Have you ever been intruded upon by somebody else’s public porn consumption?
A quiet young woman in one of my classes wanted to know if she could ask a question about college “etiquette” (her term). A sophomore who appeared not to be feeling quite at home on our big campus, I expected her to ask about a roommate squabble or a tricky club membership issue.
Instead, she surprised me with this: “Is it impolite for me to ask the guy who sits in front of me in one of those huge lecture courses to turn off his porn while the teacher’s speaking? It’s, like, really distracting.”
The tone she used was one she’d employ to inquire which fork to begin with at a formal dinner or whether she should fold her napkin between courses. This student watches entire dirty movies on his laptop – during a 9 a.m. class – and “not just clips.” She doesn’t want to move because she’s left-handed and snagged one of the few seats designed for lefties.
Naturally, the university where I teach has a detailed policy against discrimination and harassment explicitly saying that “academic and professional excellence can exist only when each member of our community is assured an atmosphere of safety and mutual respect.” Sexual harassment may include the “public display of pornographic” materials, so my bet is that the kid watching hard-core movies could be disciplined were he brought up on charges.
But my student didn’t want to press charges or even tell the professor. I asked if she’d permit me to act on her behalf but she declined. She wouldn’t name the course. All she wanted, she insisted, was to figure out how to pay attention in class without making the porn-watcher feel “uncomfortable” or making herself seem like “the sex police.”
But watching porn in class raises other questions as well, such as: Why on earth would anybody do that?
Seriously, kid? Do you watch porn in class while you’re having your first cup of coffee and then watch the professor’s lectures at home and take notes by yourself?
I also want to know who’s paying for this kid’s education, because somebody is picking up the bill: either his family, the state or the institution is securing him the right to occupy that seat. Porn Boy is here at the expense of someone else: Another applicant was rejected so that Porn Boy could have the privilege of attending class.
Yes, pornography has existed since the beginning of time. Folks have created dirty pictures since we first drew in the mud with sticks, but one thing I can tell you is that the final exam will not include a matching quiz based on “Virgins from the Planet Pleasure.”
It isn’t just where I teach, either, and it isn’t even just college. In a recent issue of Time magazine, Belinda Luscombe describes a 28-year-old named Gabe Deem as growing up “in an era when what used to be considered X-rated was becoming mainstream,” so that he and his friends watched “explicit videos constantly … even during class on their school-issued laptops.”
I wanted to help my student understand that the problem was not hers – even though she was upset by it.
I remembered that Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, addressed the issue of dealing nicely with smut-watchers at work. As if to illustrate my ignorance, when we searched online for “Miss Manners,” I tripped over a startling number of sites featuring a “Miss Manners” having nothing to do with the distinguished 77-year-old Washington Post columnist. (As my friend Angel once said, “Not all searches for ‘blonde ponies’ get you where you thought you’d get.”)
We did finally locate Judith Martin’s line. It was in response to a woman asking how she might innocuously make her male co-workers stop showing her degrading material. Martin summed it up wonderfully: “Your question is almost like asking for a polite way to let a flasher know that his trousers are open.”
I suggested that my student needed to embrace some outrage, find some humor and use a loud-girl voice to say, “Hey, friend, how about keeping your private tabs closed? Don’t do that here. Thanks.”
Some things transcend etiquette. Watching porn in public is one of them.
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