a motorized phallus.
The things we have to do to keep them entertained, these days...
ReplyDeleteNorthwestern was founded as a university "of the highest order of excellence." Go U NU!
what a lovely example of a lack of common sense----"Our new Republican state legislature is looking for budgets to cut in education. I have an idea! Let's sponsor a live sex show with something called a F___saw!"
ReplyDeleteWhy not just knee a state senator in the nuts and dare him to gut your budget...
I was pretty surprised when I saw that one of our ilk had such a colossal lack of judgment.
ReplyDeleteNow, of course, I'm curious about the nature of the f***saw... .
I'm not buying it. If it's a class, they shouldn't be paying attention.
ReplyDeleteI thought we were discouraged from posting links to stories. Every time it happens people bitch about it.
ReplyDeleteGreta, Fox News posted a picture on their site.
ReplyDelete"Furthermore, earlier that day in my lecture I had talked about the attempts to silence sex research, and how this largely reflected sex negativity … I did not wish, and I do not wish, to surrender to sex negativity and fear."
ReplyDeleteToo bad he didn't try surrendering to good judgment. (Or, at least, try thinking about how his actions could hurt the fight to maintain institutional assurances of academic freedom.)
I have to agree that this isn't the wisest thing to do in the current climate, but it does seem like the professor covered the bases in terms of everyone involved, including the students, being both informed and consenting. Still, the shock-'em-by-being-sexually-explicit tactic seems a little shopworn to me by now, a view which may be supported by the use of the sex toy. After all, actual and/or simulated sex on film, and probably even on stage, has already been done -- so much so that it's unlikely to be new to any of our students.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not sure that I'm willing to accept a demonstration of a sex toy that closely resembles a power saw as uncomplicatedly "sex positive." It brings up some interesting questions about constructions of both the "masculine" and the "feminine" in our culture, and about connections between sex and violence, and I wouldn't at all mind discussing those with students, but if that aspect wasn't at least acknowledged, I'd be concerned.
@ELS: I think it's the posting of whole long articles without commentary (serious or snarky) or questions that people (including me) objected to. A short excerpt with some contextualization (in this case, I think the title counts) and a link is different.
@Cassandra - It speaks volumes that this professor (I feel like I should be putting that label in scare-quotes, really) claims to be doing research on sexuality and yet would still unproblematically espouse categories like 'sex-positive' and 'sex-negative'. It's a ridiculously simplistic binary, which, in my experience, is generally used to condemn any perspective which critiques boundless promiscuity and unconstrained expressions of sexual desire in the public sphere.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that some commenters believe that there should not be a college course titled, "Human Sexuality." Maybe we shouldn't even be allowed to utter that word... s - e - x !
ReplyDeleteDamn, my entire lengthy comment just evaporated. Well, here's the gist:
ReplyDeleteAnything called a "fucksaw", whose handle looks exactly like a power tool handle because that's exactly what it is, is not uncomplicatedly "sex-positive", and it is naive to claim that a live demonstration with it is not exploring the uncomfortable nexus of sex and violence. The subtext (hey, what if we had some OTHER attachment on this powered saw handle? Say, the one it was DESIGNED for?) is too close to the surface. I assume, hope, that that's what the prof was getting at.
But even if he wasn't, I salute his refusal to bow to the right wing Rethuglican "stupidity is good so let's axe education" climate. His method may have been ill-judged, but if we start caving in out of fear they won't HAVE to beat us into submission, because we'll have done it to ourselves.
@Merely Academic: Stupidity isn't good. Stupidity is great. We should burn books and ban education. Life is better for stupid people.
ReplyDelete@introvert.prof: That's a classic.
Ew. I hope they used a tarp.
ReplyDeleteIs it bad that I had a more-than-passing familiarity with the "fucksaw" and its other motorized friends before this debacle?
ReplyDeleteCount-down to the law suit against Fox News/distribution of Darwin Awards.
ReplyDeleteLook at what they show and read the caption. Apparently they aren't actually showing anything. It involves an attachment. That makes it sound like an accessory, doesn't it? Like they're showing us something, just leaving out one little detail. But it's an ordinary reciprocating saw. What they show is LITERALLY something from Home Depot - the attachment is the business end of the story. But I promise you, there is some moron out there saying "My husband has one of those, I didn't know you could use it for that...."
I PROMISE you, there will be a lawsuit in a matter of weeks. No, maybe months. Because it's not like they're just going to get hurt and say "I'm suing someone." They're going to be dead. And it'll take until enough idiots accidentally kill themselves this way that someone else catches on to the pattern and figures out what the fuck made them do it.
I my rather jaded opinion, this comes down to the difference between doing what is correct, doing what is popular, and doing what is right (and usually smart).
ReplyDeleteYes, we have academic freedom. Some disciplines obviously rely upon this more than others: if you are teaching organic chemistry, the body of knowledge has been somewhat defined for you. Insofar as the letter of the law, the professor at Northwestern was well within accepted territory. This “demonstration” was announced in advance and not mandatory: his bases are covered. The popular phrases we hear bandied around the academic water cooler will contain phrases like “free speech” and “within the professor’s rights” as well as “daring and experimental”.
In my mind, several other phrases come to mind: What the hell was he thinking? Does he want to become a target of the conservatives? In times of limited budget and heightened scrutiny , this professor has somewhat tarnished ALL academics: is this the kind of flawed judgment that we should all gladly get behind? Is this the cause that we all will have to adopt when we come to state budgets towards higher education getting slashed? I can hear it now in FOX NEWS: “IS this what you want YOUR child to learn at the IVORY TOWER U?”.
