Temple University unveils porn studies course on sex and ‘the patriarchy’: No ‘right vs. wrong’ perspective

Temple University in Pennsylvania has started its first "porn-studies course" this semester, aiming to teach students about sex outside of a moral, "right vs wrong" framework.

Additionally, the new course, which has become popular at the school, will serve as a "jumping off point" to talk about woke issues like "race, ability, and the patriarchy," the Business Insider reported after talking to the course’s instructor, Professor Jennifer Pollitt.

The Insider piece described the course, titled "Social Perspectives and Digital Pornography: The Other Sex Ed," as one in which both undergraduate and graduate students will learn and discuss "sexuality, intimacy, and power dynamics."

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Pollitt explained that starting a class on pornography seemed prudent considering young people’s reliance on the medium for "filling in gaps" in their sexual education.

Pollitt, the school’s assistant director of gender, sexuality, and women's studies who started the course at the beginning of the 2023 Spring Semester, began by telling Insider just how popular the class has become in such a short time.

She noted that she had to expand the class from "25 to 40 students" outright just to meet a portion of the demand students had for it, telling the outlet, "I just kept having a longer wait list, which signaled to me that there is an absolute need for a course like this and that students really, really want to talk about this."

Pollitt explained that in addition to teaching about sex, the class aims to use pornography as a foray into discussion about progressive topics. Insider wrote, "She said her goal in creating the course was to use digital pornography as a jumping-off point to talk about race, ability, and the patriarchy."

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One of Pollitt’s students, Evelyn Andromeda, told the outlet about some of these woke lessons she’s gotten out of the class, saying, "We've talked about how porn focuses on different minority groups — whether that's racialized porn, disability porn, gay porn, trans porn, and how porn can build narratives around these identities that can be both liberating and crushing at the same time."

Also, Pollitt claimed she wanted the class to explore porn outside of social stigmas and the morality discussion attached to it, with Insider reporting she said she wanted to get students away from "binary thinking: viewing porn as simply right versus wrong, good versus bad."

The professor billed the class as a space where students and teacher can talk about things they "sometimes don't even discuss with their closest friends."

Pollitt also justified the course, saying it "may be [students’] only real access to knowledge or info about how sex and sexuality work." Insider noted her point that pornography "may be filling in the gaps in terms of sexual education — especially in the absence of comprehensive sex education, which is not federally mandated."

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In response to people who claim that a college class on porn is "ridiculous," Pollitt declared, "I hope my students leave recognizing how valuable it is to research and to study pornography across all disciplines and to figure out what we can learn."

Fox News Digital reached out to Temple University for comment about the nature of the course and asked whether there was controversy among faculty and staff upon greenlighting the class for students. The college has yet to respond.