What is the Sex at Yale Initiative Anyway?.

Sex Week is a great chance to bring sex out into the open. For one week, students get to share thoughts and ideas about sex that are usually left unsaid, and discuss them honestly, unreservedly, and open-mindedly. But what about when the week ends? The sex scene at Yale will of course continue, but will all the issues that have been raised just be shoved back under the carpet?
Sex at Yale, a new initiative on campus, won’t let that happen. A coalition of almost a hundred students already, led by Professor Melanie Boyd of the department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the initiative seeks to promote ways for individuals to have thoughtful, pleasurable, consensual, and empowered sex at Yale. Its first project is a web site, featuring a collection of student essays that share personal sexual experiences.  At the same time, essays will offer strategies and tips for creatively and successfully navigating Yale’s sexual culture. The essays will deliberately include very diverse perspectives; the goal is to explode the notion that there is a monolithic “hookup” culture at Yale, and show the wide range of sexual practices (including abstinence) that successfully exist on Yale’s campus.
The initiative will also work with existing on-campus groups to promote sexual safety. It will highlight existing resources for physical and emotional sexual health, including resources for preventing and responding to harassment and assault. It will especially seek to support the freshman orientation rape prevention and sexual safety programs, but without exacerbating female fear or sexual shame.
Finally, the site will seek to help individual students become more articulate not only about sexual safety and consent, but also about mutual respect and desire. After all, the initiative’s members argue, it is not enough to have sex that others consent to have with us; sex should always be truly desired by both parties. As Prof. Melanie Boyd put it: “Yale students are creative, smart, resourceful—pretty desirable.  No one should be having sex they don’t want, or in ways they don’t want it, or with people they don’t desire.  And everyone should have a reasonable shot at having the kind of sex lives—active, sedate, celibate, monogamous, etc— that they do want!”
Want to know more about how to get involved? Contact Mihan Lee at mihan.lee@yale.edu.