Every year as April rolls around and warmth and sunlight trickle back onto campus, Northwestern students take advantage of the impending spring fever and celebrate Sex Week. Free condoms and packets of lube are handed out by Sex Week staff all week and several fun events, discussions, and panels are hosted on campus about sex, sexuality, and sex education.
This year’s Sex Week kicked off on Saturday, April 6 with a performance of Wildcat Burlesque which was co-sponsored by the Lipstick Theatre and events ran through Friday, April 13.
The main goal of Sex Week is to eliminate sexual ignorance on college campuses and reduce the reluctance that people have about discussing sexuality in a sex negative culture. Sex Week aims to educate students about sex and all of its implications and facets, but also to help change the attitude in society that sex is a taboo topic that should be avoided. The mission of Sex Week is stated clearly on the event’s website: “We want people to start talking.”
“Sex education is incredibly important for everybody, but it’s especially necessary on a college campus because we’re at an age where more people start exploring their sexualities,” Weinberg sophomore Kayla Hammersmith, a member of SHAPE, says. SHAPE (Sexual Health & Assault Peer Educators) is a Northwestern group that co-sponsored some of this year’s Sex Week events.
This year’s Sex Week events covered hot topics including the representation of women in hip-hop music videos, queer sexuality, pornography as activism, and the rape epidemic in the U.S. military with a screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Invisible War. In addition to these informative and thought-provoking events, there was also a selection of humorous and entertaining events such as a drag queen make-up tutorial and a discussion with YouTube sensation and sex educator Laci Green.
Green discussed navigating the relationship world in college and how to achieve and maintain a healthy relationship. Her take home message is that having a healthy relationship is all about supporting each other, communication, trust and respect.
Northwestern’s Sex Week has been described as provocative and suggestive. It definitely achieves its goal of opening up the conversation on campus and making people think. It also lessens the stigma of talking about sex while also educating students in a fun and engaging way.
“I think sex week is awesome—it’s both educational and fun,” Hammersmith says, “There is such a range of events that cater to so many different people and interests and that’s amazing. It provides people with resources (all the free condoms and lube!), as well as the opportunity to go hear speakers about topics that they may not have been exposed to before.”