NEWS: Harvard Kids Don't Put Out

I fucked a couple of Harvard undergrads. Is that "proof" enough or do you want to see a used condom?

It's a fucking title - it's simply meant to draw attention. That should have been deduced by reading the first sentence of the article.

Fucking lighten up.

I wasn't being serious, sir. It was entirely tongue-in-cheek, and I realize that Subrosa was simply drawing attention to his (as I believe I mentioned) really well-written and thought-provoking article. Next time I'll add some ridiculous emoticons and make eeeeeeeeeverything better.

Does that make you feel better? If not, maybe you should take your own advice.

Anytime, lawyer-man. I've got a raging girl-boner for that big, sexy brain of yours.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

I love the fact that after what was supposedly an informed and educated opinion on sexual matters, his final statement is one of ignorance and stupidity....

Except Quebec....Fuck those guys...

haha, thats beautiful. Being from Montreal, i have always loved people who insult my home. I find it funny. And sad, but mostly funny.

You're both entirely correct. I guess it's the cases that aren't really clear at all that I'm really thinking about. And it's not that I think that people won't find themselves in bad situations if they decide in advance not to get into bad situations. It's that I feel like at a lot of schools there's a hookup culture that says that people should be cool with casual sex, that they shouldn't feel restrained from doing whatever they feel like doing, that they shouldn't let themselves get hung up on traditional-values moral/religious patriarchal judgmental anti-sex bullshit--and what young adult doesn't want sex, right? Of course you want to get laid! But the problem is that a lot of people don't know what they want, and it's really easy to find yourself in a situation you didn't want to be in when you had no idea what you wanted to start out with--when you only knew what you felt like you were supposed to want. (It's even easier to have this happen when you're drinking, which also seems like a cultural expectation at many colleges.) My school might have been abnormal this way, but I felt like there was a culture that made you weird if you weren't okay with casual sex (and excessive drinking--often in tandem). And it kind of made it feel like everyone was doing that: going out and partying and having a blast and fucking whoever they wanted, however and wherever and whenever they wanted. That was, of course, not true, but the collective mindset seemed to be that the snot-nosed elitist secular liberal hippie kids would be damned if they'd let anyone tell them who to fuck or under what circumstances (or whether and how much of which substances to consume before/while/after said fucking occurred).

I don't even know how many stories I've heard, from people at my school and at lots of other schools, that followed this exact pattern: "Well, we were out together, and it was fun, we were making out/fooling around/doing whatever and I liked that, I think I was cool with that [or "and that wasn't a big deal, I didn't mind that, I guess"] and then suddenly everything got way out of hand." And what I'm arguing is that it's hard to know when things are getting out of hand when you haven't really thought about what "out of hand" could mean for you, and you kind of feel like things aren't supposed to be able to get out of hand because you feel like you're supposed to be able to go with the flow and see where things lead and be cool with that and enjoy it. The end result of those situations might not be clearly classifiable as rape. In fact, I don't think that they usually are clearly classifiable as rape (which is not at all to say that what happens in some of those situations can't be called rape). It's not that I'm saying that rape or sexual assault can be prevented by suggesting that people take a moment to think about their boundaries. It's that I feel like maybe having people think about their personal boundaries and validating the boundaries that people set for themselves--validating the simple act of boundary-setting--might help people end up in fewer situations that end in them feeling both victimized and at fault and really having no indicators either way to help them figure it out.

What I'm saying is less helpful for people who knew that they had no intention of hooking up and it was forced upon them anyway. I think I'm talking more about validating that intention. Again, it seems dumb that anyone would need to tell someone that it's okay not to want to hook up in whatever circumstance, but I feel like there are a lot of people (especially earlier on in college) who feel like it's weird or unacceptable not to want to hook up--or who feel like it's weird or unacceptable to want to make out or mess around a bit, but not fuck--whatever. I feel like there are people don't think that their boundaries would be valid in the eyes of their peers, and so they don't set them.

Does that make sense? The more I type, the stronger sense I'm getting that I know what I'm trying to say but I may not be getting it across at all.

I totally meant it, too. Totally.

Yes, I think so. And while I can't say that I experienced that same hook-up culture in college that you did, I understand that it exists and that it may lead to people making bad choices that could lead them to situations that may lead to bad results.

I think (and I could be wrong on this) that we would agree that a discussion about the pitfalls of the "hookup culture" is not at all inappropriate and could be helpful. My position (and I think yours is as well) is that a date rape seminar is not the ideal format for that discussion to take place. Do I have that basically right?

No, I think a date rape seminar could actually be a great place to talk about that kind of thing, to be honest. (By that I mean that I think it's quite relevant--as are subjects like substance abuse. I realize that the scope of such a seminar would likely have to be narrowed down, but a discussion of expectations and pressures and boundaries as applied to sexual interaction is extremely relevant to the subject of sexual assault on campus/in a college setting.)

I don't, however, think that such a seminar would be a great place to preach strict abstinence (I don't think that that would be effective--especially if it's in a cheesy or trite or values-laden format), and I certainly don't think that date rape seminars or other educational programs like that create those social expectations in any way whatsoever.

And it's not necessarily that I think people make bad choices, per se, that lead to bad results. I'm having a really hard time articulating what I do mean, though, so I'm going to have to mull and then come back to this.

Smart people being humble regarding the difficulty of articulating clear positions concerning complex and fraught social and personal issues.

A rare moment on the SG boards. Let's pause and treasure this, folks.

OK. I should have been more clear. That's what I thought you meant, but didn't articulate it very well myself. I agree with what you're proposing above.

OK. Fair enough.

Except it's not on the CE boards.

HAHA YOU'RE A STUPID LOSER!!! LOL!!!11

I'm sorry, what?

Well, it's nearly impossible to detect tones in text.....and even more so with one short sentence.

There are plenty of people in the world who get offended (or would be offended) by a single thread title and I had no way of knowing you weren't one of them.

My apologies.