Surrendering to peer pressure, cheating on assignments and skipping class to sleep in – students battle with morals every day.
In such scenarios, the virtue in question is unmistakable and the choice to be good or bad is made knowingly.
It is the less significant, less predicable tests of character where ethical lines are blurred that determine the depth of a student’s integrity.
For instance, what to do when I am strolling past Plumas Hall on my lunch break and I spy on a bench by the bike racks a silver and red Las Vegas engraved bottle opener sculpted like a pair of boobs.
Now if this were a leather wallet with identification inside or a cell phone with a list of contacts I would make it my priority to find the rightful owner. But what college guy doesn’t want to crack open every beer with boobs?
I am tempted to say anyone careless enough to lose this bottle opener does not understand the value of the keepsake and perhaps they deserve not the treasure.
Instead I am just going to say, “Finders keepers.”
Call me unethical. Call me corrupt.
I don’t think I am unjust, I just think I am an opportunist.
Miles Inserra can be reached at [email protected] or @m_inserra on Twitter.
Ari Bean // Apr 11, 2016 at 1:34 pm
Allow me to discuss this topic with more depth.
Every year men spend billions of dollars to look at women with little clothing on. Such as the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Or with no clothing on, like on internet sites and so-called men’s magazines.
Women, on the other hand, spend virtually nothing to see unclothed men. Why? Some feminists say that the reason is that men are socialized into viewing women as sex objects. And that women are socialized into not viewing men as sex objects. But if that is true, how do these people explain g ay men? They are as aroused by pictures of naked men as heterosexual men are aroused by pictures of naked women.
Obviously, then it’s not socialization. It’s that men are programmed by NATURE, not by society, to respond sexually to the visual.
This is an area in which men are so different from women that it is probably — no, not probably — outright impossible, for women to truly understand.
And of course women find some men attractive. And of course a woman can have an intense reaction to seeing a very appealing men. But there’s still no comparison. The visual alone arouses men. It takes far more to arouse a woman than seeing naked men. If that’s all it took, most husbands would walk around the house naked whenever possible, or at least every time they wanted sex.
And the average heterosexual man is excited countless times a day simply by seeing women: in person, on billboards, in magazines, on television, and even in his imagination. This is not the case for women. Sure there are male strip shows for women. But few women ever go, And the few who do, go in groups, like for a “girls’ night out.” And for every one of those shows, there are probably 10,000 female strip shows for males, most of whom attend alone, not as a participant in a “guys’ night out”.
Let’s be honest. There is no magazine featuring men’s legs for women to look at, and get aroused by. But there are websites and magazines of women’s legs for men. And are women paying to view topless men? Men pay good money to look at topless women. Again, that doesn’t mean women never get turned on by merely looking at some men. Of course they do. But it is only some men, on rare occasion: it’s a stranger, and more usually a celebrity. Men get turned on any sight of female flesh on almost any female.
The effect of the visual in men is so powerful that it even amazes men. Perfectly normal men will look up the skirt of a mannikin shaped like a woman. That’s how instinctive it is for men to look at female flesh.
It’s perfectly understandable that women cannot fully relate to this. But if a woman wants to understand male sexuality, the first thing she has to understand is the power of the visual. That’s why you see ads for every sort of product a man might buy accompanied by a scantily-clad woman, or just a part of her. Like her legs, or a leg. Would you see ads with men’s legs? No, it would be absurd. An ad with women’s legs is not absurd – it’s alluring.
None of this is meant to excuse inappropriate male behavior. Men must always control themselves.
But to deny the power of the visual on men is like denying that the Earth is round.