By Day Greenberg and Matt Spector The Daily Northwestern
This week, campus activists want students to see the naked truth.
Monday marked the beginning of Northwestern's first Sex Week, which will feature lectures, workshops and entertainment addressing important sexual issues on campus and will encourage open dialogue, event organizers said.
Weinberg sophomore Stella Fayman, the founder of the event, called Sex Week "a series of provocative events aimed at exploring sexuality and encouraging sexual health awareness."
Monday's events included a sexual health fair at Norris University Center, and back-to-back lectures in Annenberg Hall about social issues surrounding sex in the U.S. The lectures were hosted by NU psychology Prof. Eli Finkel and history Prof. Lane Fenrich.
The professors used humor and candor to pull students into discussions about safety, personal decision making and discrimination in mainstream media coverage of the HIV epidemic in the country.
Finkel shared a study done on male students at Carnegie Mellon University that posed questions such as, "Would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance that she would have sex with you?"
Meanwhile, Fenrich discussed controversial topics, such as using "educational pornography" to promote safe sexual practices; singer and beauty queen Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s; and a National Public Radio story titled "Meth Use Among Gays Worries Health Officials."
"We think it's gross or nasty and so we don't want to have these conversations," said Fenrich, who teaches a course on gay and lesbian history. "The key isn't just having these conversations (about sex) in classrooms. … We need to start talking about ways to have these conversations differently."
Weinberg and Communication junior Marcus Bermudez-DeLeon said he appreciated that Fenrich addressed stereotypes about homosexuals that are "so spread out in society and have nothing to do with party lines."
"It's really interesting when you look at gay representation in the media reinforcing negative attitudes like 'I'm nasty' or 'The way I have sex is wrong," he said.
Sex Week's mission is twofold, said Emily Raymond, the incoming treasurer of College Feminists. The first goal is to get students to talk and reexamine their perspectives about sex and "everything that comes with it," while the second is to educate students through health fairs and talks, the Medill freshman and Daily staffer said.
NU's Sex Week is patterned after similar events at other schools such as Yale University, Fayman said.
The week is entirely student-run, with support from College Feminists, Sexual Health & Assault Peer Education and Pure Romance, a company that sells adult bedroom accessories. The Undergraduate Psychology Association provided food and drinks for Monday's lectures.
Pure Romance will be giving two presentations during the week, and the company's CEO, Patty Brisben, will be speaking at both.
According to Raymond, the Pure Romance event has inspired the creation of a counter-event on Facebook. She said she welcomes a little controversy if it promotes a dialogue among students.
"I think it's awesome that someone feels so strongly about the issue that they want to do something about it," Raymond said. "Our first and foremost goal is to encourage discussion. It certainly has gotten people talking."
Fayman said one of the week's most exciting events will take place Friday night: The cast of "Kama Sutra: The Musical" will be giving students a sneak peek of the show before it starts its second run in Chicago next week. After the performance, the actors and the producer will hold a question-and-answer session.
"'Kama Sutra: The Musical' does not treat sexuality as a taboo or hush-hush subject," Fayman said.
"The show itself … is really racy," she said. "The lyrics are all sexual innuendos."
Medill freshman Rena Behar said she hopes Sex Week will happen again in the future.
"I think it has the potential to be a valid part of community campus life at NU and it's something we should encourage," Behar said.
Reach Day Greenberg at d-greenberg@northwestern.edu. Reach Matt Spector at m-spector@northwestern.edu.
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