Kink At A Jesuit University

Whistleblower: Corruption Not Just At My College, But Across Therapy Profession

Whistleblower Naomi Epps Best

I’m sending out an extra newsletter today because I didn’t have enough space to write about it in the earlier one, and it’s a very, very important topic, for several reasons. I had planned to write about it earlier this week, but wanted to make sure of the allegations being made by Naomi Epps Best on social. Now I see the Wall Street Journal has published her (fact-checked) whistleblower account of the utter perversity at the Jesuit-run (of course) Santa Clara University. Epps Best is a graduate student in the marriage and family therapy program at the Catholic school. Here, from the university’s website, is the anodyne description of the course Epps Best talks about:

Excerpts from her piece:

What began as a simple accommodation request in a required course called Human Sexuality turned into a case study in the reshaping of therapy training—not by science but by critical theory, a worldview that filters human experience through left-wing assumptions about power, oppression and identity, particularly regarding race, “gender” and sexuality.

The first time I enrolled in the course, students were assigned to read sadomasochistic erotica and a book called “The Guide to Getting It On,” featuring sexually explicit illustrations. We were told to write an eight- to 10-page “comprehensive sexual autobiography,” which could include early sexual memories, masturbation, current experiences, and future goals with an action plan—all uploaded to a third-party platform for grading. The syllabus allowed that students “are not required to disclose anything that causes extreme discomfort,” but that disclaimer rang hollow attached to an assignment requiring us to discuss such personal matters.

They didn’t accommodate her request to opt out of this part of the required course. It got worse:

But in the classroom, among other things, he showed a how-to bondage video featuring a submissive wearing a “gimp suit” (a full-body garment designed to restrict movement) and played songs like “WAP” and “I Beat My Meat”—racial slurs included. A guest speaker, a male transgender psychologist, told us “only trans women have p—s that can blow up the world” and described being sexually aroused while looking in the mirror. One exercise included anonymously writing down something we disliked about our genitals or breasts, to be read aloud in class by another student.

More:

When I went public anonymously on Substack, I realized I had stumbled onto something larger. The entire field of educating therapy has been hollowed out and filled in with critical theory. Therapists are no longer trained to be neutral; they’re trained to be agents of political change. Concepts like modesty and marital privacy aren’t merely treated as optional or even dismissed. They’re seen as oppressive norms to be actively combated.

In Multicultural Counseling, we were told that “objective, rational, linear thinking,” “delayed gratification,” and making a “plan for the future” are traits of “white culture.” I was required to preface mock therapy sessions by “naming my whiteness” and warning that I might misread clients because of my race. In Human Sexuality, we were taught that children with six months of “gender distress” should be “affirmed” in their belief that they are of the opposite sex—without deeper assessment, even when trauma or autism was present.

These ideas are being promoted by the field’s top bodies. The American Psychological Association, American Counseling Association and Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs have adopted standards grounded in critical theory.

Here’s a link to Naomi Epps Best’s Substack, “Clinically Incorrect”. In one of her entries, she describes something that happened in that class:

In a subsequent quarter in the same course, students were exposed to a video tour of a BDSM dungeon during class. A female influencer was shown gagged, flogged, and wrapped in plastic. Afterward, the professor asked the class if we wanted to “try it” ourselves. I walked out, visibly upset. That material was presented with no opt-out or academic relevance to Marriage and Family Therapy training. Asking students if they’d like to participate in a sexual fetish is unprofessional and pedagogically inexcusable.

You can download the course syllabus by going to this entry on Epps Best’s Substack.

In Class 9, one of the required readings is a chapter in The Ultimate Guide To Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino, who twenty or so years ago wrote a weekly column for the Village Voice about kinky sex. I remember reading the Voice on the subway once in New York City, and coming across Taormino’s explicit column celebrating taking it up the butt, and describing techniques. I could not have imagined then that she was only slightly ahead of her time. Today doctors report treating numbers of young teenage girls who have anal damage because their boyfriends demand anal sex, just like the boys saw on porn.

