The Best Thesis Defense Is a Good Thesis Offense
A/N: Happy birthday, @bunbunlittleone! If anyone could pull this off, it would be you. Thanks to @daja-the-hypnokitten for edits, encouragement, and help with sciencebabble.
Contains: non-consensual hypnosis, academic sexism, forced feminism, masturbation, mention of penises (though they don’t do much).
Iris Konijnenberg was, objectively speaking, brilliant. She had co-authored her first journal article at 16, graduated early from Yale with numerous accolades, and was the youngest neuroscience Ph. D candidate that Elman University had ever seen. She was also, objectively speaking, gorgeous—and that was the whole problem.
With her flawless skin, full lips, tiny waist, and breasts so perky they seemed to defy gravity, she could have been a model. Instead, she was a promising young neuroscientist—but half the men in this field couldn’t seem to see past her tits.
“Breathe, Iris,” she muttered to herself as she paced the antechamber. “Breathe, and don’t go there. It’ll be fine. Your research is water-tight. Even the Phallus Brigade will see that.”
Intellectually speaking, she could not have been more prepared for her thesis defense. She had double- and triple-checked her work with respected researchers around the country, her PowerPoint was lucid and well organized, her accompanying handouts were pristine. But Iris and her groundbreaking findings on the differing effects of hypnosis on the occipital and parietal lobes were about to enter a room of walking, talking penises who refused to take her seriously as a scientist.
Candice Smith, her old adviser, was brilliant—she had gotten her doctorate almost as young as Iris planned to. Under Dr. Smith, things had been bearable; she’d had a strident voice of support in the department, and someone to commiserate with about the sexist bullshit they both faced. But then Dr. Smith had been offered her dream job across the country at a far less toxic institution, so Iris had gotten passed on to Dr. Galit Taubman, who was also brilliant, but much more timid. She was hardly able to stand up for herself, let alone Iris. Still, she was an ally, if a quiet one, but when she went on maternity leave a month before Iris’s thesis defense (Iris privately wondered if she’d ever come back)... Well, that left Iris facing a committee of four of the most conceited, sexist, unpleasant men she had ever had the misfortune of meeting.
But still, she was going to do this, and do it right. She was wearing her most sensible, modest clothes—no mean feat, with breasts that mocked any fabric that attempted to contain them—her science was rock-solid, and she was going to pass with distinction, goddamnit, and get all the honors she deserved. The committee was all sexist assholes, but they had to listen to science, right?
And if they didn’t, there was always Plan B.
Steeling herself, Iris gathered her papers and bustled into the room. Two of the committee were already there: Dr. Jackson, with his wispy white hair, smiled indulgently at her, as if she were a precocious child, while Dr. Marmotti, bored, fiddled with his cigarette lighter. Iris greeted them both and turned her attention to setting up—disseminating her handouts fiddling with the projector and remote. Dr. Ward drifted in as she worked and started flipping through his handouts with a barely-concealed look of distaste. Exactly one minute before the scheduled start time, Dr. Cariou slid into his seat, looking like he’d just woken up.
Well, thought Iris, no time like the present. Let’s get this over with.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said, clicking the PowerPoint to life. “Thank you so much for your consideration, and for taking the time to come to my thesis defense. Today I’ll be talking about the differing effects of hypnosis on the occipital and parietal lobes...”
Surely they’ll let me get through the presentation, she had thought. They’ll roast me during the Q&A, but you’re not really supposed to interrupt the presentation itself, that should be fine... But she was barely ten minutes in when Dr. Jackson put up a hand and, without waiting to be acknowledged, informed her, “Those figures can’t possible be correct, my dear.“
Iris took a deep breath through her nose. “Dr. Jackson, the calculations are all on page 16 of your handout if you’d like to see them. As I was saying—”
“But I would expect this regression to show a nearly horizontal trend line,” interrupted Jackson. “Really, a 101 class would cover...”
“The trend line would go up if the effect was strong enough,” Iris informed him, fighting to keep her voice pleasant. “I know that Praetorius’s 2015 paper had a very different graph, but my data is cleaner, and I control for socioeconomic class, which turns out to have a huge distortive effect on the final graph. Now, if I may continue...”
She barreled ahead before Jackson could object again, but his comment seemed to have opened the flood gates. The interruptions came thick and fast—even Dr. Cariou, who looked half asleep, roused himself for long enough to ask why she hadn’t considered his own research on the topic from a decade prior (when she had in fact noted the paper, and the differences in her approach, two slides before). When Dr. Ward questioned her methodology for the second time in five minutes, she knew that this would never work. These men were determined that she was not a scientist, would poke her argument full of holes that weren’t there, so convinced were they that her findings were inaccurate. It was time for Plan B.
