Sex Awareness

Sex Awareness!! I often wonder why a twenty-something university student needs to be made aware of sex?

This year, "Sex Awareness Week" at the University of Calgary has brought plenty of self-awareness to a female student in the Department of Philosophy. She goes by the stage name of Honey Houston; she also happens to have been a contestant in (and some say this year's winner of) the Miss Nude Canada pageant, and was performing (semi)nude on Campus as a member of group immodestly named Nasty Girls Entertainment. Her picture, leaving nothing to the imagination, was published by the campus paper, The Gaunlet, causing a significant amount of controversy.

Houston also gave an interview to The Gaunlet, which they titled "Staying Abreast of Sex Awareness:"

Nasty Girl Honey Houston has an interesting perspective when it comes to the sexual acceptance of students at the U of C, being both an exotic dancer and full time philosophy student. She hopes that the week will help U of C students loosen up when it comes to sex.

"Being a student and an exotic dancer are in two opposite worlds--doing homework in a strip bar can be interesting," said Houston. "I hope students at the U of C will get the confidence to try new things. This is the place to expand your mind in different ways" (emphasis added).

The Gaunlet has been receiving plenty of traffic, some of which appears to have been designed to jam their site. Next to the story, they have defiantly placed this graphic.

Rob, from Say Nothing, has now reproduced the controversial photograph in his blog.

Houston is said to be enraged by the publication of the compromising image in the school paper, and is planning to sue The Gaunlet, the Calgary Herald reported. The Edmonton Journal also picked up the story.

Notwithstanding her assertiveness in the interview to The Gaunlet, she is reported to be embarrassed to the point of not wishing to set foot on campus, and will now finish her semester by correspondence. The newspapers reports do not mention whether she may have been aware of embarrassing others while she paraded through the university food court in the nude, however.

By now, she is probably also aware that small cameras can be smuggled in just about everywhere; that student newspapers will stop at little, if at anything, to shock and awe their readers and university administrators; and that embarrassment is a relative thing.

Whether or not university students need sex awareness is a debatable subject, I imagine, but Houston's story makes it clear that students ought to ponder the necessity of an ethics awareness week, and a privacy awareness week. The Department of Philosophy will probably assist in the task.