Katherine Kerstein has an op-ed on the shameful frat boy antics at Yale:
Who can blame Yale guys for being confused?
Let's get this straight. Yale big wigs invite young men -- buzzed by testosterone -- to experience and celebrate the outer edges of male sexual prurience. They invite them to ogle female fellow students in garters and leather bustiers as they slink down the catwalk in the university dining hall.
But when the guys take the invitation seriously, an outraged chorus denounces them for "demeaning" and "hateful speech."
It's just another example of the blind spot so many our "best and brightest" exhibit. Too often, folks with strings of graduate degrees think they can reshape the world and human beings to their own specifications.
They act as if human beings are infinitely malleable -- as if there is no "floor to the universe." They think they can encourage young people to view sex as a sport, and are shocked when the dark side comes out.
R. J. Snell, meanwhile, writes about “sex gone wrong” and suggests how to make it right:
Sexual desire is incredibly powerful and volatile, capable of bringing great joy or enormous harm. Not only does the institution of marriage serve to regulate and order sexual dynamism into the stability of the household, but it allows for the integration of sexuality into a whole life, into a life incorporating the comprehensive union of spouses—body, mind, emotions, finances, work, religion, children, aspirations, fears, and loves. But while the institution itself brings about personal and social goods of order, there is no guarantee that the institution of marriage per se avoids sexual alienation or degradation of spouses…
… Overcoming the normalized brutalization of women requires a faithful recovery of the traditional understanding of the marital act, for that understanding forbids those acts which alienate and use the body, consciously or not, and allows only those acts in which women and men give themselves to each other in integrated and comprehensive ways. One might even say that the tradition teaches how to make love rather than merely to attain a degraded and brutalizing pleasure.
Read the full column here.
