“If you’re straight, watch gay or lesbian porn and see how quickly you feel aroused - and how you can’t control that,” the 62-year-old professor told his students.
A professor at Penn State University has come under fire for instructing straight students in his entry-level sociology class to watch gay porn.
Professor Sam Richards made the comments during a December 6 lecture billed on the syllabus as "A Conversation on Trans Issues, TERFS, and The Binary," the Daily Mail reported.
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View on Rumble"If you're straight, watch gay or lesbian porn and see how quickly you feel aroused - and how you can't control that," the 62-year-old professor told his students, which was reportedly met with silence.
Singling out the males of the room – in the professor's words, "especially men," – he explains to the room that after watching the porn, "You'll realize that, 'Oh, d**n, I could be sexualized by people who are like me.'"
He went on to argue that "we are all at some level nonbinary" as well as "very much" bisexual.
A live stream of the lecture was uploaded onto Richards' YouTube channel but has since been made private after the footage caused anger and controversy.
The school is standing by Richards' statements, telling the Daily Mail that "academic freedom for faculty" is necessary to achieve "critical thinking and discussion" within the student body.
Following Richards' comments in the lecture, the 700-strong student audience greeted the professor with silence, at which point he reportedly asked, "I might have hit a nerve there, did I hit a nerve?"
He then reiterated to the straight men in the room, "Watch gay porn. See if you feel that feeling," encouraging them to embrace the feeling of homosexuality while watching.
"If you feel that feeling, look in a mirror, and say: 'Huh, maybe I'm just feeling some things that I'm just afraid to release,'" he allegedly told the class, before suggesting that they might be fine with being bisexual.
Most of the rest of the class discussion revolved around Richards' beliefs regarding the fluidity between the two biological sexes.
The school responded to the backlash, saying, "Professor Richards purposefully teaches in a manner designed to promote discussion across a spectrum of opinions," adding that the "class is not mandatory but is a popular elective that students choose to join."
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