When I was on active duty in the Navy, we were CONSTANTLY told that our actions would be magnified if we got into trouble: it would not be “A DUI was given on Friday evening”: it would read “A Navy officer was given a DUI on Friday after nearly killing a busload of children coming home from a charity event”. This is no less true for college faculty.
It would behoove us to accept and embrace the fact that we are 1) highly visible, 2) easy targets, and 3) role models. We ought to be a lot more careful about the image that we project. To quote the movie “the Right Stuff”, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”.
Right on, C.Rocks.
ReplyDeleteOur local paper has now picked up this story, and the online comments are disheartening. More than half are making comments like, "these sorts of things are important to learn." Yes, people are now so dumbified that they actually believe watching a live performance of porn acts constitutes an 'educational experience', and anyone who objects is a 'sex-negative' party-pooper.
Frankly, I'm simply baffled about how these events came to pass in the first place. Obviously, at some point, this woman made known her interest in performing such an act. Instead of doing the reasonable and compassionate thing -- telling this woman she needs to see I psychologist, asap, to get to the root of her self-destructive exhibitionist tendencies -- this dude's response is, "Sure! What a great idea! I'm sure my male students will love leering at you exploit yourself, blessed by my professorial sanction, while my female students learn the valuable lesson that our society's efforts to sexualize and demean women to the extent that they become willing participants in their own oppression need not be left outside the classroom door." The mind, it boggles.
I know I had my cynical persona on earlier in this thread, but really. Anybody know where I can get some brain bleach? This is a straight-up porno rape fantasy on the same order as 15 guys creaming on some woman's face, and her then drinking it. Something else I need brain bleach form.
ReplyDeleteBlack Dog, if you're really more than casually acquainted with this, you're nuckin' futz. It's a power saw.
This is on the same order of stupid as putting a bunch of home-made meth into your system. As someone with a bit of safety training, the mind, it boggles.
I remember taking a sociology course as an undergrad. We were made to watch a very graphic movie on female castration (they showed everything). Many of us walked out when the cutting started taking place, myself included. I remember that the instructor got mad at us for leaving, said it was rude to her and the women who were being castrated. I could have stayed, but puking on the floor would have also been considered rude ;)
ReplyDeleteWe've discussed repeatedly on CM and RYS the difficulties that female faculty and instructors face in trying to get male students to treat us with the same respect they show toward male professors, to recognize our credentials and authority in the classroom, and to take our ideas and perspectives seriously.
ReplyDeleteReally, what better way could there be to further this goal than to explicitly (pun intended) link the notion of "women who are entitled to occupy the front a classroom and be granted my attention" with "women who are willing to perform sex acts for my viewing pleasure" in their tiny, uncritical noggins? Surely, there can be no downside to this? /sarcasm font
The other thing that, on further reflection, is bothering me more than a bit is that there does seem to be a strong possibility that this woman gets sexual gratification from exhibitionism. I have no objection to exhibitionism per se, as long as everyone involved is fully informed and fully consenting. But if this was described as a "demonstration," I have to wonder whether the students realized that their presence was essential to her pleasure -- in other words, that they weren't just watching a demonstration, they were part of it. They had more warning than someone confronted on the street by a flasher, but nevertheless were being placed in a somewhat similar situation, perhaps without fully understanding or consenting to their roles. It's one thing for two or more people to play "flasher" or "suprised by the meter reader" or whatever works for them in a location where the game is limited to those who consciously chose to participate, but quite different to actually flash random people or surprise the real meter reader. The "demonstration" strikes me as falling in a gray area in between, but further from the "full informed consent" end than I'd like, especially for a school-sponsored activity.
ReplyDelete@Blackdog: I think "motorized friends" are pretty common these days; heck, you can buy them not only on Amazon, but also through the Vermont Country Store (I kid you not; when they first showed up in the catalog, and aroused some protest, the "proprietor" argued that they've always carried drugstore items, and that vibrators can make a contribution to continued sexual vitality as people age). The "fucksaw" does strike me as a pretty extreme entry in that category, both for the reasons I alluded to and Merely Academic explained more thoroughly, and because, as Wombat and introvert.prof pointed out, if it's really just a converted power saw, then it's a quite powerful machine that's not at all designed for this purpose, which makes it potentially dangerous on a bunch of levels (too much power for the purpose, electricity and water/dampness don't mix, etc., etc.)
I suppose I should clarify...I own a Sawz-All, and when I first learned (via gay porn) that one could put it to this use, I thought OH MY GOD THAT IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER.
ReplyDeleteAs a social science person, I feel like I should be able to comment about the bizarre lengths (no pun intended) that people will go to in order to find new forms of sexual satisfaction. Past saying they do it, and noting as other have above that one person's satisfaction may well come at the expense of another's physical well-being, I got nothin'.
I had not considered the notion that by showing a woman in a classroom setting using this object, one was undermining women's authority in the classroom all over again. Would the same be true if the object in question was the more standard "Hitachi Magic Wand" or one of the myriad devices that the Germans (they are good at this) have dreamed up for the same purpose?
BlackDog, I sometimes think Andrea Dworkin had the right of it: explicitly erotic sexual images in the public square are ipso facto exploitative of and demeaning to women because they aid men in objectifying women.
ReplyDeleteTo do so with the endorsement of a male professor, with a man performing this rather extreme act on a woman, well, SocioConvert has said it better than I.