A “student-led” feminist sex course at UC Berkeley is asking students who take the class to sign a pledge, swearing not to have sex with other students in the class—or the instructor.
“FemSex,” or the “DeCal Course,” is one of UC Berkeley’s most popular courses, with five full sections of 20 students. The course focuses on everything from “the influence of social hierarchies in all reproductive choices, solo sex, partner sex, orgasm, sex work, communication, consent, relationships, gender/sex-based violence, and empowerment” to “normative gender privilege.” It also features basic sex instruction.
The class is so popular that it’s inspired copycat courses at Brown and Harvard.
It also promises to help students navigate a difficult world where people occasionally want to know their gender, and provides a “safe space” where students can learn about their bodies, their power and their privilege.
But don’t put any of the newfound knowledge to use with your classmates. The class contract, obtained by Campus Reform, specifies that doing so would create an unsafe and potentially chilling environment, and violate the class’s guarantee of “mutual trust and respect.” The student instructors, who have to get special permission from their department chair to offer the class, also say all that intra-class sex could ruin the class’s reputation.
The contract is so airtight, it requires students to report even thinking about another classmate in a sexual way: “This includes any disclosure of the desire to hook-up to a classmate or facilitator,” the clause reads. Since these are college students, that probably happens quite a lot.
Given that the average student loan debt of a graduating UC Berkeley student is more than $25,000, students might want to think twice about spending all that cash on FemSex, when they can learn most of what’s offered on the Internet.