On Valentine's Day I made the mistake of walking through the campus center.
I imagined there would be people selling flowers that one could buy for a friend or sweetheart, chocolates, kiss-o-grams, candy hearts - all things related to love, friendship, or kindness, values the world understands Valentine's Day to celebrate. What I discovered instead was a disgrace, a stark reminder that I am at Tufts, an unhealthy sexual playground.
As a female, but also as a human being, the sex fair held in the name of "feminism" and "education" was insulting and disturbing. It was disconcerting to see on Valentine's Day, of all days, that meaningless sexual pleasure appears to have replaced any concept of love and respect.
Why do I say sexual pleasure and not sexual awareness, dialogue, education, or any of the other polite terms under which people tended to categorize it? Because anyone who walked through the campus center that day was thrown into a carnival of sexual gratification that had little to no relation to education.
Buckets of condoms, sex toys, sex games, genitalia cookies and masturbation tables sent the message that sex is virtually meaningless, something to joke about, and that sexual awareness comes through learning to be free and detached mentally and emotionally by ridding oneself of any moral and emotional barriers that may accompany sex.
Any notion that the fair was about health is entirely specious. If there was a table on comprehensive pregnancy prevention, disease, rape prevention, how to treat a sexual partner respectfully, how to recognize personal sexual boundaries, or on any of the emotional aspects relating to sex, I didn't see it, nor did I hear anyone talk about it. Furthermore, I didn't see any advertisements mention such tables.
That's not to say it wasn't there, but it was undeniably not a central point or emphasis of the event. In the end, the sex fair was little more than organized animalism, a glorification of the most base understanding of human sexuality.
Interestingly, most of the people I spoke with regarding the sex fair agreed that it had little to do with education and instead described it using words such as "weird," "creepy," "distasteful," "disgusting" and "degrading." I only heard a few people, most of whom admitted that they had not gone, say that they were "all for it," convinced it was educational and conducive to important dialogue. I will not argue that having a dialogue about sex is very important.
The fair, however, was anything but dialogue. It blatantly endorsed one and only one understanding of sexuality: that unrestrained sex, so long as there is a condom involved and some basic form of consent (but even this is dubious, as I saw it mentioned nowhere) will be fabulous and problem- and emotion-free.
So, even if you agree with me thus far, you might still be wondering what could really be so bad about teaching people to treat sex lightly and nonchalantly. What is so bad about teaching people to have casual, detached sex?
Here, I am going to push my argument all the way to its uncomfortable end. I believe events like the sex fair that promote such an understanding of sex facilitate rape. Treating sex flippantly makes a dangerous assumption about humanity. It remains a fact that sexuality is one of the most important and definitive aspects of human nature, and the sexual instinct is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, and most continually present human urge. The emotional and moral boundaries that so often guard our sexual urges are hardly arbitrary. When you eliminate those barriers, a dangerous gray area is created. In teaching that sex should be careless and pleasurable only, you infuse people with a selfish entitlement to indulgence, and make it far easier for people to take advantage of each other.
Encouraging women to be free and casual with their sex (so long as it's "safe") sends the message to men that women are available as sexual objects, merely instruments for obtaining meaningless pleasure. If women are careless and emotion-free about sex, why should they be treated with any care at all? When we start teaching that any and every sexual activity should not only be permitted but encouraged, where do you draw the line as to what is okay and what is not?
When you start eliminating our built-in moral code surrounding sexuality, it undeniably makes it that much harder to control and channel the sexual instinct that leads to rape. The fact is that we do not want a society run by sexual urges, and the sex fair taught people to embrace and indulge in those urges.
After working in the field of rape and domestic violence, I found one common denominator underlying the attitude of every perpetrator. Each of them saw women as sexual objects there for their pleasure and believed they were entitled to sexual gratification when they felt the urge. At some point in their life, they were taught that the primary end of human sexuality is pleasure, free unrestrained satisfaction.
Sound familiar? Sounds like the sex fair.
I always hear women complaining that men aren't chivalrous anymore. I always hear men complaining that women aren't ladylike anymore. This is not, for one moment, to say that ladies and gentlemen no longer exist at Tufts, but events like the sex fair teach us that treating each other like ladies and gentlemen is an outdated value.
Frankly, Tufts needs a radically new sex education. Promoting "sexual liberation" as a means of awareness and self-realization is breathtakingly na've. Men need to learn how to ask a woman on a date, how to recognize her limits, and how to treat her like a lady.
Women need to be learning how to say no when they are uncomfortable, how to recognize their emotional boundaries, and how to determine what qualities in a man indicate he will treat a woman well.
Both men and women need to learn that casual sex is emotionally damaging, creates a gray area conducive to rape, and is neither liberating nor fulfilling.
Re-teaching love, respect and reverence is the first step towards eliminating rape and restoring chivalry in men and true awareness and self-esteem in women.
Ashley Samelson is a senior majoring in political science and Spanish.
