Westminster instructor and others speak on ‘Porn Class’ offered this spring

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – Pornography exists. It has an impact on society. Scholars study that impact.

ABC4 received multiple tips from April 19 to 20 about a course being offered at Westminster College during the May summer term titled “Gender 3000 – Porn.”

Westminster told ABC4 that the May summer term at Westminster is designed to annually offer courses that are different from the usual, this one included. Westminster is a private institution, and the course is an optional, elective course. No student is required to take it. Utahns continue to express general outrage and a tip to ABC4 referenced a change.org petition to “appeal to Westminster” about the course.

While it is difficult to know exactly how viral crazes such as this start, research by ABC4 indicates that an article in Campus Reform by Ben Zeisloft shared on social media started the outrage. Campus Reform is a conservative “news” website that describes its goal as “exposing liberal bias and abuse on the nation’s college campuses.” In addition to their “objective reporting” efforts, Campus Reform has organized several protests on campuses around the nation, including a protest against “liberal” commencement speakers such as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

After reporting on the Westminster Course description, Zeisloft’s article continues to discuss other campuses “pushing sexuality upon their students,” including a sex-positive Wentworth Institute of Technology sex education course focused on female orgasm. Why female orgasm qualifies as “liberal bias” remains unclear in the article.

Because of the buzz on social media regarding this class, it stands to include the course description verbatim as displayed on Westminster’s website:

“Hard core pornography is as American as apple pie and more popular than Sunday night football. Our approach to this billion-dollar industry is as both a cultural phenomenon that reflects and reinforces sexual inequalities (but holds the potential to challenge sexual and gender norms) and as an art form that requires serious contemplation. We will watch pornographic films together and discuss the sexualization of race, class, and gender and and as an experimental, radical art form.”

Westminster College

ABC4 reached out to Westminster for an interview and was told that the department in question was receiving a huge number of calls. Sheila Rapazzo Yorkin, chief marketing officer of Westminster College thinks that the overwhelming amount of calls may have started because of Campus Reform’s reporting on the story. Yorkin provided a statement to the public about the Westminster course that reads as follows:

“Westminster College occasionally offers elective courses like this as an opportunity to analyze social issues. As part of this analysis, Westminster College and universities across the county often examine potentially offensive topics like pornography to further understand their pervasiveness and impact. Descriptions of these courses, while alarming to some readers, help students decide if they wish to engage in serious investigation of controversial subjects. This course will help students learn how to think critically about the influence of digital media culture. Westminster is a private liberal arts college dedicated to offering students life and career readiness education through programs that challenge, provide diverse perspectives, and develop critical thinking skills.”

The course is not a course about watching porn together in a group, a course on why pornography is good, or a course on how and why to make porn, according to Westminster. The university says it is designed to develop critical thinking skills about porn’s impact on society, culture, and inequality.

ABC4 spoke with Eileen Chanza Torres, the instructor of the course in question. First off, Chanza Torres wants Utahns to know that there are no children enrolled in the class. Second, she wants Utahns to know that her course is “not an attack on conservativism or religious practice.” Third, Chanza Torres mentions to Utahns that she “gets the fear” about this course being offered. She comes from a Catholic family that inspired her to study exactly why “sex is considered scary.”

Chanza Torres grew up as an immigrant to the United States during the AIDS epidemic, which helped shape her academic interest in how sex and gender influence society, culture, and politics. Her research is centered on “thinking about how marginalized groups can be brought to the center,” and focuses on media and technology’s role in said process.

When asked why she is teaching a course on pornography, Chanza Torres calls it “a fascinating study of people and gender performance.” “The majority of porn is bad for women, although there is some variety in porn.” Chanza Torres’ class is designed to help students think critically about pornography’s impact on gender in the U.S. Her research looks at popular pornographic websites as problematic databases that obscure the legality of pornography and its ethics in general.

Chanza Torres maintains that while she is “sex positive and body-positive,” the course at Westminster is designed to be critical of pornography using rigorous methodological frameworks. It’s not for her and students to “watch porn, giggle, and go home.” She hopes her class can be a safe and moderated space for students curious about pornography’s impact on society.

“I’m not interested in making my students copies of myself,” says Chanza Torres. Instead, she hopes that everyone involved in the class can bring their own perspective and ideas to the conversation, and form their own critically informed perspectives on pornography.

Chanza Torres and Yorkin want to remind Utahns that the class is entirely optional, and that students can opt out of the course or certain included materials with no consequence. Despite this, some Utah residents remain shocked that there could be a whole university course centered on pornography, and especially at the prospect of watching it as a class.

Connor Boyack is author of a children’s book about conservative takes on the law titled “The Tuttle Twins Learn About The Law.” An animated series based on the book is being produced by Angel Studios in Provo. Boyack spoke with ABC4 about his perspective on the course, which he tweeted about.

“I think what many parents are coming to realize is that higher education is not what it once was. Universities have really degraded in their quality and I think that’s exemplified by meaningless degrees,” says Boyack.

Boyack continues saying, “A class to study pornography is hardly exemplary for what we would like to think as taxpayers that we are investing in to subsidize these degrees through grant and loans,” while acknowledging that Westminster is a private institution that does not receive these kinds of investments. As far as ABC4 could find, no course on pornography is being taught at any of Utah’s public universities.

On Gender Studies and similar degrees, Boyack says they are “inherently idiotic.” “There are plenty of people working at Starbucks who have not found a way to monetize their ‘education’ with such a degree.”

On gender studies specifically, Chanza Torres says they are important “because we are humans.” “There’s no escape from how we perform gender, it’s like breathing.” For Chanza Torres and other gender studies scholars, gender is worth studying because it is experienced by all humans every day.

Gender Studies as a discipline has been taking a critical eye to pornography for a long time. There is even a full academic editorial publication called “Porn Studies” that has been running since as early as 2017. Chanza Torres spoke to ABC4 about how the entire field of porn studies was originally pitched as “pornography studies” in order to reflect the kind of serious academic scrutiny it intended to apply to pornography, and how it was shortened to “porn studies” after institutional pressures. Most gender studies professionals acknowledge pornography as a complicated, nuanced media force.

Some on social media have spoken in support of the Westminster course, and about their surprise at the entire outrage to begin with. While the anti-porn course movement gained traction on social media, a BYU Idaho anatomy class that censored anatomical images of the human body went viral on Twitter, prompting further discussion about what is and isn’t appropriate for a university education.