Amia Srinivasan's confabulatory pedagogy re. Sex

Economic theory justifies Academic credentials as 'screening' and 'signalling' devices which overcome 'information asymmetry'. However, their purpose is defeated if the notion gains currency that some acquire them solely by reason of gender or race or type of sexuality. Just recently, a Tambram- i.e. a 'caste-fellow' of myself and Amia Srinivasan- has been accused of Caste discrimination because, he allegedly hinted that an employee had gained a credential on the basis of 'affirmative action'. The fact is the Indian qualification in question is awarded solely on the basis of merit. Some people of disadvantaged backgrounds may get a little extra help to complete the course, but they must still complete it. The evidence that they have completed it is that they can do their job just as well as others hired from the same place.

Still, it is unfair, discriminatory, and harmful to the proper functioning of an Enterprise, to insinuate that a person has used gender, race, religion, or sexuality, as a means to get ahead. Thus, the Enterprise should take steps to remove possible grounds for such suspicion.

Social Scientists, Jurists, and Philosophers have a good reason to consider subjective issues relating to attribute-based discriminatory behavior in a manner that focuses first on the objective socio-economic function that is being discharged.

What should our attitude be to sex in the workplace or the Academy? Firstly, we should recognize that rape is a crime of the most despicable and damaging sort. The priority must be to ensure this crime is prevented, or, if it happens, it must be very severely punished. This is particularly important to safeguard economically weaker sections of society. It is completely unacceptable for academics to prose on about this topic, from their perspective of privilege, without admitting the horrible nature of the crime of rape which can occur under color of 'consent'.

As for the permissibility of purely voluntary sexual relationships in a place of work or study, I think, the answer depends on whether any evaluative or economic signalling or screening mechanism is affected. If none is, then the situation is analogous to a sequence of transactions on open markets. No economic or other damage is done over and above that which is internal to that transaction. This is the common sense view. It does not, however, resolve every question that might arise. An Enterprise may consider a particular market or type of behavior to be repugnant. Society at large may disagree. We may consider it discriminatory for an Employer or Education Provider to proceed as if that activity was truly repugnant. This is certainly a matter where a broad range of public opinion may be usefully canvassed.

However, the issue of sex with faculty or workplace supervisors is not one such field. The primary purpose of a place of work or learning is not to create such sexual opportunities. If people wish to pursue such opportunities they may do so outside such places as free contracting agents. Of course, if the Enterprise has monopolistic or monopsonistic powers, this may not be feasible. But, in that case, the target of reform should be that market power which by its very existence may be per se illegal.

Ten years ago, Yale banned sex between faculty and undergrads. Sex with someone whom you might supervise had been banned since 1997. This seems reasonable. An obvious economic motive exists. The thing is eusocial. The prestige of the Institution is raised.

However, some would disagree.

Amia Srinivasan has an article in the Yale Law Review titled 'Sex as a Pedagogical Failure'. Because she misrepresents the evolution of relevant Laws and norms, her paper fails to have pedagogic, as opposed to parodic, value.

She writes

I am particularly interested in the standard rationale that now undergirds prohibitions on faculty-student sex—a rationale borrowed from employment sexual-harassment law—according to which power differentials between professors and students preclude the possibility of genuine consent.

This is not the standard rationale. The behavior is banned because it is repugnant, possibly illegal, and creates a financial liability and may give rise to adverse publicity. Nobody in their right mind thinks that every student who slept with a member of faculty was raped because she lacked the capacity to give 'genuine consent'.

Employment sexual-harassment law has nothing to say about 'power differentials'. Customers- or Students, in this case- may be guilty of sexual harassment. The thing is illegal if
1) It is related to the gender of the victim- whatever that may be- i.e. if the person was of a different sex, the harassment would not have occurred
2) it is sufficiently frequent that it results in a 'hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision.' Thus, if the President of a College complains that he is being subjected to incessant lewd behavior by female custodial staff and if the College does nothing and if the President is forced out, then he can sue for sexual discrimination provided he can prove that female custodial staff would not have subjected him to harassment if he had not had male secondary sexual characteristics.

