Monday, April 30th at 7:00 in PLC 180

Brod, a professor of philosophy and leader in the pro-feminist men's movement, offers a unique take on the problem of sexual assault, one that complicates the issue even as it clarifies the bottom-line principle that consent must always be explicitly granted, never simply assumed. In a nonthreatening, non-hectoring discussion that ranges from  the meanings of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the indeterminacy of silence to the  way alcohol affects our ethical responsibilities, Brod challenges people to envision a model of sexual interaction that is most erotic  precisely when it is most thoughtful and empathetic.

Harry Brod is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the author of White Men Challenging Racism: 35 Personal Stories, Theorizing Masculinities, Hegel's Philosophy of Politics: Idealism, Identity and Modernity, A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity, and The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies. As a public educator, Dr. Harry  Brod has delivered the lecture “Asking For It: The Ethics and Erotics of Sexual Consent” on college and university campuses across the nation as a central component of gender violence prevention campaigns. You can check this here:  http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?key=243&preadd=action. The Media Education Foundation (MED) summarized this film’s content as follow: “The line between sexual consent and sexual coercion is not always as clear as it seems -- and according to Harry Brod, this is exactly why we should approach our sexual interactions with great care.