Archive for the ‘Sex’ Category

I haven’t put a whole lot of thought into what persona I’ll be adopting for Valentine’s Day/Single’s Awareness Day (SAD) this year. I’ve done the couple thing. I’ve done the hating-on-anything-to-do-with-love-while-secretly-sending-myself-chocolate thing. At this point, I’m leaning towards ambivalence. As such, when I got inspired to do a playlist post by Kristi’s awesome article about failtastic lovesongs, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to go the “mushy” route or the “sardonically commenting on the absurdity of the holiday” route. So I went with both. One will make your significant other look deep into your eyes with misty longing or laugh whilst tenderly spooning. The other will make you want to a) key your ex’s car b) sit in bed with the  company of several pounds’ worth of Ghirardelli wrappers c) think to yourself “Heck YES I’m single and ready to mingle” or d) laugh uproariously at the concept of romantic love. Whatever you choose to jam out to this Tuesday, just remember that no one will love you until you learn to love yourself, you get 12 free condoms a quarter from Vaden, and that chocolate can stimulate all the serotonin you will ever need. Keep it classy, Stanford. (more…)

GSB admit weekend T-shirts? Too soon?

It’s summertime at Stanford, which means there are more people getting married at MemChu than you can shake a stick at.  The Quad’s colonnades and courtyards are positively bursting with bridesmaids in various pastel shades, and each procession of limos can hardly clear Palm Drive in time for the next nuptial motorcade.

Yes, Stanford students get married.  But most intrinsically to my point, Stanford students often get married to each other.  Not to beat the dead horse of the Contemplation or Action IHUM, but “ay, there’s the rub.”

You see, the Stanford Alumni Association is more than happy to point out to incoming students, current students, even prospective students (who promptly look around their Discover Stanford tour group in a mixture of excitement, apprehension, and horror), that about a fifth of Stanford students end up marrying other Stanford students.  Most of these folks meet their future mates by the end of sophomore year.  So juniors, you’re stuck.  Hope you like the pickings, ’cause that’s it.

Just kidding!  In all seriousness, though, it’s an interesting topic of discussion, one which is usually met with “oh-nos,” “oh-weirds,” or chortles and quick changes of topic.  Why the cold shoulder to intra-Stanford spousing?

So maybe I’ve been watching too much How I Met Your Mother, but the real world of dating outside college looks like it sucks.  From show to show and girl to girl, you suffer with hapless Ted who, despite being an attractive and successful architect, simply cannot seem to land a winner.  Accuse him, if you wish, of “searching for love in all the wrong places,” but quite frankly, what is the right place?  In college we’re blessed with a preponderance of extracurricular activities in which we can meet and enjoy the company of those who share our passions and interests.  When you’ve got a nine to five job, it’s a lot harder to pick up activities just for kicks and funzies.

So what’s the real-world alternative?  Bars.  Where the Barney Stinsons of the world trawl the seas of the single.  In a bar the first impression is appearance.  Boom: hot, not, or eh-why-not.  You’re instantly judged as a piece of meat, and the Barneys don’t care if you love sustainability or saving the pandas – they care if you look, shall we say, appetizing.

This, my friends, is why college serves as an excellent built-in filter function.  So yeah, there are a few folks that seem to have slipped through the cracks of our stringent admissions process, but you just as well as I can look up the stats online.  Even if you get someone in the bottom fifty of the SAT score rankings, you’re still doing just fine, and it’s quite possible Mr. or Miss Perfect is busy curing cancer, building the next generation of electric vehicles, or composing a symphony in  his or her spare time.  Everyone here possesses “intellectual vitality” in some way, shape, or form, and everyone has the shared experiences (or sufferings, depending on your take) of IHUM, PWR, and Stern Dining.  And if money is any object… well, let’s just say that with a Stanford grad you’ll probably be doing just fine.

So I kind of resent it when my friends and acquaintances mock “sketchy grad students looking for wives.”  Well, can you blame them?  This is their last shot at the Stanford filter function, and the approaches of the outside world leave much to be desired.  I think there’s a reason college sweethearts Marshall and Lily are the happiest characters on How I Met Your Mother.  And their love is legen – wait for it! – DARY.

Peter Bing, '55: Stanford donor, dating expert.

During the last two weeks of each quarter, students flock to Green Library, presumably to study. However, according to Peter Bing, ’55, they ought to gain more from the mass migration than scholarly solidarity.

