Losing My CCSL Virginity

It is the end of my first semester as the chapter chair of the UT CCSL chapter!  It has been an eventful first run, for sure.  There were some moments back in August when, as I slogged through the bureaucratic bog of creating a student organization, I wondered if this would ever get off the ground.  But from the safe vantage point of a nice, long holiday break, I can confidently say that the UT chapter is alive and thriving.

Our first meetings started off a little slow.  I had two very dedicated, very passionate undergraduate members, who were brimming with great ideas for our chapter’s mission and possibilities for campus interventions.  However, three enthusiastically sex positive women does not a MOVEMENT make.  Thankfully, they helped me develop a strategy to recruit more members.  First, we changed the structure of our meeting by spending 15 minutes on the procedural stuff (announcements, event organization, etc.) and then using the remaining 45 to open a roundtable discussion on a topic relevant to our mission of sexual literacy.  Second, we doled out some of our seed money to buy a ton of tacos to fuel the meeting.  There is not a student on the UT campus who can resist the allure of free Tex Mex.

The inaugural roundtable topic was “The Social Meanings of Virginity”.  We created a Facebook group for CCSL, and then a Facebook event publicizing the roundtable meeting.  Our Facebook administrator, Mary Lingwall, publicized the event to well I got a little worried we would have be committing a fire code violation! Ah, what a great worry to have.  We publicized the roundtable discussion to potential attendees with this description:

“This month, we will be discussing the social significance of virginity.  They say no one forgets his/her first time – but why is “losing your virginity” so important?  What does “first time” mean, anyway? How do media representations, peer influences, sexual identities, and a whole host of other factors mediate our feelings about and experiences surrounding first sex?”

The result was a room full of awesome attendees with a whole host of diverse experiences and opinions on the topic.  The discussion was really fruitful for challenging our preconceived notions about the importance of (and definition of) virginity and the barriers that creates for sexual happiness.  It was an incredibly rich and stirring discussion and I really look forward to next month’s roundtable (um, on that note – any ideas for our next discussion starter?).

We also co-sponsored a very successful speaking engagement with the fabulous Riki Wilchins – it was standing room only in a large meeting room in the Main Building.  We also made progress toward tabling, t-shirts, and collaborations with other student groups.  It was, all in all, a smashing semester.

In the spring, we will be hosting the next CCSL regional training and conference - 7.  We are really excited about the speakers we are lining up and what will sure to be a very stimulating two days of sexuality research and activism. 

See you on the other side of the holidays!

Cati