6B the university daily kansan
pornography
monday,september 15.2003
Porn nights at scholarship halls stimulate, chafe
Photo illustration by Jared Soares/Kansa
By Samia Khan
correspondent@kansan.com
Kansan correspondent
The University of Kansas canceled class on two consecutive days in January of 2002 for the first time in almost 25 years. This anomaly led to another peculiar event: Snowy Porn Night.
With no activity on the icy streets and a opportunity to sleep in the next day, residents of Margaret Amini Scholarship Hall organized*a gathering. A few hours later, with bowls of popcorn in tow, a large group gathered in the recreation room to enjoy bad plot lines, poor acting, and unrealistic sexual scenarios.
"We were laughing and talking pretty much the whole time. I don't know if it was to cover any awkwardness, or if it was because the movies were just so stupid," Liza Pehrson, former president of Margaret Amini, said.
Snowy Porn Night is not quite the anomaly that some might guess. Gatherings for porn are not new to the scholarship halls or any housing arrangement. Margaret Amini, Stephenson and Douthart Scholarship Halls all lay claim to their own porn events or traditions.
With an issue as touchy as porn, complaints about image and individual rights and can bring a potential involvement from the Department of Student Housing.
But in a self-governed and independent-minded system like the scholarship halls, high-level department involvement is infrequent and draws theire of many residents.
SNOWYPORN NIGHT
When Margaret Amini Scholarship Hall organized Snowy Porn Night, Pehrson, 2002 hall alumna, said the idea came from another resident who had taken part in a similar event in a residence hall.
Pehrson helped spread the word. Within an hour and a half, approximately 50 people from Margaret Amini and other scholarship halls gathered in the recreation room to watch two movies that one of the residents had received as a gag gift.
"We weren't porn collectors," Pehrson said. "She just happened to have them and never got rid of them."
Pehrson said the group talked and joked about the poor quality of the films the entire evening.
Nobody complained or voiced a protest to Pehrson or the scholarship hall director. But, Pehrson instinctively knew a few girls did
not approve.
The scale and publicity of the event was a one-time event for the hall.
TRADITION
"I wouldn't have minded having Snowy Porn Night again. Although if it was something that happened regularly, I have no doubt someone would bring it up," Pehrson said.
Stephenson Hall boasts a bigger tradition of porn events.
Nick Ray, Burlington junior, lived in Stephenson for his first two years at the University. Ray said the hall elected a porn chairman at the first hall meeting of
the year, introducing the new men into the reality of Stephenson life. The porn chairman was in charge of organizing their Wednesday porn nights.
"The new guys were all pretty much thinking, alright, this is going to be an interesting year," Ray said.
In Ray's two years there, porn nights did not occur regularly as in past years of the hall.
"The Porn Chair was kind of lazy," Ray said. "Actually, we were all pretty lazy."
Residents also download from each other's large collections of porn on the hall server network.
When the occasional Wednesday night phone rolled around, residents gathered in front of the big screen television in the rec room.
Ray said the porn nights were filled with comments and jokes from the audience just like Snowy Porn Night.
The porn events never lent themselves to complaints or issues because of the strong relationship between residents.
"Stephenson is tough love," Ray said. "It's one big locker room. But we respect big problems and when things really matter. We turn our music down for each other."
"We were laughing and talking pretty much the whole time. I don't know if it was to cover any awkwardness, or if it was because the movies were just so stupid."
Douthart Hall's Porn Tuesdays began in the Fall of 2002. The event started almost by accident. A few residents surfing
PORN TUESDAY
Liza Penson
Liza president of Margaret Amiini Scholarship Hall
Liza Pehrson
online one Tuesday night began joking about a Web site called "Amateur Straight Guys."
"We ended up having fun that one night, so we wanted to continue doing it," said Stephanie Lovett, Douthart resident and programming chair. "It's not like anyone had an agenda."
The group residents decided to make a tradition of it, calling it Porn Tuesday.
It quickly became one of the hall's most popular events. Residents from other scholarship halls and students outside the scholarship hall system frequently attended. The event usually lasted approximately a half hour.
"It was sort of like stopping to watch a television show," Lovett said.
