Paul Thomas, director of “Call Girl Confidential,” spoke and screened a hardcore film focused on fantasy rape and bondage at Yale last week, according to the New York Post. A student, Colin Adamo, had the temerity to call the film disrespectful to women, to which Thomas, notes the Yale Daily News, “insinuated that he was a prude.”
This kind of accusation — of prudery, puritanism, etc. — is of course the stock retort these days when anyone challenges the easy circulation of sicko, violent S&M porn on many college campuses. And such rhetoric has largely succeeded. The porn merchants and their academic allies have embarrassed and paralyzed most critics into silence.
Never fear, Yale. Respect for women? Human dignity? The potential danger to students of violent porn? What in the world glorifying the likes of fantasy rape has to do with higher education? Such “bourgeois” considerations would be met with a gaping yawn and yet more derision. Serious moral debate, especially on sexual issues, is near dead on campuses.