Sex Week’s goal of diversity fulfilled
Reading Virginia Calkins and Callie Lowenstein’s article “Sex Week at Yale promotes hypocritical image” (2/13), it is clear to me that they have not yet had the pleasure of attending any of our events. While they make a valid point that our advertising is sexy and catchy, it certainly has not deterred a large and extremely diverse group of students from showing up to our events. I would venture to say that the diversity I witnessed at these events is greater than at any other event I’ve seen on campus. It may surprise Calkins and Lowenstein to know that Logan Levkoff’s presentation on the...
I'm glad you seem enthusiastic about "dispelling...myths" about female sexuality. So do you think it's not a myth, then, that abnormally skinny women are more sexually desirable or better at sex than all the rest of us? Is that just how things really are?
I am a sex-positive person. I think it's empowering and useful and potentially a lot of fun to have a forum for information and discussion about how women and people of all genders experience pleasure and negotiate sexual relationships. (Let me note that I'd be potentially interested in any event that offered free sex toys for the taking!) But when I see advertising that makes sex look like it's for a certain type of people who aren't like me (physically or culturally), I'm not inclined to attend the event that's being advertised. The advertising is suggesting that I am less deserving of or able to experience sexual pleasure than some other group of people. Why would I want to go to an event whose organizers, if they don't just believe that this is true, aren't critical enough to realize that they are presenting themselves and their organization as if they believe it?
But it sounds like you don't actually want to promote inclusive sex positivity and recognize the diversity of sexual experience--those aren't values you care at all if you further with sex week (you don't seem to care if you further any ideas about anything!) So the fact that you're doing the opposite with your advertisements probably won't bother you.
Yale Sex Week came across as Yale Straight Male Porn Week. The involvement of the pornographic industry supports this notion. I was so disappointed.
Why couldn't there have been a naked male on the cover of the Yale Sex Week magazine? It seems that the current Yale Sex Week organizers are pandering to the straight male fantasy. Straight men form less than half of the population yet they get seemingly total control over what gets prominence in the Sex Week promotions.
"Our goal is to get people talking."
And my goal today is to breathe at least a few times.
Of course you're going to get people talking - your goal as organizers of "sex week" should be to give people access to knowledge.
If you're setting the bar as low as "stirring up controversy", then no shit - you're going to succeed.