Creepy. Just Plain Creepy.
This story about the prof who got busted for surfing porn and sending emails about his sexual fantasies to a friend totally creeps me out, but some of the comments creep me out more.
Look, there's a difference between idle fantasy of the "she's hot/he's hot" variety and sending long, drawn-out, "Dear Penthouse Forum, you'd never believe what happened to me last Tuesday" style emails to your friend about them.
Side question for the menfolk - is emailing your buddies about your sexual fantasies just an everyday occurrence, or does that strike you as decidedly odd? And creepy, but let's just stick with odd for now.
I thought women were supposed to be all about the oversharing, but I can pretty much guarantee that I would never terrify my friends and accquaintances that way. Ick.
But back to my main point, which is this: some of the commenters are all up in arms like this is some sort of witch hunt. Look, first of all, it is not cool to surf porn on university computers. Period. We've fired quite a few folks for that behavior, although the firings here have tended to skew toward the staff side, not the faculty side. It's not a quesion of intellectual freedom, or freedom of speech, people.
Secondly, because this is a bit more subjective, this dude's emails are just disturbing, and not in that "eek! Protect my puritan eyes!' kind of way, but in the "Hey little girl, want some Caaaaaannnndy?" kind of way. And to the commenter who left the flip quote about the damage of Victorian mores--uh, seriously? I thought the point was that the professor was so completely sexually UN-repressed that he felt no compunction about spending office hours indulging his proclivities. Victorian mores, in this case, could have helped him refrain from hitting the "send" button, and thus helped him keep his job.
Bottom line: It's fine to be a creepy weirdo in your private life, but "tenure" doesn't equal "Let fly the work porn!"
Hmmm, it's a sliding scale. The closer to the 14-20 age range, the less odd (for both sender and recipient). The less frequently, the less odd. More detail would be more odd. If I, when I was in college, got such an email from a friend, I wouldn't have thought much of it. Multiple e-mails would be odder. After college, much odder. Today, from someone my age - very odd indeed.
But, it does make me think of the standard comment to many postings involving attractive females of the "I'd hit it" form. Is that not, in very brief form, a sexual fantasy, published not just for friends but to the public?
Men, pretty much, don't care about sex as long as they're getting enough of it - which can be surprisingly little. Yes, the fifteen-year old is obsessed but the ten- and forty-year olds would rather talk about, say, cars.
So the effect of these e-mails is basically that the guy isn't very mature.
I think that the prof is either on the edge of mental illness or is absolutely clueless about ordinary personal interaction. I think he goes well beyond immature!
AOG -
If you follow the links in the article to the Smoking Gun site, this fellow goes well beyond the generic, frat-boy style "I'd hit it," which is shorthand for "she's attractive, unattainable and an object of my fantasy," and
well into creepy-ville.
I think the devil's in the details here; as in, the dude gives WAAY too many details about these girls, as though he's spening waaaaay too much time thinking about them.
Well, yes, the creep is in the detail.
AOG -
If we ever do a blog meet, remind me to tell you the saga of the "aphrodesiac nut." I can't do it on the blog, but it's a humdinger, and believe me when I say this guy? He's got "aphrodesiac nut" written AAAAllllll over him! ;)
I was a professor for 14 years so I have a pretty good perspective. I see two issues.
1) Pron on the work computer.
If it's against policy and it's a fireable offense then he should be fired. Personally, I know of faculty who have done far worse things and NOT been fired. (Including becoming involved with a student which this guy did NOT do.) There should at least be a private warning first. Usually the humiliation of having been caught would be enough. Why is he doing this at work? Don't they pay this guy enough to get broadband at home? (BROAD BAND - get it? Lawd, I slay myself sometimes.)
2) Lusting after the girls in the class and writing about it to someone else.
Just let me say that if I had wanted to tomcat around there were plenty of opportunities with sexually aggressive girls who were provocative and clearly interested despite the fact I had a wedding ring on my finger. There was one girl whose real name I forget but who sat in the front row and should have been named "Sharon Stone". Any normal man, married or not, would have found it hard to concentrate. And there's nothing you can do to put an end to it. In the words of Joe Jackson
I got my heart burnt, you know where I hurt
They say the miniskirt is coming back in style
I say it’s not fair but what do they care
When you’ve got power then you use it for a while
I'm not sure we can blame the guy for his interest unless whether we know whether some of the girls were intentionally provoking his interest. I can just see some college girls being rotten enough to think it was fun to torture a lonely and maladjusted 60 year old.
My wife and I have a deal. It's OK to work up an appetite as long as you come home for dinner. Was this guy married? I wonder if the pron and his writing about the girls in his class were just some way of coping with some girl's behavior without actually acting on it by involving a student? He should have been tough enough to cope without it but everyone has a breaking point.
Details, details.
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When I was an undergrad and then in grad school, I was the big brother of a sorority. It was a nice social outlet and I got to go out with lots of girls who needed a date on occasion and I had my own black tie so I could be ready at a moment's notice. They knew I would behave and that they could depend on my discretion.
By the time I'd spent five years in grad school, I was eventually kind of in the neuter gender as far as they were concerned. I ended up overhearing a lot and some of those girls WOULD have those kind of discussions. Hell, on an occasion or two they had those discussions with ME. The stories I could tell. Yikes!!
Don't you find it a bit interesting that as a grad student, you were neuter, but as a professor you became male again, for basically the same demographic?
Well there was a strategy behind that.
As a married professor it would have been wrong to tomcat around with the undergraduate women so there's no choice in the matter.
But as an unmarried grad student big brother of the sorority it would not have been wrong. Regardless, I chose not to even though I was presented with multiple opportunities. 'Cause like I was saying - girls talk.
I made a point of behaving myself and once they figured out they could trust me not to be trying to get into their pants every chance I got (to be vulgar about it) and once they figured out that I DIDN'T talk, they let their guard down.
I got a lot of dates with a lot of interesting girls with no strings attached. Which was a sweet deal for me, because during my graduate program, I had a very interesting social life without being burdened with the care and feeding of a steady girlfriend. And since they were inviting me to their sorority functions, they were the ones footing the bill. Given that I was an impoverished graduate student - double sweet. In the process, I learned more about the opposite sex than you can imagine.
When I felt like chasing women, instead of robbing the undergraduate cradle, I saved it for my own grad school peer group. I made sure that was known in the sorority so that at least they didn't have any "doubts" about my goals in life.
It's all about how you treat people as to how you are perceived. That was thirty years ago and we're all grown up and are married and have kids. A few of those "girls" are my lifelong friends. We trust each other a heck of a lot more than anyone we've met since. And yes I have guy friends too, but I'm the only one I know who has the woman friends. Well worth the little bit of restraint 30 years ago.