Amia is interested in a 'standard rationale' which does not exist. Feminists in the Seventies lost the plot. They babbled stupid nonsense. Thus their lucubrations ceased to impact on the law or on public policy.

Such a rationale is problematic for the reason that feminists in the 1980s first said: it strips (overwhelmingly) women students of their agency, inverting the rapist’s logic of “no means yes” into the protectionist logic of “yes means no.”

Students, like other Customers or Clients of Enterprises or Organizations, have no 'agency' to demand sex from those paid to provide them a service. Gender is irrelevant. A woman is free to fuck her pizza delivery boy provided he consents. But, she has no legal power to prevent him being sacked for having violated Company policy. Female students can fuck their Professors. They can't stop their Professors being fired for cause. However, they still must not rape anybody.

Feminists were pretending that Patriarchy rapes women. But this pretence had no legal backing. It was merely a type of paranoia.

But it is also problematic in that it fails to register what is truly ethically troubling about consensual faculty-student sex. A professor’s having sex with his student constitutes a pedagogical failure: that is, a failure to satisfy the duties that arise from the teacher-student relationship. Implicit in that relationship is the promise that the teacher will work to equalize the asymmetry in knowledge between him and his student.

This is nonsense. A 'sleeping dictionary' was a person you might cohabit with for the specific purpose of gaining an equal knowledge of a particular language. Equally, a sex worker might trade sex for a specific type of instruction. These are pedagogic relationships in which sex features either as a matter of convenience or as consideration. We may well imagine a person saying, 'I married this nerdy but bright guy because I wanted him to explain quantum physics to me. This has enabled me to achieve great success in my career as a hard sci-fi author'. Such relationships may have a repugnant aspect but they are legal. They do not necessarily compromise pedagogy. On the other hand, a claim to expertise on the basis of a sexual relationship would be dismissed as absurd. Nobody can fuck their brains into you.

Asymmetries in knowledge are irrelevant when it comes to sex because what is transferred is bodily fluids, not instruction. Furthermore, no teacher is obligated to work to 'equalize asymmetry in knowledge'. The most they may undertake to do is impart a particular course of instruction. But, speaking generally, the Professor is expected to have a considerable surplus of knowledge over and above that which she is paid to impart. It is a different matter that a student may, by arduous research, 'catch up' to the Professor once she has achieved a like eminence.

Srinivasan's bizarre view appears to be founded on the following proposition-

When the teacher takes the student’s longing for epistemic power as an occasion for his own gratification, allowing himself to be—or, worse, making himself—the object of her desire, he has failed her as a teacher.

It may be indeed be the case that if you let someone use you, sexually or emotionally or socially, to get power, then you fail him in some way. Perhaps, you ought to be trying to get him to understand that one should not 'long for power' of any type- even 'epistemic power' which is bogus and risible. Many would agree that people shouldn't be 'users'. The thing is repugnant.

Equally, we may say it is repugnant for a teacher, or doctor, or postman, or pizza delivery guy, to have sex with the customer because of some kink in the customer's sexuality which makes that particular occupation sexy. I myself turned down a well paid job at a leading Accountancy firm when I heard that there was a widespread practice of 'giving head to get ahead' among young Junior Associates. Thus, though I felt honored to be offered a job as a janitor, I turned it down because frankly I'm not made of sperm.

On the other hand, I did teach for a few years. I never came across a student who thought having sex with me would cause a transfer of knowledge. On the other hand, I wasn't teaching Philosophy. It may be that students of that discipline think that a transfer of bodily fluids can make them smart. But, if such is the case, such students need to learn some elementary biology.

For this reason, I consider Srinivasan's argument to be wholly ignorant, mischievous and inutile. It is ignorance of biology which may cause students to act in the way she suggests. Professors should not take advantage of their ignorance for the excellent reason that they will soon spot they have been cheated. 'Hey Prof.!' they will say, 'How come I don't speak French good tho' I gave you oral?' You mention the French obsession with suppositories to buy yourself some time. But, after anal, they still won't be able to speak French. They will figure out they have been cheated. Then, they will carve you up with their flick knives or beat you over the head with their skateboards or scooter-thinggies.

