It’s Politically Radical Sex, Not Ordinary Mortal Sex
A librarian replies to a comment piece in the Daily Californian:
Please don’t fuck in the library. I work here. My staff works here.
The piece in question is by UC Berkeley student Nadia Cho, who seems to believe she’s very edgy and progressive. In fact, it’s difficult to overstate just how edgy and progressive our columnist believes she is:
We decided that, out of the millions of books in the library, the shelves full of books on religion seemed like the best place to fuck.
How incredibly, desperately transgressive. Ms Cho gleefully explains that she and her companions are “desecrating” buildings with their “perverse ways.” You see, the sex she’s having is much more radical than yours, and therefore more important.
The risk of getting caught is what makes having sex in public so exciting. Without that, there wouldn’t be any novelty in doing it.
Indeed. And what’s the point of exhibitionist psychodrama without an audience? We’ve been here before, I think.
Thankfully, the author also obliges with some practical tips:
It’s best to have some empty shelves toward the bottom so that you can climb them and feel like Spider-Man while your partner penetrates you standing up.
And,
It’s probably not a good idea to ejaculate in public places — just saying.
Of course it’s not just a matter of sexual abandon and incriminating evidence. It’s political too. Very political:
Berkeley is the best place to explore your sexuality. Our school is a predominantly safe and accepting space with many places, people and resources to help you discover your sexual self. It is the place where I learned what it means to be queer, to recognise the presence of patriarchy, to attempt polyamory and to become more confident in my sexuality so I could go ahead with new experiences — attending naked parties and orgies and writing a sex column, just to name a few.
Tuition fees well spent, then.
The studiously uninhibited Ms Cho is keen to educate the rest of us in matters sexual and political. She tells us, for instance, that, “Sex-positive isn’t a term that most people are familiar with. Look it up, learn and be amazed.” Suitably amazed and quaking with excitement, Ms Cho shares her insights: “Sex-positive is a concept, a culture and a state of mind… It is a view based on acceptance, communication, zero judgement…” Judgement is recurring motif in Ms Cho’s sexual sermons and we are told, more than once, that, “It’s extremely insensitive to berate a person’s intimate experiences,” and that, “It feels good to internalise the belief that you deserve to be respected for your personal decisions and that you’re not doing anything wrong in doing what feels right for you.” And hence, presumably, the shagging in public libraries and issues of tissue.
Though if sexual transgression really is Ms Cho’s thing, as she’d like us to believe, surely the university’s Islamic Society would be an even more thrilling and edgy venue. Imagine the suspense, the transgression, the thrill of being caught “desecrating” the prayer mats. Or would that be the wrong kind of heteronormative patriarchy to rail against?
On learning that not everyone was awed by her libidinous odyssey, our Californian student offers the following explanation:
The fact that I happen to be a woman of colour might have something to do with it.
Ms Cho’s previous contributions to human knowledge include, “The thought of being in a [monogamous] relationship scares the living shit out of me,” and a stern reminder that while having “fucking intense, mind-blowing sex,” her partners “need to acknowledge and understand their positions and privileges relative to mine.” Which sounds like a recipe for the hottest, edgiest, most radical sex ever.
This appalling filth is kept coming by readers’ donations.
Yo Gabba Gabba,
College is where kids discharge their stupid urges and leave them behind as they enter adulthood…
Unfortunately, it’s now also where quite a few students get their narcissism affirmed and encouraged, all in the name of progress and identity politics. And I wonder if that “educational” process leaves its victims less realistic, not more so.
I mean, this isn’t the worse thing ever, but did she need to write a pretentious-as-hell article about it?
David- Thanks for your reply, and I subscribe and read City Journal. You might be right that universities are getting worse, in my day they expelled Naked Guy in contrast to affirming Ms. Cho. But that was my concluding point, we should castigate her adult admirers and enablers. I presume you agree with that, even if you don’t agree with me that we should give the kid a break? I suppose I don’t have enough derision for everyone involved.
Yo Gabba Gabba,
…we should castigate her adult admirers and enablers. I presume you agree with that, even if you don’t agree with me that we should give the kid a break?
I tend to think of the adult enablers as pretty much that, enablers. As Heather Mac Donald points out, they’re players in a co-dependent relationship. It’s mutual role-play and psychodrama. But it depends on what you mean by ‘castigate’. To be clear, I’ve no interest in Ms Cho being pelted with fruit and cast into the outer darkness. She’s an absurd figure – credulous and conformist – but hardly worth a flogging.
