Harvard Sex Week organizer calls conservatives ‘homophobic’ for opposition to anal sex workshop
Harvard’s annual Sex Week will include a workshop on anal sex.
Kirin Gupta, the event organizer, said the media backlash over the event is just “latent homophobia” and “residual prejudices.”
The anal sex workshop was scheduled for Nov., 4--Election Day.
Opposition to Harvard University’s anal sex workshop is just conservative homophobia and prejudice, according to the event organizer.
This year, Harvard’s annual Sex Week included a workshop called “ What What in the Butt: Anal Sex 101,” aimed at teaching “how to do [anal sex] well.” The event received national media attention from outlets that criticized and questioned the academic value and integrity of the workshop.
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“The conservative backlash speaks to the latent homophobia that society thinks so often it has gotten over, and has not,” Kirin Gupta, one of the event organizers, told MTV. “It speaks to these residual prejudices that people [have] when faced with a reality they’re not willing to acknowledge or respect.”
“I would say that the idea America has a crumbling morality, that we have some kind of morality that’s standing, is built on repressive patriarchal conceptions of sex and sexuality,” Gupta said. “So if that’s crumbling, then let it crumble.”
Gupta is co-president of Sexual Health Education & Advocacy Throughout Harvard (SHEATH) which is the student group that organizes Harvard’s Sex Week. The anal sex workshop was held on Nov., 4--Election Day.
The workshop was headlined by a “sexologist” from Good Vibrations, a sex toy and product retailer.
Gupta said that the workshop is simply about the “general mechanics” of anal sex and “does address performing this act on anyone of any gender.”
Gupta also said the attention the workshop has garnered is in part because Harvard is an Ivy League school.
“[A] lot of times people forget that an Ivy League is also a college campus,” she told MTV. “There are young people here and they need sex education just as much as any other campus needs it. A lot of people think of Harvard as [having] old-school, ivory tower, Northeastern Protestant puritan morality--this abstinent of sexually repressed attitude towards intimacy.”
“I can’t imagine that there are not more worthwhile educational programs and initiatives to which Harvard’s resources should be devoted,” Molly Wharton, a Harvard student, told The College Fix.
Sex Week began Nov., 2 and included other events focused on virginity,sexual social justice issues, racism, fetishes, and online dating apps. The week ends Nov., 8.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @K_Schallhorn