Of course, if you are teaching Philosophy- i.e. inculcating a habit of verbal diarrhea- your students may not be so quick to catch on. Thus Amia argues-

Thus, what is fundamentally at issue in consensual professor-student sex is not whether the student’s consent is genuine but whether sex with one’s student is compatible with being a good teacher.

In a University context- as opposed to swapping driving lessons for a hand job- sex with students is not compatible with being a good teacher for the same reason sex with patients is not compatible with being a good doctor or sex with customers is not compatible with being a good pizza delivery boy (even if you suffer from premature ejaculation and thus are able to keep to your schedule). It's not what you are paid to do. It is opportunistic. It is repugnant. It has negative reputational and other consequences.

This is not to say that a sexual, or marital, relationship is wholly repugnant once no other commercial tie exists between two people. But that is because the matter has no salience. It is unimportant. The relationship is not founded on a particular business or professional arrangement.

What is more, much professor-student sex, in its dominant mode—that is, between male professor and female student—constitutes not only a pedagogical failure but also a patriarchal failure.

Because the Professor is in 'loco parentis'? That's quite a sensible point. Thus Amia can't possibly mean it because she is batshit crazy.

Such relationships often feed on, and reinforce, women’s second-class standing in higher education.

Using female students as items of furniture has the same effect. Why not just treat them the same as other paying customers? Don't use them as chairs unless you are teaching all your students how to gain employment as living pieces of furniture.

As such, these relationships plausibly thwart the legal right
of women students under Title IX to exist in the university on equal terms with their male counterparts.

This applies equally to male students. Unless the Prof. is bisexual and is doing everybody on campus.

While genuinely consensual faculty-student relationships do not constitute sexual harassment, they plausibly can and do often constitute sex discrimination.

But equally plausibly don't and can't constitute sex discrimination. An ugly person may feel left out but has not suffered sex discrimination if her Professor is banging every one else on campus.

Whether or not we should ultimately favor such an interpretation of Title IX—whether or not, that is, we think that it would render
campuses ultimately more equal, not just for women but also for nonwhite, queer, immigrant, working-class, and precariously employed people—it is clear that university teachers need to attend more carefully to the sexual ethics of their own practice.

How about simply not shitting where you eat? How hard is that? Why drag Title IX into the matter?
Also how come Srinivasan neglects to mention issues related to the use of students as furniture by members of faculty? Many queer, non-white, immigrant, working class, precariously employed people may be being used by faculty as chairs or foot-stools or even ottomans (which is racist and Islamophobic).

The demand here is not only prudential—a matter of increased legal liability or administrative pressure—but also pedagogical: a question of our ethical duties as teachers.

Don't sit on your students. Don't use them as dinner tables. Also read your fucking contract.

If we consider a University to be an 'alma mater' and if we consider Pedagogues to be 'in loco parentis' the ethical bar on sex with students arises naturally as a type of incest taboo.

Amia however is not really interested in the ethics of the matter. Overlooking the truly horrific aspect of sexual harassment- e.g. the forcible rape in Meritor v Vinson- Amia, perhaps because of her position of privilege, looks at this despicable crime which African Americans were disproportionately subjected to, only from the point of view of elite rent-contestation. Thus, she is interested in Catherine MacKinnon's Feminist legal theory-

While the courts have not explicitly taken up MacKinnon’s inequality approach, there are indications of its enduring influence. For example, although Barnes v. Costle invoked the differential-treatment account of sex discrimination, the court also evoked the inequality account by comparing, as Reva Siegel has observed, the sexual harassment endured by Barnes to cases in which employees were (uniquely) discriminated against for being in an interracial relationship: “Just as prohibitions on interracial sexual relationships play a role in the perpetuation of racial inequality, Barnes suggests, coerced sexual relations in the workplace play a role in the perpetuation of gender inequality.”

This is far from the truth. The judgment says ' Put another way, she became the target of her superior's sexual desires because she was a woman, and was asked to bow to his demands as the price for holding her job. The circumstance imparting high visibility to the role of gender in the affair is that no male employee was susceptible to such an approach by appellant's supervisor.56 Thus gender cannot be eliminated from the formulation which appellant advocates, and that formulation advances a prima facie case of sex discrimination within the purview of Title VII.'

