Opinion
Educational sex scenes: perhaps the greatest oxymoron in all of academia.
It really doesn’t matter what class taken: art, literature, humanities. Before most students graduate from USF St. Petersburg, they will have seen at least one movie scene with sex, nudity or eroticism in class.
I personally have seen one every semester since I started school here.
I respect and admire many of the professors who have shown these films in my classes. Yet, I question the purpose. What can students possibly hope to gain intellectually from watching these films?
Surely professors don’t wish to teach students how sex works. Public consensus holds that Hollywood unrealistically depicts sex anyways. I have yet to talk to anyone who can give me a clear, rational answer to my question.
When I was in middle school, I promised myself I would never watch a movie with a sex scene. I realize this puts me in the minority of most Americans. I didn’t make this commitment because I was afraid of sex. In fact, the opposite is true. I believe sex is a beautiful thing, in a context: marriage.
What sex scenes do is make sex commonplace. Anyone who feels a slight twinge of a feeling they call “love” has to have sex in a movie. Otherwise, it won’t be deemed a “good” movie.
The normalization of sex in movies makes constant sex in the real world seem normal also. Not having sex in your relationship? It’s obviously not a relationship worth having.
Suddenly, there’s no advantage to marriage. If the advantages of marriage can happen outside of marriage, then what’s the point? And when people do end up getting married, all those memories follow. The memories of the sex in the movies, real life, etcetera. Sex loses its beauty, because all one can think of is “remember that time when…”
I’m a journalism and media studies major. I’ve taken classes on media effects enough to know that theories on how media affects us seem to change every couple of years. One day, it affects us immensely. The next, we aren’t affected at all. Using the no effects model, we excuse ourselves to watch whatever we wish.
College is a time to explore different viewpoints. I understand that I will encounter people who hold different views than I in regards to sex and marriage. That’s fine, even healthy. I realize someone may say something that offends me. I may say something that offends someone else.
Showing sex scenes in class go beyond merely disagreeing with me. It violates my standards.
“I graduated high school without ever seeing a sex scene. If I was going to watch a movie with one, I made sure I knew when to skip a scene or leave a room. When I came to USFSP, I saw a movie full of graphic sex scenes. No one warned me before the scene was right in front of my eyes.”
The answer won’t come through censorship or punishing professors for showing such movies. I think professors should consider the implications of showing graphic scenes to their students before playing the movie.
For three semesters, I’ve sat silent and allowed professors to play these movies. I don’t want to go into marriage with memories of others having sex. Why should those memories develop in the classroom? I want to be the best journalist I can be. Is watching graphic sex scenes, nudity and eroticism really a prerequisite?
College is about learning and understanding new viewpoints, which doesn’t mean you have you agree with them. Sex is a part of everyday life: the human experience. You have to be willing to open your eyes to things you’d rather not see if you really want to be the best journalist you can be.