A few clicks on her remote diverted to her auxiliary PowerPoint presentation: the next slide that appeared still had real, solid data on it, but with the addition of an eye-catching animation of synapses firing, the impulses running back and forth across the screen. Another click of her remote turned the thermostat up a few degrees. Let’s do this, she thought to herself. “Gentlemen,” she began, “if I could call your attention to this animation: you notice the way the neurons in the occipital lobes are firing at almost double the rate of the ones in the parietal lobe. Now, consider the implications...“
Iris was no stranger to public speaking, having given conference talks across the country. Normally she took care to speak higher in her voice, so that her words would carry even without a microphone. Now, she let herself drop into a lower register. One couldn’t call it sultry, not quite, but her voice was low and smooth and a little husky, soothing and captivating as she clicked through slide after slide of animations, pointing out this spiraling pattern and that repetitive motion.
The thermostat was doing its work; Dr. Marmotti was fanning himself with a handout, and Dr. Ward had loosened his tie. Iris paused before her next slide and told the room apologetically, “I’m sorry, but it’s just getting so warm in here, if you don’t mind, I’ll just...” and with deliberate slowness, undid the top button of her blazer. She noted with satisfaction that all the men’s eyes followed her fingers, and that Dr. Cariou shifted noticeably in his seat when she undid the button.
The next slide had some subliminals in it, the subtlest she could manage—milliseconds’ worth of text flashing “relaxed” and “drowsy” over her animations. Her years of research in hypnosis weren’t for nothing, she thought with pride: the tide of questions had slowed considerably, and the committee all looked a bit sleepy. Dr. Jackson blinked rapidly as if to clear his head, and asked dazedly, “The, the p-values on that graph, they aren’t, I mean, are they...?”
Iris smiled warmly at him, catching his eyes with hers. “It’s okay, Dr. Jackson,” she said smoothly, “I’m about to explain my calculations on the next slide. All you need to do is watch the slide and listen to my explanation.” And without dropping his gaze, she undid another button on her blazer.
Her tits were straining against the fabric now, her nipples rock-hard—hypnosis had always turned her on a bit more than was strictly professional, but in this case it was a welcome side effect, as every eye in the room was drawn to her chest. Iris “accidentally” caressed the side of one breast, and four pairs of eyes followed her movement raptly.
She had them.
The subliminals in her slides were bolder now, and consequently more effective. After each slide, she paused to undo another button. The committee’s attention was split between the screen that flashed words at them like “deeper” and “sink” and “submit”, and Iris’s chest, the way she subtly touched her breasts, always casually enough that it could have been an accident. Cariou was squirming in his seat now, and Dr. Marmotti was visibly hard under his pants. When she undid the very last button on her blazer and slowly, ever so slowly, pulled it off to reveal a sleeveless camisole that just barely contained her cleavage, all the men stared, entranced. And when she left the podium and walked up to them all in turn to gently guide their heads into her pillowy breasts and firmly say “Sleep”, they all slumped into her without protest, thoroughly hypnotized.
She was a little turned on herself. Here were powerful men who had made her life hell these last few years, all slumped over bonelessly, aroused and enthralled. Simply because she could, she dipped a hand into the waistband of her skirt and felt the wetness there. There was nothing to stop her from fucking herself right now on the conference table, she realized giddily. They were all in her thrall. She could make them oblivious, she could make them forget, she could make them help... (She quickly dismissed the last thought. None of these assholes had any appeal to her in that way. Maybe curvy Dr. Smith, or that quiet visiting professor Dr. Peters from last semester, but none of these four.) Still, the power of it was intoxicating, and arousing beyond belief. And she had been so stressed about her defense, her libido at an all-time low as she panicked about how she would get through today. She’d been through the mill; she owed it to herself to let off a little steam.
“Gentlemen,” she told them softly, and hopped nimbly atop the big hardwood table. “Boys.” Iris slipped a finger into her panties again and gave herself a single, luxurious stroke that made her shudder in pleasure. “I want you to listen very carefully to me.” She rubbed slow circles on her clit as she spoke, her hips rolling in time to her hand. “You’re all soooo open and pliable right now, so aroused and suggestible, so distracted by how relaxed your body is, how hard your cock is. It’s so easy to let my words trickle right to the deepest level of your subconscious, isn’t it?”
