FoodSexLit

Driving to work the other morning, I heard the new Luda joint “Sexting,” which begins by invoking the unfortunate Tiger Woods: Luda parodies the panicked, now-infamous voicemail Tiger left for one of his mistresses.

The first lines that follow the skit are Luda talking about “sitting in a rehab class/ trying to get myself unhooked on ass” and, if that deliciousness wasn’t enough (I adore the line “unhooked on ass,” for various Shakespearean reasons) his teacher asks him: “Luda, are you over there sexting?”

I love Luda.

Not only do I think the song is brilliant in terms of the form (the parody of Tiger) and punny (he uses all kinds of texting acronyms in what I would deems a pretty lyrically profound way) it raises a question that I’ve been asking myself recently.

To nutshell it for you, I’ve been wondering if my students are sexting while in class.  Not because I’m a perv, but because if I were a student, I would totally be sexting it up whenever I was bored in class.

Jesus, even as the teacher it’s hard for me not to sext in class.  As I’ve dedicated my professional life to academia, I spend hours in the classroom.  Fortunately, since I’m the one standing up there in the front, and because I have the rare gift of academic freedom, I am rarely ever bored: I get really into my teaching.  I consider it a gift that I get to be totally present in my chosen profession.  I think my students will attest to my passion and commitment to my subject matter—look me up on ratemyprofessor.

That said, I have paused just outside the door to send just one last sext before I started my day teaching.

I have yet to have the courage to sext during meetings—especially English department meetings, which can get pretty intense.  But I have a number of friends who occupy reputable, important, well-paying professional situations, and I cannot tell you how many of them, after not answering their phone, have texted me some variation of: “I’m in a meeting.  What’s up?”  And to answer your question, I’ve had a lover sext me during a meeting—one while he was leading a meeting.

So I imagine that in this brave new post-modern world of smart phones, people texting during class, or any other academic situation, is not going to be the issue it is now much longer.

I used to have a syllabus policy about cell phones.  When I was a young teacher at the turn of the century (early 2000’s), I used to get really mad if a student’s cell phone rang in class. A few years later, after everyone learned to turn their cellphones off (or set them to vibrate) and as texting became more and more commonplace, I would get upset about the texting instead

As of last fall, however, I stopped enforcing a “no texting” policy for various reasons, the main one being that I had the opportunity to teach with an older, more experienced faculty member.  Because it was a learning community, there were about 70 or so students—the closest to a lecture course I’ve ever gotten.  My largest class size, up to that point, was 30—usually it was around the mid-twenties.  As any teacher will tell you, the smaller the class, the more you can pay attention to what your students are doing.  But teaching 75 or so bodies and personalities comprised of various ages and backgrounds and language ability was different than anything I’d ever encountered before in my teaching career.

Early on in the quarter, I was really, really upset that students were texting in class (instead of listening to me.)  And one day I couldn’t stand it anymore.   Since the man I was teaching with was older, and a male, I knew he could handle disciplinary situations without being called a bitch—or “bitchy,” or any other feminized version of an insult that I’ve been called by students over the years because my ego is so invested in my teaching and I take it personally when, as a former student oh-so-insightfully noted on ratemyprofessor:  it was something along the lines of “she gets really mad if she percieves that students are disrespecting her.”

So after class I marched self-righteously up to the man I was co-teaching and told him that certain students were texting during class.

“So?” he asked.

“They’re not paying attention!”  I said.  “They aren’t listening to me!”

“And it’s their loss,” he said.  “Besides, what are you going to do, take away their cell phones?”

And while that’s exactly what I would have done in my smaller classes, had done in my smaller classes—but his detached response made me think about the wisdom (and dignity) of taking their texting so personally.

And then he pointed out that the students I was complaining about, the ones most blatant about texting during my lectures on writing, were actually turning in the best writing.

So that pretty much shut me up about student texting in that class.

My colleague’s response was rare.  The majority of my colleagues, whether my age or older, are less differentiated from student texting—let alone sexting.  And a lot of them talk about the “dangers” of texting on writing skills:

Let me illustrate: over our photocopy machine at work is a small comic: 2 mch txting mks u 1 bd spllr.

I laugh every time I see it, because, after a brief stint as spelling bee finalist at Holy Rosary in fourth grade, my own spelling declined precipitously.  And as a tenured professor of writing, a woman with an M.A. and an M.F.A. in the writing of poetry, a woman who publishes not just poetry but also in peer-reviewed journals about teaching college-level writing— a woman who perhaps protests too much . . . I can say with authority (backed by research) that the ability to spell correctly has absolutely NO correlation with producing good writing.

