Well it all started with our “mandatory†lecture. This irony of it all is The Powers That Be say it’s not mandatory. It’s just that if you don’t go, you’ll lose points. In any medical school students’ brain, points being lost is bad, thereby, making the class mandatory. The other ironic thing, is that it was not actually a lecture where we might learn physiology or some other clinically relevant material, we were to attend a “Film Festival.†Not just any film festival, but one where we have to watch graphically sexually explicit movies in class among our peers to make us comfortable with sex. Well, it is after all the human sexuality and reproduction portion of the block. So watching softcore makes sense. Right? Except how is watching softcore porn in class supposed to make me more comfortable with sex? Maybe it’ll make me more comfortable about watching sexually explicit movies in class. Do they think it’ll make me more comfortable with sex and a patient. Since there is this age old rule about doctors not being allowed to have sex with their patients, are the movies supposed to make us more comfortable talking to our patients about sex? Or make it more comfortable to watch a sexually explicit movie with a patient?
Our first mandatory film festival was an HBO special called “If These Walls Could Talk 2.†What happened to part one? I wondered to myself as I sat unaware of the film and the purpose of the film festival. Yeah, the professors had talked about the films to us. I vaguely remember something about it and the films’ purpose, but I think I must have been checking email and didn’t allow myself to really soak it in. So, if you’ve never seen this HBO special, part deux is about lesbians. I have some very close friends who are lesbians. I see the prejudices they encounter in society. I’ve heard the trouble they have buying houses, being open in public, the trouble with adoption, and so forth and so on. Because of my friends, I entertained the idea of watching the show, as opposed to studying. I should have know though, that when HBO was plastered all over the screen, it was going to have softcore at some point. I watch True Blood (in the privacy of my own home of course, not in class) and when I refer to it in conversation, I tell my friends “I must rush home and watch my softcore.†This HBO special was softcore lesbian porn. Well, not all of it actually, but one scene was, and that was enough to make everyone squirm in their seats for one reason or another. The girls, out of embarrassment and/or shock, and the boys out of frustration for having to watch their life long fantasies play out in front of them by watching two girls get it on in class on the mega big screen. I don’t generally like to consider myself a prude, but it made me a little uncomfortable. I like to think of myself as a public prude vs. a private prude. What happens in my house, stays in my house, and maybe it’s a good thing my walls can’t talk.
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