A UT Professor's Violent Fantasies and his Harassment of Students

By Erin Rogers
Fall 1992 (2 of 2); pages 12, 22; #2
The Other Texan

Writing erotic literature should not delegitimize a person's academic credibility. This changes, however, when a professor blurs the line between fact and fiction to the point that it affects his/her professional activity.

-The Other Texan

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"Suddenly a desire to violate tears through his body like an electric shock, six thousand volts of violence, sacrilege, the lust to desecrate, destroy. His thumbs unite between the crack of her ass ... and plunge up to the palms in her. A submarine scream rises from the deep green of her dreaming, and she snaps toward awakening ... with ... a hard pain stabbing at her entrails. She struggles, writhing to get away ... but she can't escape. She jerks and twists again, but Macrae is too deeply in, ... he can feel the blood knocking on the walls, as though at any moment it will damburst through, come flooding out. ... And Isabelle ... hears a voice calling out, 'don't stop. don't stop,' ... and she realises with surprise that it is her own voice."

The man who wrote the above scene in his novel, Isabelle and Veronique: Four Months, Four Cities, under the pseudonym Lawrence St. Clair is actually Professor Jim Hankinson of the UT Philosophy department. Although he denies having written what he characterizes as a "despicable" novel, an employee of Black Spring Press in London has confirmed that Hankinson is indeed the author. Originally published in 1989 in England, the book was recently picked up by an American press, Blue Moon Books of New York.

The paperback porno - part romance novel, part triple X movie - has become a staple of pop culture which often serves to normalize brutal sexual assault, racism, sexism, and a strange brand of homophobia. But print and film media alone are not responsible for propagating a violent and intolerant culture. Some of those who produce the crude versions or exploitation and racism in erotic literature are also at work within higher education, promulgating the same values, only in a more subtle fashion.

When asked about the novel on November 3 Jim Hankinson became extremely flustered and uncomfortable, c1ammering for something to say. All he could offer was "no comment, no comment." Finally, after being pressed, he claimed that he had not written the book, but then spent fifteen minutes defending it. He claimed that it was "merely a cultural artifact, not a political manifesto," and that therefore it carried very little weight in society. "Actually", he said, "it's just a reflection of our already violent culture. It's escapist, it's a fantasy. It places you in a world you would want to live in but can'.,"

Unfortunately, it's not just a fantasy for Hankinson. The British professor has a history of harassing women students and abusing positions of power within universities. At McGill University, where Hankinson worked prior to being hired at UT, harassment charges were initiated against him by a graduate student, who is now writing openly about her case. At that time, her chairman persuaded her not to press formal charges. The harassment counselor at McGill also confirmed that there were complaints against Hankinson by women students at McGill, although he was never formally charged. She said that Hankinson took the job at UT just as harassment charges were being initiated against him and against several other members of the McGill philosophy department.

When complaints began to be made against Hankinson by students at UT, the chairman of the Philosophy Department at the time, Paul Woodruff (currently Plan II director), ignored the complaints in order to sponsor Hankinson's rise within the department. Woodruff was given the novel, along with information with which he could verify Hankinson's history of harassment at McGill, including the name and telephone number of the harassment counselor there and the name and address of the woman who initiated charges. Woodruff, who serves with Hankinson in the joint classics-philosophy program, chose to discredit the students and to cover up the information from McGill in order to push for Hankinson's promotion to Graduate Advisor. Woodruff now claims that appointing Hankinson was Professor Daniel Bonevac's idea, but admits that he wholeheartedly supported the plan, because no formal charges had ever been filed. On November 5, 1992, even after Woodruff was presented with hard evidence continuing the two harassment cases and Hankinson's authorship of the porno novel, Woodruff continued to praise Hankinson and fell that he would still make a wonderful Graduate Advisor.

Professor Dan Bonevac was offered the same information when he took over as the chairman of the Philosophy Department in Spring 1991. At that time he stepped in to prevent Hankinson's appointment to Graduate Advisor. Bonevac said that he did not know if the charges were true, but that he did not want to investigate any further because he "just didn't want to know the truth." He has never asked Hankinson about the novel or about the sexual harassment complaints from McGill and UT. Bonevac hopes that "it's all in the past now," although he admits that he has received complaints from at least two women who "felt uncomfortable" in Hankinson' s class. Gage Paine, UT Assistant Dean of Students says that informal sexual harassment complaints are on the rise. With professors like this giving us grades, writing us recommendations, controlling our reputation in academia, and covering lip for each other, one can understand why.

