Sex as a pedagogical failure

Journal article

In the early 1980s, U.S. universities began regulating sexual relationships between professors and students. Such regulations are routinely justified by a rationale drawn from employment sexual harassment law: the differential in power between professor and student precludes the possibility of genuine consent on the student’s part. This rationale is problematic, as feminists in the 1980s first observed, for its protectionist and infantilising attitude towards (generally) women students. But it is also problematic in that it fails to register what is truly ethically troubling about consensual professor-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 practice of teaching. What is more, much consensual professor-student sex constitutes a patriarchal failure: such relationships are often parasitic on, and productive of, women’s second-class standing in higher education. 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. Whether or not we should ultimately favour such an interpretation of Title IX – whether or not, that is, it would render campuses ultimately more equal for women and other marginalised people – it is clear that university professors need to attend more carefully to the sexual ethics of their own practice.

Authors: Srinivasan, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Yale Law School
• Journal: Yale Law Journal
• Volume: 129
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1100-1146
• Publication date: 2020-02-02
• Acceptance date: 2019-08-30
• ISSN: 0044-0094
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR