Drexel University Professor Writes Washington Post Editorial About The Time She Sent Anal Bead Porn To Her Students, Says It Was Worse Than Cancer
Three weeks ago, when I sat my teenage daughters down to deliver the difficult news, I said, “Girls, I have to tell you something upsetting.”
My younger daughter’s face went still, and she took a deep breath. Then she asked the hard question.
“Mommy, are you sick?”
And in that moment, I knew I had to lie — not about being sick (thank goodness, I’m healthy as a horse) but about being okay.
Yes, announcing an imminent mastectomy would have been preferable to explaining what had happened to me.
“No, honey, I’m not sick,” I answered. “No, what I have to tell you isn’t nearly that bad.”
I answered her as her mother, as her protector for life. I wanted her to believe, to know, that public humiliation was not as bad as cancer. I needed her to feel that everything was going to be all right.
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At first, when I learned what had happened, I was sure I had lost my dignity forever. Unsurprisingly, some students spread word of the incident through social media and anonymous e-mails to the media. Everyone was talking about me. Everyone was speculating about whether I watched porn, or used sex toys, or liked kinky sex. Some people were calling for my job and law license.
No doubt, some felt justified in feeling superior to me. They enjoyed the scandal (where is Olivia Pope when you need her?), the thrill of the sexual and salacious, the speculation. The schadenfreude was irresistible. Gossip was natural.
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Seemingly, private citizens do not have the right to that one simple thing: privacy. In a moment, through no desire of their own, they can become public figures, shamed in headlines for conduct that is unintentional and harmful to no one — except themselves, as the news media exploit them for sport and profit.
Still, no one questioned the dignity of those who forwarded the unintended post. No one asked why, if they found it so offensive, students opened the link, with its unmistakable Web address, and watched the video long enough to know what it contained.
No one publicly questioned the dignity of the so-called journalists who wrote salacious stories, broadcast them, waited outside my office to interview my students, called my unpublished cellphone number. And no one questioned the dignity of the intended audience. Tabloid journalists ran with this story because they knew they would get page views. How would they know that? Because they know their readers and viewers — and they know that scandal, sex and shame are irresistible to those who devour their posts.
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Somebody call the wahhhmbulance for Professor McElroy! Wahhhhhhh. Jesus, talk about a self-important pile of crap. I mean what are we talking about here? A porn link? An embarrassing email you got called out for a month ago and everyone instantly forgot about it? You’d think it was the end of the world. And instead of just accepting responsibility for it and letting it die out, she had to run to the Washington Post and publish a lengthy editorial about how society is trying to rip her to shreds. “Let’s see how many people we can blame for my mistake.” The students for forwarding it. The media for running with it. The bloggers for making jokes about it. Lady, you’re a professor at a $46K-a-year university and you sent your entire class a link to porn stars shoving anal beads up their ass. Take a little responsibility for it instead of blaming everyone around you. I’m sure you and all your Professor friends would be super lenient and understanding if it was the other way around and a student did that accidentally right?
And you would “prefer to announce a masectomy” over this? Seriously? Hey Professor, why don’t you ask somebody with cancer right now what they’d prefer, an embarrassing mistake that goes viral for 2 days or another round of chemotherapy? Fuck off.