Member-only story
[We interrupt our usual programming of the mini-series “Mount Bliss” to bring you this special story that was published in the April issue of ENM Magazine (Ethical Non-Monogamy). That magazine just launched in January and has hit hard times due to COVID-19. Please visit them and support them. This story was inspired by the amazing Yael Wolfe.]
“It is hard to imagine ‘slut’ being reclaimed the way ‘queer’ was, as a respectable label for academic programs and cultural centers.” (“Slut: The Other Four Letter S-Word,” on Fresh Air, WHYY, NPR, March 13, 2012)
The course was only open to graduate students and doctoral candidates. They were mostly from the Women’s Studies department, but some were from English and/or Comp. Lit. One or two were from the Philosophy department and one from the Religious Studies/Theology department. It didn’t matter where they came from; what mattered was that they came.
This was the cutting edge of academia: Slut Studies. The syllabus was a stroll down all the dark, forbidden stacks of the salacious, suggestive, censored and censured, prurient, perverted, plucky and poetic pornographic literature of the centuries.
It culminated with an in-depth reading and analysis of Match, Cinder & Spark. The professor was only a few years older than the students, if that. The student body was female and most of them either lusted for…