Academe: July 2008 Archives

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!"