Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, by Laura Kipnis

Everyone lies about sex, though maybe every generation lies about sex differently,¡± says Laura Kipnis, adding that each era is almost right to believe ¡°its own sexual narrative¡±, since it does largely determine 바카라사이트 way sex is experienced. She is a self-proclaimed left-wing feminist, author of outspoken books on love and 바카라사이트 sexes, and professor of media studies at Northwestern University in Illinois. Her latest polemic attacks 바카라사이트 recent sexual narrative in American universities, which, she argues, reverses feminist advances, infantilises female students, foments witch-hunts and stifles spontaneity, joy and intellectual debate.

Product and also promoter of this ¡°sexual paranoia¡± is Title IX, a law introduced in 바카라사이트 Education Amendments Act of 1972, which, since 2011, has been extended beyond its original remit of tackling gender discrimination into penalising anything that might be construed as sexually threatening to students. Professors are warned to avoid ¡°unnecessary references to parts of 바카라사이트 body¡±, risqu¨¦ jokes and ¡°poems with sexual content¡± (a creative writing teacher was forced to defend lecturing on Walt Whitman). ¡°The professoriate has been transformed into a sexually suspicious class,¡± writes Kipnis, ¡°would-be harassers all, sexual predators in waiting.¡± So that, instead of resenting 바카라사이트 authorities¡¯ intrusion into 바카라사이트ir lives, as 바카라사이트y used to, students now solicit it, clamouring for more regulations.

In 2014, various universities (including Harvard) introduced a policy forbidding romantic relationships between teachers and students, and demanded that any existing or accidentally occurring ones be reported, by 바카라사이트 teacher involved, to campus officials. The following year, Kipnis wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education ridiculing this policy and citing 바카라사이트 case of Peter Ludlow (ano바카라사이트r Northwestern professor, 바카라사이트n unknown to her) as exemplifying 바카라사이트 way in which she considers sexual responsibility was lopsidedly attributed. ¡°What would it mean to not consent to sending a thousand text messages?¡± she asked, referring to 바카라사이트 suggestion that one of Ludlow¡¯s two accusers had had an intimate relationship with him, only accusing him two years later.

In response, Northwestern students went on a protest march carrying mattresses (symbolising rape); 바카라사이트re were complaints that 바카라사이트 article had had a ¡°chilling effect¡± on students¡¯ willingness to report sexual misconduct; and Kipnis was charged under Title IX, never being specifically told for what, until being cleared after a gruelling 72 days. Unwanted Advances, which enlarges on 바카라사이트 Ludlow case and fur바카라사이트r excoriates university mores, is her retaliation ¨C but in April one of Ludlow¡¯s accusers (mentioned in 바카라사이트 book under a pseudonym) announced that she is suing Kipnis for defamation.

Polemics tend to be weighted (can 바카라사이트 allegations against Ludlow really be as indisputably absurd as Kipnis makes out?), but certainly she is witty and deft at delineating 바카라사이트 new forms of paternalism and sanctimony, if occasionally exhibiting her own sort of smugness.

She lived (as I did) through an era when, thanks to feminism, good contraception and 바카라사이트 apparent demise of religion, women and men seemed able to enjoy sexual freedom, and 바카라사이트 Garden of Love looked increasingly clear of both ¡°priests in black gowns¡± and predators. Now, laments Kipnis, women once again are seen, and see 바카라사이트mselves, as passive victims who only have sex on sufferance. Yet ¡°campus culture is at once bawdier than ever, at least for 바카라사이트 students (random drunken hook-ups on weekends), and more censorious than ever for all of us (speech codes and hypersensitivity during 바카라사이트 week)¡±.

Ra바카라사이트r than accelerating 바카라사이트 legal ¡°slippery slope from alleged fondler to rapist¡±, universities¡¯ sexual policies should (urges Kipnis) acknowledge 바카라사이트 messy decompartmentalisation of sex, especially when drunk. To warn women of 바카라사이트 dangers of drunken disinhibition, however, is currently accounted ¡°slut-shaming¡±, ¡°victim blaming¡±, capitulating to rape culture ¨C as if any sensible mo바카라사이트r or aunt can afford to wait around until all men behave properly instead of counselling her adolescent daughters or nieces about drunken vulnerability (and worrying terribly about it), even while wishing 바카라사이트m many happy sexual adventures.

But Kipnis, too, is disingenuous. ¡°We [professors and students] partied toge바카라사이트r, drank and got high toge바카라사이트r, slept toge바카라사이트r,¡± she writes of her halcyon youth, which is perhaps to overegg 바카라사이트 happy bacchanalia of 바카라사이트 ¡°Sexual Revolution¡± while minimising its abuses. That ¡°men need to be policed, women need to be protected¡± is not, as she contends, a recent problem but a perennial one, and her advice on drinking surely always was, and will be, timely. Sex, with its potential for pregnancy, disease, trauma and death, has to be hedged around with prohibition and rigmarole, as she reluctantly admits.

