The tamest of  “Torn about Porn”s images

This week, GU Pride, United Feminists, and the Georgetown Solidarity Committee are co-sponsoring “Sex Positive Week,” brought to you by University money.

That last part has irked a host of Catholic student leaders, including The Georgetown Academy Editor-in-Chief David Gregory (COL `10) and Georgetown Knights of Columbus Grand Knight Joe Kapusnick (SFS `10). You can read all about it in Voice News.

But let’s get down to business. Who or what’s gracing our fair campus for Sex Positive week that has these students so upset? Well, they tend to mention:

• Tristan Taormino. The self-proclaimed “anal sexpert,” author, and pornographic director will be speaking in ICC 115 on Saturday at the event “Relationships Beyond Monogamy.” Her racey bibliography includes Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships and True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion

• Jenny Block. The author of Open: Love, Sex & Life in an Open Marriage will be speaking at the same event. But If the first chapter of her book (PDF), which sincerely discusses the difficulties of modern women, is any indication, she’ll won’t be anything like Taormino.

• Last night’s “Torn about Porn” event, a discussion about whether images from No Fauxxx shown in a slideshow are “Sex Positive”—that is, affirming rather than objectifying or exploitative, like sex-negative porn. I attended this for tomorrow’s article. While you can construe the ten or so images in the slideshow as ‘offensive,’ the conversation was grounded, with most students concluding that porn is porn, and these images in particular are just “porn with hipsters in it.’

• Mitzi from Black Rose, a D.C.-based bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism organization “that hosts, among other things, educational classes revolving around BDSM activities, issues, and safety.” She spoke at Monday night’s “Sex Positive … What’s that?”

• Ricci Levy of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a group which “educate[s] the public on the importance and value of sexual freedom and counter the arguments of groups seeking to restrict sexual rights”  (think Lawrence v. Texas) and “oppose[s] abstinence-only sex ‘education’ and endorse an age-appropriate, comprehensive approach to sex education.” She also appeared at Monday night’s “Sex Positive … What’s that?”

Image used with the permission of No Fauxxx.