Although Harvard Sex Week organizers did not respond to repeated requests by The College Fix seeking comment about their Sex Week events, student Kirin Gupta, co-organizer of this week’s observance, did grant MTV an interview to talk about the agenda.
On Tuesday, some Harvard students took part in an “Anal Sex 101” workshop, which covered a wide variety of topics, “including: anal anatomy and the potential for pleasure for all genders; how to talk about it with a partner; basic preparation and hygiene; lubes, anal toys, and safer sex; anal penetration for beginners, and much more,” the agenda stated. “Learn the facts about this exciting yet often misunderstood form of pleasure, find out the common mistakes people make, and get all your questions answered.”
In her interview, Gupta – a joint social studies and women, gender, and sexuality major – explains that students shouldn’t have to Google anal sex to learn about it, and suggested the media firestorm over the workshop is simply because conservatives are a bunch of uptight, patriarchal, heteronormative homophobes:
MTV News: Why do you think Harvard Sex Week is making so many headlines?
Kirin Gupta: The past two years we had Sex Week, we didn’t have an anal sex event — but I think it’s something that was really missing. It’s part of a lot of people’s sex lives, but it’s something a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge because it’s not part of traditional heteronormative sexuality.
Saying we don’t need [the workshop] is like saying we don’t need sex education, or should have abstinence-only education, or that people should feel ashamed for doing whatever it is that’s part of their sexual practice. … The conservative backlash speaks to the latent homophobia that society thinks so often it has gotten over, and has not. It speaks to these residual prejudices that people [have] when faced with a reality they’re not willing to acknowledge or respect. …
MTV: How would you respond to commenters saying this workshop is somehow evidence of America’s crumbling morality?
Gupta: I would say that the idea America has a crumbling morality, that we have some kind of morality that’s standing, is built on repressive patriarchal conceptions of sex and sexuality. So if that’s crumbling, then let it crumble.
Yep. It all makes sense now.
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