Prof. Hugo Schwyzer Ends ‘Porn Class’ at PCC; Quits the Internet

LOS ANGELES—Professor Hugo Schwyzer from Pasadena City College has just announced that he will no longer be offering classes on a subject he called "Navigating Pornography.” The Humanities 3 class was only offered twice, but as Schwyzer told the Pasadena Star-News, “I'm exhausted by threats and controversy. I need a break." But Schwyzer, whose role as a nationally known writer on issues related to sex, feminism and gender, has a lot more on his plate than just the porn class, and as of yesterday, July 30, has also announced that he is quitting his blog, or as the NYMag’s “In the Cut” put it in a lengthy story and interview published today, “Feminist blogger Hugo Schwyzer quit the Internet yesterday.” Schwyzer’s self-imposed exile from public life is not a quiet one, but comes complete with a variety of narratives by him (and others) across a multiplicity of digital platforms explaining in intricate detail why he is doing what he is doing. It’s to be expected; for years now, the professor has honed the technique by which he makes academic observations intertwined with extremely personal self-revelations, as if he is both studying and working out his (and everyone else’s) demons in real time, for all to see. Complicating the picture has been his problematic past, which includes years of addiction, a self-professed attempt to kill himself and his girlfriend in an alcohol and drug-induced rage, and multiple sexual affairs with students. The entire portfolio of issues, combined with his editorial precocity and success at self-promotion, has made him a polarizing figure and a very public object of loathing for many people, most of them women. Indeed, if Schwyzer is consistent on one point it is that he is stepping back because, as he put it in the blog, “the toxicity of take-down culture is exhausting and dispiriting.” To the Star-News, he phrased it as, "I'm a deeply flawed man who has made many mistakes and been as open as possible about them. Some people can't forgive those mistakes." And in his interview with “In the Cut,” he explained, “I dealt with depression and alcoholism for many years; I’ve written about this many times. I’ve been fifteen years sober, but a lot of the depression came from being online. When I’ve been taken down, there’s virtually nothing in my defense, and anyone who does come to my defense gets slapped down. Google me. Here, I’ll do it ...” Googling Schwyzer does indeed return several results on the first page that lead to irate posts denouncing him as a fraud in every sense of the word. It takes little effort to discover that he has become a kind of poster child, an ideological pivot of sorts, around which a passionate and often vicious debate on the role of men in feminism has swirled. It is difficult to frame Schwyzer as an innocent victim in any of it—in the sense that he asked for it, and they brought it—but it easy to see how it all might simply have become too much for him. That said, however, another comment by him to “In the Cut” suggests that his reasons for wanting a life change have far more to do with personal and domestic issues than any exterior motivation. Answering the question, “What are you going to do now?” the professor replied, “Work on getting mentally healthy. I need to get my meds right. Second, I need to get my marriage right. There’s some bad shit that went down. I had an affair, which is very off-brand for me.” “Off-brand” is a notably odd way for an individual to describe an affair, but not if that person is habitually used to being the object of public attention, good or bad. It sounded so odd to the interviewer that a follow-up question asked, “Off-brand ... as in out of character?” “In that I’m supposed to be reformed,” replied Schwyzer, in hyper-self-awareness mode. “The affair was with someone in the same circles that you and I move in, so I have to protect her. But there’s a lot of gossiping. It may reach you. Don’t be surprised.” Indeed, no one will be surprised if his planned recusal from the internet is not as complete or clean as promised. Even today, as he makes the rounds to talk about why he is moving on, an article posted to Slate.com by writer Amanda Hess indicates the extent to which Schwyzer may have succeeded in becoming an enduring fixture in the conversation on male sexuality. Writing about whether uncircumcised men have less oral sex, Hess noted halfway through the article, “But at least some uncircumcised men aren’t receiving oral sex because they just don’t want to. Hugo Schwyzer, who elected to get circumcised at age 37—‘I wanted to feel as if I was starting over sexually,’ he bizarrely told New York magazine in 2009—says that he chose not to engage in oral sex as an uncut man because the activity caused ‘too much sensation.’” And in an article published last month on Hollywood.com about a Brown University student who had an idea that resulted in “the Feminist Taylor Swift Twitter account” that went quickly viral, Hugo Schwyzer winds up there, too, playing a pivotal role in the popular success of the joke. According to the article, student “[Clara] Beyer credits the explosive growth in Twitter followers to male feminist blogger Hugo Schwyzer, who retweeted Feminist Taylor Swift to his 7,000+ followers on Thursday night, after the two engaged in an online conversation about one of his columns. ‘The next morning, I woke up and had 6,000 followers,’ she says.” The adult industry will be sad to see the porn class at Pasadena City College end, to be sure, but it was a good run while it lasted, and all things considered, it looks like the porn professor could benefit from an extended sabbatical, if such a thing is possible.