someone here recommended the "you were wrong ... " podcast re: iran-contra when bush popped his clogs and i listened to a couple of episodes on a flight recently, thanks for the rec i quite like sarah and mike!, and a propos of this post during the columbine episode mike explains his refusal to cite to teenager diaries as evidence of pretty much anything thusly: his english teacher during high school (i don't remember which grade) had them spend time "journaling" during class and told them to write what was in their deepest hearts because he, the teacher, would never ever read it. mike wisely deduced the dude was a complete dick and would use the journals for surveillance, so mike (then still closeted) purposely wrote the most explicit straight porn he could come up with, steadily, for several weeks. the inevitable happened and he was called into the principal's office with his mom and english teach present to talk about their concerns with the contents of his journal. assholes. so i told the kid this tale with apologies for not having warned him to never ever fall for this, but he assured me that the times he's had to keep a journal or diary for school the teachers have always warned the students repeatedly to not put anything personal in them.
Never tell the truth about your sex life except to people directly involved with it has always been my rule.
Even then, probably avoid the whole truth.
Plus, you can still give yourself permission to lie to yourself.
The worst thing about this assignment is that depending on your circumstances, it may not even be possible to come up with a safe lie.
That sounds terrible. What department is this in? If nothing else, biased towards people who are comfortable writing these things. And people who have something to write about. This is a class, not an EST retreat.
I feel that if a teacher gives this assignment they should at least give students the option of doing it as a fictional character.
This is one of the most awful and exploitative ideas I have ever come across. Perhaps it's the same course where the demonstrated the fuckhammer* in class.
* some name like that, anyway: a cross between a power tool and a dildo. A bit like David Davis, really.
I should say that the prompts skip over one's current status. There's early encounters and first intercourse, and then straight to the future. Of course, being college kids, that may cover the whole thing, but I'd guess half of them have more to it.
Does the course description clearly say "You will be writing about your own sexual experience and/or what you anticipate."? Is it a small class? Or big class? I am inclined to believe that the course description and title probably give fair warning.
I have no idea, but I think the instructor is likely to be diligent about dotting their Is and crossing their Ts on things like that.
That sounds like a fantastically bad idea in all kinds of ways and I am astonished that the college hasn't put a stop to it. Could your acquaintance possibly be pulling your leg?
First off, why on earth should students trust a faculty member with that information? What guarantee do queer or trans students have that the teacher is culturally competent and not a bigot? What guarantee do they have that the teacher won't - as teachers often do - share any particularly juicy or risible bits on the internet? What guarantee of privacy do they have? What happens to these documents and how does the student insure that they are not copied and retained?
And what is the professor going to do if a student describes committing rape? Many, many young men do not grasp that doing sex to an unconscious woman is rape, for instance.
Frankly, I am a little dubious about your acquaintance, because acquiring this type of narrative at scale from younger, vulnerable people seems super sketch.
I am with 16 100%, but am just filing this with the fucksaw and Awkward Turtle and AWB's tearful students as evidence that American universities are not only stranger than I imagine, they are stranger than I can imagine.
Fuck No!
I had a painfully visceral reaction to the described exercise. I wouldn't trust a teacher with this. And if giving up that info is the price of taking a course in human sexuality, I'd have avoided it like the plague.
If you email me (heebie dot geebie at gmail) I can send you the website of the individual and you can decide for yourself!
It sounds to be frank like the acquaintance is trying to start a cult. Many cults make surrendering extremely personal information the price of entry: it's good for enforcing compliance.
20: Then you'd miss the most important lesson. Replace the blade before making a fuck saw, don't just cover it.
For the record, 16 would have made a better OP.
I still suspect it is good for some students who have never thought twice about the patriarchy and are sort of floating along in life. But yes, clearly this is going to unearth all kinds of trauma and nonconforming identities in a really inappropriately nosy way.
Also, given that a significant percentage of people have sex for the first time when they or their partner are under age, this is basically demanding that a lot of her students write and sign a confession to a criminal offence.
It seems like you'd either get a lot of lies (from the clever, closeted or embarrassed) or a set of truths that, frankly, one does not want to know about one's students. Like, I don't know most of that stuff about most of my friends. I cannot imagine standing in front of the class and, like, knowing everyone's sexual history.
Therapists have a whole bunch of training (and legal and professional codes) to help them deal with sensitive information and to help them help clients reflect on their experience. Faculty kind of don't. I would not want to be the professor who has to decide whether I talk to the student, talk to the department chair, make a mandatory report or call the cops when a student writes without realizing it about committing date rape or having a consensual sexual experience when they are, eg, 15 and 364/365 and their partner turned eighteen the night before.
Therapists build up the therapeutic relationship so that there's an individual level of trust. Friends are on a roughly equal footing with each other. Both friends and therapists are in the habit of having individual conversations with each other and have a relatively developed idea of what the relationship is. I can't imagine trying to be a friendapist to even a small class in this way.