Lovett often made the weekly announcements that went out on the hall's e-mail list-serve, on each floor's whiteboard and at hall meetings.
came with each week ranging from cartoon to aquatic porn. The room responsible for hosting Porn Tuesday was responsible for screening the porn to make sure nothing objectionable occurred.
Every Tuesday night a willing room of residents hosted the event as a study break. Most of the material was computer-based, and a different theme
Lovett said Porn Tuesday existed as a reason to hang out and laugh. It wasn't a hedonistic gathering just to watch anything they could find.
"As a hall full of girls, do you think we would have sat around and laughed at women being objectified?" Lovett said. "There's a lot of nasty stuff out there, but we weren't watching that."
This year, Lovett said, Porn Tuesday had not been organized by any of the residents, but there was interest.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Porn Tuesday incited much more conflict than porn events in Stephenson and Margaret Amiini. Gina Lopez, Douthart scholarship hall director, said some residents felt uncomfortable being officially associated with the event.
"They felt it was giving outsiders an inaccurate understanding of what activities were acceptable to all our residents," she said.
Lopez also said a few residents also held strong personal and moral objections to the event.
Ken Stoner, director the housing director, said a Douthart resident moved out because of the event after the 2002 fall semester.
In another occurrence in the middle of the spring semester, a few residents complained directly to department officials.
Douthart held a hall meeting to discuss the issue and reach a solution. The question of department intervention arose only to decide whether the event was an official or unofficial hall event. The department becomes liable for events deemed official.
"They're like any bureaucracy. They don't want their name drug through the mud." Lovett said.
Lopez said either she or her superiors in the department could have forced the event to be labeled unofficial, but chose to let the community resolve it. The hall meeting resulted in several concessions. Porn Tuesday remained official, but public announcements halted.
Although not previously an issue, the possibility of holding the events in public spaces was clearly eliminated as well.
Lovett said the meeting allowed the controversy to become less personal.
"I think a lot of people realized we weren't trying to shove it down their throats," Lovett said.
STUDENT HOUSING
Jennifer Wamelink, assistant director housing director, said students had a much stronger voice and internal governing system in the scholarship halls.
Pehrson said if the department became involved in something like Snowy Porn Night, residents of Margaret Amini would have turned it into a big battle as a matter of principle. She said scholarship hall residents lived with a great deal of sovereignty, and often reacted negatively when their independence was seemingly threatened.
Ray agreed that Stephenson residents always became a little irritable at the mention of the department.
He said it was part of the scholarship hall culture, especially Stephenson's, to react to official intervention.
IMAGE CONCERNS
"We'd do crazy things," he said. "You're talking to a hall that asks for a fireman's pole at every year's budget meeting."
Wamelink said although image was a concern, the students living in the scholarship hall system took higher priority on her list.
"I'm concerned about the residents of the community, and the residents of the community feeling comfortable," Wamelink said.
Stoner said the scholarship hall porn nights did not create a major image problem at the moment. University policy also held no position of direct intervention on the matter of porn.
Stoner said the department's primary role was to provide the halls with feedback and information on the matter of complaints and conflict.
"I'm not going to be the First Amendment police," he said.
Marlesa Roney, vice provost of the Office of Student Success, acknowledged the natural human curiosity toward sex.
"College is a safe environment to be away from people who would slap you on the wrists for doing things like that," Roney said.
Roney said most of the image issues rested directly with the hall governments but admitted image could become a concern down the road.
"If it becomes recognized as part of the culture at KU, I think it's not the thing we would want to be known for," she said.
The issue of porn in the scholarship halls culminates in the question of individual rights. Residents agree comfort takes precedence over principle. Once all possible infringement on other residents disappears, supporters of porn events said they held a right to have the gatherings in privacy.
For many scholarship hall residents, porn events remain a way to get together, talk and laugh.
"It's a matter of respecting differences," Ray said. "We all know we're good kids."
- Edited by Erin Riffey
Grad student examines cultural lines within gay pornography industry
Sam Joshi, graduate student in theater and film, showcases some of his gay pornography collection and the resulting implications of race within the genre.
Jared Soarea/Kansas
By Abby Mills amills@kansan.com amilss@kansan.com kansas staff writer
For most, pornography is all fun and games. For Sam Joshi, it's hard work.
