The week of Feb. 22-28 was “Sex Week” at UW-La Crosse. From Condom Bingo to Sex in the Dark, the events aimed to spread the word about sexual health resources on campus, as well as informing students about sex related topics.
Sex Week is an annual event at UW-L that is put on by the Wellness Resource Center along with the UW-L Student Health Center, Wellness Center and Options Clinic.
Senior community health major Elle Smith shared some insight into what the week is all about, “Sex week is put on by the Wellness Resource Center with different events that students are welcome to go to. These events involve different presentations, games and tabling events that try to increase awareness about sexual health and try to decrease the stigma associated with the topic of sex.”
On Thursday night in Centennial, a session titled “How to Be a Better Lover” was held. Ryan McKelley, a professor in the Department of Psychology, and Terry Glenn Lilley, a professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, led the Q&A session. Their goal was to get the conversation rolling about sex.
This session was taken from the series, “How to Be a Better Man.” The posters and email about the session included men’s sexual health topics like: “how to last longer,” “no means no, but what means yes” and “the friend zone.” However, the topic of discussion varied much more than the poster advertised.
“How to Be a Better Man” started two years ago when a group of male faculty, staff and residence life members on campus sat around talking about masculinity. It started off as a social gathering and turned into the grouphosting discussions.
After both professors shared their inputs and statistics on the prompted question: “how to last longer,” there was a much more insightful conversation discussing abusive relationships and what they entail. Lilley and McKelley answered questions about sex drive, shared their opinions on Fifty Shades of Grey, gave specific examples of how to have ‘good sex’” and more.
There were many questions asked, and these were the answers to the overall topic of sex and relationships.
“The most important answer, the first answer to how to be a better lover, is to ask more questions and to have more discussion. We live in a world where sex is everywhere, but we don’t talk about it. As long as we remain in our heads and we don’t ask the questions, we don’t get the answers,” said Lilley.
McKelley added his input to that by saying, “I’m not anti-text, but have the conversation about being a better lover, or a better partner, in a live dialogue.”
“Sex Week” has come to an end, but events like these surely will inspire some conversation.