On Wednesday November 3, 2010, approximately 60 students gathered in Shanklin Hall to pass around strap-ons and test vibrators against their noses. Now flash forward to Friday April 22, when over 200 students were packed into an Exley lecture hall watching a clip called “Faces of Ecstasy,” which featured women’s facial expressions during masturbation. These are just snapshots of the two workshops given by sexologist Megan Andelloux over the past year.
Andelloux, a well-known sexuality educator with a broad range of expertise, has been giving workshops at Wesleyan for the past seven years. She is a contributing author for a number of collections on sexuality, including “Sex and Society” and “We Got Issues.” The latter focuses on topics relevant to young women. One of her articles is also included in “Naked At Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex.” The diversity of the target audiences of these books speaks to Megan’s ability to make her knowledge relevant to a wide range of people. The presentation included a variety of images, video clips, and testimonies from women of different ages, ethnic backgrounds, and sexual identities.
“I thought that the PowerPoint presentation was very self-aware and very inclusive,” said Julia Conrad ’14.
In addition to being a writer, Andelloux is an expert on sexual health issues. She develops sex curriculums for hospitals, and has been featured as a keynote speaker at HIV educator trainings and Planned Parenthood conferences. She also concentrates a great deal on sex positivity, and teaches a variety of workshops from “Kink Academy” to “Becoming an Ask-able Parent.” The breadth of her knowledge is a key reason why the Wesleyan Peer Health Advocates have continued to invite her back over the past seven years.
“Ms. Megan offers workshops on a variety of topics,” said Mike Kurth ’11, one of the team leaders of the Peer Health Advocates. “Our hope is to eventually bring all of them to Wesleyan, instead of just focusing on the same workshop every year. Sexual Health has many facets, and, by extension, so should the workshops we bring to Wesleyan.”
Kurth explained the group’s motivation for choosing the topic of the most recent workshop.
“We wanted to do something different from the event we held last year,” he said. “Last year’s focus was how to have good sex, and this year we wanted to focus on female pleasure. It seemed appropriate because we coordinated this event with Femnet.”
Students had a range of reactions to the choice of this workshop.
“I thought the sex toys workshop was a more intriguing and unusual topic,” said Nick Petrillo ’14. “I liked that it was more tangible and that there were more things to hold on to—things that I don’t normally come in contact with.”
Conrad, on the other hand, thought that the recent workshop was more applicable to the lives of students on campus.
“Orgasms and female pleasure are things that more people can relate to,” she said.
However, Conrad thought that the two workshops were interesting for different reasons.
“I thought they were equally entertaining,” she said. “They were raunchy in different ways: this last workshop was more graphic and had footage of more intimate things, but sex toys are, in many ways, a more taboo subject.”
Megan’s presentations have become part of the Wesleyan experience.
“She should definitely come back so that more people have the opportunity to come see her, especially next year’s freshmen,” Petrillo said. “When I told my friends about her they asked, ‘What kind of a school do you go to?’ Well, a school that’s more fun than where you go.”
Additionally, Wesleyan recently won Andelloux’s Sex Tour Contest, which is based on participation and advertising, among other areas. The University will receive $3,000 in sex toys and other safe sex supplies.