Here is an excerpt from the required reading in the Taormino for a degree in marriage and family therapy from that Jesuit university. It’s a chapter by a married woman who explains why she loves living as a “submissive” to her “dominant” husband. This is rough stuff, so you might want to stop reading right now. It’s important to get into the details and see exactly what kind of thing that a Jesuit university requires of its students learning how to be marriage and family therapists:

It gets much worse. I have slightly altered this (you’ll see where), but let me again warn you: it’s deeply perverse. In this part, the author — the mother of a baby girl, as she writes — talks about a time she and her husband brought a dominatrix and her transgendered partner into their sex session:

Her partner returned with her whip and Mistress whipped my flesh, which was already marked from what had preceded in the bedroom that evening. As Mistress welted my skin with her whip, her fingers teasing my [vagina] every so often between strikes, and her partner sat at the kitchen table sipping his tea with a devilish grin, I felt absolute euphoric bliss in my service. It was one of those moments of clarity in which I feel that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, full of purpose and with an internal stillness that exists only in absolute surrender.

Submission is a gift of full surrender to another person. It’s the removal of ego and self-indulgence. When I engage in a heavy D/s [dominant-submissive] scene, I picture myself as a hollow cane of bamboo: I allow energy to flow through me, keeping complete focus and attention to my surroundings on my Dominant, without drawing attention to myself. It requires being aware of the rhythm of life around me, life in my scene, and how I play into that rhythm, that cacophony of sound.

For example, the sound of a key in the door cues me to remove my panties and kneel into slave position with arms folded behind my back. The sound of the shower’s running water instinctively starts me calculating how long that sound will last before Sir exits the shower and I enter with a fresh folded towel. The sound of the whistling kettle activates my anticipation to prepare Sir’s tea. The whistling kettle, the shower water, and the key in the door are just as kinky to my auditory senses as the sound of the flogger coming into impact with my grateful flesh, the whisk of a cane, the yelp of other submissives, and the cries of orgasmic pleasure that surround us in public dungeons.

It is humbling to serve, to give in, without ego, mindful and focused. But as submissives, we are human. We will make mistakes, and if we choose to disobey or act in a disrespectful manner, we will be punished. The grace and dignity with which a submissive accepts a punishment is just as important as the manner in which you conduct yourself in daily service. It may be even more important.

I remember one instance when I allowed my emotions to get the better of me during a D/s scene with my Sir. Sir told me that because of a production schedule, he would have to work late on our anniversary, which was in a few weeks. This personal matter affected me as my Sir’s lover, not as his submissive. I ran off from the scene in a huff and committed a cardinal sin in D/s: I took off my own collar. The collar is a symbol of dedication to our D/s relationship as well as a symbol of honor and respect reflecting my commitment to the BDSM community. In losing my composure and removing my collar, I was not only disrespecting my Sir but also acting as a disgrace to our community. Therefore my Sir decided that my punishment needed to be a public penance.

I treaded behind Sir in shame. I wished I could disappear and was thankful for the inviting darkness that the blindfold brought. I was led downstairs to a dungeon and placed on a suspended table; it was disorienting and difficult to balance on it without my sight. On all fours, presenting my [backside], I awaited my punishment—rope biting around my chest, under my arms, pressed up against my rib cage, attempting to take over my breath and lead me into submission. I felt floggers, paddles, hands, straps, belts, clamps, clothespins, and mouths. I gently cooed, “Thank you, Sir” and “Thank you, Ma’am.”

I heard later that a line had formed; everyone wanted their turn. I changed positions, presenting my chest, my [vagina], rotating to give onlookers a better view. I stood in difficult stress positions, squatting, balancing—all blindfolded. My head was spinning, chasing after the texture of voices in the room. I heard people negotiating with Sir.

As he handed me over to the next participant, one politely asked me, “Could I go harder?”

“If it pleases you, Sir.”

Another said, “You seem like such a good girl. What could you possibly have done to deserve this punishment?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Sir. I’m sorry, Sir.”

I followed the words like light, like butterflies. I let the sensation wipe through me at the hands of seasoned leathermen and Dominants and newbies who were shy and nervous. You would have thought they were the ones under the whip. I could feel a community around me—young and old, SMers, experimenters, and swingers. Each with a different stroke, a different touch. I was polite and grateful to them for taking part in my punishment.

Sir approached, whispering in my ear. “Just one more and I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

This swing was familiar. The cane struck my [backside]. I could feel the area of my flesh start to harden after repeated impact, and I could tell my skin had already started to bruise from hours of punishment. But I welcomed this touch. His touch.

“Count and show me you’re sorry,” he said.

