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In\u00a0Sweet Nothings<\/a>, author Madison Griffiths investigates the uncomfortable complexities of \u201cproblematic sex\u201d between academics and students on Australian university campuses.<\/p>\n The term \u201cproblematic sex\u201d \u2013 often used by Gen Z and younger millennial feminists \u2013 refers to sexual relationships that, while technically \u201cconsensual\u201d, are nonetheless harmful for other reasons, most often due to significant disparities of power.<\/p>\n Griffiths\u2019 book tells the stories of four women now in their\u00a030s and 40s<\/a>, all of whom entered into a sexual relationship with an academic at the university where they studied while in their early 20s. Griffiths explores how these experiences left three of them psychologically damaged or, in Griffiths\u2019 words, feeling \u201cangry\u201d, \u201cbitter\u201d, \u201cbetrayed\u201d, and \u201csmall and expendable\u201d.<\/p>\n Griffiths was also once in a relationship with a man who had been her university tutor. As she writes in an author\u2019s note:<\/p>\n In my late teens, I was once a man\u2019s student.<\/em><\/p>\n In my early twenties, his lover. In my early thirties, a thorn in his side. I had discovered, over the span of a decade, that there had been others he had loved, or at least held: a small handful of students-turned-lovers.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The memory prompted her to post an appeal on Instagram for people to come forward who had once been in a relationship with their \u201cteacher, tutor, professor or student\u201d. She received hundreds of responses, ultimately meeting with her four interviewees.<\/p>\n \u201cIt started to appear obvious to me that sex between university students and their superior felt contaminated by larger, more damning forces,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n Sweet Nothings focuses on Rose, Blaine, Cara and Elsie and their relationships with four men. The identities of all individuals \u2013 both protagonists and antagonists \u2013 are masked, although the action mostly unfolds against a recognisable Melbourne landscape.<\/p>\n Rose\u2019s story revolves around Samuel, a sessional lecturer who has pursued at least three sexual relationships with female undergraduates he teaches across different institutions.<\/p>\n Blaine\u2019s story revolves around her sexual encounters with Greg, an older, married professor who has spent much of the past three decades engaging in sexual relationships with his female students. Often these liaisons occur in the back rooms and side corridors of the campus where he teaches. At one point, he accepts an appointment as mid-candidature assessor for Blaine\u2019s PhD. He \u201cminced her thesis to bits\u201d \u2013 in order, Griffiths suggests, \u201cto divert attention from the two of them\u201d and appear \u201ctrusting, professional in front of his colleagues\u201d.<\/p>\n Elsie enters into a sexual relationship with her middle-aged doctoral supervisor Harrison, in the aftermath of his marital separation. \u201cI need to know,\u201d she says when she confronts him with the \u201cwrongness\u201d of their relationship, years later. \u201cWhen did you realise you were using me?\u201d<\/p>\n The fourth story centres on Ivan, who has a chaste but intense relationship with Cara. \u201cNothing happened,\u201d Cara insists. \u201cYou see, it was all very gentle, which is why I can\u2019t understand you wanting to speak to me.\u201d<\/p>\n In some ways, Cara is a foil for the other women in the book, although Griffiths also paints Ivan as emotionally creepy.<\/p>\n Griffiths spoke to male professors and tutors who had slept with a student. But to protect her four subjects\u2019 anonymity, she did not speak to the men they were involved with.<\/p>\n Despite serial inquiries into\u00a0sexual harms on campus<\/a>, \u201cconsensual\u201d sexual relationships between academics and students remain an ethically grey area in Australia: the rules that govern them vary between institutions. There are few conclusive prohibitions, and most of those that do exist refer specifically to relationships of a supervisory nature.<\/p>\n In 2018, peak body Universities Australia released\u00a0a set of principles<\/a>\u00a0for \u201crespectful supervisory relationships\u201d, which state \u201csexual or romantic relationships between an academic supervisor and their student are never appropriate\u201d.<\/p>\n But historically, especially among academics themselves, there has been little cultural consensus, and lots of arguments.<\/p>\n Griffiths describes scouring the websites of Australian universities, sifting through codes of conduct around sexual harassment. \u201cI am struck by the obscurity of their language, how up-in-the-air they seem.\u201d<\/p>\n It appears, she writes, that they imagine sexual harassment as an isolated incident, featuring a \u201ccartoonish assailant\u201d \u2013 \u201ca man with bits of bread from his lunch lodged between each tooth, who licks his lips and makes plain his big terrible wants\u201d.<\/p>\n The reality, she suggests, is a lot more slippery \u2013 a perpetrator is more likely to be an admired teacher and intellectual role model who seduces a student by telling her \u201cshe is genius\u201d.<\/p>\n Under such guidelines, universities broadly agree that marking, grading or supervising the work of students with whom faculty are in a sexual relationship constitutes academic misconduct. For this reason alone, many of the relationships described in Griffiths\u2019 book should have triggered academic misconduct proceedings.