The current brouhaha concerning Uncommon Threads and the content of its Fall term issue shows the problem that can occur when one aims self-righteousness at everyone but himself. In the issue in question, Micaela Diaz '00 is quoted regarding this fall's Jack O' Lantern controversy as saying, "For me it's not even about being politically correct or anything like that. It's about being culturally sensitive and respectful of the people whom you share space with..." And those may be the most appropriate words in which to frame the current controversy.
One can ask why Uncommon Threads forsakes this message. Its fall issue is anything but culturally sensitive or respectful of the people who share space with the newspaper. The material in the latest issue is an attack on human dignity and thus on the entire Dartmouth community.
Now if we begin at the inherent nature of the sexual act, we see that it is private and selfless. Uncommon Threads trivializes and renders the act worthless except in the primitive, pleasurable form. This is a very dangerous manifestation. The sexual act becomes a means to an end -- that of pleasure. The paper, which has attacked fraternities for alleged wrongdoings with corpses and such, engages in the same behavior.
In this issue women become the playthings of men. Sex as a means to pleasure becomes another means for men to dominate women. The sexual act loses all significance. As the sexual act becomes a means to an end, the actors also become objects to be manipulated and controlled to attain pleasure. This is a grievous assault on human dignity.
It is the same assault that Larry Flynt and the pornographic industry engage in; it is the same assault that occurred when slave masters used slaves as human pawns; it is the same assault which occurs so often in random hookups on campus. In "awakening," the two women are each other's sexual playthings. Thus the story trivializes and glorifies the assault on human dignity.
This story (which could be found in some pornographic magazine) objectifies the person. One supposes that those who read it are meant to be aroused and pleasured. For the reader the sexual act becomes a means to physical pleasure. Instead of the beauty of selfless giving, the sexual act as a public story becomes the means to an end.
This is the foundation of the next step in the assault on human dignity via the sexual route. In "awakening," we have two willing participants but one can easily move to the next step of one willing and one unwilling participant. The cultural vanguard of Uncommon Threads would join all of us in attacking this.
But they seem to take the next step in "Exposing Erotic Intersections with Class: A Rereading of Sally Mann." Here the writer glorifies a woman and her photographic work, which could nearly be deemed child pornography. One of the strange and scary things here is the attempt of Uncommon Threads to justify the pictures by their social implications.
While a photo which a parent takes captures the beauty inherent in her child, Mann's pictures take the child and manipulate her. She is made into something she is not and should not be -- an erotic plaything. She is being used. After she has been eroticized, she becomes a means to dysfunctional sexuality.
A question one might ask is: Would you allow your sister or daughter to be so photographed? Would you allow such photos to be sold? I think the answer can only be a deafening "No." At the same time one might ask: Would you desire to be a simple means to end, an object, a plaything? Again the answer is "No." We return to Diaz's words. Uncommon Threads is being disrespectful towards the members of the Dartmouth community. It is attacking the dignity of each of us.
It is also hard to understand why the members of Uncommon Threads do not see the fallacies in their position. A question seems appropriate: Would the members of Uncommon Threads and the Dartmouth community support student funds paying for Hustler? Again the only answer is "No." Yet its content could come from Larry Flynt and the pornographic industry. The social vanguard of which Uncommon Threads is part has protested the actions of fraternities and Playboy and yet condones the very assault on dignity it vehemently protests.
It ceases to make sense. Again it is the large problem with self-righteousness. One forgets to shine the beam inward and allows himself to act in the same manner as those he attacks.
As old-fashioned as it may seem, there are many on campus who believe the sexual act should remain private. As strange as it may seem, there are those who do not believe in supporting Dartmouth's own version of Hustler. As odd as it may seem, there are those who think child pornographers should be locked up instead of glorified. And as strange as it may seem, there are those here who find it a great disrespect to see such material delivered to their house of worship as Uncommon Threads was to mine. These people do not yell as loud or act as disrespectful as those in the cultural vanguard. But as the questions posed above show many if not most of us find ourselves in this group.
And perhaps the members of Uncommon Threads have an explanation for their actions. Perhaps so does Larry Flynt. But the question is not the who but the what. Flynt's explanations do not wash away the iniquity of his assaults on human dignity. And no explanations can wash away the assault that Uncommon Threads has visited upon the Dartmouth community.
Perhaps it is time to ask for a real affirmation of human dignity from the social vanguard instead of the moral platitudes it so righteously and hypocritically expresses. And perhaps until they do, instead of exhausting ourselves with righteous indignation over fewer beer kegs, we should request, scream, shout, command that our student dollars go to people who affirm the dignity of the human person and go nowhere near those who do not. Defund Uncommon Threads.