In other words, if the sex-pest had been bi-sexual, everything would have been kosher. The ratio only mentions 'differential treatment'. There is no 'inequality account'.  What of the judgment's mention of 'interracial sexual relationships?' Is it really true that the Court spoke of 'perpetuation of racial inequality'? 

The answer, I'm afraid is no. Inequality is fine. Discrimination isn't. What the judgment said was 'The protections afforded by Title VII against sex discrimination are extended to the individual,74 and "a single instance of discrimination may form the basis of a private suit."75 To briefly illustrate, suits have been entertained where a woman charged that she was fired because she was pregnant and unmarried, notwithstanding the fact that no other woman was discharged for that reason,76 and where a male nurse asserted that he was denied assignments to care for female patients, although no allegations were made with respect to the assignment of other male nurses.77 Close analogies emerge from situations wherein a black woman was terminated ostensibly for personality conflicts but allegedly was told that she probably did not need the job anyway because she was married to a white male,78 and where a white woman attributed loss of her job to her relationship with a black man.79 In each of these instances, a cause of action was recognized although it did not appear that any other individual of the same gender or race had been mistreated by the employer.80

Justice is a service industry. It is driven by supply and demand. It has no means of enforcing equality though, at the margin, it can enforce the law till contracting parties disintermediate it. 

Amia says- 

This expansion of campus sexual-harassment policies in the 1980s and 1990s to include consensual relationships was driven by at least three forces.

It was driven, in the main, by one force. Revulsion at the Permissive Society's excesses. The threat of AIDS had made everybody nervous. Furthermore, the law was making Enterprises culpable for discriminatory activity by employees. If they knew about a complaint and there was 'retaliatory action' then they were liable for damages.
As for 'Radical Social theory'- it had shat the bed in the Seventies. It had no influence in the era of Reagan and Thatcher.  Amia believes otherwise. She says

First was the radical social theory that underlay feminist efforts to transform antidiscrimination law, according to which, in the words of Kathryn Abrams, paraphrasing MacKinnon, “coercion is paradigmatic of heterosexual relations and constitutive of the social meaning of gender under gender inequality.”

MacKinnon was co-counsel on 'Meritor v Vinson'- a horrific case where a Black woman was forcibly raped and where the disgusting sociopath got off scott free- which was decided in 1986. However the ratio does not say anything about 'heterosexual relations' or 'gender' or even 'consent'. Sexual harassment exists and is per se illegal where it is unwelcome even if it leads to consent.  This means, unless you take a job for the express purpose of being sexually harassed, you have been discriminated against if you come across it. However, this is independent of gender or race. Thus a white man holding a senior position in an Enterprise has an equal remedy against a black, female, supervisor of the custodial staff who fondles him or subjects him to unwelcome sexual advances.

Meritor could be considered a victory for Civil Rights and the Second Wave Feminism which brought about changes in the Law. It can't be said to have been a triumph for 'radical social theory' though no doubt it contributed to MacKinnon's personal legend. But she went on to achieve nothing in American jurisprudence. True, she was 'gender adviser' to the International Criminal Court. But, Obama didn't sign up to it. It seems 'gender advise' is something America might want to export but which it does not want for itself.

Amia notes that 'Third Wave Feminism' was not just a madhouse- it was a madhouse fatally divided against itself-

'“Third Wave” feminists strongly criticized radical feminists for playing into the hands of politically ascendant conservatives by (as
they saw it) reinforcing a Victorian paternalism that would ultimately be used to oppress and control women. As Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson wrote in a gently critical letter to Adrienne Rich in 1981, “In the Reagan era, we can hardly afford to romanticize any old norm of a virtuous and moral sexuality.” But in the last decade, and particularly in the wake of #Me-Too, feminists have moved back toward a Second-Wave skepticism about sex across large power differentials. As an index of this shift, just compare how con-
temporary feminists would respond to a present-day Clinton-Lewinsky-type scandal to how feminists responded—or failed to respond—in the late 1990s, when it became clear that the world’s most powerful man had been receiving fellatio from a twenty-two-year-old intern.

