Transcript of "60 Minutes" Show on Controversial College Program
Contributed by Melinda Whiteway
Sunday, March 22, 1998
Profile: Sexuality 101; increasing number of colleges now offering sexuality
studies covering all manner of sexual activities
SEXUALITY 101
MIKE WALLACE, co-host:
It may surprise you that before we begin this report on a growing
field in academia that we have to give you a parental warning. But
you should be on notice that some of what you're about to see,
indeed, some of what is being taught on college campuses today, is
for mature audience's only. So with that word of caution, time was
and not too long ago the hot subjects on college campuses were black
studies, Chicano studies, women studies. Today it's something
called, by the people who teach it, queer studies; studies that
explore sexual identity, sexual ambiguity, sexual fantasy and gay
history. It is also known as gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender
studies and today it's being taught at some of the top universities
in the country. And it's not just the classes that are provoking
controversy. At the State University of New York at New Paltz last
fall, the Women's Studies Department organized an academic conference
called Revolting Behavior: The Challenges of Women's Sexual Freedom.
And to some who were there, that is just what it was: revolting.
Ms. CANDACE De RUSSY: This conference was a travesty of academic
standards and a travesty of academic leadership.
(Footage of Candace De Russy with Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Candace De Russy, a trustee of the college,
was there.
Ms. De RUSSY: I am embarrassed to describe how, in fact, lurid
the conference was. It featured the sale and the free distribution
of pornographic materials including information on how to dispose of
one's razor blades after, quote, "bloodletting sexual activities."
So what we have here, in fact, is the degeneration of an academic
forum into a platform for lesbian sex, for public sadomasochism, for
anal sex, bisexuality and masturbation.
Dr. ROGER BOWEN: If students are interested in what these
subjects are, best to study them in a safe, protective environment
such as the academy.
(Footage of Roger Bowen; Bowen with Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) The college's president, Dr. Roger Bowen,
has been under intense criticism for permitting the conference to
take place, a conference that included the distribution of pamphlets
like the one I read to him titled Safer Sex Handbook for Lesbians.
(From pamphlet) 'For safe penetration, use a slippery, lubed-up
latex glove to enable...'
(Voiceover) Needless to say, we cannot read all of it.
(From pamphlet) '...to safely rock her into a frenzy.'
Dr. BOWEN: Mm.
WALLACE: Please, give me a break.
Dr. BOWEN: This--this is--this is--that...
WALLACE: The academy?
Dr. BOWEN: You can focus on that, if you wish. And it is
titillating, and it is provocative, and it's even insulting, in many
ways, to our moral sensibilities, and I understand that...
WALLACE: Yeah.
Dr. BOWEN: ...but we had 21 workshops, 19 of which were academic,
very conventional...
WALLACE: Mm.
Dr. BOWEN: ...given by respected scholars in their field. The
larger issue is about academic freedom and protecting the First
Amendment within the academy.
Ms. De RUSSY: In the name of academic freedom, what we have here
sometimes is, in fact, academic license, the notion that anything can
be said--anything can be said and done on campuses now. No subject
is taboo.
Dr. BOWEN: The same topic is being explored today at the
University of Minnesota, University of Iowa, University of Virginia,
Yale, Brown, NYU, some of the top-quality colleges in the country.
(Footage of Wallace on campus; title highlights of college
courses; George Chauncey)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) So we went to visit some of the top colleges
in the country, and found that, indeed, students are discussing in
classes sexual practices and pleasures, homoeroticism in literature
and history. Dartmouth, for example, offered Queer Theory, Queer
Text; at Brown University, Unnatural Acts: Lesbian and Gay Literary
and Cultural Studies; at Stanford, Homosexuals, Heretics, Witches and
Werewolves: Deviants in Medieval Society. Professor George
Chauncey, who teaches a gay history course at the University of
Chicago, told me it wasn't so long ago that a class like his was
virtually impossible.
Was there reluctance in academia, if you will, to get involved
with this?
Professor GEORGE CHAUNCEY: Oh, definitely. The academy has been
one of the last places to take up these questions.
(Footage of Chauncey)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Questions, for example, which take a closer
look at the sexuality of some of America's greatest heroes.
