McGill gets horny

>> The first annual Love/Sex Week answers some questions, poses others and provides some good old dirty edutainment at the same time

CELEBRATING THE DIRTY: Nicolas Piperno (
centre) with Love/Sex volunteers

by STEVE ZYLBERGOLD

What’s the best method for testing a slipknot before initializing autoerotic asphyxiation? Is it dangerous to fart while being sodomized? Why does green stuff shoot out of my penis when I squeeze it? What’s that smell?

There are tons of questions about sex plaguing the minds of straights, gays, bis, trans-gendered folk and people of all kinds of sinful sexual orientations, simply because we are too ashamed to ask.

In an effort to find answers to some of these questions, McGill’s Post Graduate Student Society (PGSS) is organizing its very first Love/Sex Week, five days of sexual edutainment for grad students and their lucky guests, running from Monday, Jan. 28 to Friday, Feb. 1.

With Love/Sex Week, the PGSS is doing everything possible to make sure that grad students can have more fulfilling sex lives, hosting straight and gay speed-dating nights, instructional workshops where students can learn the latest erotic dance steps and massage techniques, and a massage-oil-tasting. Monday’s “Dirty Minds Trivia Night” will offer participants an opportunity to amaze one another with their sexual knowledge, or lack thereof. The event rounds out with an all-night fetish-themed ball, so unpack your finest (and tasteful, organizers suggest) fetish gear for a night at McGill’s Thomson House.

If this is starting to sound as if McGill has transformed into the kind of learning institution found in movies where wacky fraternity members band together to help a nerd lose his virginity under false pretenses, you’re only half right. Love/Sex Week will also feature informative lectures and workshops led by local sexperts. On Tuesday, renowned researcher Jim Pfaus from Concordia will address the biological side of sex and explain why it feels so good. If you were under the impression that it’s only because of the great sensation that you experience when your penis or vagina is stimulated, then you just don’t understand science and this lecture will do you some good.

“Lessons From a 7-Foot Penis,” a Friday-night Q&A session/show led by Montreal performer/activist/sex advocate Norman Nawrocki, will add a shot of humour to Love/Sex Week. While some may be disappointed that this event is not in fact a guy meting out “lessons” with his abnormally huge member, others will surely be entertained and even learn a thing or two from Nawrocki’s insights on everything from safe sex to sex toys.

Dr. Laurie Betito, the host of Passion on CJAD 800 AM, will also be giving a talk Friday evening on the numerous sex myths and falsehoods encountered not only by naïve, sexually active children, but by seemingly experienced adults as well.

“According to Dr. Laurie, there are a lot of really basic things about sex that men and women don’t know, but really should,” explains PGSS vice-president of internal affairs Nicolas Piperno. “Like the fact that around 50 per cent of women cannot reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse, or that most healthy males cannot have sex for longer than two minutes before ejaculating.”

See, Love/Sex Week is already reassuring people, and it hasn’t even started yet!

Love/Sex Week takes place Monday Jan. 28
to Friday, Feb. 1 at McGill’s David Thomson House
(3650 McTavish). For a detailed itinerary, visit pgss.mcgill.ca.