What Sex Week Forgot

Miriam Grossman, MD  |  2007.05.14  |  The Chicago Sun-Times

Original Article

With headlines focused on college massacres and presidential nominees, it's natural to have overlooked an event that has become familiar on campuses around the nation: Sex Week. The goals of last month's happening at Northwestern University were to examine misconceptions about sexual health and to speak openly about "taboo" and "hush-hush" topics.

Don't yawn—to dismiss Sex Week without scrutiny would be a blunder.

With pandemics of herpes and HPV, antibiotic resistant strains of gonorrhea and more than half of the nation's 1.3 million abortions performed on women under 25, open discussion of uncomfortable sexual health issues is a welcome development. In today's campus culture, "hooking up" is the norm and real relationships are traded in for "friends with benefits." Studies show that up to 80 percent of undergrads have participated in an unplanned sexual encounter, in which there are no intentions of speaking again.

Kudos to Northwestern for recognizing the need to provide accurate information to students so they can safely navigate their sexual encounters.

If only the "misconceptions" targeted by Sex Week—or the "taboo" and "hush-hush" topics discussed in lectures and workshops—had included the most critical issues facing this population.

Unsafe 'safer sex'

I refer first to the false sense of security students have when they practice "safer sex." Standard guidelines advise students to share their sexual histories with a potential partner, but the current scourge of STDs is called "The Hidden Epidemic" for a reason. The millions of cases of diagnosed HPV, herpes and chlamydia are just the tip of the iceberg—most people aren't aware they're infected. So discussing sexual histories, if it ever occurs, is of limited use.

Then there's the reliance on condoms. Anyone working in campus health has seen students in distress upon discovering they have herpes, HPV or a positive pregnancy test: "But we used a condom," she objects, "every time!" She learns the hard way that condoms can fail, and that hidden infections can be transmitted skin-to-skin between areas not protected by latex.

Taboo topics? Here's one: with the death of dating and the normalization of hooking up, young women are more vulnerable than men. They pay a higher price for casual sex, and they pay it often. Men are often silent carriers of infection; women are more likely to develop symptoms—an abnormal Pap test, blisters, warts, or a discharge. Aside from the discomfort, shame and worry, these conditions may require painful, expensive treatment and can complicate future ability to conceive and carry a pregnancy.

Misconceptions about sexual health? Here's one: students don't have to worry about HIV, unless they share needles, have anal intercourse or have a sexual partner who does those things. In the absence of other infections or medical conditions, it is difficult, if not impossible, to transmit the virus vaginally. Homophobia? Not so fast. It's not a matter of sexual orientation—30 percent of young women report engaging in anal intercourse. They should be warned.

Danger of infertility

I suspect that these urgent issues were not included during Sex Week. And somehow I think it's also safe to assume that NU's Campus Feminists, who supported the event, did not include a workshop on one of the major health issues facing women with successful, demanding careers: infertility.

They need to take a look at the work of economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who found that the more successful a woman is in her career, the less likely it is that she'll have a partner or a baby. The women she interviewed who broke through the glass ceiling—CEOs, surgeons and a playwright—spoke bitterly about misinformation about maternal age and childbearing, and mourned their "squandered" fertility.

Talk about hush-hush. A survey of freshman at four-year colleges was conducted earlier this year and reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education. They were asked about their life goals, and the top five answers were listed. Number One? Three out of four students said "raising a family." Who would have guessed?

Do the planners of next year's Sex Week—at NU, Yale or elsewhere—have the courage to include workshops and seminars that will address that sort of "forbidden love"?

Dr. Miriam Grossman is a psychiatrist at UCLA Student Psychological Services and the author of Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness Endangers Every Student. She can be reached at anonymous.md@hotmail.com.

Related Subjects:

Health Care
Higher Ed
Sexuality