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Volume XV Issue 2 March 13, 2003
Sexual Liberation on Campus
Amherst’s views on sexuality range from liberating openness to traditional double standards.
By Gail Zuckerwise
In a small institution such as Amherst, individual personalities are unavoidably noticed, and ideas, whether pre-conceived or resulting, have ways of attaching themselves to individuals. Our college environment creates a society in which people generally feel a level of comfort, for faces are familiar and recognition of people and surroundings provides for a certain intimacy. However, looking in on this world, it seems as though the community has taken precedence over these distinct characters, and it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate the individual from the whole. Foucault writes about sexuality as a key element in the analysis of these people.
Relating Foucault’s writings on the deployment of sexuality to that of the Amherst community, it is clear that the students have devoted a large effort to breaking free from some of these generalizations while continuing to embrace others. Amherst is an institution that prides itself on its diverse and accepting student body. A member of this community is content to be seen as an independent entity interacting in a largely diverse population.
However, there are many similarities among the students that are overlooked; similarities in behavior, perception, and attitude that constitute a large part of the Amherst self as a collective unit. In his discussion on the deployment of sexuality, Foucault talks of “transforming sex into a discourse.” This is illustrated in many ways through interaction between people in relation to gender. Communication between and among males and females in relation to sex and sexuality is an extremely defining and regulating aspect of the student body. The force behind this is the power that sex has come to yield. Foucault writes of the importance of the “multiplication of discourses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: and incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail”. This exponential growth in openness and acceptance of sexual discourse is easily noticed at Amherst and has become a major socially defining aspect of many individuals among their peers.
Recently, there have been two events that perfectly exemplify the importance of sex to the Amherst Community. An orgasm workshop was openly advertised in many forums, tempting students with promises of skills to get, give, and enhance orgasms. Whereas Foucault writes of sex’s power through desire as a way of regulation and discipline, at this liberal arts institution, we have come to embrace liberation through sexuality. Stoler comments on Foucault’s interest in “the norm that circulates between the processes of disciplining and regularization” and how these “articulate the individual and the population”. Although Foucault sees a different norm than that of the Amherst students, his reasoning still applies in terms of establishing a convention. This contrast is important in identifying the individuals that make up this community, for it proves their desire to attain freedom through actions that were once condemned.
Another example was Amherst’s rendition of the Vagina Monologues. Students preformed in front of their peers to express the value of femininity, as well as the love for pleasure seeking and self-satisfaction. “The value of the Vagina Monologues goes beyond a past full of negative attitudes. It offers a personal, grounded in the body way of moving toward the future,” according to Gloria Steinman. Not only does this go beyond the prior constraints of sexuality, but it allows for the individual to be accepted and praised for further self-determining actions. A flier for the production explains, “Females celebrating their vaginas are another step towards women taking control of their bodies.” It is apparent that sexuality has become a major influence on the concept of the self at Amherst, for it is one way in which people express comfort with themselves and others.
While sexuality has become liberating for many people here, it also maintains its constraining properties in many senses. This can be understood through comparison to Stoler’s discussion of colonialism, which she argues “has taken the categories of “colonizer” and “colonized” as givens, rather than as constructions that need to be explained. Despite our attempts to redefine sexuality as an equalizing agent between genders and their needs and acquisitions, there are still many instances where sexual encounters become centered on the idea of the pursuer and the pursued. Our ability to make these clear distinctions shows that there is still a ways to go until individuals can escape from society’s rigid definitions. This becomes important when we notice its lingering effects on the differentiation between norms among gender. An appropriate example is the double standard that continues to exist concerning sexual behavior among males and females.
While we pride ourselves on our liberal attitudes towards gender relations, as seen by the example of the campus events, there are still certain conventions that cannot be escaped. This is clear when listening to conversations on the topic among friends or hearing others speak of reputations that are based on sexual actions. Sexual behavior is a large contributor to reputation and consequently is largely used to create a desired persona or to characterize another. It is clear that guys who are sexually involved with many girls are viewed as “players,” while girls who become involved with multiple guys are “sluts.” It is interesting to try to rationalize these views, for they are so unfounded, yet this contradiction is one convention that even liberal Amherst students cannot eliminate when defining themselves.
“We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, it is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim…to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures, and knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance”.
Using sexuality to help define oneself is reasonable, but it will only be effective when each individual understands the importance of liberating himself from its convention and personally defining his interpretation of the deployment of sexuality. Until we are able to break free from society’s pre-conceived notions of sex, it remains an unstable way of self-definition, for outside influences inhibit the self-defining process.
Our attempts at liberalizing sexuality show our determination to use sexual discourse to our advantage in terms of establishing the individual, and through these efforts, Amherst individuals will continue to achieve higher freedom of self-expression and self-creation.
Gail Zuckerwise ’05 is a Staff Writer for The Indicator.
Monday, May 21
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