Women ignored

Your formal sexual education need not end after learning about STIs in high school. A psychology class on human sexuality at Northwestern University near Chicago viewed an “absurd” and “clinical” video about female orgasm in early March during an after-class guest lecture about sexual subcultures. Students thought the video was unrealistic and discussion began about how informative something more natural would be appreciated.

Chicago fetish tour guide Jim Marcus and his fiancée Faith Kroll were present and had planned to demonstrate sex toys including whips, paddles and a clown wig. What happened next will probably stay with the students in the lecture hall longer than most course content. Kroll told the class she fetishized “being in front of people, having the attention and being used,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Next, in front of around 100 students, she stripped, laid down and for several minutes was penetrated by a power saw modified to be a sex toy, which was wielded by her fully-dressed fiancé.

Now, the debate surrounding the performance’s educational merit is fizzling out. Online news stories suggest the students in attendance consider the live sex show, though shocking at first, to be a non-event, purely academic in nature. Judging from what we know about college students, there was likely less pedagogical pondering and more wide-eyed texting going on in that lecture hall.

That debate has largely neglected to include any woman’s perspective. It appears no journalists interviewed female students, nor were any non-male professors or administrators asked for comment on the story. In fact, it seems the only woman involved was Kroll. The professor, guest lecturer, and Marcus were all men. Even the students interviewed by Chicago media were men. One concerned mother was interviewed by television reporters, with the fairly ridiculous comment that we could expect to see a classroom orgy next. But as far as enlightened commentary from a female academic at a school with a majority of female students? Nothing.

The media has failed to cover this explicit example of the objectification of women in our society. That the reduction of a woman to a sex object in a public setting seemingly failed to raise a single eyebrow from the scribes of society is laughable, but sadly expected.