"Human Sexuality" class at Northwestern includes after-class session on BDSM, complete with dildo penetration and orgasm

By Michael J.W. Stickings

No, I'm not kidding:

More than 100 Northwestern University students watched as a naked 25-year-old woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her fiancee during an after-class session of the school's popular "Human Sexuality" class.

*****

The optional, non-credit demo followed psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey's sexuality class. Nearly 600 students are in Bailey's class this quarter, and most didn't stick around for the after-class show, which featured four members of Chicago's fetish community describing "BDSM," or bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.

Conservatives like Michelle Malkin are jumping up and down in disgust, but then they're generally opposed to both education and sexuality, so this, to them, was doubly bad. And it was indeed educational:

"I didn't expect to see a live sex show," said Justin Smith, 21, a senior economics and political science major who was in the after-class session. "We were told we were going to have some people talk to us about the fetish world and kink."

Smith said it took him awhile to process what happened, but he doesn't object to the way the material was presented.

"It was for me academic like everything else," he said.

Professor Bailey was hesitant to agree to it but couldn't really "come up with a legitimate reason why students should not be able to watch such a demonstration. Was it obscene? Only if you think such normal aspects of human sexuality are obscene -- and, yes, I mean normal, which fetishes (and female orgasm) very much are, and exhibitionism is hardly a "weird" one. Besides, everyone present was an adult and the whole situation was fully consensual. The woman, Faith Kroll, "said she was not coerced in any way and students were repeatedly warned it was going to get graphic."

I applaud the university for supporting Bailey, the course, liberal education, and academic freedom:

"Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines," said Alan K. Cubbage, vice president for University Relations. "The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge."

I realize that conservatives don't get that -- the advancement of knowledge, that is -- but there is so much more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their repressive right-wing ideology.

As for me, I just wonder why I missed out. I don't remember anything like that ever occurring at Tufts. At least not in a classroom.