The Women's Resource Center is sponsoring a series of events this week, including its annual reading of "The Vagina Monologues" on Valentine's Day, this Wednesday.
The Valentine's Day reading is connected to "V-Day,"an annual event held at hundreds of campuses nationwide, according to Women's Resource Center Outreach Coordinator Xenia Markowitt.
"I'm looking for interactive and proactive ways to get people talking about sex and sexuality," said Katie Oliviero '01, a Women's Studies major who organized the event. "The sex series' goal is to get people talking about sex."
She added that she did not want to force a particular view about sex, but wanted participants to "think about it's place your life."
Dartmouth's series was started by two student interns at the WRC last year who wanted the focus to be on women's sexuality from a feminist perspective.
This year, the event has been shortened from a month to a week, according to Markowitt. She also pointed out that the event, especially the Good Sex talk tonight in Cutter-Shabazz Hall and the Vagina Monologues Wednesday, would also interest men.
In addition to the reading and the Good Sex talk, events include a lunch with the founders of the Alternative to Marriage project, an interactive session on Bisexuality and a brown bag lunch to discuss sexuality.
The Vagina Monologues will probably be the week's most well-attended event. Last year's monologues drew around 200 people, according to Markowitt. This year's will have a slightly different script, including two monologues written by the Dartmouth students who will be performing them.
Markowitt said of the monologues, "What if women were in control of talking about their own bodies? It's very interesting, there are a lot of different perspectives. The Vagina Monologues start from that premise -- what happens when women start to talk about themselves in that way."
"Everybody had a really good time," Markowitt said, explaining the monologues' appeal. "It's not a dour, serious thing -- it's very entertaining."
