The Last Day of Class

Today was my last day of teaching for the semester and I held my traditional little feast for all three of my classes. Here's some brief notes.

1. Corrupting the Youth. Socrates was convicted of corrupting the Athenian youth and denying the gods. Although I've never had much interest in Socrates and he's always been one of my least favorite figures in the history of political philosophy, I have to admit that I was very Socratic in my teaching of The Sermon on the Mount and the Gospel of St. Luke. My argument was not that I didn't believe in Jesus (although I don't). Instead, I argued that my Bible Belt students don't believe in Jesus as he is presented in the Bible and that what most Americans really believe in is a Lockianized re-interpretation of Jesus as a modern figure of freedom, rights, moderation, and responsibility. Like Socrates, I didn't get much resistance.

2. Turning Back the Specter of Heterosexuality. For some time, I've been thinking that the most important consequence of feminism was the specter of a generalized heterosexuality. In other words, feminism raised the possibility that males would see the homo-erotic worlds of education, work, sports, bars, and porn would either be forced to integrate women or forced out of existence. But guys can rest easy. Yes, women have not only been integrated into education, female students get better grades, receive more approval from teachers, and are starting to elbow their way into good jobs. However, guys have responded to the encroachment of women by turning video games into a homoerotic arena, greatly increasing their consumption of pornography, and advertising their masturbation as an alternative to involvement with women. And a lot of college guys seem to be de-emphasizing the importance of the newly hetero worlds of school and work as well.

Today, guys in my honor's class mentioned the popularity in their dorm of "rule," where guys seek to spank each other by surprise and can do so without retaliation unless the target sniffs out the attempt and shouts "rule" first. The homoeroticism here is in the spanking in the same way that towel-snapping used to be the homoeroticism of high school locker rooms. My twelve-year old daughter mentioned that "rule" was popular among eighth-grade boys last year at the local high school as well.

It's my impression that all the new strategies for homoeroticism have worked. In this sense, straight guys have defeated the specter of heterosexuality in their lives.