Joshi, Bombay, India, graduate student, is writing his dissertation for the theater and film department on gay pornography. He said the cultural themes he worked with were just as worthy of study as the classics.
"It's more important than studying Shakespeare," he said. "I'm finding out about white male sexuality. What could be more important than that?"
Joshi's advisor agreed that his work was needed in film studies
"Sam is doing very important, intellectual work at the intersection of film and LGBT studies," Catherine Preston, associate professor of theatre and film said. "It will add much to our understanding of this marginalized group's visual culture."
Joshi's interest in studying male erotic videos began with the only gay pornography musical in existence, Romeo and Julian. Although all the actors were white, the film was done in South Asian style, he said.
South Asia Homosexuality is not commonly accepted in Asian cultures, but Asians are not fully
accepted in American gay culture either, he said. Asian Americans are either ignored in gay pornography, or treated as erotic sexual objects, he said.
By casting white actors in a film with subtle South Asian flair, Joshi said, Romeo and Julian explored same sex love for South Asians.
Joshi said while gay pornography helped gay men feel more comfortable with themselves, demeaning Asian men can make them feel less secure.
Joshi also researched the effect of pornography on men more generally by looking at
police fantasies. Many police fantasies involve a dominant-submissive model, Joshi said. After watching videos that portrayed prison rape scenes, Joshi said he wanted to find out why this type of fantasy is so pervasive in gay pornography.
"In prison, when men rape each other, it has to do with the zero-sum game of masculinity," he said. "One gains masculinity at the expense of the other."
This battle is inherent in American culture, he said, when males are threatened by other males and have to degrade them in order to feel more masculine.
These struggles make it difficult for men to form emotional bonds with each other, he said.
The relationship develops an emotional bond that is evident in the way sadomasochists have formed a close, caring community.
Sadomasochistic fantasies actually allow men to form emotional relationships, he said. The dominant figure often takes the role of introducing the submissive character into manhood, Ioshi said.
Charlie Santaular, Lawrence junior, said he was surprised when Joshi, a teaching assistant, told his film class of his dissertation.
Studying pornography is not common. Joshi said he knew of only five other people in the world tackling the same subject.
"It's something rarely done, so it could be interesting," he said. "But it's not something I would be interested in personally."
Joshi said by dismissing pornography in this way, people are overlooking a valuable tool to study society. He said pornography should be treated as a cultural artifact.
"It's not just sex," he said. "Nothing is just sex. It's a cultural thing."
— Edited by Ashley Marriott
Homemade sex tapes arousing, revolting option for erotic play
By Sam Amburgey correspondent@kansan.com Kansan correspondent
Hairy backs and love handles flash across the video screen. An occasional awkward stare comes from an individual who's curious as to what the red, blinking light across the room is for. This is amateur pornography.
Brad Robinson, Wichita sophomore, said he liked amateur porn because the aroused individuals looked like they could be somebody's neighbors.
Many couples make their own videos as a way to keep their relationship interesting.
"I think it would be cool to make one just to see what the two of us look like in bed," Robinson said of himself and his girlfriend.
"Amateur porn is mostly straight banging," he said. "Unlike big-time porn that is usually overproduced."
Other couples may be cautious of videos because of their use as incriminating evidence.
Rich said she did not see herself as a prospective participant in a sex tape, but she didn't have a
"I would probably throw it away after watching it just to avoid any future problems," said Courtney Rich, Shawnee senior.
"Amateur porn is mostly straight banging."
problem with the form of entertainment, as long as children did not get a hold of it.
Brad Robinson Wichita sophomore
Misplaced tapes may keep many couples away from making their own home videos. Not helping the small industry is the urban legend where someone in a small community rents a movie from Blockbuster and accidentally puts a home sex tape in the box and returns it. Within a week, everyone in town has seen it.
Although the department of theater and film isn't in the video rental business, it does receive its fair share of amateur films.
But Matt Jacobson, assistant professor of film and video production, said there was nothing pornographic about them.
"I've never seen anything that is too adult or sexual in nature," he said. "There was one project that contained a love scene, however it was pretty tame. Our students are pretty good about assignments, but I'm not sure about their spare time."
Edited by Dave Nobles