Textual healing

19th Feb 2010

Is sex­ual promis­cu­ity one stu­dent stereo­type too far?

THERE are some stu­dent stereo­types that can’t be avoided. We are, for exam­ple, renowned for scroung­ing, sav­ing and sub­merg­ing our­selves in cider and these are some stu­dent type­casts I’ll con­form to for ease’s sake. How­ever, there is a con­tin­ual pro­mo­tion of sex which sur­rounds us as uni­ver­sity stu­dents and, although I under­stand that this might be to some people’s taste, I’m not entirely struck by the extent of this recent ‘sexploitation’.

Last week, a venue on Broad Street invited us all to an event called ‘Shag-Tag’. Walk­a­bout wel­comed stu­dents, on no other than St Valentine’s night, to go and enjoy what they hailed the ulti­mate sin­gle student’s night out. The idea was to go to the bar from 9pm, receive a num­ber on arrival, find some­one who, in their words, ‘you wanted to shag’ and text their code and a mes­sage to the big screen TVs. Then all that was asked of you was that you sat back and waited whilst the masses flocked to ‘get jiggy with you’. There were all sorts of offers to entice the sin­gle stu­dent; the very dis­taste­ful pro­mo­tional flyer show­ing two stick fig­ures enjoy­ing them­selves, shall we say… Cheap entry offers and drinks didn’t go amiss either and who could resist a taste­fully named cock­tail, two for the price of one! ‘Sex on Broad Street’ or ‘Shagger’s Par­adise’ anyone?

I can’t help but see a few flaws in Walkabout’s premise. Not only was a total igno­rance shown towards the dan­gers to our sex­ual health, but there was a bla­tant and unashamed pro­mo­tion of sex with strangers. Can any­one else see allu­sions to a swinger’s party here? Although Walk­a­bout did have the DrinkAware logo on pro­mo­tional mer­chan­dise, there was nei­ther any safe-sex endorse­ment nor any encour­age­ment to take pre­cau­tions. I under­stand and agree that you are respon­si­ble for you own sex­ual health and rela­tion­ships but if ‘Shag-Tag’ was pro­mot­ing such easy and assumed sex then surely they should men­tion con­doms? Accord­ing to the NHS, 16–24 year olds (the typ­i­cal age of stu­dents) are the great­est affected group when it comes to sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted infec­tions. Despite rep­re­sent­ing only 12 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, we account for over half of STIs in the UK.

I have never been offered so many chlamy­dia tests as I have here at uni­ver­sity and, on a stan­dard night out, con­doms are thrown at you left, right and cen­tre. Although these are pro­mo­tions for safe sex, are they really just another pro­mo­tion for sex? What con­cerns me most is the expec­ta­tion of us as stu­dents to just go out and sleep around. It is as if we are expected to indulge in casual sex, just as we are expected to miss the odd 9 o’clock lec­ture. When talk­ing to fel­low stu­dents about this, one put the sit­u­a­tion quite bluntly: ‘As stu­dents we are expected to sleep around all the time. Com­pa­nies think that the way to sell us prod­ucts is to sell them with sex’ she said. Other stu­dents who I spoke to thought that ‘Shag Tag’ seemed a funny event, not to be taken too seri­ously which made me ques­tion whether I was tak­ing it all too lit­er­ally. ‘It sounds like a right laugh!’ said one whilst another male stu­dent won­dered, ‘who would actu­ally go…?’

Vice  Pres­i­dent Wel­fare, Johnny Davis, who was respon­si­ble for organ­is­ing last week’s Sex­ual Health Aware­ness and Guid­ance week in the Guild, told me: ‘With regards to the pro­mo­tion and word­ing for [Walkabout’s] event, I think they have taken it a bit too far. It is one thing to allude to some­thing and quite another to shove it down someone’s throat. I can see why some peo­ple could find it offen­sive and vul­gar. SHAG week at the Guild was about mak­ing sex­ual health more acces­si­ble and open for stu­dents to engage in; stu­dents can still be quite prud­ish and find the idea of sex­ual health as taboo.’ Per­haps I am just one of those prudes.