<\/p>\n Since #MeToo, the guidelines have also tightened.\u00a0Writing recently<\/a>\u00a0in The Monthly, academic Ceridwen Spark noted that the\u00a0Staff-Student Personal Relationships Procedure<\/a>\u00a0at RMIT was amended in 2023 to include the following statement:<\/p>\n power imbalances are inherent in staff-student relationships, and as a consequence, free consent cannot be assumed on the part of the student. It is the obligation of staff members to maintain and enforce professional boundaries at all times.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Universities Australia\u2019s chief executive Catriona Jackson touched on this in 2018. She\u00a0said<\/a>:<\/p>\n Universities understand that supervisors have power over their students. A sexual or romantic relationship that develops in that context also raises questions about capacity for consent and academic integrity.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In a recent case, University of Melbourne dismissed an academic for\u00a0sending sexually inappropriate messages<\/a>\u00a0to a student he was supervising, only for the Fair Work Commission to order his reinstatement with A$28,000 in financial compensation. (An investigator hired by the university had found the academic breached the university\u2019s workplace behaviour policy. The university is\u00a0considering appealing<\/a>\u00a0the ruling.)<\/p>\n ANU appealed a judgement in a\u00a0similar case<\/a>\u00a0in 2022, eventually rebutting the legal argument that the sexual interaction with the student did not occur until\u00a0after the student\u2019s marks<\/a>\u00a0were decided. (At the heart of the legal dispute was whether the lecturer had breached ANU\u2019s conflict of interest policy \u2014 requiring staff to declare a \u201cclose personal relationship\u201d with a student if they supervise or assess them.)<\/p>\n Guidelines based on \u201cconflicts\u201d largely apply to relationships between academic staff and students for whom they are immediately and directly responsible. Some of the relationships in Griffiths\u2019 book began after the student left the classroom. But the order of events didn\u2019t change the power dynamic.<\/p>\n Other professions \u2013 such as psychology, medicine or the military \u2013 long ago established rules and ethical codes to prevent the sorts of harms that may arise from such entanglements. A doctor may not have sex with a patient. A military officer may not have sex with a person under their command.<\/p>\n And yet, despite the extraordinary assemblage of intellectual firepower available on university campuses \u2013 specialists in philosophy, education, ethics, politics and, dare I say, race, class and gender equity \u2013 many universities seem to have imported their codes of workplace conduct from the corporate world, rather than forging policies centred on the intricacies of pedagogical relationships.<\/p>\n Griffiths writes, \u201cBefore embarking on this book [\u2026] I naively imagined being able to track a professor\u2019s eventual demise\u201d \u2013 forced to drag their feet through the back door of some \u201csandstone college\u201d. Yet she \u201conly stumbled across one realised dismissal, protected by a university eager to stitch together the lips of its student, whom they encouraged to sign an NDA\u201d.<\/p>\n Griffiths does not name the institution in this case. But the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to silence sexual harassment complainants in universities has been the subject of\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n NDAs \u2013 made famous in the civil and criminal claims brought against high-profile perpetrators such as Fox News\u2019 Roger Ailes and movie producer Harvey Weinstein \u2013 are yet another import from the corporate world.<\/p>\n When Griffiths posted her Instagram call, her inbox filled with women\u2019s stories. No men replied. The contents of the book reflect this disparity, but also mirror wider social trends, whereby sexual harassment\u00a0disproportionately impacts young women<\/a>\u00a0and the perpetrators are mostly men.<\/p>\n \u201cThe script that makes it permissible for a professor to pine for his attractive, precocious female student, even to sleep with her, is hardened and tedious,\u201d Griffiths writes. Still, she strives to avoid what she repeatedly invokes as the \u201ccartoonish\u201d. Instead, she explores how \u201cour wants, our yearnings\u201d are formed in a \u201csociety littered with sexism\u201d.<\/p>\n Sweet Nothings is written under the shadow of Helen Garner\u2019s\u00a0The First Stone<\/a>. This controversial 1995 book followed the legal proceedings initiated by two female students at Melbourne University who accused the Master of Ormond College, Alan Gregory, of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n Garner\u2019s book, while beautifully crafted, has not dated well. \u201cWhy are they so angry?\u201d Garner asked. \u201cWhy did they go to the police?\u201d \u201cWhat else was there in this story, beyond accusations of nerdish passes at a party?\u201d<\/p>\n In seeking out her answers, Garner failed to grasp the seriousness of sexual harassment and misunderstood the nature of structural and institutional power. She blamed the victims, casting them as \u201cdestructive, priggish and unforgiving\u201d, positioning them as siding with a repressive police power.<\/p>\n Griffiths, in her own book, constantly worries what Garner will think of her \u2013 that she is puritanical, \u201cmaking a fuss over not much\u201d or that she is, in an adaptation of Garner\u2019s phrase, \u201cpolicing the eros and all of its mystique and shimmer with dogged scorn\u201d.