My first week of college I enjoyed my first dose of smut. The source? Squirm: The Art of Campus Sex, Vassar’s erotic magazine, which is replete with salacious prose, poetry, and photography created by and for the student body. Squirm started four years ago when a group of Vassar students decided to create “a project that would start dialogue [and] act… return to article
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Reader Comments (11)Page 1 of 1 pagesThis article is great! It is both interesting and informative. It’s also a great combination of the identity politcs of the 70s and the goals and difficulties of the present generation.
Posted by Ana Minian on Aug 16, 2003 at 5:34 AM Forgive my ignorance, but is “sex-positivity” what it sounds like in context, promoting a positive attitude toward sex, or is there some other meaning?
Posted by Kent Bullis on Aug 18, 2003 at 1:59 PM The sex-positivity movement arose in reaction to anti-porn and other feminist movements that framed sex as problematic or distasteful for women. Sex positivity, in contrast, focuses on sex as pleasurable, empowering, and creative.
Sex-positive activism also tries to downplay or eradicate stigmas attached to sexual choices and to provide safe spaces for people such as sex workers and transsexuals, who have historically been marginalized by the larger feminist community.
Posted by Jessica Clark on Aug 18, 2003 at 10:09 PM Good greif !!! Talk about not having anything better do to or talk about.
Are students these days so desperatly boored that this is the only thing on their minds ???
Posted by Chris on Aug 20, 2003 at 1:48 AM I agree with you Chris from Florida.
I was raised in the 60/70s by great parents. Politically liberal yet morally old fashioned. I love sex! With my husband! But we don’t go around telling everyone we are hetro! Nor do we go around telling others to do What we do or believe How we do! etc
People are too IN YOUR FACE today. Chill out! Freedom of Speach is over rated! I wish more people learned how to use some restraint !
Respecting others is sadly lost!
Posted by Lisa on Aug 20, 2003 at 12:16 PM I agree with you Chris from Florida.
I was raised in the 60/70s by great parents. Politically liberal yet morally old fashioned. I love sex! With my husband! But we don’t go around telling everyone we are hetro! Nor do we go around telling others to do What we do or believe How we do! etc
People are too IN YOUR FACE today. Chill out! Freedom of Speach is over rated! I wish more people learned how to use some restraint !
Respecting others is sadly lost!
What happened to the gathering to discuss literature?
Posted by Lisa on Aug 20, 2003 at 12:16 PM woops….
make that speech not speach…
i should edit pre-sending!
Posted by Lisa on Aug 20, 2003 at 12:22 PM Actually, I have no problem with this article. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of and just because there is a story about publications that explore the erotic and other forms of sexual identities that are different is not being in one’s face. It is bringing such groups out and showing them as they are, less chances of demonizing them. Sex is not all college students think of but it is a real issue for many people. As for freedom of speech, it’s a wonderful thing unless someone says something one doesn’t like. It, then, becomes over-rated. I guess we could always stifle dissenting views and move to a totalitarian society. Instead of moving to stifle someone else’s voice, one should present a counterpoint all in the spirit of public debate which is precisely what the freedom of speech encourages. Of course, we could let people remain ignorant and move back to the Dark Ages; that sounds really good to me.
Posted by Christian on Sep 9, 2003 at 10:20 PM If people are happy in their current sexual state of being, that’s great, and more power to them!
However, people with “alternative” sexual life styles don’t have the same support and role models that main stream, heterosexual couples have. They need to talk to others who have the same concerns and questions, and sex positive groups make that possible.
It may also be that you haven’t encountered the anti-sex attitudes that were prevelant when I went to college in the late 1980’s. Remember “The Rape Culture Project?” It certainly had some good points, but it seems like a lot of feminists felt like they had to reject their own sexuality, because it had been used to stigmatize and punish them for so long. A lot of my friends thought all representations of sexuality were evil porn, and that anything kinky was “sick” and needed to be cured. Now people are realizing that just because people have different turn-on doesn’t mean they have *bad* turn ons. That’s what being sex positive is about.
Just food for thought.
Sincerely,
Ms. Lee Marshall
Posted by Lee Marshall on Oct 17, 2003 at 6:52 AM Fifty-eight year old father if five who was in Haight Ashbury when it happened…what has higher education come to? No wonder we are outsourcing our entry level high tech jobs to Asia. Those young people are working their butts off to find a better life, while America’s brighest are obsessed with just getting off. Maybe old Nakita was right after all.
Posted by Randy Williams on Mar 2, 2004 at 6:39 AM I was wondering how I could view this magazine. I am doing a paper on college pornography.
Posted by Lauren on Mar 5, 2004 at 8:14 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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