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Sexual Paranoia Comes To Campus

March 8, 2017

As part of Censorship Awareness week, Laura Kipnis presents Sexual Paranoia Comes To Campus (Intellectual Freedom Takes a Curtain Call).

Laura Kipnis
Cultural critic

Laura Kipnis is a professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, where she teaches filmmaking.

According to Laura Kipnis, feminism is broken if anyone thinks the sexual hysteria overtaking American campuses is a sign of gender progress. As a longtime feminist, Kipnis was surprised to find herself the object of a protest march by student activists at her university for writing an essay about sexual paranoia on campus. She was then brought up on Title IX complaints for creating a "hostile environment." While writing about this process, Kipnis uncovered an astonishing netherworld of accused professors and students, campus witch hunts, and a sexual bureaucracy run amok. Without minimizing the campus assault issue, Kipnis argues that there has to be far more honesty about the complicated sexual realities and ambivalences hidden behind the notion of "rape culture." Instead, Kipnis believes regulation is replacing education, and women’s right to be treated as consenting adults is being repealed by feminist paternalism and well-meaning bureaucrats.