31st
On Sex @ MIT.
When I first heard that The Tech was having a sex issue, I squealed like a little girl. About fucking time, right? It finally came out today, and people are most definitely talking about it. On our way to 10.302 lecture, a lot of us Course 10 juniors grabbed our copies from the hallway leading to building 66 and sat down in 66-110 to read it before Prof. Hatton started lecture, at which point I was so shocked by the sight of Christine holding two dildos and smiling like it’s fucking Christmas that the professor felt the need to ask what was up and we all started to laugh. Maybe not the reaction you’d expect from a room full of mature college students, but it was inevitable. If The Tech was hoping to get a reaction from people, they very well got it. Here’s mine, page by page.
First of all, major kudos to the people who had the balls to get naked for the camera. I wish I’d heard about this; it would’ve been a good start to my playmate career. (Juuuust kidding!) My respect for Dorota has increased exponentially, after seeing her pose nude for The Tech and being the only one brave enough to show her face (the rest of the models covered artfully with some papers). She looks gorgeous and she has a nice body that she definitely needs to show off.
The interview with Kate McCarthy, “MIT’s official sexpert” —God, I fucking hate that word, “sexpert”— is your usual, generic “don’t be afraid to experiment but please use protection” piece, the one they have to print so the editors and writers don’t seem all like a bunch of nymphos. It’s always useful to reiterate all of these points, but to someone who’s heard this many, many times and knows what her resources are (even if she doesn’t use them all— yeah, yeah, whatever) this didn’t spark my curiosity. Something that did resonate with me, though:
There are plenty of fish in the sea. If a relationship doesn’t work out, bounce back, dust yourself off and get out there again. Don’t let a break up get you down. You are an amazing, vibrant, and sexy person and if one person doesn’t realize it, it’s his/her loss. Self-confidence is huge.
Preach it, sister. This is something I would’ve never expected from someone who talks sex from a strictly medical perspective, and it’s refreshing to read, especially to me right now. Oh, and she also advises people to masturbate, which MIT students need to do more of. (More on that later.)
The “My First Time” stories were amusing, although I wish this had been drawn out into a full-length article instead of printing little snippets. Perhaps they didn’t have enough submissions, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt. The few stories that were printed were funny and I suggest you read them. I mean, someone regretting fucking a Republican? I’m glad to say that’s one mistake I haven’t made, not consciously at least.
While I appreciated the stories, I did not appreciate the uppity fucker who wrote that their first time will happen after they’re married because they want it to “actually mean something.” OK, my first time was not with someone I loved, or even liked, but did it mean something to me? Abso-fucking-lutely. It felt liberating and exhilarating, it built my confidence, it was a completely selfish act on both sides, and it was an awesome time, awesome enough for an encore. Just because you have no feelings for the person you’re sleeping with doesn’t mean that it won’t mean anything. If you’re looking for your feelings for someone to be validated and/or reciprocated, maybe having sex is not the best idea. I will respect other people’s point of view and their decision to wait until marriage, as unwise as I think it might be —gotta test the ride before you commit to it, right?— but don’t be the one party-pooper to post something so self-righteous when the prompt is clearly looking for people WHO HAVE ALREADY FUCKED.
I skipped the rape article, because that shit is depressing. I feel sort of bad dismissing that, since it’s important on principle, but most of those stories are the same, especially in a college context: The girl was drunk at a frat party, she said no, passed out and the guy proceeded to fuck her. I’m sure you’ve all heard some variation on this story.
