i went to this party with my boyfriend who is in the 19th grade and all of his academic friends were playing x-rated charades that to me, were degrading...crap?

be more specific, please, about what was said "in situ".

well, this was a room full of men and women (most students in a masters program, one a professor) picking hand-written "clues" out of a hat and then silently acting out what was written on the piece of paper so that the other people in the room could guess at what the piece of paper said.
one of the "clues " was animal sodomy", where two women were on the floor acting out sodomy and mimicking different animals, much to the heated pleasure of some of the men in the room, who were cheering them on with such phrases as "get it, baby" and "oh, yeah".
this, to me, is crap.

what specifically offended you here? i dont want to make inferences.

I agree, this doesn't seem offensive at all.

I was offended that the women would allow themselves to be in a position where the men could objectify them in a very degrading way. It was uncomfortable and creepy in that room and almost everybody left feeling like they had just rolled in poo. I was offended that the men would treat their academic peers in such a degrading way.
I opted not to act out any of the nasty "clues", so I was in a position that when it was my turn I had to read more than one "clue" until I could find one that I was comfortable with. This made me rather unpopular with everybody because I was making somewhat of a stand that made the other women playing feel badly about what they were doing and some of the more aware men embarrassed by their own behavior.
I also felt like a prude, which I am not. I just don't feel that women should encourage a society where they are objectified negatively. I think we get enough of that without acting out animal sodomy in a room of our peers.

The game itself sounds fine (as it could have just as likely been 2 men or a man and a woman or a he-she and a peg-legged sailor acting out animal sodomy).

It is the behavior of the participants instead that seems open to criticism.

I have a hunch, but of what disciplinary persuasion were these grad students you speak of?

I like that this is so far unanimously NOT CRAP.

Stop whining!

Betty,

I am with you on this one. Academics in general seem to me a tight-assed bunch, so the excuse of an x-rated parlour game to get their jollies is right in line with my opinion. I don't really have a problem with people being nasty, but women who willingly degrade themselves for no other reason than societal acceptance are playing their part in making sure that we continue to be a fucked-up society. The madonna-whore complex is alive and well.

I'm glad you fought the status quo.

I have found that academes can exhibit bizarre social behaviors. I should do a field study, write it up and publish it.

There was a girl I met through a friend at a prestigious Ivy League university--a graduate student working on her Ph.D.--who when we went out insisted that everyone at the table make out with her, one after another, boys and girls included. It was a bizarre manipulative power play that to me seemed like a consolation for some kind of personal/interpersonal lack of balance, or something. Or she was a nymphomaniac, or a control freak, or both.

Any way you slice it, she was batshit nuts.

It was a strange day in my life when I concluded that rockers tended to be the well-adjusted ones, and it was the people with doctorates who were fucked up.

But maybe I've figured out why psychoanalysis and semiotics so denigrated in certain contemporary academic circles: it would force them to consider the pyschosexual meaning of their bestiality fetishes.

Betty, out of curiosity, what field of study were these people in?