Meet Abbey Francis, The Argus’ new Sexual Health Columnist. In this first column, she introduces the issues she hopes to tackle throughout the coming semester.
Wesleyan is undeniably a sexually liberal school. Last Thursday, Alpha Delt hosted a “Milkshakes and Porn” party and showed a seventies porn film which featured Alice giving the Mad Hatter a blowjob. The Feminist Network will soon be hosting a sex toy workshop. This is the first year Wesleyan will go without Eclectic’s infamous Sex Party.
And so I ask this question: We may be liberal, but are we empowered? Are we healthy? Are we safe?
As in any community, sexual behavior varies immensely from person to person. At any big Saturday night party, a bystander can see the stereotypes: there will be some girls almost at a right angle as they dig into a guy’s pelvis with their rears, as well as some girls who subtly elbow any would-be dance partners away. There will also be the male equivalents – the guys who, without even seeing a girl’s face, will grab her hips in an attempt to dance and the guys who politely ask a girl to dance with that questioning, almost fearful look in their eye.
While it is tempting for me to see a girl grinding on a random guy at a party as a symbol of her sexual liberation and empowerment, it is tempting for many people to brand her as an insecure slut. Both of these rationales clearly oversimplify the matter. Is she expressing her sexuality through dance, or is she looking for validation from the touch of her partner? Perhaps more importantly, will the night end with dancing? Or will she go home with this guy, possibly intoxicated, and have unprotected sex that she later regrets?
These questions are clearly not black and white—this girl is human, and her sexual choices will always be made for deeply personal reasons that we, as speculating bystanders, can never fully predict or understand.
In truth, this is college, the time for that surprising, mythical behavior referred to as “experimentation.” We have the perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent ourselves and question our sexuality, gender, and sexual liberties, especially in a college as liberal as Wesleyan.
That experimenting allows for a lot of empowerment, but also a lot of risk. In such an extremely liberal environment, it is easy to write off every divergence from one’s comfort zone as a tapping of inner sexual power. Though I think that Wesleyan’s allowance of sexual boundary-pushing is one of the greatest things about this school, I also think it is something we should consider with the utmost seriousness. We must recognize that we are not stereotypes—our sexual character is as idiosyncratic as we are. Just because some of us experiment a lot in college doesn’t mean that we’re empowered, and just because some of us choose not to experiment doesn’t mean that we are already self-aware. Our sexual selves are personal and unique, but are also partially influenced by politics, media, and our social environment. These factors deserve exploration and questioning, especially on a campus so open about sexuality.
In the coming weeks, I hope to take on some of these issues of sexuality and sexual health at Wesleyan by observing and exploring both the mainstream and the unusual. On a campus that considers itself to be diverse, it is important to examine whether that diversity applies to sexual-behavior, and what our perceived sexual liberality hides and reveals about sexual health at Wesleyan. I hope to explore the intricacies of our unique sexual habitat: its positives, negatives and everything in between.
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