As a journalism major, I’m wondering when I’ll be able to take my sexual advice course to keep up with the hard hitting columns of the Ivy League.
Through the first half of this semester, sexual advice opinion columns have been popping up in student newspapers across the country, particularly Yale Daily News’ “WKND” column and The Cornell Daily Sun’s “Sex on Thursday” column.
“The Secret to the Perfect Blowjob” from “Sex on Thursday” is not really advice, but rather a bragging right for the author, under a pseudonym, to showcase her personal sexual exploits, as well as encouraging her readers to also challenge themselves in the art of fellatio.
“The best compliment I’ve received regarding my fellatio prowess was that I should write a book on my technique,” she writes.
In a similar article, author “Jack Strap” tells the tale of how he was almost involved in a threesome with two other men that involved copious amounts of “french kissing” and neck grabbing.
“I am in no way endorsing ‘homewrecking’ but what I want you to take away from this is that things happen, and sometimes if the home is already vacant, there is nothing wrong with wanting to put it to good use shortly after,” he writes.
Meanwhile, at Yale, their newspaper breaks down “what is sex?” and uses charts and graphics to explain all the possible ways anyone with a pulse can “successfuly” engage in sexual relations. (Of course, marriage and commitment are sold separately.)
Publishing advice on how to navigate the
seemingly deteriorating ethics around
college dating is one thing, but publishing blatant pornography regarding your personal sexual experiences is not advice, its smut.
Being a college student in the 21st century is mentally draining. Greek life and other similar institutions have only made traditional values regarding dating to be realistically thrown out the window. “Hookup culture” dominates college campuses throughout the nation, and the world, frankly.
In a study published by the American Psychological Association, 78% of sexual partners who engaged under the guise of “casual hookup culture” over-estimated their partner’s comfort level and encouraged wildly unpredictable levels of performance anxiety and unnatural pressure.
“An individual history of hookup behavior has been associated with a variety of mental health factors. In a recent study of 394 young adults followed across a university semester, those participants with more depressive symptoms and greater feelings of loneliness who engaged in penetrative sex hookups subsequently reported a reduction in both depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness (Owen et al., 2011). At the same time, those participants who reported less depressive symptoms and fewer feelings of loneliness who engaged in penetrative sex hookups subsequently reported an increase in both depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness,” the study goes on to report.
I am in no way arguing a suppression of speech for anyone. I believe that the First Amendment is the only way to keep the progress of democracy from regressing. However, ethics within publications need to be upheld. Promoting a disgusting cultural issue such as hookup culture is only going to create an overwhelmingly vulnerable population. Locker room talk simply does not belong in a newspaper, plain and simple.