Prof. CHAUNCEY: Probably the best example of that is the case of
Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, before he was married, did live with
another man, Joshua Speed, for three and a half years, and slept with
him, shared his bed for three and a half years. And their
correspondence indicates that they had a very close, intimate
relationship. And so, on the basis of this, some claim that Lincoln
was a homosexual. Well, I don't think he can be called a
homosexual. But at the same time, I don't think we can call Lincoln
a heterosexual either. The point, it seems to me, is that Lincoln,
and many, many other men and women who we know more about in the 19th
century, were operating in a very different emotional universe than
we are today.
Ms. ELIZA BYARD: The effect of homosexuality on society has
become a legitimate focus of study.
(Footage of Eliza Byard)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Eliza Byard, a PhD candidate in history at
Columbia University, runs her own queer studies group on campus.
Ms. BYARD: If you want to understand certain moments in American
history, you will understand those moments better if you see all the
dynamics in play. For example, the fall of Joseph McCarthy, the
Army-McCarthy hearings, 1954...
(Vintage footage of Joseph McCarthy)
Ms. BYARD: (Voiceover) ...a moment when this man who had
terrorized American society for four years, was finally brought
down.
One of the major tools at the disposal of the Army lawyers at that
moment was homophobia. They could look to the relationship...
(Vintage photo of Roy Cohn and G. David Schine with McCarthy)
Ms. BYARD: (Voiceover) ...of Roy Cohn and G. David Schine and
imply that these men were lovers.
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Cohn and Schine were Senator McCarthy's
principal aides at the time.
Ms. BYARD: And that moment of humiliation and insinuation is one
of the key moments in the downfall of Joseph McCarthy.
(Footage of Chauncey; John Younger)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) But gay history is only one aspect of these
sexuality studies. At the other end of the spectrum, we found more
debatable scholarship in courses like this one at Duke University.
Professor JOHN YOUNGER: A woman is defined as the human being who
is penetrated by the man, who is defined as the human being who does
the penetration.
(Footage of Younger with Wallace; title highlight of college
course; Younger)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Professor John Younger teaches an English
seminar called Perspectives in Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Studies, as
part of a new program he directs at Duke in the study of sexuality.
On this particular day, he was talking about power and inequality in
sexual relationships.
Prof. YOUNGER: ...talking about. In lesbian terms, I'm talking
about the butch-femme combination. And in--in male homosexual
terms, I'm talking about the sadomasochistic, where we are taking a
kind of realization of a power in equality, and we are going to then
exaggerate it and play with it so that for the S&M male relationship,
they'll have leather--black leather costumes and leather chaps, and
they'll have whips and chains, a little bit of pain, and so on and so
forth.
Unidentified Student #1: You would just think that the power
resides in the person who plays the role of the man, who does the
penetrating.
Prof. YOUNGER: Let's say the top, put it that way. 'Top,'
'bottom' is the normal terms for this.
Student #1: What?
Prof. YOUNGER: Top and bottom--penetrator, penetratee.
Student #1: OK.
(Footage of Wallace in Younger's class)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) It was difficult for me to understand how
this discussion belonged in a college English class.
I'm not sure, still, what changes this from a rap session about
sexuality into academia.
Prof. YOUNGER: What I'm trying to do is to give some concepts
with which students can then start looking at this very complicated
social issue. There is no one viewpoint. I think we've all been,
in a sense, a victim of one viewpoint.
(Footage of Wallace with students)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) I asked these students in that Duke class,
all of whom identified themselves as straight, why they chose to take
a class like this.
Unidentified Student #2: One of the reasons why I'm taking the
class is because I want to learn more about the social structure of
the country. And as a minority and a female, you know, I can
understand the minority issues that the homosexual community has to
face.
Student #1: Some of the theories that are introduced in class are
sometimes off-the-wall, and I get frustrated just discussing
something so absurd.
WALLACE: So absurd?
Student #1: Yes. Like, we discuss different theories as to
explaining why people are gay, and I disagree with almost all of
them.
WALLACE: What kind of theories do they give as to why people are
gay?
Student #1: Well, there's one theory I remember in particular
saying that women were more prone to be gay than men because we're
around our mother and we're raised by a mother, and we kind of get
this attraction toward women due to our mother's love.