At the Bing Wing’s rededication in 1999, Bing said, “I hope this wing will always be a place where students will feel secure and where they feel they belong. And I wish that they will always come here, seeking knowledge and hoping to find a date.”

Bing was not shooting from the hip, either. Earlier in his remarks, he noted the pivotal role the library played in his personal life: “The old main library, and especially the reading room with its heavy oak tables and chairs, and its high, vaulting windows, was central to my undergraduate life. It was where we came after dinner, to do our homework, to meet with friends, and to discretely observe someone we’d like to meet, ‘quite by chance,’ when it was closing time and we all left together. For me, shy, and only able to live on campus my freshman year, the reading room…was a secure place where I could feel I belonged.”

Times have changed, however, which means that waiting until closing time is not always enough to break the ice. Thus, in the spirit of Peter Bing, here’s a Top 5 list of ways to meet your match–“quite by chance”–while hitting the books.

5. Bond over YouTube. If you need inspiration, this and this should get you started (h/t James Balassone).

4. Figure out your inner animal. Apparently, I’m a proboscis monkey.

3. Ask the other person what he/she is studying. This sounds rather lame, but you’d be surprised how willing people are to share whatever knowledge they are cramming.

2. Complain together about the loud announcements the librarians make every evening, normally at 8:00pm, 8:55pm, 12;40am, and 12:55am, as if we have never heard them before. If you run out of material, you could always segue to commenting on the absurd or obnoxious behavior of one of your neighbors. Lane Reading Room, with its squeaky chairs and “high, vaulting windows,” offers ample room for opportunity.

1. The old classic: ask whoever is sitting across from you if he/she wants to get Coupa, or offer to buy the person something if he/she is too busy!

Our Kappa Sigs aren't the only ones who've hit a rough patch

I was sitting at Stern Dining last night in an attempt to keep myself awake to study. That location is a pretty mixed bag when it comes to people working quietly, laughing with their friends, or just grabbing a bite to eat from The Dish. Last night was one of the particularly noisier times and one subject repeatedly surfaced amongst different groups. I first noticed a rather obnoxious animated group of freshmen boys behind me gather around a laptop, laughing about some “hilarious” email that got leaked at USC. A few minutes later, the girls at a table to my left started talking about a link shared on Facebook about USC’s chapter of Kappa Sigma being under investigation. It came full circle when the friend I was sitting with read aloud from one of the most vile and offensive emails I’ve had the displeasure of seeing.

The intent of the email, reportedly sent by an unidentified member of the fraternity, was to start a “Gullet Report” about which girls are most willing to have sex and which brothers are getting the most action. One of the earliest lines in the email reads:

Note: I will refer to females as “targets”. They aren’t actual people like us men. Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless.”

And it just gets worse and worse from there. The author runs down a list of key terms, describing different types of “pie” (vaginas) and the various methods to be utilized to “take down” certain targets. One such example is the Loop n’ Doop: (more…)

Stanford: the Champagne Room of the Soul.

Most everyone on campus has seen this photo by now, I’m sure.

It’s been passed around samizdat-style since the day of the shuttle shuffle.

But just in case you hadn’t seen it.

Well.

Now you have.

Don’t you feel richer?

I can’t help but think that someone at PT&S is making fun of us.

Also, anyone know where this sign actually is?

(Secret hope: it’s somewhere in EV.)

This is my "oh-no-you-didn't" face.

It had seemed so promising.

Sneaking into Huang Engineering that evening back in late August when they still hadn’t quite figured out the locks, my friends and I were awed by the pristine perfection of the shiny new building.  Window-walled study rooms!  Verdant terraces!  Gratuitously large wooden steps!

We frolicked down the hallways and struck poses in the octahedral conference room.  But my heart plummeted after my jubilant arrival at the bottom of those Hagrid-sized steps.  For there, in the middle of Stanford’s metaphorical Mecca of engineering, I was confronted with the following words:

“Brotherhood of Engineers”

Once again, I felt the slap across my face of the cold, smelly fish of sexism in engineering.

To preempt the inevitable opposition

Yes, I understand that the plaque was intended to honor the laudable historic precedent of ground-breaking male partnerships and collaborations in Stanford engineering.  One can’t glance at a Stanford campus map or surf the web without being reminded of our dynamic duos: Hewlett & Packard, Larry Page & Sergey Brin (the Google guys), Jerry Yang & David Filo (the Yahoo! guys), etc., etc.

