Letter to the Editor

To the Editors:

As a feminist activist here at Columbia, I was excited to read Mark Hay’s column ("Keeping sex healthy," Feb.8). Hay discusses the status of sexual health on campus, applauding diversity in student groups and institutional services geared towards promoting sex-positivity. He also notes that, despite these services, Columbia students are not sexually healthy. I agree with him thus far: Columbia has exceptional services and yet these services are under-utilized.

Unfortunately, Hay condescendingly reprimands our apparent less than “minimal effort” to successfully reach out to one another—going so far as to advise that groups “should each, within the next week, contact every other campus group.” Hay is right that outreach is key to spreading awareness about sex positivity, but he ignores the work groups already do to promote sexual health.

The feminist, sex-positive, and queer activist groups work together all the time. Campus groups (like Take Back the Night, V-Day, FemSex, Radical C.U.N.T.S, Q, the Columbia Queer Alliance, GendeRevolution, Conversio Virium, and Proud Colors, and more) and administrative services (like the Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center, Men’s Peer Education, the Gay Health Advocacy Project, Well-Woman, and Go Ask Alice!) plan events together frequently. Consider these popular events: Take Back the Night’s annual Sexhibition (a consent based, sex-positive health for campus groups), CQA’s First Friday (a monthly queer-friendly dance), and weekly Radical C.U.N.T.S discussions that bring all types of people together. And what about Queer Awareness Month, Relationship Violence Awareness Month, and Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which always feature a wide variety of co-sponsored events? Not to mention countless events throughout the year, from workshops, to discussions, to forums, to panels, to protests, to parties. Sex positive activists are each other’s best allies—of course we brainstorm, plan, and organize together.

If Hay wants to improve sexual health at Columbia, I recommend that he ask student activists what they are already doing to promote sex-positivity. Ask us about our concerns, our frustrations, our struggles, and our successes. Ask us what we think a sexually healthy campus would look like and how we can get there. Join the conversation, don’t lecture from the sidelines.

Lauren Herold, CC’12
Feb. 10, 2012