Just when oil spills and attempted bombings and flooding start to get me down, I learn about a something really cool that’s happening in the world that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I recently learned about a conference that happened at Harvard a little big ago called Rethinking Virginity.
Rethinking what now? That’s right, virginity. And it’s high time it got some re-thinking. Just what would a conference like that talk about? Well, here’s what the organizers had to say:
Half a century after the sexual revolution, the concept of virginity remains as contentious as ever. While the sexual abstinence movement preaches in classrooms and college campus the dangers of premarital sex and “hooking up”, feminists decry scare tactics and “slut-shaming”. What are the religious, legal, and economic origins behind ideas of sexual purity? How does queer sexuality complicate the equation? Is a sex-positive vision of abstinence possible?
To give you an idea of how these questions might be answered, the conference had the following panels
Virginity: A Historical and Cultural Primer
Debunking The Virginity Ideal: The Feminist Response To Slut-Shaming & Sexual Scare Tactics
Healthy Sexuality: A Workshop?with
Popping The Queer Cherry: Virginity Loss, Marriage Norms, & LGBT Identity
Toward A Sex-Positive Vision of Abstinence
Lux from our dear friends at Fleshbot participated in the conference, moderating the Debunking The Virginity Ideal panel and speaking on the Popping the Queer Cherry panel. We asked Lux a few questions about the conference – read on to see what she had to say and please, tell us what you think. How would you answer the questions above? Why do you think virginity needs to be re-defined?
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