Last updated: 07/05/05
PORN IN THE USA

Changing attitudes to sex in the USA has seen the rise of a new type of publication on American university campuses US students are producing their own pornographic magazines in a bid to make sex more openly discussed.

Student life and sex are, by reputation, synomynous with each other - but students in America have taken this relationship one step further by producing their own pornographic publications by students for students.

At least ten universities in the US now have their own student-run erotic magazines, featuring sex advice, fiction and nude photo-spreads of ordinary students.

These publications challenge the popular perception that US universities are bastions of political correctness.
From Harvard to Yale, the University of Chicago to the University of New Hampshire, some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of learning, are home to sexually explicit periodicals and, surprisingly, in many cases the editors are female.

The University of Chicago’s magazine Vita Excolatur combines high-brow articles with student nudity. The debut issue included a piece of footnoted satire headlined ‘Psychoanalyze This: Sexual Overcoding as Discursive Limitation.’ The writer manages to reference photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, French theorist Deleuze, Christ and the Washington Monument before concluding, ‘Don’t judge a boy by his penis and don’t judge a girl by her lack of a penis.’

The magazine also has a more open agenda when it comes to discussing sex, the issue also included articles on sexually transmitted diseases and a sex column that covers condoms, cunnilingus and one-night stands. Then there’s the photo spread of a topless student reading Sigmund Freud’s Ego and the Id.

H-Bomb, published at Harvard, features poetry and articles on psychoanalytic theory and French structuralism alongside photographs of naked students.

Newer entrants to the market acknowledge the pioneering role of Squirm: The Art of Campus Sex, started six years ago at Vassar University now co-educational, but once the leading all-female university in the US.

The newest and arguably the most explicit of the genre is Boink: the college guide to carnal knowledge produced by students at Boston University.

The magazines website states, ‘The words and images represented in Boink are necessarily explicit to accurately reflect the sexual openness of an evolving generation. While we understand this may offend some, we firmly believe that sex is a natural and healthy part of college life.’

The magazine is not afraid to admit its pornographic nature. Alecia Oleyourryk, co-founder and editor in chief of Boink said, “Our magazine is porn. It’s meant to arouse, it’s meant to excite. It might also be meant to make money, the first issue sold 10,000 copies at $ 8 (£4.20) a time.”

She has also appeared semi-naked on the cover of the magazine.

H-Bomb’s co-founders, Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hardy, distributed 4,000 free copies to Harvard students, and sold 3,000 more off-campus for $ 5 (£2.60) each.

Despite the popularity with consumers, these magazines do not have a great relationship with their university administrations. The Boston University Dean of Students made this statement on the arrival of Boink, ‘The university does not endorse, nor welcome, the prospective publication Boink.’

Also, despite being funded by money from a Student Activity Fund, Vita Excolatur works under strict guidelines set by university officials which forbids the magazine to shoot nude photos of students taken in front of recognisable university buildings and landmarks. There is an element of support as the magazines do get some funding under the banner of protecting free speech.

However, the magazine did include ‘Love in the Stacks’, two erotic photo spreads of clothed homosexual couples that were shot inside the university’s Regenstein Library.
This spread illustrates one aspect of these magazines that could be considered politically correct. The publications have an insistence on equal opportunities for gay and straight erotica.

Reactions from students have been understandably varied. James Weight, 21, posed nude for Boink because he thought the magazine was ‘a fresh look at the way in which college students deal with sex in their environment’.

‘I’ve received some playful chiding from friends but nothing serious,’ he said.

Harvard student, Kathryn Renton said that H-Bomb was ‘a symptom of a general blase attitude about sex shielding covert titillation’, while Jason West was blunter saying the magazine served ‘perverts just wanting to peek at naked college students’.

The difference in opinions highlights the conflict between traditional conservative views and the changing attitudes of younger generations which is centre to many debates in the US today.

Christopher Anderson, Boink’s 38-year-old co-founder, photographed student models for his magazine and H-Bomb with the hope of advancing a more ‘European’ attitude towards sex in America.

“There is nothing shameful about nudity or sexuality,” he said. “Boston has these puritanical roots where anything related to sex becomes taboo,” he added.

Taboos are certainly being shattered with university campuses hosting ‘sex events’, such as naked parties at Yale, something called the Condom Olympics, part of ‘sex week’ at Tufts University, and National Outdoor Intercourse Day at Western Washington University, which teaches students about the legal repercussions of having sex outdoors.

Feature by James Thornhill