Word: sexualism
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Kaya N. Williams ’07, a former chair of the Association of Black Harvard Women Action Committee, sees a benefit to open sexual dialogue like that shared in FemSex or other frank discussions of sexuality, “Harvard campus in general is not really all that friendly, and women have to find different positions that they can make themselves comfortable in, and for some FemSex fits that ideal. I think that for a lot of people who take it, it’s a very meaningful experience...
Oftentimes, the left aligns abstinence with repression, and those on the right conflate sexual liberalism with a pathology of need, while each accusing the other group of limiting women’s options and forcing them to conform to a sexual ideal. Meanwhile, the majority of women at Harvard continue on as they always have, trying to distance themselves from both extremes. The pop-culture ideal, to enjoy a “Sex and the City”-style series of casual hookups while walking the line between enough sexual activity to keep one from being a prude...
...informal discussion in Lowell Dining Hall on sexuality, the complications become clear. “It’s weird that Harvard does have this really liberal reputation when it comes to sex,” says one female student, “because I’ve found, when it comes to talking about it, people fall back on conservative sexual terms.” A male student added, “I feel like sometimes women are very vocally politically feminist, but when you get them into a room with some alcohol, they’re not very...
Questions of female objectification and empowerment also arise when pornography and sexual liberation comes into play. Grizzle cites the use of erotic material as a major flaw of FemSex. Many conservatives place the moral responsibility for sexual behavior on women. McCaffrey says, “I would say women are better at [controlling sexual urges], so I think they have more responsibility, but it’s something that men can be a part of. In the past, pretty much all women were very sexually reserved; you could always find prostitutes, but virtuous people were just not sexually promiscuous...
Others point out the seeming incongruity of this position. “Sexual violence is construed as a women’s issue when 99.9 percent of rapists are men—it would seem to me that rape is a man’s issue,” says former Strong Women, Strong Girls Director Tracy E. Nowski ’07. “When you talk about gendered things on campus, women tend to show up. It’s hugely misleading, because obviously ‘gender’ involves both men and women...