She slipped two fingers inside herself easily. She was dripping, she was so ready. “So when I tell you that you don’t need to remember any of this, any of the hypnosis, any of me fucking myself on this table, it’s so very easy to make that your reality. Knowing that you won’t remember anything out of the ordinary happened today, anything at all. Just a standard thesis presentation, except that the ideas I presented were so brilliant they blew you away. You won’t remember the hypnosis, the arousal, the helplessness. Though,” she added with a wicked smile, “maybe it will come to you in a dream occasionally.”
And then Iris, who had thought she’d planned everything perfectly already, had an idea.
She shimmied her panties off and spread her legs wide, fucking herself openly on the conference table. “Inhale,” she told her enchanted audience. “Smell my sex on the air. Feel how unbearably turned on you are. Know without a shadow of a doubt that when I wake you up and finish my presentation, you’ll take my seriously. I’m not a pin-up girl, I’m a scientist just like you, with a brain, with important ideas, with good methodology. You’re not going to give me my doctorate because I brainwashed you—you’re going to pass me if and only if my ideas have merit. The only thing I’m brainwashing into you...” She removed her slick fingers from her pussy and passed it under each man’s nose in turn, delighting in their shudders as they breathed her scent.
“The only thing I’m brainwashing into you is that your colleagues are scientists first. Real scientists. Intelligent scientists. It feels so good to treat your colleagues as equals. And—only after the fact, in private, where it won’t creep anyone out—it turns you on so much. From here on out, it feels so pleasurable to treat women as peers. Any doubts about their abilities, any snide sexist thoughts, they’re instantly drowned out by a wave of pleasure, of obedience. Respecting women becomes second nature to you. It’s what turns you on, what makes you feel good, it’s the only way you know how to have sex, how to seek pleasure. Boys, repeat after me: ‘I respect women’s intellects.’“
“I respect women’s intellects,” the committee droned tonelessly, and Iris’s fingers on her clit sped up. God, but a roomful of men helplessly repeating her words back at her, and brainwashing themselves out of sexism to boot...
She made them repeat more mantas, she intensified their arousal, driving her conditioning home. Finally, at the brink of orgasm, she ordered in a voice that trembled: “You’re going to sit there and let your conditioning settle deeper as you listen to me come. My orgasm is going to echo through your heads and cement all of these commands. That you respect women. That treating women as equals makes you feel good, and fulfilled. That you won’t remember anything out of the ordinary happening here today. And a-after I c-come—” She was struggling to keep herself back from the brink now. “After I come and tidy up, I’m going to snap my fingers, and when I do, you can wake up without a clue that anything out of the ordinary has happened, and let me finish my presentation without interruptions, and oh, and take my ideas seriously and evaluate my work like you would any male grad student, and, and, ah...”
She yanked her hand away from her clit and breathed deeply through the edge, reveling in the pleasure that coursed through her body. “When I snap my fingers,” she repeated in a slightly calmer tone, “you’ll awaken, remembering nothing out of the ordinary. But your programming will remain. Teaching you to respect women. To respect me.” Her hand trembled right above her clit. She was so close now, she knew it would only take seconds of touch to make her explode. Iris took one more moment to savor the scene—these powerful men at her mercy, herself splayed on the boardroom table, the air thick with the scent of her sex and her control.
And then she fucked herself hard and fast, and the air was full of the sound of her cries as she came.
“As I was saying, the effects of slow inductions on the parietal lobe are really quite pronounced, as you can see in this graph here...”
The committee blinked sleepily up at her, shaking their heads or rubbing their eyes—but they listened respectfully as she continued her presentation (now with her blazer firmly back in place.) There was still the odd question here or there, but they were polite clarifications, and easily satisfied. The Q&A was the most civil Iris had ever seen at Elman University, no matter the gender of the grad student, and the committee’s conference afterwards was brief: she had passed with distinction.
Every man in the room shook her hand warmly as she left—and if they sniffed their fingers afterwards, they did so completely unconsciously. One or two still sported a hard-on, but were appropriately abashed, covering it with papers or the table, and somehow managing not to make lewd remarks, as the faculty of yesteryear might have. Iris—no, she told herself, Dr. Konijnenberg—glowed inside as she made her way down to the reception. She had done it, had passed with flying colors, but even more importantly, had made Elman University a better place for all of the women who came after her.
And she knew how to do this again, she realized. This was just the beginning. What sorts of changes could she make in this field, with only a PowerPoint presentation and her words and her breasts?
But she put the thought out of her mind for now. For now, she was finally a Doctor of Neuroscience, and she was going to eat cheese cubes with her newly-civil professors, and she was going to get sloshed at the bar with her friends later, and when she finally went to bed she would fuck herself silly remembering this afternoon.
Iris grinned broadly as she helped herself to some charcuterie. She had done good work today.