<\/p>\n As a middle-aged female professor, I do not experience such qualms.<\/p>\n The actions of the male academics in Sweet Nothings are abundantly clear. In many of these allegedly \u201cconsensual\u201d sexual relationships, the men engage in emotional abuse of their student, including coercive, controlling and threatening behaviour. And though Griffiths\u2019 deliberately dreamy writing style makes it difficult to determine exact events, the book describes at least one sexual assault.<\/p>\n In her book, students are warned by male academics not to use any official university channel to communicate with the perpetrator. Students are enjoined to secrecy and threatened with indeterminate consequences if they expose the perpetrator.<\/p>\n Students are incessantly lectured \u2013 politically, philosophically and artistically \u2013 that there is nothing \u201cwrong\u201d in the allegedly \u201cconsensual\u201d relationship, in ways that constitute intellectual, moral and emotional abuse of the student.<\/p>\n And with respect to sexual assault, it is irrelevant whether or not a victim\u2013survivor was previously in a \u201cconsensual\u201d relationship with the perpetrator, or whether the perpetrator subsequently sends a text message to \u201capologise\u201d, as one assailant does in Griffiths\u2019 stories. Sexual assault is a criminal matter and ought to be named as such.<\/p>\n It is only later that the women in the stories develop the maturity to see the relationships for what they were. Once this is \u201cseen\u201d, they \u201ccannot unsee\u201d it.<\/p>\n Rose and Elsie lodge formal complaints. Rose tells Griffiths \u201chow many forceful emails she has sent, how many department heads [\u2026] have come to know her by name\u201d. She becomes \u201cused to being ignored, so much so that it doesn\u2019t ache any more\u201d.<\/p>\n In the book, the men, ubiquitously, remain in their jobs, accruing long lists of \u201cadmirable achievements\u201d, \u201cprestigious awards\u201d and \u201cgrants that cost the earth\u201d.<\/p>\n Griffiths recounts both individual and institutional responses to the women\u2019s complaints \u2013 including \u201cwe are all adults\u201d, or he is just \u201ca flirt\u201d \u2013 wondering, \u201cis it love we are protecting \u2013 or something else entirely\u201d?<\/p>\n In the past two decades, a handful of universities overseas have taken steps to prohibit sexual relationships between faculty and students. Yale University was\u00a0among the first<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0ban sexual relationships<\/a>\u00a0between faculty and undergraduate students in 2010. Harvard University followed suit in 2015, adding\u00a0stricter guidelines<\/a>\u00a0for graduates.<\/p>\n In the United States, these prohibitions are politically and philosophically justified under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which is designed to protect individuals from sex-based discrimination in educational settings that receive federal funding.<\/p>\n In the landmark 1977 case\u00a0Alexander v Yale<\/a>\u00a0five female students\u00a0took action<\/a>\u00a0against the university. They lost on facts but won on law, establishing the legal principle that a university\u2019s failure to address on-campus sexual harassment by male faculty constituted a form of sex discrimination, because it disproportionately harmed young women.<\/p>\n In 2020, universities in the UK moved to regulate sexual relationships between academics and students, introducing policies underpinned by a different, narrower philosophical approach influenced by commercial workplace agreements. University College London was among the first to prohibit sexual relationships in which there is \u201ca real or perceived conflict of interest<\/a>\u201d, which it defined as \u201cclose personal and intimate relationships between staff and students\u201d where there is \u201cdirect supervision\u201d.<\/p>\n Other institutions followed suit. Oxford University had\u00a0previously insisted<\/a>\u00a0academics\u2019 sexual lives were largely a private matter. In 2023, a\u00a0new policy<\/a>\u00a0acknowledged a greater potential for \u201cconflicts\u201d to arise.<\/p>\n In Australia\u2019s neoliberal university setting, education is mostly perceived as transactional, and the \u201cconflicts of interest\u201d approach often prevails.<\/p>\n This narrowly legalistic approach sidesteps the peculiarities of pedagogical relationships, ignores the nature of the university as a public institution dedicated to social uplift and advancement, and misunderstands the nature of harm. The institutional power held by academics extends far beyond the ability to mark, grade, pass or reject the student\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Students arrive at university filled with dreams and aspirations, seeking mentors, even a hero, standing at the threshold of their imagined futures. This form of institutional power places a strain on concepts like \u201cconsent\u201d and \u201cconflict\u201d that they cannot bear.<\/p>\nAppearing trusting and professional<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Obscure language \u2013 and lots of arguments<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u2018A society littered with sexism\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Changes overseas<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Pedagogical relationships<\/strong><\/h4>\n