There is no such index. Feminists now would respond as they responded then- by gibbering incoherently and trying to scratch each other's eyes out. Ultimately, the thing would resolve along party political lines. Fellatio is cool if our guy is getting it. It isn't if their guy is getting it, or we can pretend their guy is getting it so as to have a stick to beat him with.

One thing which has changed is that some loony toons Feminists have teamed up with the Christian Right to mess with Trans people.

America had different sexual mores from the old world. It also had a different attitude to Higher Education. Speaking generally, a girl in Europe who went to College was not 'husband-hunting'. Even if she was, Professors were not well paid enough to be a suitable match. America was more egalitarian. Moreover, the University Campus provided an expanded pool for assortative mating. For Gay people, there was also a 'life-style' aspect to this. A Gay mentor on the faculty might introduce one to the finer things in life. This was the Socratic tradition.

One reason why the notion of a special sexual regime for 'co-eds' fell out of favor was because American Universities seeded high value adding Technological industries in their vicinity. The distinction between Town & Gown collapsed. The Town had superior capacity to cater to Life-style choices. Furthermore, 'Baumol cost-disease' was raising the opportunity cost of University education. Tenured Professors could no longer be forcibly retired by reason of their advanced age and the worthlessness of the shite they taught. These senile buffoons were still playing grab-ass with young people who could no longer be sure of paying off their student loans. In this context, sex with faculty became not just morally repugnant, it was actually gross and icky. On the other hand, some University Department's continue to be wholly worthless. This means any 'epistemic power' its Professors possess is wholly bogus- as bogus as Freud's way of making a living. A fraudulent power can be appropriated in a fraudulent way. June Campbell became a 'dakhini' by having sex with some smelly homeless Tibetan dude. She may also have studied the shite that homeless dude was supposed to be an expert in. But a monk who is having sex is not a good monk. A teacher is not a good teacher if she is fucking her students. But the same is true of a Doctor or a Pizza delivery boy who has sex with those who pay for, or otherwise legitimately command, their services.

Amia mentions

Regina Barreca,speaking of and to women who ended up as professors, asks: “At what point . . . did the moment come for each of us when we realized that we wanted to be the teacher, and not sleep with the teacher?”

Barreca makes money as a humorist. She is being funny. True, her own subject- Literature- isn't exactly mentally taxing. Still, the fact is, Higher Education ought to be about mentally taxing stuff. You are supposed to do a bit of mental muscle building and then say 'well, I've got enough stamina now to do well in such and such remunerative career. So bye bye University.'

Barreca’s question suggests that

she was trying and succeeding in being funny. An academic Economist might say to a room full of her colleagues 'at what point did the moment come for each of us when we realized we wanted to lecture others on Economics rather than sleep through lectures on that dreary subject?'

Amia, however, believes that Women, unlike Men, are driven to acquire Knowledge by sexual desire for the one dispensing it. I don't say the thing is impossible, but it is unlikely. You may say 'the reason I order so much Pizza is because I fancy the Pizza delivery boy'. This is funny because to confuse food with sex is funny. But the fact is you may have an eating disorder. You may have diet related medical problems. Get help.

the default interpretation for most women is that the desire
sparked by the male teacher is a desire for the teacher, an interpretation that must be overcome if the woman is ever going to become the teacher.

Amia is wrong. The default interpretation is that lectures are boring. You can try to trick yourself into taking an interest by focusing on some aspect of the lecturer's personality. In my case, my students tried to focus on my hilarious South-Indian-trying-to-be-posh accent. They failed. They all slept with me- but only for the duration of my lectures. Oddly, this rather increased than decreased their future earning potential. To sleep quietly while some guy drones on is a valuable work-skill.

If Barreca is right, then the importance for women, straight and gay alike, in having women professors goes well beyond the value of role models.

Barreca isn't right, she is being funny. The importance of having women professors is because some women are good at teaching. So are some men. It may be that some smartphone app of the future will prove superior to any human teacher. A genetically engineered parrot might be even better. Teaching useful stuff can improve teaching itself because useful stuff changes available Technology. But Amia's type of shite pedagogy is not useful.

