IMAGINE, IF YOU will, that a college professor regales a mixed class in psychology with tales of sexual exploits, illustrates the lecture with close-up photographs of genitalia, extols the bliss of autoeroticism and invites those students looking for the perfect Christmas gift to stop by after class for copies of a sex-toys catalog.
And suppose that many students, both male and female, are disgusted and that one student, feeling degraded and abused, flees the lecture hall and brings a harassment complaint, charging the pro-fessor with creating a sexually hostile classroom environment.How long do you suppose it would take university officials to suspend the professor from teaching? A week? A month?
At California State University in Sacramento just such an incident occurred in December, and the professor continues to teach - and to do so with faculty backing. One member of the faculty, bristling at student criticism, urged the professor's detractors to "grow up."
Oh, I failed to mention that the professor is a woman - Joanne Marrow, a 45-year-old lesbian activist, former Maryknoll sister and author of "Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence." The student who filed the complaint is Craig Rogers, a 33-year-old married man with two children.
According to a front-page story in "The Wall Street Journal," Rogers found Marrow's lecture "crude, unadulterated male-bashing combined with lesbian proselytizing that made him feel `raped and trapped.' " University administrators declined to press the matter.
They also rejected Rogers' request to be allowed to skip five final-exam questions relating to the offensive lecture.
Thus stonewalled by officials of a university whose harassment code prohibited "sexually explicit or sexist" statements and the "display of sexually explicit pictures," Rogers has brought a $2.5 million harassment suit against Marrow and the university.
Since Rogers is a Christian, Marrow's lawyer dismisses him as a prude and says his complaint is "fundamentalist Christian McCarthyism." But Rogers' own lawyer notes persuasively that it is "un-imaginable" that a male professor behaving in such a fashion would have been treated so delicately.
And were Rogers not a Christian, it ought to be added, it is unimaginable that his faith would be an object of derision.
The double standard is a mark of the times. On the campus and at the office, male behavior that brings instant dismissal - vulgar, sexually explicit wisecracks, for example - is simply shrugged off if the offender is a woman.