Iqra’i

Victoria Wild in the YDN:

[Sex Week's] advertising does not attempt convey a message (other than times and locations); we leave the message to the presenters.

Laying aside, for the moment, the idiotic claim that advertising does not convey a message, and focusing only on the second half of this ridiculous sentence… Leaving the message to the presenters is the problem.

Pluralism for the sake of pluralism is nonsense. There may well be more than one right way of doing things (I’m looking forward to Sunday’s Sex & Spirituality panel), but there are also wrong ways.

‘May not every man in England say what he likes?’ — Mr Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying, — has good in it, and more good than bad. (Matthew Arnold, 1869)

Do any of these planners actually think that pornographers are the people to consult about a healthy cultural attitude towards sex? Do any of them think that looking like a porn star is the key to love and intimacy? Do they really think that screening pornographic films — notable for the objectification of bodies, particularly women’s, and the decoupling of the sex act from emotion — will help anyone “get beyond the awkwardness, the discomfort, and the taboo” that pornography has produced? Do none of them see a problem with porn culture?

Maybe they’re only interested in titillation and giving the student body what it wants. Weakness is, if not exactly excusable, then at least understandable. But if this is only a manifestation liberal idea that we ought to be exposed to everything because we can, by ourselves, come up with the right answer — if it’s about “empowering” women by showing us that we get to participate in our very own degradation — if it’s really about letting pornographers get their message across…

I may have to go for that taser after all.