So the numbers don’t lie.  But while it is true that engineering developments of Stanford past have been male dominated, it is inappropriate and alienating to propagate this gender imbalance through a bronze immortalization in a multi-million dollar building.

"Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." - Texas Governor Ann Richards

Exclusivity discourages diversity

Gender imbalance in engineering is a serious issue.  According to statistics collected by the Society of Women Engineers, women account for only one-fifth of engineers at national universities, and the percentages have been decreasing in recent years.  My beloved Electrical Engineering is only a depressing 14% female by degrees earned.  It’s not that women are somehow academically unqualified: women are outpacing men in overall participation in higher education, taking the SAT more often, and earning more degrees than men (see Time Magazine).  It’s that female engineers are confronted with the constant menace of stereotype threat.

No online article stated it more clearly and concisely than the Harvard Crimson: many women in engineering “struggl[e] with the persistent sense that [they are] unwelcome or unqualified.”  Women also get screwed over in the engineering pay scale, earning 71-74 cents for every dollar earned by a male counterpart, according to the NSF.  According to the U.K. Times, a “predatory or condescending culture [towards women] was more common across the workplace 20 to 30 years ago but has somehow survived in an engineering, science and technology context.”

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"A boombox is not a toy." TheLonelyIsland

Oh yes, it’s that time of year again.  CVS has become a glycemic nightmare, the LikeALittle posts are increasing in frequency and desperacy, and you can’t take a walk around campus at night without stumbling upon canoodling couples.  Awkward.

Bust out the Disney pop-out valentines and the predictable romantic comedies, ’cause it’s almost Valentine’s Day.

This post serves primarily as a warning to any intrepid young men hoping to pull a John Cusack boombox scene like in Say Anything: some love songs are stupid.  Yeah, sure, well-intentioned, maybe.  But stupid.  Follow along as I assess some of Western culture’s favorite love songs… and why they’re so dysfunctional.

Your Song – Elton John

His gift is his song and this one’s for you.  “How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.”  Awww.  Until he gets to the part where he, um, forgets the color of his sweetheart’s eyes.  Boys: you should know this.  If you don’t, Facebook-stalk your girlfriends, quick!  Girls: if he can’t remember the color of your eyes and doesn’t have amnesia, he’s not exactly committed.  Run away, run away!

Yikes.

Don’t Fear the Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult

This song attempts to romanticize death.  More specifically, an allusion to the death of Romeo and Juliet.  In case you weren’t paying attention in eighth grade English class, Romeo dies by poison and Juliet stabs herself with a dagger.  Um, creepy much?

Every Breath You Take – The Police

In what is also known as the stalker song, Sting insists that no matter what you’re doing, he will be watching you.   He dreams and “can only see your face.”  Yes, it’s a catchy song, but the level of obsessive adoration and devotion approaches that of a psychological disorder.

You May Be Right – Billy Joel

“Friday night I crashed your party / Saturday I said I’m sorry / Sunday came and trashed it out again.”  So he trashes your parties.  Routinely.  “I may be crazy / but it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.”  Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining?  Ladies, I can assure you that you’re not looking for a lunatic.

Bad hair day, Bowie?

Rebel, Rebel – David Bowie

Even the driving guitar riffs and British accent aren’t enough to make up for the fact that he calls you a “hot tramp” and “tacky thing,” admits a degree of confusion about your gender (“not sure if you’re a boy or a girl”), and he’s encouraging your use of sedative-hypnotic drugs….  At least the catchy song puts some fun in the dysfunctional?

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Constant weddings on campus = no pressure, right?

At Stanford, as at many elite universities, there tends to be a predominant view that dating here is somehow flawed.  We’re working too hard, we claim, we don’t have time to develop meaningful relationships.  There’s no middle ground, others complain, where’s the route between frat party flings and near-obsessive-already-planning-the-wedding-in-Mem-Chu couplings?

And sure, there are more people who want to be in relationships than actually are.  Depending on your metrics, that might be sufficient data to prove the there’s-no-dating-at-Stanford hypothesis.

But I don’t think that dating at Stanford is fundamentally flawed.  I think that many of us are just going  about it the wrong way.

Like… only a little?