Hankinson's violent porno is nothing more than a how-to guide of white male hate and destruction 0f "other." The protagonist expresses his will to destroy in a myriad of ways. Yet this crude barrage is ornamented with a sprinkling of Romantic languages (Greek, Latin, French, and Italian) and is informed by concepts from ancient philosophy such as those used by Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Aristotle, along with many references to classical sculpture (pp. 161 , 166, 155, 177) and mythology (pp. 166, 177, 181). Hankinson wants to dismiss his writing by claiming it is a "merely a cultural artifact". However, graphic sexual violence against women, racism, economic imperialism, homophobia, pedophilia, statutory rape, and physical torture cannot be so easily dismissed. None of the violence in the book is presented critically; the hate crimes depicted appear as sadistic accompaniments to sexual exploitation.

At a time when our country is experiencing profound racial division, economic disparities, widespread domestic violence, and a backlash against women, it is puzzling that members of one of the most prestigious segments of the UT philosophy department, the joint classics-philosophy program, are engaged not in critical thought, but in fostering harassment and in writing and covering up the publication of novels which target people for destruction by their gender, race, sexual orientation, and income level - novels which sexualize hate crimes by validating the prejudices and power disparity at their root.

Anyone who doubts the sympathies of Hankinson's book need only skim the first chapter where the racism and xenophobia become obvious immediately. The juxtaposition of light and dark, desirable and fuckable, powerful and weak, is invoked from the very first paragraphs. Hankinson depicts a tall, blonde, white woman whom the protagonist attempts to mutilate and destroy. There are several references to her blondeness and "fair flesh"; the hint of color on her skin is only the result of sunlight. The blonde woman walks out of the abuser's apartment, exhibiting self-determination and the will to escape violation. But the protagonist's Mexican maid, referred to by Hankinson several times as an animal, is described in contrast as "dark," with "eyes as dark as an animal's," "dark lips," and a "dark body" whose "groin is a dark tangle" and is stereotyped as submissive and overly religious. She enjoys her abuse and is "grateful" for the sexual mutilation and violence against her and comes back for more. Hankinson wants us to believe that violence against people of color is justified since they choose it anyway.

"The Mexican girl is crawling on the floor like a wounded animal ... still sobbing and crying ... Then he opens a drawer and withdraws from it a short riding crop. The Mexican girl is watching him ... and she lets out a cry, no, no, and backs away clutching her clothes ... but she is captivated by the steel in his eyes and she cannot run, caught like a wild animal ... She struggles, but only a little. She feels the sole of his foot on her waist, then waits ... for him to bring the crop down on her flesh, and when the ... pain courses through her, she feels a burning thrill or salvation ... and she is grateful to Macrae for beating her clean again."

The use of children and young women as sexual fodder is encouraged in the name of sexual freedom. Hankinson describes the rape of a young prostitute which begins with the protagonist smashing the woman's head over and over into the wall while she struggles desperately to get away. He pays her extra to "destroy her" and leaves her with a "strangled mass of pain on her face. " Later, a rich Italian art dealer supplies Hankinson's hero with a sixteen-year-old girl for his personal "pleasure." The same girl is put on a cross, stuck with a metal dildo, licked by a dog, and whipped while adults stand around the girl, masturbating and fondling each other, excited by the brutalization. The novel's main characters are all rich, powerful, and white. In their cosmopolitan world of credit cards, sports cars, and champagne, they are able to buy, sell, and exploit people (especially the "other") as easily as they do their art.

The attitude often typified in pornography that "other" is acceptable only if one can use it to achieve pleasure is invoked here in the treatment of lesbians and gay men. The lesbians in the novel are accepted because they use dildos, allow the protagonist to watch them having sex, and want to engage in threesomes with him. On the other hand, gay men are depicted as "disgusting" and criminals. The main gay character in the novel, has a "camp affection," hands "clammy like corpses," is an alcoholic and drug addicted, and is a blackmailer with "crooked, black, venal eyes," who is finally killed at the end of the book. Hankinson's book conveys the idea that it is okay to torture and humiliate women employees and rape and abuse children, but that it is not 0kay for people to have the right of sexual preference.

If this is Hankinson's "escapist fantasy world" we can fully understand the harassing, and power-tripping of his reality. Because of the way sexual harassment charges are brought against professors, and because of the potentially negative and harmful consequences of bringing forward charges of harassment, many women are silenced and forced to work with those who are harassing them and the professors who choose to ignore their complaints in order to cover for their buddies.

We encourage anyone who has read this article and has suffered harassment from a professor, T.A., or another student to come forward, at least to The Other Texan or the recently formed COGS committee on Sexual Harassment so that we can share our stories, protect ourselves, and expose those who otherwise will continue to escape responsibility for their actions. (Phone calls will always be accepted at [defunct phone number redacted]).