BY NOW, you’re surely aware of the controversy that erupted at UC Berkeley last week over the school’s student-taught courses on “Male Sexuality” and “Female Sexuality,” sponsored by (of course) the Women’s Studies department. Last semester’s “Male Sexuality” course featured an orgy; a party game involving matching anonymous Polaroid shots of students’ genitalia with the correct student; and a field trip to a gay strip club to watch course instructors strip and have sex. (The Daily Cal, the Berkeley student newspaper, broke the story; if you haven’t been following it, you can read their coverage here and here.)
What’s most telling isn’t the presence of such a course at a prestigious American university (more on that in a moment), but the arrested development revealed in the comments of those involved with the courses as instructors and students. Morgan Janssen, a student instructor, told the Daily Cal that “in the class we don’t say anything is right or wrong.” Instead, the classes “provide a much-needed forum” for discussion “of how students really feel about themselves and their bodies and others,” said another instructor. Such discussion is necessary to help students break through taboos and feel comfortable discussing their “sexuality.”
