Great story by Kaite Welsh, who recognizes that the rise of student sex columns and blogs “is not just an exercise in pornography or titillation” but rather a reflection of the fact that “the personal is the political” — a sentiment I mentioned in my interview with her. The article was inspired in part by Dan Reimold’s new book, Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy and a Student Journalism Revolution. Reimold chatted with me as part of his research, and his book is now available on Amazon. I’m looking forward to cracking open my copy!

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the piece and I thought Welsh asked particularly insightful questions — ones that weren’t merely prompted by a desire for a sensationalistic headline. Here are some of the reflections I shared in our conversation about sex columning:

You got a lot of publicity for the blog - what do you think made readers and the press focus on SATI when there’s such a wealth of other sex columns and blogs out there?

Based on reader comments, emails, and conversations, I think that SATI was appealing because it eschewed “Sex and the City”-style glamour in favor of a more authentic story about what coming of age as a young woman is really like. I made it pretty clear early on that I wasn’t trying to emulate any “It Girl” motif nor was I trying to be a role model for anyone else. I didn’t want people to aspire to be me or to have my shoes or to date and fuck the way I do. Maybe that works as fluffy TV, but it’s not real life and the latter is the world my readers live in. I like to think that they could relate to my status as an outsider in the Ivy League world, that they appreciated my honesty about even my worst romantic and sexual experiences, and that they grew up with me along the way.

You’ve described Harvard as “sexually conservative” - what impact did that have on you both as a writer and as a sexual being?

I grew up in a really conservative Asian community and I went to Harvard thinking that New England must be the most open-minded, progressive place in the country in comparison. I found that for the most part, I was right, but nonetheless a lot of my peers — even self-professed liberals — entertained very antiquated ideas about female sexuality. Even if most Harvard students would identify as “progressive” in terms of ideals, they aren’t actually very progressive in practice. For example, slurs for sexually active women were constantly and casually being employed, but never against their male partners of course. I was also really involved in queer advocacy during my undergrad years, and I can’t tell you the number of times people would say that gender neutral housing and other issues were unessential because “there aren’t any transgender students anyway”. I couldn’t understand how I could come from such a conservative upbringing and find myself espousing much more radical viewpoints than my peers who grew up in liberal hubs. As a writer, I sought to address double standards, homophobia, sexism, etc. that I observed among my peers as a way of demonstrating that even supposedly liberal environments, like Harvard, are susceptible to biases against people on the basis of gender and sexuality.

On your blog, you talk about moving from being an “über sensationalized sexual persona to become a somewhat legitimate voice on gender and sexuality” - how did that transition take place? Do you look back on your earlier writing and cringe, or do you stand by the things your younger self wrote?

I don’t cringe when I read old SATI entries, but I’m obviously not the same person anymore. I think my experiences as a sex blogger were an invaluable part of my evolution. I never really understood the feminist mantra of “the personal is the political” until I realized that I was making a political statement by living and expressing openly choices that countered mainstream ideas about sex and relationships.

What affect did the fact that you are a woman of colour have on your experiences or on people’s perceptions of you?

As an Asian woman, I was subject to all kinds of criticism that would have never emerged if not for my background. I wanted to be challenged on the basis of the intellectual rigor of my arguments, but what I found was that some critics found it easier to dismiss me as someone who plays into the Dragon Lady stereotype. It also gave people reasons to make assumptions about my choice in partners and their choice in me. Those who assumed that no man could possibly want to be with a once-promiscuous woman wrote off my romantic interests as guys who had particularly potent cases of yellow fever, rather than recognizing that a colorful sexual history might not be as big of a dealbreaker as they think.

Do you notice a difference in the attitudes of male and female columnists, and in the responses they receive from readers?

As with serious literature, there’s a tendency to dismiss works by female writers as uninspired chick lit while male writers are heralded as breaking new ground for tackling similar topics (coming of age, etc.). When it comes to the college sex column, I can understand some of this reasoning, since there are pieces written by women which are blatant rip-offs of Sex and the City. But there’s also a lot of great collegiate writing about sex that people are too quick to write off and I think that’s a shame, because the college newspaper is generally a much more liberal forum than mainstream media. It’s one of the best sites for discussions that don’t happen elsewhere in the press. I don’t think Tucker Max-style sex columns by male writers contribute very much toward the conversation (they’re as hackneyed as the Sex and the City-inspired columns) but I do think the college paper would be a great starting point for serious debate about male sexuality and all the hang-ups that come with the masculinity ideal.

What effect will the hyperawareness of the younger generation about privacy and publicizing their personal lives have on the genre? Teenagers are constantly being warned about the impact of Facebook, blogs and Twitter on their future employment - do you think this will result in a reduction or self-censoring of sex columns?

I don’t know how much employers really look into this type of thing (probably varies by industry), but I will say this: my personal experience (and the experience of other blogger friends) has demonstrated that I’m no worse off job-wise than my peers without extensive social media presences. In my case, I want to make a career out of gender and sexuality advocacy, so my blog was actually quite an asset in that regard. Have I lost jobs and opportunities because of it? Perhaps, but I don’t know if those employers would have been right for me anyway.

(Source: lenachenblogger)