Editors and contributors for a faculty bioethics journal at Northwestern University’s medical school say the administration tried to take editorial control and bury an essay in the winter issue by a prominent disabled professor graphically describing how a nurse helped him rediscover his sexuality.

Since that issue’s publication, the kerfuffle has deteriorated into a contentious censorship debate, Inside Higher Ed reports:

The controversy began more than a year ago, upon publication the winter 2014 issue of Atrium, a faculty-produced bioethics journal published by Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. The issue, called “Bad Girls,” featured several scholars’ takes on disability and sexuality. One of the essays, by William J. Peace, then the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University, offered a frank and somewhat graphic description of getting fellatio from a nurse after he became paralyzed at the age of 18, in 1978.

Peace’s piece—titled “Head Nurses”—was titillating, sure, but it was enlightening, too, detailing his uncertainties about recovering any sexual function after suffering his paralyzing spinal cord injury. More important than ever walking again, he wrote, was a simpler concern: “I wanted to have sex. But did my dick still work? Could I still fuck?”



On the recovery ward, male patients joked about there being two types of “bad girl” nurses Peace—pictured above with some students—writes. The first, the “dick police,” were generally young and inexperienced attendants who grabbed the patients’ manhoods and jammed catheters into them.

That led into the second group of nurses—and the passage that likely made NU’s med-school deans and fundraisers queasy:

But late at night, my roommates told me about the other group of bad girls—the ones I desperately wanted to meet. These bad girls were called “the head nurses.” Initially I thought this was an urban legend if not a bad practical joke. Yet I was told again and again that, at some point during my rehabilitation, a nurse I knew or had never seen would answer the call bell late at night and give me a blowjob. There was no privacy in rehabilitation centers at the time. Rooms usually held four to six men. All that separated me from the other paralyzed guys was a flimsy curtain. We did not even have a television in the room. Just the physical set-up alone made the stories seem like impossible fantasy. But sure enough, late one night I was awoken by the guttural sounds of deep moaning. I turned to see the silhouette of a young shapely woman giving my roommate a world-class blowjob. I remember this night with crystal clarity because it was the first time since being paralyzed I got an erection. My dick was alive! Who needs a doctor when you have a head nurse! A week or two later, I received my own visit. It started out badly. It was late at night and I had pissed all over myself and the bed. I hit the call button, upset. I thought I had had a handle on bladder management at that point. The nurse that came to help was one with whom I was very close. She changed my sheets and came back as I was washing myself. I was playing with myself without much luck. She explained I had to be a bit more vigorous and try non-traditional approaches. Then she rubbed my leg and pulled the skin on my inner groin, and sure enough I grew hard. I started to cry in relief. She wiped away my tears and then went down on me. She brought me to orgasm, and I was taken aback when I realized no ejaculate had emerged. She explained to me that this is common for paralyzed men and that it involves a retrograde ejaculation. She assured me it would not affect my fertility or my sex life in a major way. My son is living proof she was correct.

So... there’s that. Though, at one point, there wasn’t: The issue’s editor tells IHE that “medical school administrators asked Atrium’s editorial team to remove parts of the essay from the web, because the content was considered inflammatory and too damaging to the new Northwestern Medicine ‘brand.’”

After a year of acrimonious debate, the administration gave up on that request—but recently proposed that it review future Atrium issues before publication. Another adjunct professor at the school, who published an article in the same issue as Peace’s essay, bolted for another university in part due to the administration’s handling of the case.

Peace, for his part, seemed to anticipate that some readers would find his story objectionable. “Truth be told, I could tell many stories that would be far more objectionable to most people than my ‘head nurse’ experience,” he wrote. “But what is etched in my mind some thirty-five years later is the compassion that woman showed me—the compassion so many of these women showed us young men.”

[Photo credit: New Mobility]