Westminster College located in Utah, United States is offering a course titled “FILM 2000: Porn” which requires the students as well as the teachers to watch pornography together. The details of the course was published on the college’s official website, however, it was taken down later after it attracted attention and criticism by the media and the internet. The website stated, “We will watch pornographic films together and discuss the sexualization of race, class, and gender and as an experimental, radical art form.”
The college further said that it keeps offering such electives to the students to help them understand and analyse social issue better. The course offered falls under the college’s Gender Studies courses. Classes for this course are going to be held twice a week for three hours during a four-week term.
The pornography industry is a multi-billion industry. The course being offered by the college seeks to study the industry as a cultural phenomenon that brings to the surface sexual inequalities also holding the potential to change sexual norms and also a form of art that needs to be studied more seriously and deeply.
Inspite of receiving criticism, the university has chosen to hold its ground. The course will be continue to be conducted as planned. The college’s Chief Marketing Officer, Sheila Rappazzo Yorkin, in a media report quoted, “the course is not new at the college. It was offered several times in the past, but was paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
This decision of the college however has upset the Utahns. To express dissent, a petition was created by the citizens demanding the removal of the course. The petition states that watching of pornography together in the classroom with the teachers creates an unsafe environment for students while normalising pornography in culture.
This news has stirred up controversy not just in the US but across the world. The media picked up this issue striking conversation on the internet. Where, on one hand, schools in India organise sex education and speak at large about the negative impact porn can have on the young minds, a college in the United States is playing porn in the classroom to understand gender, racism and class. Interesting!
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