Mr. ROGER KIMBALL: Here, what you have is a coterie of
politically motivated people who are attempting to use the university
as an ideological training ground.
(Footage of Roger Kimball)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Roger Kimball, managing editor of the
conservative journal The New Criterion, is among the most outspoken
critics of this latest trend on campus.
Mr. KIMBALL: Every week, we get another report saying, 'Gee,
our--our student body is--it's--they're terribly uneducated. They
don't know who Winston Churchill was. They have never read a novel
by Charles Dickens. Every week, you get a new report about how
disastrous things are in education. And at the same time, what you
have here is--is the total politicization of the curriculum at many
places, elite places like...
WALLACE: Wait, wait, wait. Total...
Mr. KIMBALL: Right.
WALLACE: ...politicization?
Mr. KIMBALL: Well, let's put it this way: extreme politicization
of--of the humanities.
WALLACE: Students aren't required to take these courses. They
can choose or reject whatever they want to hear.
Mr. KIMBALL: That's why one has teachers. We have to give
students what they need, not what they say they--they may want.
Professor MICHAEL WARNER: There are a lot of students for whom
this kind of study is exactly the transforming experience that they
need from education.
(Footage of Michael Warner)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Rutgers English Professor Michael Warner is a
pioneer in what he himself calls queer studies.
Prof. WARNER: Many of the things that we're studying are
fundamental to the culture, like the concept of pleasure or the
concept of consent. These things are--are key terms in our law, in
our philosophy, in our ethics, in our self-understanding, and they
are best understood by inquiring into the diversity of sexual
practices and pleasures.
WALLACE: Professor Warner, I think that you'll agree that most
people who are looking in at this moment will tell you that
sadomasochism is deviant, doesn't belong in anyone's classroom.
Prof. WARNER: They will say that in one context. But Americans
also know that people have all kinds of sexual pleasures. And
as--sadomasochism is not confined to some peculiar fringe minority.
It sells products, it's in music videos, Madonna has made a whole
career out of it. And people know in that context that it's a
perfectly ordinary thing--or not ordinary, maybe, but at least
pleasant thing. And the fact that they contradict themselves in
other contexts and say, 'Oh, it's deviant and it's horrible and
objectionable, and no one should be allowed to talk about it in a
university,' is a sign of deep contradiction, unrecognized conflict,
and ill thought-through assumptions.
WALLACE: It's my understanding that much of sexuality studies is
being driven by people who are themselves gay?
Prof. WARNER: Well, that's true. And it--it is a--it is a
pretty commonsensical reason for it, which is that we're the people
whose--whose lives are organized by the need to overcome the stigma,
and by the need to find dignity in difference, and we find--we find
each other through a shared world organized around sexuality. So it
makes sense that we've thought a lot about it...
WALLACE: Mm-hmm.
Prof. WARNER: ...and that's finding expression now in a lot of
academic work.
(Footage of conference; photos of transsexuals)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And in academic conferences like this one
last month at the University of California at Santa Cruz organized by
the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Student Association. The
program included panels such as Compulsory Meat Eating and the
Lesbian Vegetarian Connection. There was a photography exhibit of
transsexuals, women who became men, including the photographer
himself.
Unidentified Man: And I've met so many transsexuals through this
process of photographing them, and it's just been an incredibly rich
experience.
(Footage of workshop)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And we sat in on a workshop called Latex
Lovers: A Workshop on Queer Women, Safe Sex.
Mr. KIMBALL: This sort of thing has no place in the university.
After all, students have four years, four unrepeatable years, in
which they can immerse themselves in, as Matthew Arnold put it, 'The
best that has been taught and said.' Is this--is this a good use of
taxpayer dollars, a good use of parents' dollars?
Prof. WARNER: We're not just saying, 'Give us some space,
tolerate us.' We're saying, 'You don't really understand how
impossibly conflicted this culture is on the subject of sexuality.'
So we really, I think, are putting the ball back in the court of
straight culture...
WALLACE: Mm-hmm.
Prof. WARNER: ...so to speak...
WALLACE: Exactly.
Prof. WARNER: ...and that's what makes people nervous. That's
why we get so much flak.
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