From www.wickedlocal.com- Students at several universities, including U.C. Davis and U. Maryland, recently planned to show a XXX “hardcore” porn film on campus, not as an educational event but as a form of entertainment. Maryland pulled the plug on showing the film for kicks and played a small part of it, instead, as part of an educational panel (albeit after the state legislature threatened to take away hundreds of millions in state funds). But U.C. Davis gave it the green light as a rip-roaring good time for students, citing “free speech” and calling the film a “safe alternative” to drinking.
I’m afraid to read the school’s definition of “safe.”
Colleges well understand the multiple ways that porn is harmful. According to Oklahoma State Professor John Foubert, men who use porn are more likely to commit sex crimes than those who don’t.
No surprise there because porn normalizes and eroticizes violence against women. It hurts men, too. Porn addiction is a huge and growing problem that has destroyed the lives of many men — and studies show that men who use porn have worse sex than those who don’t. Other human relationships are also negatively affected. 75 percent of men in prison for child rape admit using child porn — and 75 percent of men in prison for child porn — admit sexually abusing numerous children.
All these reasons explain why an “official” university showing of porn would violate Title IX as a form of sexual harassment. And while an “unofficial” presentation by students isn’t prohibited by federal law, schools can and should forbid all showings of such films on campus.
We’re not talking about “Sex in the City” here. According to Wheelock College pornography expert, Professor Gail Dines, the vast majority of “mainstream” porn sold in this country depicts women being brutalized — often by multiple men — with objects and weapons. And it isn’t “fantasy.” Real women are really hurt while men experience sexual pleasure. “Actresses” in the “industry” often have to stop working after only weeks because their genitals are so damaged and their bodies so mutilated they are no longer “valuable” in the business. If this is what “mainstream” porn is like — just imagine the “hard core” stuff they showed at U.C. Davis.
This has nothing to do with morality or censorship — it’s about the serious damage caused to an entire society when sexual degradation of women is celebrated as pleasurable entertainment.
Instead of knee-jerk free speech excuses, universities should use this controversy as a teaching moment.
Institutions of higher education enjoy an honorable place of leadership in this country — and they’re not the government — which means they aren’t beholden to the “real world” laws that allow the systematic degradation of women through the lawful proliferation of even the most vile pornography.
Schools should take this opportunity not only to rise above the “real world” but also to collapse the ugly hierarchy of isms that too often allows hateful material directed at women to be protected as free speech — while similar “speech” directed at other “types” of students is prohibited.
This point cannot be overstated. U.C. Davis thinks the brutal abuse of women in film is protected speech — but presumably they don’t feel the same way about films that celebrate the violent abuse of blacks, Jews, Muslims, etc.
Any school that indulges such a hierarchy should prepare itself for an uprising. Women are tired of the unequal enforcement of free speech principles on college campuses. It’s time to showcase this injustice by demanding that schools also show other movies that celebrate the violent abuse of blacks, Jews and Muslims.
If schools forbid these other films, women will at least have successfully unveiled the pernicious ways universities have participated in the subjugation of women in higher education and larger society.
The remaining option is for schools to allow all styles of violent, hate-filled movies to be shown as entertainment — in venues where core American values such as civility and equality are forming roots in newly developing minds. And then what will happen to our communities of young people — when campus air becomes a pungent fog of “hatred as pleasure,” seeping into the brains of our next generation of leaders as they learn about politics, science, business, the arts, law and human behavior?
“Safe” alternative to drinking, indeed.