Education

Professor assigns bizarre novella ‘The Baby Jesus Butt Plug’ to students

Robby Soave Reporter
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California State University comparative literature students will be asked to imagine a world where “the baby jesus is a very popular anal probe,” a reading assignment that some say is absurdly offensive.

“The Baby Jesus Butt Plug” was assigned by Jordan Smith, a comparative literature professor, at his students’ request.

“I assigned a reader of Bizarro Fiction, a new genre of surreal gross-out literature in the United States,” he said in a statement to TheBlaze. “Undergraduate education is about finding your voice and clarifying your values, and allowing the students to vote on whether they would rather tackle a difficulty, potentially-offensive text in a literature course is certainly one of the ways to facilitate that.”

The text itself is a 104-page science fiction horror story about, “a dark and absurd world where human beings are slaves to corporations, people are photocopied instead of born, and the baby jesus is a very popular anal probe,” according to Amazon.

A review described it as “trashy and dark.”

Smith originally tried to steer students away from the book, but eventually gave in when the class voted to read it.

The professor should have stuck with his instincts, wrote the editors of The College Fix.

“The College Fix chronicles a lot of the garbage professors peddle in the name of scholarly pursuits — including pornography — but this ranks as one of the most offensive reading assignments we’ve ever come across, regardless of the professor’s claim it was students who clamored to read it,” they wrote.

According to Smith, the text prompted a worthwhile discussion about sex and Christianity.

The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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