It promotes a “healthy lifestyle.”
At least that’s what Larry Moneta, Duke University’s Vice President for Student Affairs, claimed after the Brodhead administration gave the green light to Duke’s sponsorship of the Sex Workers’ Art Show.
Moneta didn't say how shoving dollar bills and sparklers through your anus and into your rectum and standing with other Dukies and shouting, “I take it up the butt,” promotes healthy living.
Perhaps Moneta said nothing because he knows President Brodhead is planning to explain everything to us in his next “Dear Duke Alumni, Parents and Friends” letter.
Whatever the case, The Chronicle today published a column by Martha Brucato, a Duke student who helped the Women's Studies Department, the Women's Center and others organize the sex show.
Brucato’s column has already drawn many comments on the thread, including this one:
heartsurgeonAs I often point out, how a person self-IDs on the Net is not a sure guide to who or what the person is.
posted 2/19/08 @ 11:39 AM EST
I might ask what percent of sex workers have communicable diseases, some of which (HIV, Hep B,C) are life-threatening.
What percent of sex workers have drug or alcohol addiction? What percent of sex workers have some form of serious mental illness? What percent of sex workers have a serious criminal record?
I hardly think this segment of society needs my encouragement (and tuition dollars) to pursue its "art".
Rather, screening for communicable disease, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders among these folks would seem to be a more appropriate and beneficial use of University funds, for all concerned.
Sometimes I wonder if these GLBT/Sex Week events are really recruitment tools for the alternative life style.
So I have no reason to say heartsurgeon is, in fact, a heart surgeon.
But what we can all be sure of is this: heartsurgeon asks questions and raises concerns any responsible physician would put before us.
Now why didn’t Moneta speak to those questions and concerns?
Why has President Brodhead said nothing in response to those questions and concerns?
Is Brodhead really waiting to discuss them in a letter?
I don’t think so. Brodhead wants to duck them and other important questions and concerns regarding Duke's sponsorship of the sex show.
Brodhead's been able to duck them because The Chronicle's editors have gone along with him by agreeing to ask him nothing about the sex show and saying nothing editorially about his silence concerning it.
Do any of you disagree?
2 comments:
This Sex Workers Show is simply another attempt to exploit the immature infatuation with saying dirty words in public.
A friend of mine produces and directs "The Vagina Monologues" and I have designed and built her sets as a personal favor because the show proceeds benefit abused women and children in our area. I have never seen the show and never intend to see it. I started to read the script, but by about the fourth page, I had to give up due to the constant repetition of slang terms for the female genitalia. It is boring more than obscene.
I was reminded of when I was about six or seven and I first heard some of these terms; we used to sit around and say the words and giggle uproariously. A mature and educated person who can still be excited by hearing off-color words shows himself to be anything but mature and educated. The same goes for any adult who can be entertained by the kind of garbage that was presented to the Duke audience in the Sex Workers Show. To somehow suggest that it was uplifting and educational is utter nonsense and proves that much of today's higher education is misguided, jejune, and intellectually vacant.
Tarheel Hawkeye
Here's a perfect letter on Tim Tyson in the Hurled Scum today. It speaks to Duke's flagrant hypocrisy.
Keep it coming.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/index.cfm#926186
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