We Need Sex Week - Here's Why

Sex week is easily one of the most controversial programs on campus today. An annual event organized by Sex Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT), the event has regularly drawn the ire of Tennessee Republicans in Nashville. Offended conservatives and even clergymen have characterized the event embarrassing and salacious.

Even the current interim UT President Randy Boyd and interim UT chancellor Wayne Davis, have publicly sided against the event. In the wake of a Tennessee State Comptroller Report which condemned the usage of student activity funds on Sex Week, Boyd sided with Nashville, saying the event “…has damaged the reputation and overshadowed the many achievements of our university”. 

The Tennessee State Legislature has repeatedly attempted to defund the program, and to disqualify its leaders as uneducated or incompetent. One of the worst threats to the program came last year with the perpetual controversy on the proposed reallocation of Student Programming Allocation Committee (SPAC) Funds.

Since its inception, perceptions of Sex Week have been shrouded in clouds of disinformation, outrage, hot button issues such as the sexual assault, LGBTQIA+ affairs, and contraception. 

But the truth is that Sex Week Matters. 

Sexual education has proven to lower teenage pregnancies, STD transmission, and increase contraception usage. But beyond this, sex education addresses many topics that simply are not addressed properly in mainstream American society, basically because they have to do with sex.

Sex is still quite a taboo subject in many circles of American society. This reflects itself in the ongoing political battles relating to contraception, abortion and other sexual wellness issues throughout America. Just this year, President Trump ordered federal funding for sexual education to focus on abstinence only programs. 

The lack of sex ed is exacerbated by the fact that only 20 states require that sex ed and HIV education be taught in schools, and of those only 13 states require that information taught be medically accurate.

We are basically allowing sex to be one big guessing game of smoke and mirrors for many of our youth. As a result, for millions of American children, the reality is that ‘sex education’ consists of little to no discussion with any teacher or parent on the topic. We remain the Western country with the highest teen pregnancy rate. America’s taboo towards sex also manifests itself in the apparent intolerance towards nudity on television, to the point that graphic violence in films often tends to be less scrutinized.

Paradoxically, mainstream American culture tends to be quite sexualized. In a report by J. Walter Thompson New York and The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, it was found that women were still sexualized and misrepresented in media to a significant degree. Over a ten year stretch from late 2006 to 2017, the report found that women who appeared in ads still tended to be at least 10 years younger than their male counterparts and had seven times less speaking time than male counterparts. Women on average appeared in ads with sexually revealing clothing five times more than male counterparts. (report can be found here) 

These media trends, combined with a lack of sexual education, as well as a permissive attitude towards sexual consent that remains a problem in many parts of American society has created an atmosphere towards sex that can be truly toxic. Aside from the high-level instances in which victims of sexual assault or harassment were humiliated and those accused skirted scrutiny (such as that of Justice Kavanaugh, or Justice Thomas), there exists many news stories of brave victims who were publicly eviscerated for reporting their attackers. (Here is another example)

This is why we need sex education, and why we need Sex Week. We need this forum because we need to be having these discussions not just as UT, or the state of Tennessee, but as a country. The first step towards fixing these issues is normalizing them in our national dialogue. We can’t engender a society with healthier attitudes towards sex and sexuality unless we are willing to come together and address these issues.

Legislators in Nashville who oppose Sex Week are doing a major disservice to their own constituents by denying them this vital education. They are disallowing people the opportunity to protect themselves from STDs, inform themselves about consent, and better their sexual wellness. Their actions are also once more sending a message to the LGBTQIA+ students of UTK and Tennessee that their identity and sexuality are not welcome and should be kept out of public view.

This cannot be the values of Tennessee Volunteers. As Vols, we should work to engender freedom of ideas, and not silence education we disagree with. Volunteers always strive to elevate one another by educating one another, and Sex Week achieves just that.  

Let’s Talk about it.

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