Now on to the good part: The stats. The Tech conducted a survey for all the undergraduates at MIT, 40% of which answered. I am very sad about the fact that not enough people partook in this, partly because I know we’re all interested in knowing about other people’s sex lives, but also because the larger the sample size, the more accurate the statistics would’ve been. The freshman class has the most virgins by percentage— no surprise. PoliSci majors (Course 17) have 9.9% virgins, which seems like a lot, but 17 is a very small major so it could just happen to have mostly sexually-active people. Course 10s are a very disappointing (to me, at least) 35.8% virgins, which seems to fit in with most of the majors. In general, I wouldn’t say a lot of students have had same-sex encounters: 46.6% of the CMS majors have had them, but they’re the exception— most of the percentages hover around the teens. McCormick houses most of the virgins on campus, which is no surprise, given the reputation its residents have as prudish and conservative people. Senior House comes second only to the frats with a 20.4%, again confirming the stereotype of us as sex-crazed, drug-fueled savages.
The surprising statistics to me were probably the ones related to self-lovin’. On the male side, no news: The guys masturbate quite often, with a good 75% of them (I’m eyeballing here from the pie charts) jerking off at least once or twice a week, but some of them doing it daily. Daily masturbation seems too intense for me as a girl, but I know plenty of guys who have made masturbation part of their daily routine, so these numbers look reasonable. There’s very few guys who’ve never masturbated, but you’re bound to get those who only touch their dick to pee. The girls, however, shocked me. More than a third of the girls have never masturbated. NEVER. The girls who masturbate often enough (once a month, once a week, daily) comprise about 50% of the girls who answered the survey. Now, I can definitely see why less girls masturbate: a lot of girls are raised to believe that touching themselves for pleasure is a bad thing that shouldn’t be done, whereas it is generally accepted that boys will start masturbating from an early age. I know this one girl who thinks that masturbating is gross and has never done it. How can you be repulsed by your own body?! I really think that the girls around campus need to loosen up a bit and realize that there are many, many benefits to masturbating, and that it’s completely normal and not gross and a great way to relieve stress.And on that note, let’s talk about sex toys: 8% of the guys and 16% of the girls own some. I didn’t expect many guys to have sex toys, since jerking off is a relatively straight-forward act and the sex toys I’ve seen that are meant to be used on the penis look like a bear trap. I wouldn’t want to stick my dick in a fleshlight. So I’m thinking a lot of these sex toys are probably for anal use or something. The girls need to get their hands on vibrators like, now. I expected a lot more girls to have sex toys. Again, there’s nothing trashy or gross about owning a vibrator in principle; even though there are a million trashy-looking toys out there, there’s nicer looking ones too. Find something that looks pretty and feels nice, and treat yourself. As Lena and Christine said on their article— which was very good and informative and I also suggest you read it— a good quality sex toy is well worth the investment. (If you’re reading this and you want to try something but don’t know where to start, email me.)
That’s basically where it ends for me. There’s some opinion articles, whatever with that shit, and there’s the lube review, which is good and all but lube is something that is very subjective anyway, so I skipped this. The take-away message was that it’s good to have lube on hand, so if you don’t have some, I suggest you pop by Good Vibes and sample their selection. I don’t have enough fingers to count the amount of times I was having sex and wished I had lube, so we should all be stocking up some lube along with the condoms.
In general, I am very glad that The Tech published this. I feel like, as a community, we’re not talking about sex as openly as we could. A lot of students come in here absolutely clueless about sex, and if we encourage open discussion about these things, these people could learn a lot from the rest of us. I can’t say much though, because I live in the dorm where people have the most anal sex, so I haven’t had to deal much with people who are not comfortable with their sexuality, CLEARLY. But anal aside, I think that The Tech should continue to act as a forum where sex can be discussed openly and widely. I suggest having a column, à la New York Magazine’s Sex Diaries, where people around campus could submit anonymous stories about their sexual experiences. Few are brave enough to have their name associated with the words “I jerked him until he came and he jizzed all over my tits,” or something of the sort. But a column like that would most certainly intrigue students across campus, it would give people a stage to present their stories (as crazy or sad as they may be), and it gives others the opportunity to learn from people’s experiences. Fuck, maybe I should pitch this to The Tech’s editor in chief or something. (Nobody steal my idea!)
Anyway, those were my definitely-more-than-two cents on this. Thoughts?
