Columbia University and Barnard College created a stir this month by filming what has been described as “a feminist pornographic film” in Columbia’s Butler Library to fight what they see as “gender tension” at the school. The film called “Initiatiøn,” was billed as a feminist statement exploring “the rituals of American Ivy League secret societies, to the point of hysteria, highlighting our culture’s perception of female desire.” It somehow made this ambiguous point by showing the women engaging in fondling, tweaking, and rubbing eggs on their bodies in the Butler library.
Now I admit that I am a middle-aged, Mid-western-born male professor who spends most of his academic time in the 18th Century, but I am confused. The students condemned the library because it had only names of males on its facade, proclaiming that “Butler is an extremely charged space — the names emblazoned on the stone facade are, for me, a stimulant for resistance.”
Columbia art and history major Coco Young explained that the library was the symbol of sexism because of the gender of those emblazoned on its walls. Butler is a neoclassical structure named as the University’s former President Nicholas Murray Butler. The names on the facade are a rather obvious and austere group: Along the front and sides of the library are inscribed the names of Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Saint Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, and Goethe. Notably, the most recent is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who was born 1749. The names reflect the neoclassical structure and the core curriculum of the University when it was constructed.
My guess is that the film is being the most closely scrutinized at fraternities, but that is clearly not the purpose. I have a hard time as an academic squaring the objection to the recognition of these ancient and classical philosophers as threatening or insulting to women. Columbia has long advanced female scholars and female scholarship. The university honors many such figures in different parts of the campus. Academia has been enriched by such voices and has evolved as women have thrown off the restrictions and prejudices that once existed. However, that does not mean that classical philosophers should be denounced for their gender anymore than female scholars should have been barred at one time for their gender.
Columbia is a curious site for such a protest given its history. Indeed, Barnard is named after Columbia President F. A. P. Barnard who fought for years to admit women at Columbia over objections from both students and faculty. He first called for such admissions in 1879, just 14 years after the Civil War. Finally, in 1883 after continual campaigning by Barnard, the Trustees adopted the Collegiate Course for Women. In 1886, the school awarded its first degree to a woman, a PhD in astronomy to Wellesley College graduate Winifred Edgerton. There remained opposition to women going to class and efforts to reverse the gains made by Barnard. In 1887, the school awarded a B.A. degree to Mary Hankey upon her completion of the Collegiate Course. In 1889, the trustees approved the establishment of Barnard College and in 1890 they hired a female botanist, Emily Gregory, to instruct Barnard students.
Like many institutions, there is a stratigraphic history of Columbia that shows the steady increase in female scholars and students. All universities now celebrate that diversity. It is possible to honor ancient and classical voices as well as more modern voices at such institutions. It takes a degree of maturity to understand this history while honoring all of these brilliant contributions. I do not read Locke or Plato through the lens of gender politics. These are philosophers who introduce students to foundational concepts of government, religion, and society. I certainly do not view their mere mention on library walls as a symbol of sexism or repression.
Yet, Barnard College senior Sara Grace Powell insisted “Butler is an extremely charged space — the names emblazoned on the stone façade are, for me, a stimulant for resistance . . . I work in Butler but sometimes feel suffocated by it … The point was to transgress the relative conservatism (and it’s history) of the space with this hysterical intervention.” Wow, I can understand not liking neoclassical architecture but feeling “suffocated” by the fact that there are male names on the façade of the building? I also remain confused how that feeling of suffocation leads to tweaking and what has been criticized as a soft porn shoot at a place of learning.
Frankly, the film strikes me as adolescent and irresponsible. It certainly bring a new meaning to Dorothy Parker’s view of Ivy League women when she said “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
Vogue contributor and the author of the Slutever blog Karley Sciortino helped create the film and encouraged people, if they liked her feminist porn to check out “the most recent was a blow-job instruction video that I made with Sandy Kim last May.” I am not sure if that is considered a feminist porn film but I think I will pass.
Excellent comments, as always, Jill. Thanks.
“I will also link these images to Gitmo. People in chains, people beaten, people forced into sexual acts are all a part of what is happening in one of American’s finest prisons. I have often considered that the people who participated in these initiations also thought up how to set up torture in Gitmo and other US blacksites.” (Jill @ 10:13 am)
And it’s come home to the streets (and communities) of America, as well, in a myriad of ways.
Rich,
I agree with you about women’s wages and about the disconnect between academic feminism and anything useful to women’s rights. However, this is one of the few things coming out of an academic setting that does ring true.
In my earlier post I linked to a man who had gone through the initiation ceremony at Dartmouth. “…He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of “pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,” Rolling Stone
You can read countless accounts of Greek initiation “ceremonies” and they will almost all have an element of sexual assault as an important component in them. Sexual assault is endemic to women’s lives regardless of class. We should be asking the question why men would choose sexual assault in their initiation ceremonies? That’s one question this film is raising.
The degradation and harm done to women by men is serious. This cruelty must end. Sexism is as dangerous and harmful as racism and as classism and as homophobia. People die because of it. Yet, I feel that many people do not feel the reality of that harm (nor the harm of classism) as they might with racism and homophobia.
In the late 70’s I attended Columbia U, took pre-med courses, gained a scholarship and plenty of insults. I had to turn down the scholarship and leave because, as a single mother, my teenage boys were becoming a problem I had to deal with. In one particular course, Physiological Psychology, I was called a “cow” by a male professor (most professors were male, btw) in front of the class. My thesis for that course was returned with an A- and a note that I had engaged in “excessive scholarship.” Admittedly this was at an earlier time, but we had already gone through the 2nd wave of feminism.