Artificial dating constructs don't work... but those purple boots sure do! I think I need a pair.

We Stanford students like for things to be effortless.  High school valedictorians, sports stars, musical prodigies – you name it, we’re used to things coming easily.  We focus on our academics and extracurricular activities and often assume that the rest will fall into place without any additional work on our part.

Cue LikeaLittle.com, the very definition of half-hearted, lazy pursuit of meaningful relationships.  Oh, sure, it’s much easier to confess that crush under the guise of anonymity of the Internet.  But that post took you, what, 30 seconds to write?  With relationships, as with any other meaningful pursuits, you receive according to the effort you put into something.  So if your admiration for someone is really only worth a 30-second post, go for it.  And watch absolutely nothing happen.  Don’t accuse flirting of failing you – pin the blame on the sad excuse for a flirt medium in which you engaged.

In real life, there are no fairy godmothers to make your wishes come true.  If you want something to work out, TALK to the object of your affections.  Yeah, it’s difficult and potentially awkward, but we’re all too busy to assess the intricacies of chance meetings.  If you’re actually interested in someone, you really “need to be bold, need to jump in the cold water” and put yourself out there.  If you don’t put forth at least that much effort and interest, why should they?  And for the hesitant out there: honestly, what’s the worst that could happen?  The math is in your favor.  If it doesn’t work out with crush #1 or #2, there are over 15,000 other Stanford students to choose from.  There are plenty of fish in the sea.

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It’s the most cliché of topics, but recent events in my life have made me inclined to ponder this subject a little further. We’ve all heard the complaints.  The rants about how everyone on this campus is either just sexing each other up on the side or is in a committed relationship that verges on a civil union.  And maybe that is true.  If I were Us Weekly, I’d be making up some statistic right about now about the percentage of students who agree with that description of Stanford’s dating scene (83% sounds nice and convincing).  But I’m not here to debate whether or not dating exists on Stanford’s campus.  I’m here to question if we should really want it to.

My very own singles bar.

I used to be the queen of that thing we fondly refer to as “dormcest,” a magical start to a relationship that involves never having to go on an actual date – or even leave the dorm.  My first two romantic encounters of any significance both lived in my freshman dorm.  It gave the whole thing a sort of Russian Roulette feel – wondering if I would run into him on the way to the bathroom first thing in the morning, with last night’s eyeliner still smudged on my face, giving me that lovely “cracked out” look.  Daydreams of laundry room hook-ups and hand-holding under the table at Stern dining filled my brain.  It was exciting.  It was exhausting.  But it certainly made sense – I got to know the person before getting involved romantically with him, simply because I saw him on a regular basis.  Call it preliminary research, if you will (you can also call it skanking it up based on convenience, but I’d prefer you didn’t).

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You may have noticed some odd and pervasive behavior on the part of some of your Facebook friends this year.  January brought forth a sudden winter flurry of color statuses.  October launched a startlingly sexual series of “So-and-So likes it on the ________” statuses that made it look like many a good girl had gone bad.  Finally, this month the trend seems to be profile pictures consisting of favorite childhood cartoon characters.

The rationale for these trends is that they raise awareness for issues of health and social concern through Facebook’s powerful social media.  The first two ostensibly supported breast cancer awareness, while the latter supposedly promotes awareness for and support of child abuse survivors.  At first glance, these fads seem well-intentioned and, at worst, harmless.  However, it was upon waking up to the following status in my Facebook newsfeed that I took a closer look at these Facebook crazes:

[name omitted] does not understand how putting cartoon photos up has ANYTHING to do with violent abuse against children.  As a child abuse survivor, I don’t think that I ‘only see [happy] memories’ from these images; instead, they’re part and parcel of the pleasure and pain that was growing up with an abusive parent.”  Later on in the involved comment stream, another poignant phrase from this child abuse victim stuck out to me: “the point of the current meme is ostensibly ‘against’ child abuse, and as an abuse survivor, I find it isolating.”

Facebook users: you’re actually hurting the people you’re trying to support.

This isn’t to say that I have anything personally against the participants in these memes.  I’m sure that you all mean well.  But please reconsider your purported “activism” for the following reasons.

