Texas Teacher Fired for Posting Topless Photos On-line
Austin (Texas) high school officials recently fired art teacher Tamara Hoover, purportedly for posting naked photos of herself on-line at Flickr.com, a very mainstream photo sharing site. As reported by the Houston Chronicle, the photos, which are no more erotic than the statue of David, depict Hoover in a variety of routine activities, including lifting weights, showering, getting dressed, etc. Her breasts are visible in some photos but she is fully clothed in about 90 percent of the photos. Her genitalia are never visible. She did not tell her students or co-workers about the photos yet she is now fighting for her job. Indeed, her students only found out about the photos because they were told about them by another teacher who apparently had some type of grudge against Hoover. Hmmm. More about that later.
Is this yet another example of why people need to stop posting nude photos and other such material about themselves on-line at sites like Flickr but also at social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster? Or is this actually an example of a school finding an excuse for firing a lesbian teacher because of her sexual orientation? The school district claims that it fired Hoover because the photos were inappropriate and violate the "higher moral standard" expected of public school teachers. The district is arguing that Hoover became an ineffective teacher simply because nude photos of her were accessible to students. Yet colleagues and students dispute the district's characterizations of Hoover. Fellow Austin high school teacher Robin Lind stated that she doesn't view Hoover any differently after having seen the photographs. From Lund's perspective, the naked photos of Hoover don't "make her less credible or less respectable."
So is the real problem the nude photos of Hoover or the relationship that she had with the person who posted them? Celesta Danger, Hoover's female partner, posted hundreds of photos of Hoover as part of an on-line documentary of their lives together. "I don't think I can be responsible for other peoples' perceptions or reactions when they look at my photos, it has to do with their state of mind at the time," Danger said. "I'm not out to change people's minds, but I'm not a pornographer."
CollegeRecruiter.com estimates that about five percent of employers research applicants on sites like Flickr, MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, but that number is growing. In addition, studies indicate that 77 percent of employers use the Internet as part of their background checking process and that 35 percent have rejected candidates as a result of the information they found on-line.
Clearly the posting of the photos on-line was a catalyst in this dispute and Hoover should have been understood that when she allowed Danger to post the photos she was, well, playing dangerously. Yet would the district have moved to revoke the teaching certificate of a heterosexual teacher merely because her husband posted non-erotic photos on-line? I doubt it. And what about the teacher who told Hoover's students about the naked photos? If the photos were so problematic, then shouldn't a teacher telling students to go on-line to look at them also be problematic? Yet the district has apparently chosen to take no disciplinary action against the tattle tale. Hmmm.
Perhaps my libertarian nature is just a little too strong, but this action really troubles me. We have naked, not erotic, photos of a teacher posted on-line. The teacher does not tell her co-workers or students. Another teacher tells students where they can find naked photos on-line. The students do so. The teacher whose naked photos were posted on-line by her lesbian partner is then fired. Is this the type of critical thinking that the Austin high school wants from its students? Or is this just another example of small mindedness by public officials who should be spending more of their energy trying to educate our children than in trying to enforce their own sense of morality?
Interesting, especially in light of a Reader's Digest 2003 article "Porn 101 - Yep that's Penthouse on the syllabus"...
They're not the flash cards you remember from school. One recent fall semester, students in a class at the University of California, Berkeley, took photographs of their own genitals, shuffled the pictures in a box, and challenged one another to match faces to body parts. The idea, explained freshman Christy Kovacs, "was for everyone to get to know each other."
By conventional standards, the students in Berkeley's Male Sexuality course already knew each other pretty well. During class, which counted as credit toward graduation, they listened to a lecture from a porn actress, as well as an expert on sex toys. They took a trip to a gay strip club, where their instructor had sex onstage. At the end of the semester, they staged an orgy.
If you haven't been enrolled in college during the past five years, you might consider what happened at Berkeley to be mere pornography.
But you would be only half right. In modern academia, sharing your sex life with your classmates isn't porn. It's Porn Studies, a form of serious, cutting-edge scholarly research. Just ask Richard Burt, professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Professor Burt is the author of the 318-page volume, Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares: Queer Theory and American Kiddie Culture, and perhaps the best known defender of pornography as an object of academic research. And Burt doesn't just talk about his area of study. He lives it. His personal website has helpful links to adult sites, as well as seminude pictures of his wife.
A couple of years ago in The Los Angeles Times, Burt wrote one of the first public defenses of porn studies, arguing that X-rated films are in fact literary tools. In order to comprehend Shakespeare, he contended, it's not enough simply to read what Shakespeare wrote. You have to see the movie too.
As Burt put it: "How can we understand Shakespeare's reverberation in our culture without examining his appearance in popular media like TV sitcoms, advertisements, films like Porky's 2 and, dare I say it, even hard-core pornographic films like A Midsummer Night's Cream?"
Regular folks--especially parents--may have trouble understanding the connection between skin flicks and Macbeth. To some academics, it's perfectly clear. Which explains why students at MIT watched Deep Throat in class. And why young scholars at Arizona State University screened Buttman of Budapest at the request of their professor. (Students at Berkeley, meanwhile, had to make do with a lecture by Carol Queen, author of the less critically acclaimed Carol Queen's Guide to Vibrators.)
It's all part of porn studies. As is Exploring Cybersexualities, a class offered a few semester ago by San Francisco State University that gave students tips on finding porn on the Web. According to a reporter who visited the class, instructor Mary Madden said to her students, "Let's look for naked pictures of Britney Spears--is she old enough yet? I think she might be 16, so we better not do that." To which her teaching assistant added, "How about women and dogs?"
When porn studies majors aren't viewing porn, they're making it. A couple of years ago, undergraduates in a women's studies course at Wesleyan were required to produce their own pornography. Some videotaped themselves masturbating, while others acted with partners.
At Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., "porn scholars" took a more active approach. Students attended an erotic-dance course from college lecturer Susan Scotto. Scotto, a former stripper herself, accompanied several students to a local strip club, where they made their debut onstage. "They're going to do it anyway," she explained. "I thought at least I can teach them to do it right." Asked for his opinion of the course, Mount Holyoke's dean of faculty replied that stripping "seems to build self-esteem."
Continued in the article, which I can't seem to find on the Reader's Digest link:
http://www.rd.com/
Wow.. this remind me of the good ole days when teachers were not even allowed to be married.. Wonder when too far is too far.
Does privacy really have a part in this? Or, does a teacher of Minors have an unwritten/written code to live up to? Wonder what the parents think about this..
Isn't college about preparing people for jobs? LUCRATIVE jobs?
Isn't porn one of the most lucrative businesses out there? Can ANYONE seriously state that in today's world there isn't a HUGE market for porn?
Like it or not - it's here to stay, and sticking your head in your Bible and blubbering about Holy Jeebus won't do anything but amuse those of us who aren't deluded by mythology and fairy tales.