It is, though, interesting to see who these people are, and possibly instructive.
Please save derision for the adults who admire her and give a kid a break.
She’s 20. She gets to vote, marry and join the army. She gets to write pretentious articles picked up by The media, drawing attentionbto herself. She’s not a ‘kid’. She deserves all the ridicule she gets.
She deserves all the ridicule she gets.
Perhaps, but at 20 much of that ridicule is a reflection on the rest of us.
Perhaps, but at 20 much of that ridicule is a reflection on the rest of us.
Really? Why? This needy bint isn’t a reflection on me.
Perhaps, but at 20 much of that ridicule is a reflection on the rest of us.
Speak for yourself.
Her narcissism reflects on her and the academy that gives her licence to indulge it.
Again, she’s 20. While she is old enough to vote (another open question) and do many of the other things described above, in the US she’s not old enough to be trusted to consume alcohol (legally, anyway). Nor run for congress, now that I think of it. And perhaps there’s a reason for that?
Calling her a stupid git is all well and good, but from what I’ve read of many so-called conservatives both here and on other right-leaning sites (sorry, David, while you’re right that such leaning is not by design but, whatever) having had stupid, not to mention left-wing ideas well into one’s 20’s is rather common amongst even the slightly more mature conservative population. Then of course there are a significant number of the long-time consistently conservative stripe whose dogmatic, unthinking attitudes toward evolution, homosexuality, and religion(s) have resulted in giving young people perfect cover for rejecting what were once sensible mainstream values.
I could go on and on but I’m not the kind of gifted writer to do the idea justice. If you don’t see one bit of yourself in the above paragraph, well more power too you. Though perhaps directing at least some of your contempt toward the institution(s) that fed our subject’s perspectives would go a longer way than the contempt expressed for the end product.
At one time, I would have been happy to smirk at Ms Cho’s essay, but these days I’m more inclined toward pity and a bit of nostalgia. She’s like a moth beating against a window to find the exit, wrecking her wings and wearing herself out.
Clazy,
It’s a great way to divert any potential non-conformity into something fatuous and unthreatening. A harmless, rather silly kind of ersatz rebellion.
When everyone’s a rebel….
I wonder about the children of these children. I fear that at some point a generation will arrive who, despising their parents’ pretensions, will regard conformity as a virtue, and with the fanatical zeal of youth they will attempt to purge society of the fraud of individuality.
Sorry WTP – it won’t wash. Most people do engage in stupid behaviour aged 20. My own early twenties were marked by regular instances of stupid antics. The difference is that most of us wake up the next day or think back with a quarter century of hindsight and think “What was I thinking?”. We don’t proclaim our idiocy as ‘edgy’ or ‘transgressive’ when we recognise it as self-indulgent behaviour , sometimes with unpleasant consequences for ourselves or others.
Calling Ms Cho’s behaviour and attitude for what it is does her a favour. Fêting imbeciles degrades both them and us.
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I believe you’re ignoring the point. If you’d make the effort to read what I said above, I am not excusing her behavior. Far from it, as in my first post I was defending the worthiness of raising the issue. And as I said, this is no longer something that we can continue to ignore. As I said, calling her a stupid git is all well and good. But ranting about the idiocies of a 20 year old is wasted effort without attacking the real problem, which partly is as you said the academy that gives her licence to indulge it. Like many US student newspapers, The Daily Californian is student run. OTOH, she’s a student at the university. She is a product of their system. It is our generation’s responsibility to hold these institutions to a higher standard. I don’t know anyone who went to Berkley (thank God) but if I did, I’d be giving such “gifted” alumni some slightly less than good natured ribbing. I don’t know any journalism majors (or at least any who admit to such), but if I did I’d inquire as to wtf they learned in school.
The difference is that most of us wake up the next day or think back with a quarter century of hindsight and think “What was I thinking?”. Well give Ms. Cho that quarter century of hindsight and perhaps she’ll be the next Christopher Hitchens. Not that I’d bet on it, but who knows. My point is that she is not the problem. The tolerance of these institutions by those of us who should know better is, and we’ve been tolerating them far longer that this ditzy git has been alive.
I’m not ignoring the point, WTP, I just disagree with you.