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Why are resources being put toward a dehumanizing vision of sexuality?
Why are resources being put toward a dehumanizing vision of sexuality?
F urman University once lost its religion. Now it has gained another one. That was the lesson I drew from the “Sextacular,” a Furman-sponsored event, held in front of the James B. Duke Library on campus.
Walking down the library steps holding several condoms and a grape-flavored dental dam (and a stamp card for a free snow cone!), I wondered if the advice we had been given, “to claim ownership of our bodies,” was the advice of the university itself.
Founded in 1826 as a Baptist college, Furman split from the South Carolina Baptist Convention in 1992. But there is a new established religion here. And it has the approval of the Office of Spiritual Life.
The night of the Sextacular, an associate chaplain at this once-Christian university sponsored a public lecture by Justine Ang Fonte, a renowned intersectional-sex educator. Nearly 200 students attended. And all of them received credit as part of the “Cultural Life Program.”
This “Sextacular in Conversation” event made it clear why my university effectively dumped a bunch of condoms in my hand outside the library. It explains why I was given the contact information of instructors off campus who could train me in polyamory, BDSM, and compersion.
For those of you who do not know what compersion is: It is the supposedly selfless virtue of loving your polygamous partners so much that you allow them to have sex with others. This is what Furman is teaching me about love and sexuality — though, to be fair, the university is outsourcing this training to the Queer Wellness Center of Greenville, S.C., where, I am told, “anyone could come.”
The birth-control booth made it evident that Furman sponsored the Sextacular to give students the tools to experience sexual pleasure without consequence. Fonte’s lecture, however, revealed that this event was no exercise in mere hedonism. The Sextacular did not simply provide students with tools to maximize pleasure. It did more than that. It peddled a deviant and destructive worldview.
Fonte, speaking at the behest of the Office of Spiritual Life, detailed that worldview. In her “Sex and Shame” lecture, she explained that the shame someone experiences in relation to sex is culturally determined. Shame (or guilt — she seemed to conflate the two) is rooted not in conscience but in the way that families, religions, and cultures try to control us by obstructing the path to bodily autonomy.
Fonte noted that in her comprehensive K–12 sex-education programs she focuses on power dynamics. Yes, parents, she teaches kindergartners about power dynamics. She does not teach about conscience, restraint, discipline, respect, or procreative purpose. She teaches that those with the most privilege — that is, white heterosexual men — tell everyone else what they can and cannot do and that they ought to be resisted.
The thrust of Fonte’s message is obvious: White heterosexual men are responsible for the sexual norms in our society and have instituted them for their own advantage.
Fonte, who insists that it is time “to flip the script,” assumes that the end, or telos, of human life is personal autonomy. And the only way to achieve that goal, she tells us, is by breaking free from these heteronormative standards.
“This is my goal for all people when I’m teaching K–12,” Fonte declares, to promote a “sex positive” outlook. A sex-positive outlook promotes the right to sexual self-determination and agency. Yes, parents, she teaches sex positivity to kindergartners. A sex-positive outlook begins with the affirmation that we “deserve” pleasure. Once we realize that we deserve pleasure, we understand our “self-worth.”
It must be because our sexuality is the source of our value as human beings that Furman indulges students’ sexual desires and preserves a “safe” and “affirming” environment for all nonconforming gender identities.
This, however, is a dehumanizing vision. Furman, ashamed of its southern and Christian heritage, has renounced its past and bowed down at the altar of “progress,” or sexual liberation.
According to the old creed, our telos is to love God and enjoy Him forever. According to the new creed, our telos is to enjoy personal autonomy. The old creed says that original sin is responsible for the evil and suffering in this world. The new creed says the white man is responsible. The old creed gave us two commands: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. The new creed gives us only one command, and it is much simpler: “Demand pleasure.”
The great evil that we must combat in this world, Fonte remarked, is the heteronormative set of standards that threaten our attempt to live a life without shame. These standards are the reason “why there is still a closet that our queer peers have to come out of.”
“My dream is there is no closet they even have to come out of,” Fonte boomed. “They get to be who they are right out of the womb.” In front of Duke Library, this brave new world was prefigured. Flags waved on this breezy day. Flags representing asexuality, pansexuality, and bisexuality.
Yet atop Duke Library, the old motto Christo et Doctrinae still glistened in the afternoon sunlight. Fonte envisions a brave new world without closets. But the only way to usher it in would be to place Christ in the closet. And that is what Furman has done.