“One. I’m sorry, Sir. Please, Sir, forgive me.”

“Two. Sir, I’m so very sorry, Sir, I will be more mindful of my behavior, Sir.”

“Three. Sir, I’m sorry, Sir. I will only show the greatest of respect to us and our protocol, Sir.”

I felt tired and broken. Worn down but at the same time fulfilled. I felt an unselfish pleasure from a job well done.

“You did good tonight, Maddie. I’m very proud of you. You made a lot of people very happy.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

A Jesuit university! (Or, as Santa Clara describes itself today, “in the Jesuit tradition.”) These people are mentally sick. But Santa Clara — and no doubt not only Santa Clara — wants its marriage and family therapy graduates to accept this as normal and healthy.

It’s always the damn Jesuits, isn’t it? In 2021, the Jesuit president of Santa Clara University resigned under pressure after undetailed “inappropriate” activities involving alcohol. The Jesuit Province of the West Coast, which includes the Bay Area, listed more than 100 of its priests credibly accused of sexual abuse since 1950. Keep in mind these aren’t priests in general. These are, or were, priests of a particular order, one especially active in educating the young.

Thirty years ago, right after I became Catholic, my Catholic friend Irene Groot, who died last year of cancer, started telling me about the Jesuits and Santa Clara University, where she had studied. The stuff Irene told me was very tame compared to this, but still deeply shocking. I knew the Jesuits were liberal, but … that?! If Irene were still alive today, she would not be in the least bit shocked by this from Santa Clara. Well, shocked, maybe, but not at all surprised.

Naomi Epps Best’s point is not simply that this is happening at her college. It’s that this kind of perversion, and much more, is now standard in training therapists. I, for one, would like to know how far this corruption in the therapy profession goes. I met not long ago a Catholic psychotherapist from a European country (not Hungary) who told me that the law there requires therapists to affirm all trans patients, regardless of the therapists own personal convictions (you couldn’t for example, say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t treat trans patients,” or “my personal convictions won’t allow me to give you the kind of therapy you are seeking”); no, you had to affirm, no matter what your medical judgment is, or lose your license.

I’m 100 percent in favor of detransitioners suing American hospitals into the ground, but do keep this story in mind. In 2019, when I interviewed for Live Not By Lies an American Christian physician who had immigrated from a Communist country, he told me that the major hospital he worked for had recently ordered all medical personnel to affirm any and every patient who presented themselves wanting to transition — this, regardless of the doctors’ medical judgment about whether or not transition was good for that particular patient. Fail to obey, and you lose your job. He told me that the Human Resources department at the hospital monitored social media accounts of doctors to make sure they were on message in their posting. You couldn’t not post — posting was part of your job description. To that point, he was satisfying that requirement by merely posting harmless health advice, not touching the trans topic at all. He wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to get away with it.

Should that doctor be sued? I don’t think so. Should his hospital and its administrators? Damn straight. This is an incredible violation of medical ethics. And it speaks directly to what Naomi Epps Best says about the mental healthcare profession having been taken over by woke critical theorists.

In her WSJ piece, Epps Best says:

Speaking up comes with risk. But in a field where dissent is discouraged and students are coerced, I’ve chosen to say: No more.

Brave woman. I suppose she will be kicked out of the program. Maybe she will never be allowed to work as a therapist. This is the cost of living not by lies. May God protect her. It is time for those within the field, and those who have anything to do with this field, and regulating it, to stand up and speak out.

And Catholics too. This is a Jesuit university, after all. I remember speaking once at a different Jesuit university some years back, and talking to a dissident professor there saying that the school appeals to unsuspecting Catholic parents, telling them that their kids are going to get a good Catholic education there. Parents send their young ones off, trusting the Church institution, and their kids have their faith completely deconstructed. It was many things, and one of those things is fraud.

From the Santa Clara University website:

A Jesuit education is a complete education.

The Jesuit tradition is about educating the whole person—mind, body, and soul—and preparing students to create a more just, humane, and sustainable world.

What does that mean? It means you’ll be challenged to move out of the classroom and contribute to your community. It means you’ll be expected to understand the moral and ethical implications of your academic work and to bring your creativity to bear on the solving of real-world problems.

It’s easy to talk about working to make the world a better place—but the Jesuits have been doing that work, every day, for almost 500 years.

Ignatius of Loyola wept.