Butterfly kisses and consequences

Today in my Asian American Sexualities class, I had the students share their first writing assignment with each other in small groups, a 1-page paper entitled, "AAPI Sexualities are..." Their responses were many and varied, and that was the point. It's the first week of class and I'm trying to assess what they know and think coming in, and to show them each other's perspectives.

And to let them sit there in that ambiguity. I told them that I would rarely try to push our conversations toward convergence or agreement. I value the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it (Aristotle). Good thing I have a high tolerance for ambiguity.

At the end, one student remarked, "Well, there are no right or wrong answers." To which I replied, "True, but there are answers with consequences, and we'll be learning about how severe some of them can be."


Somewhere in the sharing, there was occasion to bring up the annual fertility festival in Japan (http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=2088) which I called the penis festival. They got a kick out of hearing about such a thing. But as I was driving home, I thought to myself, if it's a fertility festival, and couples go for good luck, why is the phallus the only symbol for fertility? I'll ask them next class. Shout out to my sistas in the Pukengkeng Liberation Front.