I just read a piece of literary pornography for class. Then I checked my school email to find that someone else was sexually assaulted in a residence hall last Monday. "The only person responsible for sexual misconduct is the perpetrator," these emails say. I have it memorized.
Last time I was assigned erotica, I just didn't show up to class. I knew that the issue would come again--I'm in the Creative Writing program of the University of Iowa, for crying out loud. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to just not show up every time it did.
My teacher gave us a "trigger warning" in class last week. She warned us that it would be "heavy stuff." It wasn't heavy, really. It was actually excruciatingly shallow, but that's a problem for another post. "If there's a problem, please feel free to talk to me, and we can work something out." What, an alternate reading like my mom would ask my high school for? Then what am I supposed to do for the class discussion? Maybe I do just need to have the guts to walk up to a teacher and say, "I'm not going to read this." At least then I wouldn't have to read this stuff.
I don't just want out of the reading anyway though, because me getting out of the reading doesn't solve the problem. The problem is that every student on campus is assigned stuff like this.
Maybe I could go to the teacher or the dean or the whoever else in the department, offended and indignant, but I honestly don't think I'd be the only one, and I honestly think that my voice would be muffled.
Sexual assaults happen because we live in a sexual culture. We idolize sex, we dwell on sex, we fantasize about sex, we glorify pornography as expressive artwork while we push the realm of creativity to the breaking point until we're a bunch of jaded philosophers who believe in nothing but meaninglessness. And then we sacrifice our morality on the alter of academic respect.
Do you know why sexual assaults are out of control in your dorm rooms, University of Iowa? Do you really want to know what you can do to help?
You can stop assigning your students subject material that forces them to spend so much time and intellect on sex.
There's all of this feminism floating around campus, but it's self-defeating. Feminists run around trying to "empower women," but no one is teaching all these guys on campus how to be men, they're just assigning erotic readings as if these poor guys need more sexual content to wallow in and never teach them a word about self-control.
If you really want to respect and empower my gender, quit pointing at sex every time a female shows up.
If you really want to stop sexual assaults in your dorm rooms, quit teaching your students how to do it in the classrooms.
And writers: we have a power to make people think differently. Every piece you write that tells your audience that there is no meaning, that the closest you will ever come to meaning is through drugs and sex, you are abusing and wasting that power, and I am ashamed to be one of you.
Help me show the world that we can be more than that... and then maybe the world can be, too.
