More on filters and abandoning a course on porn

I've been reading through the comments below my post on the "filtered professor", and I remain conflicted about the wisdom of colleges and universities barring academics from accessing certain sites.  I'm grateful that the college allows us to ask for specific sites to be unblocked, and I'm confident that I could defend any of my requests if I needed to.  If there were no way to get sites unblocked, then I would have much more of a problem with this filtering business.  Ultimately, I really liked what Jenell had to say:

There are few instances in which porn or gambling would be useful for academic work. It happens much more frequently that professors become addicted, or feed addictions, in ways that jeopardize their jobs. I think the filtering helps protect our jobs, and protect us from ourselves, at least at work. It might be a bit paternalistic, but I don't mind.

I think this may be where faith comes into play.  Jenell works in a Christian college; I am a Christian teaching at a secular institution.  My faith (and my experience) tells me that human beings are weak and vulnerable to certain temptations.   For most folks, porn is unlikely to be a research interest, and much more likely to be an unhealthy obsession.  I suspect the same is true for gambling.  Internet porn and gambling (or gaming) are thus more likely to be accessed to feed addiction than for research -- even on a college campus.  Again, I think provision must be made for those few instances where there might be legitimate reason for us to access one of these sites.  But while I think we ought to have the academic freedom to ask for an override, I do think we are up to the challenge of having to ask.   If our reasons are legitimate, we should have no qualms about requesting access to a blocked site.

I teach courses that touch on sexual history.  (Women in American Society; Men and Masculinity; Beauty, the Body, and the American Tradition; Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History.)  At one point, a couple of years ago, I thought seriously about doing a course on the history of pornography.  Such courses do exist in many departments, ranging from history to film to women's studies programs.   I developed a syllabus, looked at some source texts, and was very close to teaching it under the rubric of a Humanities class.  (Believe me, there are plenty of texts out there; go to Amazon and type in "pornography history" as your key words.  Plenty comes up, and I've read some of it.)  Ultimately, after talking with some folks close to me, and praying about it, I decided not to do the course.

I am not saying we shouldn't have courses on pornography at colleges and universities.  But I am saying that I have come to respect the immensely addictive power of porn.   We know well what porn has done to the lives of many men and not a few women.  While some people may have healthy relationships with visual erotica, a great many folks do not.  As a teacher, I have an obligation to challenge my students.  But I am not willing to expose them to that which could, in some way, harm them.   The chances that exposing my students to porn could help create a new addiction (or encourage a pre-existing one) is too great for me to take.  The likelihood that all thirty or forty students in a class of mine are going to be immune to porn addiction is pretty damn low. 

Of course, one could teach a class on porn without showing any porn, but that would be fairly dull and difficult. The research topics would invariably lead students to do outside work with pornography, many armed with the academic legitimacy that my course would give them.  For some, it would simply be an interesting experience that left no enduring mark.  But for others, it is all but certain that I would be sanctioning what for them would become very unhealthy behavior.  And I'm just not willing to do that.

For the record, if one of my colleagues were to teach a course on porn here at the college, I would share these same concerns with him or her.  If he or she still wished to teach the course, I would advocate that they be allowed to access any sites they felt necessary in order to teach the class.  The fact that I'm not willing to do teach such a class, and am troubled by the whole idea of doing so, doesn't mean that I wouldn't enthusiastically support a colleague if he or she were brave enough to take it on.

Comments

[NancyP]

A course on the economics and sociology of the porn industry, and of commercial sex industry in general, past and present, would be very interesting. I am not sure that a huge amount of porn viewing would be needed.

I have in mind a book I recently read, and can recommend wholeheartedly. George Chauncey's Gay New York. Part-time and full-time male prostitutes got a mention in the book, and there was use of a body of 19th and early 20th century legal/court documents and records of various moral reform societies.

[Hugo]

Nancy, if I ever do come to modifying the course, I'd probably approach it in that fashion. Still, I'm concerned about legitimizing the use of porn (even for research) for relatively young folks (18 year-olds). At the same time, I recognize that there is important sociological and historical work to be done on the sex industry (a topic I do touch on in gender studies classes). Ultimately, as usual, I'm conflicted.

[NancyP]

How arousing can 19th century porn be to 21st century eyes? I would think that static engravings or paintings would be merely quaint to the video generation. I know I see images on Greek pots and my reaction is, hey, Greeks did other things than stand around in fora arguing law and philosophy.

Another book I recommend is Rachel Maines' book on the invention and propagation of the electrical vibrator in the 19th century.

[Hugo]

I'll look into the Maines book.

I have, in my teaching, learned the hard way that assuming that something won't turn someone on is a very dangerous thing to do.

[heydt]

Personally, I have a lot of late 19th and early 20th century porn... Taschen puts out some very cool collections of it. So while I disagree with Hugo on the way to deal with pornography, I certainly agree that you'll never know what floats someone's boat.

[Marie]

Hugo,
Since you never answer any of my comments. I'm going to assume you won't answer this one.__You can call me anything you like...but I don't think this topic belongs in the classroom. I can't even believe anyone would think of teaching this!
Who cares about the social and economic implications of trash!!

[Hugo]

Well, Marie, the whole point is that whether its trash or not, it does impact people's lives. The purpose of academe is not merely to study the good, the true, and the beautiful; it is also to study the evil, the perverse, and the hideous. If it is part of human behavior -- and it impacts human activity -- we must study it.

Speaking of trash, I have a friend who does research on Victorian garbage. You can tell a lot about a culture by what folks throw away.

[Marie]

Hugo,
Wow! I actually got a response from you!
....Sorry, I disagree with you on this. This industry impacts our society in a negative way, and young kids would only take the class for the wrong reasons. Young people are not going to take this class to learn about how porn affects society. Give me a break!! Let's get real here!

[Marie]

You know, I give up on academia...

[La Lubu]

Marie, don't give up yet! There are courses in criminology, but they hardly endorse crime! ;-)

[Adegboyega Kehinde]

I am not a teacher, but i do know what porn can do to anybody's life and i have been campaigning againt since i did my first academic project on its effects. if there is anyone who says porn should be freely taught in this age of perversion, i will not be sorry he has made the world a dangerous place for himself, his/her family and generation.
yours truely
Adegboyega Kehinde
Nigeria

[Caitriona]

Adegboyega Kehinde,

The comment, "i will not be sorry he has made the world a dangerous place for himself, his/her family and generation," doesn't seem like a very ethical one, or a very Christ-like one, to me.

But to stay with the topic, I believe Hugo is discussing teaching a class on the history of porn, including the effects it has on society. Or at least that is how I would teach it, if it were me doing the class.

[perry]

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[shufuni]

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[ergthb]

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