Sexual policing and sexual abuse

No matter what ones position may be on the prohibition of consensual relationships between students and professors, I would hope that any person who takes the teaching learning enterprise seriously would be offended by the the University of Iowa’s presentation of its rationale of said policy.  I do not think it is an overstatement to characterize that presentation as drivel.  It does not reflect any serious engagement of the issue.  The idea that relationships between human beings are complex, that sexual relationships between human beings are complex and multidimensional is given no recognition in the University of Iowa statement. In spite of the fact that I have read many similar statements of other universities, I still find it mind boggling that any institution of higher education would publicly embrace such verbiage.  I would expect that any student or professor would be embarrassed to be associated with this statement.  My impression is that the statement is the sort that is directed to children with the hope that it would scare children to be good. It is certainly not the kind of statement that would facilitate independent and critical thinking.

Ultimately the persons who write such statements do not want independent and critical thinking.  They want what all authoritarians want and that is obedience.  No matter that such is occurring at a university, the game remains the same with the game winners getting obedience of their professor subjects and of their student subjects.  This authoritarian framework is consistent with the notion of treating adults as children who cannot decide for themselves, think for themselves, consent for themselves.  Of course, in the present case, it is female students who are held to be unable to think or consent for themselves, and are in an incapacitated state as a result of predator professors.  Of course, it is the administrator powers that be which wishes to assume the power position over the power incapacitated and childlike female student.

The power dynamic is never publicly recognized by these administrators even as they take control of others and force them to do what they want them to do.  Maybe the power dynamic would have a greater chance of recognition if we stopped referring to them in bureaucratic terms and addressed them for what they are- sexual police, for sexual policing is what these policies and their promulgators are all about. 

We know that what police in general do not want in relation to performing their jobs, and that is to be hamstrung by the alleged civil liberties and civil rights of those subject to their enforcement.  No wonder that in the statements of the genre of the University of Iowa statement that no mention, no allusion,no credence, no recognition is given to issues concerning civil liberties and civil rights.  Such concerns are simply of no import to the promulgators and enforcers of these sexual codes.  Of course, when it comes to sexual regulation and sexual oppression, history has shown that the sexual police wish to pursue the  sexual perverts and purveyors unrestrained by the niceties of polite society. 

In the university, the problem has been not only the capitulation to the sexual police as is presently  happening at Middlebury College, but also in the polite rhetoric embraced by those opposing the sexual policing.  In this area the dankprofessor believes it is time to call a spade a spade, to accurately refer to persons who enforce these codes as sexual police who engage in sexual policing are violators of basic civil liberties and rights and who in their authoritarian pursuits force persons to attend indoctrination sessions in which if successful they are brainwashed to believe and to obey. 

And last but not least, it must also be pointed out that these sexual police like all sexual abusers prefer to operate in secret, out of the public purview, with said secrecy justified in doublethink terms- “these are confidential personnel matters”.

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Guest commentaries should also be submitted for consideration to the same email address.

Barry M. Dank aka the dankprofessor™
© Copyright 2007