The question is not whether women have authorities with whom they can identify, but what social processes structure the possibilities and limits of such identification, for women and for men.

Those social processes, in turn, are determined ultimately by economic factors which, ultimately, are determined by Science and Technology. So, only STEM subjects matter. Everything else is just 'screening and signalling'. 'Law & Econ' is welcome to improve 'mechanism design' in this respect but this is mere tinkering. It changes nothing fundamental. Market power, and the ability to discriminate, disappears as Open Markets prevail and elasticities of supply and demand converge to infinity. The adoption of 'Muth Rational' Expectations and the existence of 'Aumann' public signals speeds this up greatly.

Male students, meanwhile, encounter their male professors as they are socialized to do: wanting to be like them.

No. Universities proved useful because males took one look at their Professors and decided this was a fate to avoid. Don't be a pedant. Get on your horse and go West young man. Or get on a ship and go East. Make money. Live a good life. Read a bit of Theocritus or the Gospel in Greek from time to time. But never ever sound like a Professor. People will laugh at you. They will think you ill-bred. Hide your light under a bushel. But do make money. Do good portfolio choice- i.e. take a punt on Venture Capital schemes in high tech areas you don't understand. That's it. That's the whole story of Paideia from the time of Lysis to whichever final crisis Capitalism is supposedly undergoing right now.

Pedants like Amia are drunken helots. Students are supposed to feel disgust for their misology. They quietly resile from Philosophy and sign up for Law School or Business School or, if they have half a brain, actually learn something useful and go out into the real world to apply that learning in a socially useful manner.

Amia refuses to see that pedagogy is merely a service industry like Pizza delivery. We may differentiate between a Pizza maker who delivers his own product and one who does so as the servant of a Company. Amia, however, is only speaking of pedagogues as servants. Her conclusion is-

the trend toward increased campus regulation of sex offers an opportunity for university teachers, as a group, to think about the goals of the pedagogical practice and the norms of conduct appropriate to those goals. One might also think that the trend toward increased regulation gives professors a strong prudential reason to engage in such a project. If professors do not regulate themselves, they will—as has already been happening—be regulated from the top down, with all the attendant consequences. External regulation is unlikely to reflect, and indeed currently does not reflect, the ethical and psychic complexities of pedagogy. Instead, top-down regulation reflects administrators’ desires to cover their backs and the law’s tendency to see the class-room on the model of the workplace. It is striking, in this regard, that when the law does regulate therapist-patient relationships, it almost always does so in the terms accepted by therapists themselves: in the terms, that is, of what therapists as therapists owe to their patients as patients. 

Therapists are generally self-employed and have a Professional Association. They are principals not agents and thus Principal-Agent hazard does not arise in the same manner.

There is a well developed 'Law & Econ' approach to incomplete contracts. Amia makes no mention of it. Indeed, she appears entirely ignorant of a field which has been rewarded with Nobel Prizes. Thus she has no answer to the question she poses-

What might it be, I want to ask,for professors to lead administrators and the law in thinking not merely in the familiar terms of consent, coercion, and conflict of interest—but in terms of what
university teachers as teachers owe their students as students?

The answer is that there is an incomplete contract of adhesion. Teachers are agents. By subscribing to the 'Muth Rational' theory governing incomplete contracts featuring asymmetry of information and 'separating equilibria' based on 'costly signals', they can discharge their duty in a manner students regard as exemplary. Indeed, the thing may be 'envy-free' or 'super-fair' from the point of view of Society. But this is an ideographic matter and given the prevalence of Knightian Uncertainty, the Muth Rational solution is 'regret minimizing'. This provides a simple heuristic. Don't do something you might regret. Definitely don't shit where you eat. Simples.

Amia doesn't get this. Why? So she can endlessly repose the same question which everybody already knows the answer to. Forty years from now she will still be plaintively asking

What might it be for us to articulate a sexual ethics of pedagogy?

By that time genetically engineered parrots will dominate her own pedagogic field. Parrots are very affectionate. But if you try to fuck them they fly into a high dudgeon and may poop on your head. Don't say you haven't been warned. Mind it kindly. Aiyayo.