1.  Anonymity is confusing and counterproductive.

More often than not, Facebook “awareness” fads do little but to obfuscate the actual issues at hand.  I’m sure it’s very easy for the uninterested observer to dismiss these awareness efforts as merely another Facebook trend akin to the Doppelgänger phenomenon last year without recognizing their meaning.  Sure, the bra color thing tangentially related to breast cancer.  As an astute male friend of mine remarked, “at least with the bra color thing the average guy only took about 10^-13 seconds to get from bras to breasts.”  But remember, first guys had to sift through and interpret the dozens of random colors to even realize what the colors referred to.

Not-so-obvious awareness tactic

The purse thing directly counters common sense.  If anything, this particular fad intended to conceal the issues.  The Huffington Post cited the trend as a direct effort “to leave men in the dark,” and the Washington Post said “men are not supposed to know what it means.”  So we’re raising awareness by intentionally excluding half of the global population?  Great idea!  One commenter captured the awareness divide perfectly: “Yeah, that’s a great way to get men on board with breast cancer awareness month…alienate them.”  It additionally dilutes the importance of the awareness message: while breast cancer among men is significantly less frequent, men have much poorer survival rates and outcomes due to misdiagnosis.  All the more reason for men to be aware.

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Imagine this, but dark and with lots of people making out.

This year’s FMOTQ is neither a full moon nor really on the quad. The real full moon was on Saturday–which, by most people’s standards, would be the perfect day to have an event. But instead of holding it then, FMOTQ is instead on Monday (which also happens to be right in the middle of midterm week).

Additionally, instead of being on the Quad, most of the festivities are being held at Old Union. There is a concert until 11, after which people will amble on over to the quad. On the bright side, this means the amount of time spent awkwardly milling around before midnight is reduced to an hour or less.

Full Moon has certainly done its share of morphing over the years (see the Daily’s retrospective here). Far from its humble origins, the more recent university-sanctioned incarnation of the annual event is very different. But it’s still, well…something.

“I get older, they stay {that saw tooth function of amplitude and period one year, with DC bias of} the same age.“

It should also be noted that according to the Half-Your-Age-Plus-Seven rule, at age 23, you are still eligible to date someone of age 18.5.

Which is why I’m a bigger fan of the Three-Fifths-Your-Age-Plus-Six rule. Do the math. It makes sense.

An e-mail just landed in my in-box with an advertisement for a “Student Wellness Fair” that, among other things, features “A safe-sex obstacle course. You’re the sperm! Race to fertilize the egg, but WATCH OUT for the contraceptives…”

Also.

“Bollywood yoga.”

Also.

Also.

I think this is a prank. I hope this is a prank. Please, someone tell me this is a prank? Someone? Anyone? Quickly?

Check out the website here. Or, if I’m right that it’s a cute prank, when the powers that be take away the vanity URL you’ll probably want to go here.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have eggs to fertilize.

This summer I read a book that shocked me. It made me realize that I, an intelligent female, had put myself in situations where I could have been date-raped. And before I read the book, I never even realized how close I could have been. Now perhaps I’m slightly naive- but honestly, until it happens to you or your friend, who isn’t?
I was lucky- I wasn’t one of the unfortunate women who said no and were ignored. But I want to share with everyone “The mindset of justification” that can lead some men into date-rape. Without remorse. Without regret. Without recognizing that they did anything wrong.
The following are sections of the book I read- How Dangerous Men Think. This is from the date rape chapter. (Note- the book was written in Australia, so some of the words are a bit foreign- like lift instead of elevator)
“I remember interviewing a young guy under arrest for the rape of a young woman he had met at a nightclub earlier in the evening. To my surprise he was quite happy to talk about the events of the evening, even to the point of admitting that he had had intercourse with the young woman in question when it was quite clear that she didn’t want him to. In an attempt to defend his actions he told me he had been invited back to the woman’s place, that he had been buying her drinks during the night and had even paid for the taxi. He added that they had already had sex once that evening and that about an hour later he wanted to do it again, but she wasn’t so keen. He told me she “wasn’t so keen” because she was yelling and screaming at him to stop and trying to push him off. I asked him what he did at this stage, to which he replied, that he held her down and had sex with her. When I asked if he could see the problem with that he said “mate, I’d been buying her drinks all night; I paid for the bloody taxi; we’d already done it once. Yeah she was saying “no”, come on mate, they all say “no” what’s the problem?” The “problem” was he had just admitted to committing sexual assault. The “problem” was he ended up going to prison for it. The “problem” was that he didn’t think he had done anything wrong”

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