There were a few snickers at my play on words, and Kane bit his lower lip, shaking his head subtly.
“I was planning this discussion, whatever it may prove to be, next week. But in the interest of keeping your attention for at least a little while longer, I’m going to adjust my lesson plan and bump up next week’s discussion to tonight. The discussion being … open forum. You find the topic, related to philosophy of course, and we’ll open the floor to discussion. So start googling on your phones or flipping through your books. One topic will be discussed, and then we’ll dismiss for the evening.”
Most eyes stared at me for a moment, either thinking I was kidding or simply too zoned out to react quickly. But eventually, a few laptops opened, phones were pulled out, and students started flipping through the book.
“Sexuality,” Kane said loudly enough for the room to hear without ever cracking his book open.
A few people laughed, one younger guy hollered, “I second that,” and the flirt beside him leaned even farther over, pushing her cleavage up as she pressed her chest to the side arm of her desk.
“A revisitation of Nietzsche’s untimely and nefarious demise, Mr. Thorson?”
Kane smirked. “No. I was thinking more along the lines of Kant’s fear of sex, or Siddhartha’s fascination with it—not to mention his proclivity for breastfeeding.”
The room erupted in laughter then; the snorts and chuckles overtook the shocked gasps of the few, and I choked, clearing my throat for a moment before I could respond.
I forced a smile to my mouth. “Kant wasn’t fearful of sex, he simply thought sex led to the objectification of another being and was thus something to be avoided. Siddhartha… Well, Siddhartha certainly had his interests in sex … among many other things.”
Kane shrugged, smiling as he did. “See all this discussion we could be having on the subject?”
I stared back at him for a moment, and he smiled sweetly.
“Very well. The philosophy of sexuality it is.”
More whoops and hollers followed that announcement.
“Let’s turn forward a chapter, since Mr. Thorson has clearly been reading ahead, to page one hundred eighty-seven to Immanuel Kant. We’ve already reviewed Siddhartha early on in the semester, and St. Augustine in the near past, but Kant is a new one for us.”
I glanced to Kane as pages started to turn. He winked at me, and then his eyes moved down along my body. I’d dressed up on this day, wearing a fitted charcoal gray wool pencil skirt that fell to just below my knees. I’d paired it with a satiny baby pink and white pinstripe button up dress shirt and black heels that buckled around my ankle. By the time Kane’s eyes finished moving and studying my body from top to bottom, the pages had stopped flipping.
“Okay, so in the corner of the sex haters, we have Kant—he’s a big one. We also have St. Augustine. The general consensus among these men is that sex turns people into objects. More than that, it turns parts of one’s body into nothing more than an object to provide sexual gratification. Essentially, a woman stops being a person and becomes a vagina. And a man becomes nothing more than a penis. Degradation at its finest,” I summarized.
“Is that what men are to you, Professor Hess? Nothing more than a penis?” Kane smirked at me.
I smirked back. “I suppose it depends on the worth of the man it happens to be attached to.” Pretty much every woman in the room laughed at that one, and I pushed off the desk, crossing my arms on my chest as I casually walked back and forth. “Further, sex is seen as almost always violent and violating because it is driven nearly completely by impulse. Loss of sexual control, which is seen as inherent in the act, puts one partner always at risk. Essentially, rape is an unavoidable thing, because sexual desire can compel people, largely men as they understood it, to violate women against their will and outside of the man’s control.”
“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Kane muttered.
My eyes snapped to him. “It’s your topic choice, Mr. Thorson. Care to disagree with Mr. Kant?”
He scoffed. “What you’re saying is rape is tantamount to nothing more than basal instinct—uncontrollable, and thus unavoidable. That’s bullshit.”
“I’m saying nothing of the sort,” I corrected him. “But you bring up a good point. Anyone else care to weigh in on the subject?”
The young man who failed to bring his book to class on the first night but still managed to always wink at me as he was leaving chimed in next. “I get what Kant is saying. I mean … sexual drive can be intense.” He looked around with an almost seductive smile on his face.
This idiot was either trying to play devil’s advocate or really was an idiot.