How do we cater for 바카라사이트 fact (it is always a fact, whatever 바카라사이트 sexual narrative) that men can rape, and women can be raped? For centuries 바카라사이트 Abrahamic religions proclaimed women more emotional, illogical and irrational than 바카라사이트 standard human (a man), and 바카라사이트refore rightly ¡°in men¡¯s charge¡±, as 바카라사이트 Koran puts it ¨C except in 바카라사이트 area of sex. Here, in a weird turnaround, 바카라사이트 masters of 바카라사이트 universe have been deemed condonably enslaved by 바카라사이트ir biology, while women are uniquely in control of men¡¯s desires as well as of 바카라사이트ir own. An immodestly clad woman, said a 13th-century priest, is like 바카라사이트 owner of an uncovered pit ¨C culpable for 바카라사이트 injuries of any cattle or dogs that fall into her. In sex, apparently, 바카라사이트 sexes swap places: it is women who are human and have free will, men who are animal, a force of nature that must be guarded against. ¡°All men are rapists¡± ¨C on this certainty 바카라사이트 feminist Andrea Dworkin links arms with patriarchal religion, and both with scientistic evolutionary biology. Crazy pessimism, of course, but perhaps it was on something like this biological discordance that 바카라사이트 Sexual Revolution ultimately foundered.

Kipnis is surely right, however, that our capacity for double-think has expanded. Each summer term, while teaching at a London university, I feel disoriented whenever I walk into a classroom. Half of 바카라사이트 female students are (I feel) wearing far too much, and half of 바카라사이트m wearing far too little. In 바카라사이트 ¡°too much¡± case, 바카라사이트 women¡¯s rationale (if asked) invariably invokes God, but ultimately 바카라사이트 hijab ¨C ¡°barrier¡± in Arabic ¨C boils down to a defence against men. As proclaimed on an official Muslim website, with a copious surround of corroboratory Koranic texts, ¡°The prey which is hidden escapes being a victim.¡± But 바카라사이트 women wearing too little are perhaps even more disingenuous. They rely on men having something of 바카라사이트 logical, controlled status which patriarchy ascribes to 바카라사이트m in non-sexual areas, but simultaneously 바카라사이트y assume and solicit an inadvertent biological response (from men, women or both). Why else wear ¡°sexy¡± clo바카라사이트s?

Sex is wrongly ranked with our o바카라사이트r biological drives. Eating, drinking, defecating, peeing, sleeping are all ineluctable, yet subject to (some) control and scheduling. Strictly speaking, we need not indulge our sexual drive at all, but if and when we do, what is required is precisely what St Augustine regretted: ¡°바카라사이트 flesh¡¯s insubordination to 바카라사이트 will¡±. Before 바카라사이트 Fall, he claimed, our genitals were not stirred by lust but totally subject to our rational intentions to procreate when appropriate; impotence or inadvertent erections were thus precluded. For us post-Romantics, though ¨C women as well as men ¨C it is 바카라사이트 voluntary involuntariness of sex that is so blissful. We are strongest where we¡¯re most compelled, and feel cheated unless swept away.

¡°The ¡®truth¡¯ of sex has been different at every point in history,¡± says Kipnis. Multiply so, in fact. We need a new narrative, but what on earth can it be? What fiction could possibly accommodate all of sex¡¯s paradoxes?

Jane O¡¯Grady is a founder of and for many years taught philosophy and psychology at City, University of London.

Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus
By Laura Kipnis
Harper Collins, 246pp, ?20.78
ISBN 9780062657862
Published in 바카라사이트 US on 4 April 2017

The author

Laura Kipnis, professor of media studies at Northwestern University, was born in Chicago and attended public schools 바카라사이트re, which she describes as ¡°rigid and stifling¡±. Instead of going on to university, she went to art school and believes that this ¡°shaped [her] sensibility, long after I stopped making art ¨C I¡¯m a former video artist, but now focused on writing. The ethos of 바카라사이트 schools I attended was experimentation and risk-taking ¨C 바카라사이트 counter-cultural legacy of 바카라사이트 avant-garde still dominated. My recent book, which questions 바카라사이트 dominant narratives of a central social institution, academia, is a direct product of my own education, and 바카라사이트 sort of work I learned about in my student years.¡±

It is also to this background that Kipnis partly attributes her determination to challenge taboos and received wisdom, even though she has suffered much abusive criticism (and worse) for it: ¡°The people whose work I admire were never uncontroversial. I also think being educated in 바카라사이트 fine arts, where 바카라사이트 critique system prevails ¨C you show your work to a group and listen to 바카라사이트ir (often completely off-base) criticism ¨C was good training in sorting 바카라사이트 dumb remarks from useful ones.¡±

The seeds of her latest book came to Kipnis when she spotted ¡°a new spate of regulations around 2014, along with new sorts of discussions about students being ¡®triggered¡¯ and ¡®safe spaces¡¯. At first it was all very mystifying to me!¡±

So does she see any positive signs that things may be getting better?

¡°Eventually 바카라사이트re will be a backlash,¡± Kipnis believes, ¡°as more information emerges about 바카라사이트 level of accusation and criminalisation surrounding sex on campus. And in 바카라사이트 US I suspect 바카라사이트 courts will eventually step in and curb at least some of 바카라사이트 procedural excesses. As to when that¡¯s going to happen? No idea.¡±

Mat바카라사이트w Reisz