Okay, full disclosure here. I’m a student at Yale and one of the organizers of Sex Week. After some well-intentioned but misleading press surrounding the event, I’m thankful that my (mostly) benevolent leaders at The Stranger have allowed me to use this platform to set the record straight.
For the past decade, the biennial Sex Week has brought experts to Yale in diverse fields relating to sex, intimacy, and relationships, including Buck Angel and Dr. Ruth, as well as sex workers, porn stars, psychologists, anthropologists, and religious speakers. We haven’t shied away from offering practical and demanded events, including a lecture from Babeland’s Darlinda Just Darlinda on how to perform oral sex. As one of eight directors for Sex Week 2012, I’d like to make clear that I’m sharing my views, and not the thoughts of the entire board.
If you read Jezebel, you’ve probably seen this piece that inaccurately states that Sex Week has been banned. “For now, all that seems clear is that the banning of Sex Week isn’t a statement against the discussion of sexuality, but something far more complex.” Indeed, it is about something more complex. But Sex Week hasn’t been banned, and Jezebel did issue a somewhat misleading retraction. For the record, Jezebel, we’re dropping corporate sponsors.
Unfortunately, Jezebel’s early scoop has led to some erroneous reports: see here, here, here, and especially here. So where did this all start?
Last March, 16 students and recent graduates filed suit against Yale University under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act for failing to dispel a hostile environment against women. Here’s why they filed the suit: One fraternity, DKE, chanted “No means yes, yes means anal” and “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac, I fuck dead women and fill them with my semen!” while marching around freshmen dorms and the Yale Women’s Center. Another fraternity, Zeta Psi, held up signs reading “We Love Yale Sluts” while chanting “Dick, dick, dick!” also in front of the Yale Women’s Center. An email that circulated between football teams and fraternities ranked incoming freshmen women by how many drinks it would take to sleep with them. This is just a sampling of public incidents, and the rest of the suit details allegations that Yale imposes an onerous bureaucracy on its rape victims.
Needless to say, Sex Week has nothing to do with that misogynistic rhetoric. So we were surprised when the Yale committee formed in light of this lawsuit recommended that Sex Week be banned. They had concerns because, they claimed, we were “prominently [featuring] titillating displays, ‘adult’ film stars, and commercial sponsors of such material.” In response, Yale University President Richard Levin offered Sex Week a fantastic chance to propose an agenda and explain why sex positive education is a good thing. But Levin has also implicitly accused past organizers of receiving kickbacks from the porn industry (we haven’t), while saying we can’t use Yale’s name: “We will not allow the University’s facilities or name to be used in the service of corporate sponsors and the private inurement of student organizers.“
There is no better way for Yale to end rape and coercion than helping students figure out what they find sexy, while fostering easy communication and respect for sexual diversity. We know that Sex Week hasn’t been perfect. We’ve failed to respond to past misleading, sensationalized accounts with poise. And there was that one time when we failed to rein in a certain performer who decided it was a good idea to expose herself. This event was an outlier, and in general, it feels obvious to say that offering wisdom from diverse, credible sources on sex will pretty tangibly improve lives. We will not dilute our opinions, and we will not refrain from explaining to the President and Dean of our University why students should learn how to communicate their desires to partners and enjoy sex. (That sure was a fun letter to write.)
As a good, straight, Catholic boy from Seattle attending a high school for the children of progressive ex-yuppies, Dan Savage was the first person to convince me that sex—in all its sticky, emotionally fraught, amazing glory—could be compassionately, stimulatingly, and rigorously (in the academic sense) discussed. After a very steep learning curve my freshman year (which still makes me cringe), I’m proud to encourage my peers to discuss sex maturely, without shame. Yale should consider doing the same.
I was wondering when the viewpoints of the 1% were going to get representation on Slog.
Way to negate everything this remarkably centered and mature young man has just stated about the ability to have a mature, productive discourse with some sort of pseudo classist reverse elitism.
1%, indeed.
That’s about as much of it as I read, too.
Thank you, Paul. This was really well put and it’s good to know there are younger straight people out there who are working towards a more sex-positive future for themselves and their peers.
Creating an environment of unrestrained ribaldry on a college campus backfired?? Gwuuuuhhhhhh?!?
@2, there’s never any place for humor in this world, is there? Thanks for reminding me.
I don’t recall Dan ever being straight, and I’m pretty sure he attended a Catholic high school in Chicago.
Class of 1995, I think.
@7, they don’t teach dangling modifiers at Yale. The straight Seattle Catholic etc. was Paul Holmes, not Dan Savage.
Yale sounds like a horrible place. No matter how this gets resolved.
@6, you got me. Sorry. Crabby low blood sugar and general feelings of enough with the 1% already.
I’m usually much better behaved.
yale is a great place but as any place has its share of idiots, many of whom join dke and the other fraternities. dke was banned from campus for 5 yrs for this behavior, but in my opinion should be banned forever. they were just as stupid when i was there.
yes, paul, the first clause in the last graph does modify dan savage and not you.
My dad, who went to University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana, told me of a frat that was kicked off the campus for, among other things, driving a truck (something like a big rig, IIRC) with mattresses in the back, snatching up women (some of whom did not really consent) and having their way with them.
@8 zing! His dad, City Attorney Pete Holmes, went to Yale as well, so at least Holmes men learn their way around a clause by the time they are ready to take office. Special bonus: the internet led me to a video of Paul soloing away vigorously with his Yale a cappella men’s choir.
They are all in white tie and tails. Salt of the earth, these lads. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m=youtube…
@8: thanks for reminding me that there’s never any room for disingenuousness on SLOG.
@14, Don’t worry, I knew you were joking (well, once I clicked the continue reading link, before that I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about)
So Viva la disingenuidad! (and for the record I’m being disingenuous with the Spanish)
Out of curiosity, was the “how to perform oral sex” workshop going to focus on penises or pussies? If it were just focused on penises, I could see how it could appear to be a continuation of the problems at Yale.
Also, didn’t the frat chant “No means yes, yes means anal”? Paul might want to fix that misquote there.
I’m so happy I went to a school without a Greek system. The fratboy schtick would never fly at Western. Frankly, frats and their behavior is the kind of thing that turns voters off to supporting higher ed, even if said behavior comes from private schools.
I was just about to write the same comment as #17. Any school with such a long history of fraternities and sororities is inherently going to be screwed up. This is what the midwestern Republicans think of when they think of “East Coast Elites.” The Ivy League schools have to clean up their acts.
Don’t get me wrong, all young people sometimes put their foot in their mouth, but the stories of blatant sexism/racism/general disrespect for humans coming out of Harvard and Yale really take the cake. I can’t believe the rest of us have to see our well meaning colleges rank below these douche-bag behemoths.
P.S. Paul, you seem pretty OK.
Paul, did you mention in your letter to the President and the Dean that you would also be teaching about enthusiastic consent and how NOT to rape? If not, that would probably have helped your cause in light of these other rape culture issues at Yale.
@20 We did. But it’s been a real challenge to try to spread that message to Yale students, the administration, and the public at large, in appropriate terms for each audience, while not diluting our thoughts and seeming shrill. If you have any anti-rape writers you admire and could point me to, I’d be very grateful.
That’s very interesting! I listen first time about sex week, I want to organize and celebrate this type of sex weeks.