American universities now offer courses on porn novels, have clubs focused on sexual activities, and have special events that cater “personal needs“.

Idaho State University doctoral student Elizabeth Husmann offers her view on the unhealthy direction that such scholarship is taking, and its negative impact on women.

The flawed feminist notion that women can have it all when it comes to an illustrious fulltime career and raising children can also be applied to the bedroom. Which is it, do you want to be respected between the sheets, or handcuffed to the bed post and whipped?

This argument is basically being played out on a national level as news reports of an upcoming orgasm seminar planned at the University of Minnesota have spread. The event is designed to help women have more and better orgasms, and students and others have defended the controversial programming, saying for far too long men have dominated in the sex department, and now it’s time for women to get top billing.

In a recent Minnesota Daily opinion column touting the orgasm workshop, for example, the author explains how – to the woe of women – sex is traditionally imbalanced to focus solely on the male; further, such phenomenon is ultimately problematic as it dictates inequitable gender roles both inside and outside of the bedroom.

Agreed. However, are we justified in mourning the illusive female orgasm and the larger concern of female sexual neglect, if we as women instead express the opposite sentiment demonstrated by the “Fifty Shades of Grey” phenomenon that has swept the nation?

It’s a paradox that can clearly be seen in the Red Room of Pain.

The Red Room of Pain, for those readers unfamiliar with the “Fifty Shades of Grey” escapades of Christian and Anastasia, is a supposedly extraordinary environment where true sexual satisfaction is discovered…..

Maybe I am out of touch with contemporary perceptions of sexual delight, but I feel assured in my assertion that whipping someone as punishment for not appropriately replying to a command with (wait for it) the title of “Sir,” does not sound like a sane conception of enjoyment. Instead, it feels more like debased domination at the hands of a control-minded sociopath; and women worldwide are loving every inch of it.

Husmann concludes:

Unfortunately, the answers may not be pretty. For as women continue to idolize and fantasize about the demented and disgusting “relationship” embodied within “Fifty Shades of Grey,” we may come to realize that we are among the primary perpetuating culprits. And unfortunately the winners of this contradiction game are no winners at all.