Duke U Christians who won't read books they don't already agree with should go to a prestigious Fundamentalist U. Except there aren't any!
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) August 26, 2015
They read a book filled with rape and murder and slavery and genocide, but a lesbian growing up is too much for them.
Yesterday I wrote about the controversy surrounding a few incoming freshmen at Duke University refusing to read assigned material because it ran counter to their “personal Christian moral beliefs.” The arrogance and self-righteousness of this position aside, this “controversy” addresses a very real issue about free speech on college campuses. The question seems to be who’s attempting to censor whom.
Duke is a private secular university. I have to assume the students objecting to the assigned reading material (Fun Home, which is is no way pornographic or gratuitously titillating) understood that fact when they accepted admission. They may have grown up in a bubble, or grown accustomed to having their delicate sensibilities catered to while growing up, but college, particularly a secular one, is designed to educate, not validate and affirm “sincerely held religious beliefs.” That’s what home schooling or places like Liberty University or Bob Jones University is for.
Brian Grasso, one of the complainers, has an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in which he explains that his declining to do his homework has a moral/biblical justification:
“The book includes cartoon drawings of a woman masturbating and multiple women engaging in oral sex,” he writes. “If the book explored the same themes without sexual images or erotic language, I would have read it. But viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflict with the inherent sacredness of sex.”
OK, so let me see if I understand this correctly. The book contains pictures of normal human sexual activity (I have to assume between consenting adults, because I haven’t read the book)…and Grasso is offended? It’s not like the book’s covering is advertising “GRAPHIC LESBIAN SEX!!!” or “LURID DESCRIPTIONS OF LOOSE WOMEN PERFORMING ORAL SEX!!!” What I’m having trouble wrapping my head around is how depictions of sex, whether written or graphic, “conflict with the inherent sacredness of sex.” Would it be acceptable if it was a man and a woman in the missionary position? Or does any discussion of sex offend Grasso’s tender sensibilities, which I imagine he’s had OH, so much of.
Could it be that he’s taking himself…and his beliefs…just a wee bit too seriously?? Could it be that his narrow morality ISN’T the standard that others should work overtime to ensure they don’t transgress? Does he not recognize that he’s entering a world where not everyone thinks, believes, lives, or loves as he does? In taking his moral stance, is he not advocating for censorship?
But here’s what’s really confusing: I was told by a huge cover story in the Atlantic this month that it’s liberals who are ruining academic freedom on campus. The real censorship, I was told, is to warn students about violent or explicit material that you then expect them to read anyway. Free speech is under assault, I was informed, because student unions decline to pay for the comedy stylings of Dennis Miller or goofy novelty song acts. But nobody mentioned the students who are literally refusing to read books because the Bible told them not to.
As mentioned by Amanda Marcotte, this is part of an effort (what some might call a propaganda campaign) designed to convince us that the problem on college campuses these days is “political correctness.” While Conservatives are painting Liberals as the “problem,” what they won’t talk about are their own efforts to create a public space on campuses in which they control the tone and tenor of public speech. THEY want to control public speech, and the way they’re working to do that is to convince us that…(GASP!!!) LIBRULS!!! are the problem. It’s the Liberal PC Police who are heavily invested in censoring public speech they disagree with.
If only Liberals were as virtuous, free-spirited, and open-minded as Conservatives….
The reason colleges won’t pay for Dennis Miller to perform is that he’s Just. No. Longer. Funny. At one time in his career he was rather amusing; then he became aggressively Conservative and with it distressingly pedantic and humorless. His humor has devolved into self-righteous, snarky rants against Liberals…and the truth is that smug arrogance isn’t funny. THAT’S why colleges don’t pay Miller to perform anymore. Strangely enough, people don’t want to hire comedians who aren’t funny- especially ones so steeped in smug arrogance and lack of self-awareness they can’t recognize their own role in the demise of their career.
From where I sit- and yes, I’m a LIBRUL!!!- the problem can’t be laid at the feet of those of us on the left side of the ideological spectrum. Are we blameless? Of course not, but Liberals by definition stand for the opening of the mind to new ideas. By nature, we don’t reject the truth because it doesn’t mesh with our ideology. We don’t deny science, for instance, because it doesn’t support our dominant narrative. The problem lies with Conservative culture warriors, who, like Grasso, expect their tender sensibilities to not only be indulged, but to be the moral framework by which we all live.
Yeah…not surprisingly, the real world doesn’t work that way. You’re free to your morality and your opinions, but you don’t get to refuse to do coursework and expect to have that decision respected. Conservative Christian culture warriors don’t set the rules on college campuses. If that’s the goal, there are plenty of private, very Conservative Christian colleges which live by the rules you accept as the way the world should work; I suspect they’d welcome Grasso and his fellow travelers.
Are there liberals and feminists who go overboard and demand censorship? Yes, that is a thing that has happened, and we should push back against it. But this incident is a reminder that the majority of threats to education and academic freedom come from the right, from the attempts to suppress science education to “abstinence-only” programs to attacks on schools teaching kids about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Fun Home is not a pornographic book. It’s a shame that Grasso and his fellow conservative Christian students objectify women’s bodies to the point where they think all nudity equals porn. The sex scenes in Fun Home portray, in a secular way, what one might call “the inherent sacredness of sex.” Bechdel’s youthful sexual encounters are seen as life-affirming and full of joy—the kind of joy she fears her repressed father never had the chance to experience. Grasso may see all female nudity as nothing more than “titillating content.” If so, that’s all the more reason for him to read Bechdel’s book and consider the possibility that sex—complete with nudity!—can be about intimacy and human connection and so much more. But first he needs to chill out and do his homework.
In a global sense, it seems to be the goal of Conservatives to drain the joy from virtually all aspects of life, to create a space in which people live life as if it’s a duty, their service to a Supreme Being being the be all and end all, and independent and/or critical thought considered verboten. There’s no room for joy, merely the rote performance of duties within inflexible gender roles as if we were living in a world reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The biggest problem with Grasso and other Duke students objecting to being assigned to read Fun Home is their refusal to open their minds to ideas that don’t necessarily mesh with the “personal Christian moral beliefs.” Learning is about opening your mind to ideas and concepts that challenge and stretch understanding of the world around you. It’s NOT about validating and affirming the prejudices and preconceived notions you cling to.
Ideas are not the problem; they pose no threat except to the degree one allows. Under normal circumstances, ideas should be evaluated and then accepted or rejected…but they should at least be considered. Students don’t have to agree with the ideas they’re exposed to…but neither do they have the right to decide what parts of their coursework they’re amenable to and which clashes with their “personal Christian moral code.” That’s just not the way education works; it’s not an a la carte process. If they want an education that validates and affirms their beliefs and prejudices, there are numerous Conservative Christian universities who’d welcome them (and their parents’ tuition money) with open arms.
Welcome to the real world. Get over yourselves…and stop expecting the world to cater to you. It’s getting to be rather tiresome. Y’all are Christians in the same way I’m the Queen of Denial.