Also, TBH, it does harm to students to put them in a position where they have to produce a lying document about themselves for their own safety. Queer or trans students would probably lie a lot on this kind of assignment. So would survivors of abuse, people with disabilities, people who had some kind of non-abusive but traumatic sexual history, etc.
Sure, it's good to reflect on one's sexual history and values, but the only way to do this in the classroom and have it not be a nightmare is to keep it all pretty abstract.
It's absolutely wild to me that anyone would come up with this assignment. People sure are different from one another, as good old Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick so memorably remarked.
For that matter, in this age of smartphones, what if you get a student who writes about sending nudes while underage? What do you do in that situation? That's, like, super duper illegal and means that the student and the recipient could be prosecuted for child pornography. Is the professor legally liable if they know and don't report? If the professor reports and the student is charged...I mean, this is all not actually impossible. You would think that the college would be all, "wow, this kind of assignment is a firenado of media problems, do not pass go".
This is giving me anxiety just thinking about the assignment.
So, serious question: How is the acquaintance at the other place assigning grades to these papers?
The only ways I can imagine must surely be the wrong way.
"Too vanilla. C+"
"Obviously plagiarized from Penthouse Forum. F"
"So hott! A+"
Is this a college course or an initiation into Skull and Bones?
I still suspect it is good for some students who have never thought twice about the patriarchy and are sort of floating along in life. But yes, clearly this is going to unearth all kinds of trauma and nonconforming identities in a really inappropriately nosy way.
How would it educate students about the patriarchy?
31 Well you see ned, the patriarchy has certain needs...
Via the debrief, when it is revealed they were subjects of an obedience experiment.
By the end of 27, I was thinking of the ending of The Breakfast Club.
Speaking of, that movie was astonishingly terrible.
34: My memory of that movie is somewhat dim, but I'm almost certain that the essay that Anthony Michael Hall's character writes at the end didn't include a lot of explicit sex.
But it did have a lot of "You have no right to ask this."
How would it educate students about the patriarchy?
Who knows. There are former students chiming in on the thread that they loved the assignment, though. I was imagining that it helps them put their own experience into the framework of what they've learned, and maybe getting some insight into how the patriarchy shows up in their own lives. Maybe not.
maybe getting some insight into how the patriarchy shows up in their own lives.
In the form of an instructor giving an assignment requiring you to write about the intimate details of your sex life.
It is good to try to see yourself as an outsider would. Hopefully this is at a point when they have gotten a vague idea of what is realistic to compare themselves to.
40: I mean, I'm not going to over-defend it - I can clearly see how it would go off the rails. But a bit of introspection is going to help some of the students, I'm sure.
I think the exercise is sketchy as hell. My grade depends on giving detailed experiences of sexual encounters to my instructor? Sorry, bad exercise, and dangerous to the prof, too.
I would like to argue against introspection in nearly all circumstances, but I would probably have to reflect on times I have been introspective in order to do that. I can't take that risk.
What's supposed to be the point of this exercise? Bring home the unreliability of self-report questionnaires?
But what if one of the essays contained something...truly novel?
This furthers my relief that I took almost exclusively science and math in college. Yikes. I have no idea what I would do with that. Drop the class? Lie like a rug?
We talk quite a bit about sex in a couple of my classes, but certainly never anything like this. Not to mention, every adult in my state is a mandatory reporter of child abuse, and almost every employee of my university is a mandatory reporter of sexual assault, so besides all of the crucial ethical problems already raised, this kind of assignment opens the professor to a lot of liability.
This assignment sounds a little like a Biology 101 class that promises each student will learn to conduct successful surgery on a live human being. One can squint very hard and ALMOST imagine that in the hands of an exceptionally good professor, and assuming entirely good faith and intentions all around, and a near-magical lack of relevant human frailties among the students, a random class of young people just might acquire the skills necessary to conduct minor dermatological surgery in a 16-week semester.
But it isn't likely. And the ways it could go wrong are orders of magnitude more likely than the one way it could go sort-of right.
Question 1: Thinking about your most recent romantic partner, was he/she a goer?
Question 2: A nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat; do you know what I mean, eh, eh?
(100 words)
This is still bothering me. I'm thinking of students with shared computers, especially family computers, and all of the possible ways the finished assignment is vulnerable to casual or malicious snooping.
And that academic software where they automatically enter assignments into a database to deter plagiarism. It's just spectacularly awful.
53 would be a real problem if two of the students had had sex with each other.
Or if more than one had wanted to have sex with, for instance, Mutombo.
This furthers my relief that I took almost exclusively science and math in college
"How did you first learn about matrices? Describe your first experience of extrapolation. With whom and at what age did it occur?"
Well, he said he that even though he had an infinite basis, I could still get an injection, but I said, "not in my nullspace, you won't!". He was determinant, though. We proceeded to snort a Gram-Schmidt, which kind of normalized the whole thing, you know? Also, call me low-rank if you must, but I do love a good embedding. After a short random walk, we got to his place, and by this time I was looking forward to a strong mixing. [etc., etc.]
A totally novel solution to the three body problem.
Amy Fisher's solution was not practical.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again
Four of five doctors recommend avoiding Long Island for their patients who have sex.
