By SEGAN HELLE
Sexual Health Education and Advocacy Throughout Harvard (SHEATH) will kick off its seventh annual Harvard Sex Week with its first event this Sunday, the 28th at 4 PM. This year’s Sex Week will encompass a total of thirteen different events geared towards increasing education and decreasing stigmatization over sexual relationships in college. These events will be spread over the course of eight consecutive days, hosted in various classrooms within Sever, Emerson, and Harvard Hall.
Sex Week is a series of workshops, lectures, and discussions centered around sexuality, sexual health, gender, and relationships. Programming includes conversations that work to integrate the personal and the political, covering topics ranging from body positivity, non-monogamy, racial preferences in dating, and virginity to the arguably more taboo workshops on period sex, BDSM in the dorm room, and sexual fetishes.
Within the line-up will also be a keynote address by Dr. Laurie Mintz, Pd.D., a licensed therapist and professor of psychology at the University of Florida, on the topic of “orgasm equality.” The address will cover some of the material Mintz discusses in her most recent book, Becoming Cliterate, which won the 2019 Society for Sex Therapy and Research Consumer Book Award. The week will be capped off with Sexpardy!, a trivia game show co-hosted by both SHEATH and Sexual Health Awareness & Relationship Communication (SHARC) educators.
This year’s events are sponsored by thirteen different student organizations, including the UC, and twenty-two independent corporate sponsors, including Good Vibrations, which has supplied free sex toys at events in the past.
Segan Helle (shelle@college.harvard.edu)