Rocio Hernandez /Nevada Sagebrush
Maddie Poore, president of Voices for Planned Parenthood and Mark Nesbitt, former sex education instructor, gave students an overview of the concept of consent at The Consent Event in the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center Rotunda last Thursday, Nov. 13. Free pizza was also given at the presentation.
By Rocio Hernandez
Sex, orgasms and consent are topics that were discussed during Voices for Planned Parenthood’s, known as VOX, first Sex Week from Nov. 10 to 13. According to VOX President Maddie Poore, the week gives the club the opportunity to provide sex education for students at the University of Nevada, Reno.
“We know that when people feel comfortable enough talking about sex, they are then having safe sex, very consensual sex, there [are] discussions about contraception and sex for pleasure, which is why we are doing it ultimately,” Poore said. “We need to be having those conversations to make people comfortable and remove that stigma.”
The three events used drawings, panels and a presentation to facilitate conversations about sex, and draw into students to the events. VOX treasurer Annie Zhu said that all events had great student turnouts throughout the week and received positives feedback from students.
Color Your Orgasm
Drawings of colorful explosions of paint and sparkles depicting UNR students’ orgasms were displayed outside of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center Rotunda on Monday, Nov. 10.
The event, titled “Color Your Orgasm,” was one of VOX’s three events in Sex Week. Attendees decorated a sheet of paper using markers, painting and glitter and drew images that represented their orgasms. After they were finished, students had the options of posting a picture of themselves with their drawing on Instagram using the hashtag #sexweekunr and hanging their drawing alongside others on a white board outside of the Rotunda.
Freshman Andy Calinguert and junior Sara Tunney were two of the students that participated in the event. While he was painting, Calinguert mentioned that Color Your Orgasm is a great way to get people to talk about sex and sexually related topics because some people aren’t normally at ease discussing those topics. In Tunney’s experience, sexual conversations are frequent among the people she knows and she didn’t realize that that isn’t always the norm.
“There definitely were people who felt uncomfortable at first at the Color Your Orgasm event, but after a while they seemed more comfortable with it,” Zhu said. “It’s just important to be able to talk about it without having like a stigma around it because if you can’t talk about it, it’s really hard to learn about it.”
Sex in the Dark
How can a person with a vagina have more than one orgasm? What does it mean to be transgender? Is it possible to get pregnant without vaginal intercourse?
The answers to these sexually themed questions submitted by UNR students were given at VOX’s Sex in the Dark discussion in the Joe Crowley Student Union’s Theatre on last Wednesday, Nov. 12. As students entered the space, VOX members handed them index cards where they could ask questions to the panelists while remaining anonymous.
Jen Howell, sexual health program coordinator at Washoe County Health District, Christopher Daniels, vice president for the Northern Outreach Team and Anneliese Hucal, sex columnist for multiple news outlets, including Huffington Post and Playboy, were the event’s panelists. They gave students their personal insights on sex, based their off of own sexual experiences and knowledge that they have acquired in their professional careers.
Sophomore Eimi Marritt, who attended Sex in the Dark last year, said that many questions that were answered the previous year, such as birth control methods and sexually transmitted diseases, were topics that weren’t explained to her by her parents or in sexual education classes. Because she enjoyed last year’s event and learned from it, Marritt invited two friends who are foreign exchange students from Japan to go with her on Wednesday.
“I was just talking to these guys and they don’t know a lot of stuff either because nobody teaches us,” Marritt said. “It’s like this forbidden topic [but] everybody does it, everybody knows about it, but nobody understands it, so I think this is very informational.”
The Consent Event
Over 40 students gathered inside the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center Rotunda for VOX’s last Sex Week activity, The Consent Event, on Thursday, Nov. 13.
Poore and Mark Nesbitt, former sex education instructor, gave a presentation that explained the concept of consent. The presentation defined consent as an enthusiastic “yes” that is given by all parties before every sexual act. Poore and Nesbitt explained that consent has to be verbally communicated because without it, any sexual behavior can be considered sexual assault. They also stressed the importance of respecting a partner’s choice, even if they say “no.”
“It’s our responsibilities to show our partners that we do value [their] ‘no’s’ no matter what, even if we think they don’t really mean it because there is no way to really know that,” Nesbitt said. “The only option we have is to take that no seriously and then communicate we really care about their [choices].”
Last year, The Consent Event taught Zhu that consent is only valid if a person is sure that it is what they want. This is an aspect of the event Zhu said that she believes is important for UNR students learn because some people don’t know that they are allowed to reject sexual offers from their partners.
“The Consent Event empowered me to able to take a stance for myself and know that it’s okay to say ‘no’ sometimes,” Zhu said.
Rocio Hernandez can be reached at rhernandez@sagebrush.unredu and on Twitter @rociohdz19.