Adolescent is the word. Hopefully they won’t be attending biology classes. The course on Sexual Dimorphism in the Animal World would be very suffocating to their version of the feminist cause.
Meanwhile, there’s still a stubborn gender gap in wages and millions of women toil away at dead end jobs at places like Wal-Mart with no significant growth in wages over time. This is why feminism, esp. the academic variety has lost its connection to any kind of grassroots.
Cumlubia…..lol…. Now what stacks were they perusing…..
70s performance art. Nothing new here.
Ahhh, The state of feminism. It has never been pro woman but anti man @ its core. Any movement w/ a negative philosophy is bound to end up like this self parody. Pro women feminists like Camille Paglia left the feminist movement decades ago. The movement is irrelevant and just angry, like the “angry white men” they rant about continuously.
I got my PhD at Columbia. I wasn’t aware the undergraduates used the libraries for anything _other_ than having sex.
You’re overthinking this, Professor. Roll Tape!
A library is inherently sexist?? I don’t get it. I don’t dispute that sexism is a problem, but I don’t understand how you solve or help the problem by making this bit of nonsense. Who had to clean up the egg mess after they were done filming??
“On January 25th, Andrew Lohse took a major detour from the winning streak he’d been on for most of his life when, breaking with the Dartmouth code of omertà, he detailed some of the choicest bits of his college experience in an op-ed for the student paper The Dartmouth. “I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,” he wrote. He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of “pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,” as well as an “intoxicating nihilism” that dominates campus social life. “One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth – one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men – is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,” he said. “Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.” Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-an-ivy-league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-“20120328#ixzz2sSajEcSy
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
O.K. I watched that film and it brings together many things for me. First, fraternity hazing is full of homo-erotic sexual violent abuse (as opposed to sexuality). It is also full of sexual violent abuse towards women. Notice how the description above is quite similar to the women’s film. I took this film to be a comment on the cruelty towards other people that happens in initiations. I believe it succeeded in this regard.
As to happening in a library, this is often a part of elite school initiation. Doing cruel things in a public spot (see The Social Network) is “cool”! The schools know it happens and they just look the other way.
I will also link these images to Gitmo. People in chains, people beaten, people forced into sexual acts are all a part of what is happening in one of American’s finest prisons. I have often considered that the people who participated in these initiations also thought up how to set up torture in Gitmo and other US blacksites.
In the case of elite initiations, S and M is not “transgressive”, it is a norm.
As to suffocating in the library. It is discouraging to be in an environment where males are considered to have much more worth than females. I again refer people to The Social Network because it shows clearly how even highly privileged and educated women are regarded
and regard ourselves (in too many cases.)
“Frankly, the film strikes me as adolescent and irresponsible. It certainly bring (sic) a new meaning to Dorothy Parker’s view of Ivy League women when she said “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.””
Another Dorothy Parker poem comes to mind. Just sayin’.
Men
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They’ll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They’d make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They’d alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired.
“Wow, I can understand not liking neoclassical architecture but feeling “suffocated” by the fact that there are male names on the façade of the building?” – JT
I think the point of suffocation is that they are exclusively male.
“by filming what is called “a feminist pornographic film”
Who called it “pornographic”?
That does not seem to have been the intent – or the result.
A tweet from one of the makers stated:
Karley Sciortino @Slutever: I made a film for @purplediary w/ Coco Young where I hazed some babes into a secret society in an Ivy League library: http://purple.fr/television/sex/initiation
Warning, the film (in the link) is NSFW
– if work would be disrupted by the sight of female breasts in any context.
*Not* viewing the film would be NSFD ( Not Safe For Debate ). If you have not actually seen the film, you are not on good ground for debating the merits/demerits of it.
I don’t see it as pornographic. The closest it gets to sex is some mild kissing. There are breasts but no pubes.
It’s more arty/weird. It just happens incidentally to have boobs.
What I get from it is a question….
Would a film of a non-staged ‘respectable’ (male?) society initiation hazing at a place of learning look any less weird? What would that tell us about the nature of the people/institution?
I think that sort of question was intended to be provoked.
Silly girls. I can’t wait until they are women.
I can’t see the problem here. Point well made, zooms right over the heads of those to whom it is not addressed. Well played.
This reminds me of the recent event in the desert where two obese boy scout leaders destroyed a naturally eroded rock formation, laughing and high fiving along the way and then stated that they did it with concern for public safety.
You can make an argument out of anything. Watch the republicans make hay with this latest piece of mostly good news about the effects of the ACA. There is nothing more pathetic in this world overflowing with stuff that really needs fixing than someone tilting at non existing problems and oppressions that aren’t there.
This is so seventies when if you referred to a female friend as a lady you were nailed to the cross.
Well, guys don’t mind seeing girls get each other aroused, but you’d hardly call that feminist porn most of the time. In fact I suspect many feminists might object to that as being sexism from their viewpoint. Now if the feminist girls wacked the guy trying to chat them up, & maybe tied him up to boot, & then made love between themselves while the unfortunate male looked on uncomfortably… Well, I’d call that feminist porn!
Enjoyed the quote from Dorothy Parker. She certainly knew a great deal about, and was appreciative of, the subject of the quote.
Now, as long as these young women stick to using egg whites, their point may eventually sink in.
— If Dorothy were able to join them, she’d likely be leading the pack, egg beater in one hand and her mighty pen in the other.