To the Editor:
I have to confess, I don't open The Dartmouth very much, but I'm glad to have missed "Aurora's Guide to Eating Out" in its first rendition (Oct. 5). When I read it online, even without the picture, it made me wince. It wasn't so much the content as the attitude; I could have done a search on Google and come up with more detailed and exact information than that on the female anatomy, all while remaining focused only on Homo sapiens.
Unfortunately, while the "Guide to Eating Out" made me shudder, so did "Zach's Guide to Fellating Upperclassmen" (Oct. 8) and "Eating In," (Oct. 8), the two opinion responses. "Eating In" was polite and "Fellating Upperclassmen" was sarcastic and equally as gross as Aurora Wells '10's article: two male opinions screaming bloody horror with undercurrents of misogyny. Great. Let's not run along gender lines here. The original article was directed at straight young men. But weren't there any women who were upset at the representation of their sex? Because I was.
Wells's story about the poor man who asked was cruel (and I hope that he did agree to be alluded to in that manner). It was nearly as cruel as the entire article's dearth of information and wealth of condescension, claims of empathy aside. I'm ashamed to think that anyone might have considered throwing him out; at least he didn't pretend he knew when he didn't. Besides which, the very sexually experienced among us recognize that if you want to know how to please your partner, you're going to have to talk to them. And there's nothing wrong with just asking them. Privately. Or publicly -- and an article with an end in a list of books and honest resources would suffice as an answer if you didn't find someone inclined to answer your questions with a demonstration. Now everyone's afraid to ask.
In Wells's hook-ups example, perhaps, the man should have better phrased the question, "Where is your clitoris?" Or better yet, "How may I service you?" since that seemed to be all she required. However, the kindest response she could have given would be simply to show him, since he felt safe enough to ask and, well, he's not a vibrator. He's a real, living, breathing human being, and there is no need to humiliate him.
It's as if the sexual revolution is giving way to sexual tyranny, proving that both sexes are the same in some ways after all. How unsurprising.