About 25 people attended Sex Week’s “Manswers: Everything You’re Too Scared to Ask Your Girlfriend” Wednesday, April 10 in Lunt Hall room 105. The event, put on by Sexual Health & Assault Peer Educators, was a panel chaired by six female students who answered various questions about sex from a female perspective.
A mix-up with the Math Society, which thought it had reserved room 105, prompted a member to ask how math majors get kicked out of a room in the math department by Sex Week. Despite the confusion, the event began smoothly.
“Sex Week goes along really well with SHAPE’s mission,” said Ceri Roberts, a recent Medill graduate and panelist member. She elaborated by saying that creating a campus where everyone is more comfortable with sexual topics is ideal, and that having a panel was a great way to help.
Panelists took turns answering questions written on note cards by both audience members and previous general queries. After introducing themselves, they got right down to business.
“Why won’t my girlfriend let me go down on her?” was the first question posed.
“This especially to a lot of women can feel like a very intimate act,” said the first panelist to answer. Even more intimate than intercourse, she elaborated. Another panelist relayed how a friend’s boyfriend told her that her vagina tasted like tar, which is obviously pretty mean and would make anyone feel pretty insecure.
They then went on to questions such as, 'do guys have a legitimate reason to know a girl’s past history?' And 'is it normal for a guy to be threatened by a vibrator?' For the former, the general consensus was that the only important thing to know was whether a partner was clean or not, and for the latter one panelist stated that if your girlfriend asks you about a vibrator, then she’s probably comfortable enough in your masculinity to know that you can handle it.
Things got pretty graphic with discussions of why it is supposedly so easy for women to dismiss the virility of a man’s masculine insecurity and how to, with steps included, make a partner cum. Despite some confusion as to what the first question meant, the panelists generally decided that it meant a general lack of sympathy for a man’s inability to maintain his sex drive, on occasion. An audience member suggested cock rings as a way of helping combat this, along with the panelists’ conclusion that a general variety of sex positions promote exploration. For the second question, a panelist summed it up succinctly.
“There’s not one eHow like how to make Ramen, there’s not one eHow like how to make a girl cum.”
One question anonymously asked by an audience member was about whether it was offensive to ask his girlfriend to have a threesome with himself and his brother. Taking brother to mean good, perhaps best, friend, the women concluded that as long as the topic was presented well, as in having a dialogue about how to bring pleasure as opposed to just being like 'yo let’s do this,' then it would be acceptable.
In discussing Northwestern’s unique dating culture, the panelists philosophized about why there isn’t casual dating here. They variously answered that it had to do with immaturity – cutting out the getting-to-know-you part of a relationship and replacing it with drunken sex, or the Northwestern culture of always being busy and not really thinking about relationships, to name a few reasons.
The last question the panelists answered, posed by an audience member, was about how to build good music playlists. After answering generally, each panelist went down the line to answer her personal preference. Responses were as diverse as Frank Ocean’s channel ORANGE, to Muse, to the simple sounds of bodies.
Despite being for and about men, very few were in attendance.
“We try as hard as we can to market and promote to everyone,” said Roberts. “Guys kind of are more reserved about having conversations about sex.” She did note, however, that more guys were at the event than typical Sex Week or SHAPE events.
The panel ended with a raffle of sex-related objects. As well, each attendee received free condoms, lubricant and a magazine advertising sex-related goods.