In the rare event of being on Long Island more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury.
Don't go to the fifth doctor either.
44
I would like to argue against introspection in nearly all circumstances
I assume this is a joke, but I'd say something like it in earnest. I find introspection helpful only roughly half the time. The rest of the time, it reinforces whatever I'm currently feeling. Sometimes it makes me feel a bit better but then again sometimes I'm just dwelling on my problems. It often doesn't help me change direction or realize if I'm doing something wrong. I assume for every person who does this exercise and realizes, "hey, that was rape," there will be another one that decides, "hey, that sounds like rape, but it can't be because I'm not a rapist," or "hey, that sounds a lot like what that incel was saying, maybe he's right."
Outside of an earnest, it's too bright to think.
Cyrus may be right.
I certainly hated assignments in school that had to do with my inner life. All of them without exception, I think. Write about your best friend! I don't have a best friend. Who do I write about? Embarrassing. Write about your perfect weekend! Ugh, I guess I'll try to project on everyone else and write about what they probably like. Write about what you're going to do when you grow up! I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. This assignment is going to be totally inaccurate.
I assume this is a joke, but I'd say something like it in earnest. I find introspection helpful only roughly half the time. The rest of the time, it reinforces whatever I'm currently feeling.
Me too. I genuinely think that repression and resisting introspection can be psychologically health responses to a lot of things.
You sound like all those third world disaster victims who were doing fine for a while and then plunged into depression when Western psychiatrists showed up to help them "work through the experience" and "find closure".
Not in my case. I just figure it takes effort for me to work on my psychological issues, but most of the benefit goes to other people who have to deal with me.
Hear hear to 70. The idea that repression is universally bad is a sort of vulgar Freudianism - i.e. the handwaving attempts of one guy more than a century ago without much grasp of scientific procedure or access to any of the tools of modern medicine to explain the most complicated system in the known universe using the metaphor of a steam engine ("you see, if you keep your emotions, which are like steam, PENT UP in the boiler of your psyche then your brain will eventually EXPLODE and send bits of emotion-shrapnel everywhere"), filtered through a hundred years of Readers' Digest articles.
65 I'd better get myself to the ER stat.
That's why Jungian psychoanalysis is superior. You get to move the benefits offshore and keep them for yourself.
Maybe, but I sure have gotten a lot out of therapy.
Also: I inquired as to whether the assignment is mandatory or if there's an alternate option. I'll report back.
It is NOT a mandatory assignment! You may all breathe easier now.
Or heavier, if you intend to do the assignment.
BUT! Is the assignment chosen by secret ballot OR by public voice vote in descending order of teacher's-petness?
It is NOT a mandatory assignment!
I still don't like it. It's such a minefield for the students and instructor, as well described above.
Now I'm trying to remember if there were any written assignments with personal-experience components when I took a "Sex Roles and Relationsips" seminar class. I think there must have been one about some kind of (not necc. sexual) personal experience, because I remember one of the other students reading from theirs about how they hated the things their army experience had taught them about themselves. But most of that, like all of undergrad, is lost in the mists of time.
77: therapy!= introspection. In 67 I'm thinking about introspection specifically, either an entirely mental process or writing something in a journal or blog. I find therapy more helpful than that, either with an actual psychologist or some other kind of coach or simply a mentor.
I don't have a great frame of reference for writing something autobiographical for a class but I assume it's more like the former than the latter.
Can you groom an adult in that sense?
YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT'S A BAD THING.
there is a big difference between being honest with yourself and imposing introspection on others.
Or heavier, if you intend to do the assignment.
Bravo!
Nopeeking at the groanwrithing
I think the only way this assignment might work semi-safely is if the students were encouraged to think about it for their own introspection and *then not turn it in*. That would address most of the privacy issues, although there is still the issue of someone discovering something disturbing about their experience upon reflection and not having a support framework in place to help them deal with it.
I think I'm an outlier here. To me the assignment is so indescribably awful and unethical that the prof needs to be seriously disciplined if not fired. WTF was he/she thinking?
It's a cult. She is starting a cult, just like all those weird Theory professors we were talking about the other week.
Rules of Sanders-Clinton-Trump; on the count of three, both players indicate their choice by making the appropriate gesture. Trump: the two-handed OK symbol. Clinton: one hand to mouth (as in the Situation Room photo). Sanders: both hands clawing at air.
70, 73 - better, Freud didn't think everyone would be happy if they stopped repressing things and just let it all hang out. He thought we were inevitably fated to be unhappy and discontented because we must exercise self-control in order to live in civilization (the title of Civilization and its Discontents is a bit of a giveaway). The best you could hope for was to manage the process better and be unhappy rather than completely miserable.
98: those don't seem to be inconsistent.
Further to 98: Freud didn't think you should just introspect or express everything. He thought you should move from primitive to sophisticated defense mechanisms. Some defense mechanisms will lead to neurosis and unnecessary suffering. Some will allow productive, generative work and relationships.
The best way to kill your father so you can work on your relationship with your mother.