Word: condoms
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...soon as I arrived here I got the sense that everybody was having sex or expected to have sex; I reached this conclusion from one of our mandatory study breaks. In one of my most embarrassing moments here, I was chosen by a Peer Contraceptive Counselor to put a condom on a banana and demonstrate the proper way to place a condom on the penis. Although the motivation underlying this exercise was positive (if you're having sex, use a condom), the message was ambiguous. Virgins like myself were told that a lot of our classmates were having...
...explore the theory behind Condom Week. While Condom Week is predicated on the assumption that people are having sex, the more central issue is that sex--at least sans condom--is dangerous. As one of the wittier posters made clear, sex with a condom is like sleeping with a lifeguard; sex without it, however, is commensurably lethal. Although the sponsors of Condom Week cushioned their message in fluorescent-colored poster paper and humorous ditties, the essence of their project was to spread the word that sex, despite the casual tone, is far from casual. At the most literal level...
What a week for Harvard sexuality! This seems such an incongruous sentence--sexuality and Harvard in the same breath. But between those brightly colored posters ("Come on now, don't be silly, put a condom on your willy") emblazoned across kiosks and in stairwells and the computerized dating service brought to us by the Undergraduate Council and the Harvard Computer Society, our campus seems rife with overt sexuality--and rearing to go for Valentine's Day. For a college not known for its throbbing sex life, Harvard appears to be doing all right...
However, a closer examination of these two sexual phenomena--data match and Condom Week--reveals a slightly more complex picture. Whereas a cursory analysis of this week's Valentine's-Day-inspired activities would indicate carefree kids gone wild about sex and dating (and maybe if they're lucky, both), the underlying motivation behind Condom Week and Datamatch is significantly more conservative...
This is not to say that precautions are unnecessary. Quite the contrary, the dangers associated with irresponsible or promiscuous sex are real. Nonetheless, this move to conservatism is a phenomenon worth taking note of, because we do not fully understand its implications. Datamatch and Condom Week may be examples of our generation's attempts to preserve some semblance of romance in a world that reminds us that romance could be dangerous. The possibility we have yet to grapple with is that our cautious technology may have denuded sexuality of its mystique and, concomitantly, some of its excitement. That probably means...