admin @ Tue, 2005-10-18 11:00
This weekend, the company that makes Trojan condoms invited me to New York City to meet other college journalists and established sexperts and discuss-you guessed it-sex. Ten boxes of Trojan condoms, three days in Manhattan and one handshake with Dr. Drew later, I emerged from the rainy streets of New York City with a renewed perspective on sex at UC Berkeley.
After meeting the other students, I quickly realized that UC Berkeley is the best place to be a sex columnist. The hot topic this weekend was sex in college newspapers. I was the only student that had no complaints about censorship. While other college journalists are struggling to publish anything about the human act that created them, I sit topless behind a stack of Daily Cals dishing out words like "pussy" and "cock." We are lucky little lechers to be experiencing our most sexually liberal years at a school like UC Berkeley. If you think that every campus is this great about tossing condoms to the cheering crowds on their version of Sproul Plaza, think again. One college opinion editor I met this weekend, from the self-proclaimed "golden buckle of the Bible Belt, honey" told us how grocery store clerks in Lubbock, Texas harass students by asking for identification when they try to buy condoms.
On Friday, the other student journalists and I waded through flooded streets to the W Hotel penthouse in Times Square for the official Trojan Journalism Roundtable with moderator Dr. Drew and sex editors for Penthouse, Men's Health magazine and Men's Fitness. In a flamboyant display of sexual openness, the posh penthouse suite was intentionally littered with loads of love gloves (almost all of which had been subtly snatched by the end of the discussion). The orgasm gap, hook-up culture and the availability of pornography to our generation were topics of discussion within the walls of possibly the most expensive room I've ever been in.
However, most of our discussion was narrowly heterosexual and Dr. Drew frequently made college-aged men sound like hormone-driven monkeys (not to mention, the pizza was cold). The majority of the other students at the college roundtable were not sex columnists, but ad managers, features editors and opinion editors. They weren't there to engage in a riveting dialogue about the hurdles of humping health or the latest kinky frontiers, they were simply trying to figure out how to build a sexual voice on their campuses-something that UC Berkeley has been pioneering since 1997.
I was disappointed by Dr. Drew's oversimplification of the male mind at a college level. One of the Trojan representatives listening in on the conference, a 20-something working in public relations, confessed to me later that Dr. Drew made him feel sheepish at best. Referring to young men as "on drugs" because of their supposed inability to overcome their hormonal urges, Dr. Drew didn't give guys the credit they deserve.
But anyone who's ever heard Dr. Drew field questions knows that he is professional, yet relatable, and can pull accurate and helpful information form his brain like a Looney Toon pulls a mallet from his ass. Wham! You're informed. So I took advantage of my chance to ask Dr. Drew a few questions: What does he think about male and female circumcision? Why do some people laugh compulsively when they orgasm? Where does the stork get all the babies from in the first place? In the middle of our electric dialogue on hook-up culture in college, Dr. Drew surprised us with a definitive message for women. He said, "I can't find strong enough words for this: My one word of advice to women is trust your instincts ... trust the little voice inside ... There is a difference between attraction and arousal and instincts. Your instincts are the healing voice." There was no equivalent advice for men.
However, Dr. Drew did recommend four books to cover "the basics of biology, sex and love and a psychological perspective": "The Alchemy of Love and Lust" by Theresa Crenshaw, "Sex on the Brain" by Deborah Blum, "Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters" by Ethel Person and "Why We Love" by Helen Fisher. So if you aren't getting enough action here, you might add those titles to your licentious literature.
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