Regardless, no matter how much older generations might HATE texting and prohibit cell phones in their class, I think the negative reaction will slowly disappear as the workforce fills with people who have always had a cell phone—who have always been texting.  And with what I’ll term the “democratization of information,” our teaching methods will have to change.  Because it’s not just about who can memorize the most information anymore—not now, when students can google or bing or whatever-the-new-technology-search-engine-is-of-the-moment information from their phones while in class.

Example: While teaching Romeo and Juliet that same fall quarter, I started to talk about a mythological allusion in the text—then realized I couldn’t remember the exact details of the story.  While I was fumbling my way through a rendition, a student quickly found it, using his phone, and raised his hand.  Using the information he provided, we were able to piece together a more sophisticated reading of that moment in the play.

Education, like it or not, will change as technology morphs.  The same way that spelling has changed with the advent of composing on a computer, so we must shift from an emphasis on retaining information to stressing how to use and evaluate information.  But that’s another blog post.

I want to get back to the sex.  And the sexting.

So for the last year or so, I have stopped policing texting or prohibiting students from texting in my class.   I’m not a high school teacher.  Basically, I have better things to do than worry about them texting—plus, it doesn’t distract me as a teacher anymore.  Note that side conversations and whispering still distract me.  I have that scary-teacher-hearing—I can hear two girls whispering in the back of the classroom when I’m in the front no matter what is going on.  It’s like the Princess and the Pea.  So I stop THAT mess instantly.  But texting doesn’t bother me anymore, and as long as it doesn’t bother the other students, I let it slide.

I know my students are TEXTING in class—I mean, I see them doing it, especially when they think I’m not paying attention.

And with the number of students I have per year, of all the hours we spend together in the classroom, I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare and research and writing and I are so riveting that we would merit focused attention the entire time.  Plus, the idea that NONE of my students are involved in a relationship that involves sexting is really just not probable.

Fortunately for me, I’m teaching consenting adults; I don’t have to monitor what’s going on in their sex lives or their text lives.  The less I know about their sex lives, in fact, the better.  But I can’t help but wonder if my students are doing it in the classroom.  And when I say “doing it,” I mean having sex with some person who may or may not be in the same physical space while I’m teaching.

I said in an earlier blog posting on this topic that the sext, like the sonnet, creates a little room for lovers.  The cool thing is that this little room is in cyberspace, so you can sext anywhere your cell phone works.  Like “real” sex (the biological kind) sexting is even more exciting when you’re doing it someplace public.  In a meeting that seems like it will never end? Sexting clears that problem right up.  A boring party?  Suddenly your naughty bits are tingling and you’re turned on.  Really, being turned on all the time makes life more exciting.

I’m fascinated by the idea that with the advent of sexting, you can have sex anywhere—at a meeting, in line at the grocery store, driving to work.  What makes this sort of courtship so titillating, besides the fact that it’s making love with words, just as they did in the olden days (you didn’t send flowers, you sent a sonnet) is that you can do it in front of other people.  It’s sort of like the thrill of having sex outside—you might get caught—but of course it’s slightly different—it’s like public/private sex.   Basically, what I like about sexting is that it makes everything you are doing fraught with sexual tension.  And the Truth-or-Dare question is no longer the craziest place you’ve had sex, but the craziest place you’ve sexted.

For the generations that will grow up with cell phones and unlimited texting plans—sexting, I think it’s safe to say, (and its double, sending dirty pics) is the new courtship.  It’s very post-modern.  Very meta.

You know that darling adage?  About how the kids thought they had invented sex?  Well, not since Petrarch was writing sonnets has an opportunity like this come around.  There’s a whole brave  new world out there when it comes to courtship in the new millennium.

I can see how texting might be super exciting to adolescents as they discover their sexuality.  Fuck, it’s exciting to me, and I’m 33.  So I imagine it’s exciting for my college students too.

Since I’ve themed my Shakespeare classes around love and sex and courtship it’s kind of cool, I think, that while we’re talking about those subjects—reading about them—writing about them—they might be actually doing (remixing/reworking) how we woo.  And since Shakespeare loved doubles and play-with-in-plays, sexting in my class might be very Shakespearean.  A Shakespeariance, if you will.

If he were alive today, I’m sure Shakespeare would sext.  And since he was a master of conventional and unconventional wooing, I’m sure he’d be great in the virtual bed.

So I kind of like the idea of my students sexting in my Shakespeare class.

And perhaps I’m a pervert after all . . .

Still to Come:

– The Highlights of Sexting—My Best (and Worst) Moments in the Virtual Bed

And

– Two Variations on the Shakespearian Ass—The Booty and the Bastard