Coed Sex Advice

The best new trend in college newspapers

The idea dawned on Meghan Bainum in the middle of a journalism course. A news-and-information major at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, the petite, tattooed coed had always been more rebellious than most of her fellow J-schoolers. At the moment, she needed to come up with a final project for her entertainment-reporting class. "Everyone thought that meant something about bands and bars," she said later, chain-smoking cigarettes and twisting her spiky black hair around her finger. "But there are more-entertaining things out there." Bainum wanted to become a dominatrix and write about the experience.

Her instructor managed to talk her down to a report on fetishes and turnons. But the idea of writing about sex had taken root in Bainum's mind. After a semester of lobbying The Daily Kansan, her sex column launched in fall 2001. "I think they were worried about me turning their newspaper into a peddler of smut," she said. "After all, this is Kansas."

Bainum's columns, which cover topics such as bondage to genital piercing, were a tough sell at a heartland school. When Bainum's column appeared on Thursdays, the newspaper wasn't delivered to local high schools ("As if high schoolers aren't having sex," she said). One mother even wrote the paper a letter chastising the editors for running "pornography" that her college-age son shouldn't be reading.

"KU is liberal for Kansas," Bainum explains. "But underneath it all, people here are still pretty conservative. Homosexuality? They're not comfortable with it. We're one of the last states in the union that still outlaw sodomy. Around here, people are more concerned about their reputations than whether they have good sex lives."

Luckily, the Daily Kansan staff stood by its renegade sex reporter. Bainum's sexcapades are fun, naughty and rooted in her sincere interest in the topic. "Everyone basically knows how sex is done, but it's the little things people get confused about," she continues. "That's where I come in. I've had a lot of sex, I've read a lot of sex. I know more than just the ins and outs—pardon the pun."

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Like beer and football, sex and college go hand in hand. A handful of university newspapers now write about a topic that really matters to their readers. Across the country, college dailies have been adding sex columnists to their mastheads, and their copy has caught the nation's attention. These trailblazing women (yes, all of them are women) come at the topic from all angles. Some, like Bainum and Yale's Natalie Krinsky, pen their erotic encounters with the zeal of a junior Carrie Bradshaw; others prefer to offer advice like Generation Y Dr. Ruths. The New York Times put a spotlight on the phenomenon: "Ms. Krinsky is one of a growing number of sex columnists at college papers across the country who are reflecting a striking openness among many undergraduates when it comes to the discussion of sex. The columns include 'Sexpert Tells All' in New York University's Washington Square News, The Daily Californian's 'Sex on Tuesday' at Berkeley and Meghan Bainum's odes to experimentation and safe sex in The Daily Kansan at the University of Kansas. Subjects range from sexual arousal to oral sex etiquette to bondage."

Krinsky's December 2001 column detailing her initiation into oral sex caused a stink at her school—and drew hits by the thousands to the Yale Daily News' website. Krinsky's story was fun, sexy and, most important, Ivy League. The 20-year-old junior who keeps a stuffed animal in her dorm room was getting so much attention, she got an agent.

Krinsky's "Sex and the (Elm) City" column wasn't any raunchier than others around the country. It was the fact that the school paper at Yale, the hallowed breeding ground for conservatives like William F. Buckley and both presidents Bush, was publishing an article about giving head.

"Controversy is in how it's framed," said Yvonne Fulbright, the woman behind NYU's "Sexpert Tells All" column. Unlike Bainum and Krinsky, Fulbright gets explicit in her Q. and A. columns, but she keeps them third-person. "What made Natalie Krinsky's (continued on page 136)Sex Advice(continued from page 82) spit-or-swallow column so controversial was that she gave her personal take on it," Fulbright explains. "If somebody asked me if I should spit or swallow, my first response would be, 'It's none of your business. But here are your options as to whether or not you should.' Anybody can give their opinion on sex. But what you're an expert on are people's behaviors and opinions when it comes to sex."

Bainum's reaction was slightly different: "Did you read about that Yale girl in The New York Times?" she said with disbelief. "She wouldn't even tell them if she'd had sex or not. If you can't be honest with your readers, why should they take you seriously? I wrote a whole column on your magic number, or the number of people you've had sex with. People at college worry about that. What's an OK number to have? When she asks, well, one might seem to be too low, seven might seem too high, so let's lie and pick four. My number is 11, in case you were wondering."

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Sex columns make headlines at both Kansas and Yale, but at universities that are on the left end of the political spectrum, such purple prose is nothing new. Berkeley has always been a step ahead of other schools—The Daily Californian's immensely popular "Sex on Tuesday" has offered frank bedroom advice for the past five years. This year's sex scribe is Teresa Chin, who mixes her experience as a health worker with level-headed love advice. After graduation, Chin plans to study medicine with an emphasis on pediatrics or women's health.

"College is a sexually charged time in people's lives," the premed sophomore explains. "There's a lot of opportunity sexually, but there are consequences that need to be faced. That's why campuses need a sex column. In high school they throw abstinence and STDs at you and leave you there. This column is a chance to break people's fears of being sexual and teach them to enjoy their sexuality. It's not like you're reading one of those health textbooks in high school, taught by a 45-year-old woman pointing at anatomy pictures with a long stick."

When she's not debriefing the student body in print, Chin works with a student health outreach program. She plans to take students on a field trip to Good Vibrations, San Francisco's woman-friendly erotic emporium. Her recommended purchase? "It's not the first thing that comes to mind when you hit a sex shop, but they have some of the best sex literature around."

Surprisingly, her discussions of self-pleasure have been somewhat controversial at Berkeley. "Some people think masturbation techniques just don't belong in a public newspaper," Chin says.

Others think Chin should take the column in a more salacious direction. "The paper is delivered off campus, so the 'Sex on Tuesday' column is read by a lot of local residents. I got an e-mail from a man who enjoyed my column and wanted me to mention the local S&M clubs in town as an option for my readers. Which was a little strange. I don't want to suggest to these really impressionable freshmen—yeah, welcome to college, go and be yourself and have fun and go nuts at the S&M clubs downtown." She pauses. "That's really pushing the envelope."

NYU's Fulbright had a personal encounter with a kinky reader. "I had somebody try to hit on me through the column," she explains, referring to a series of letters she received that involved body-hair removal and spanking with boards. "The scenarios were so bizarre. It didn't take long to figure out that this person wasn't after advice."

It was a change of pace from her usual NYU fare. 'Just last week I got a question from a guy concerned about his blue balls. And this week I responded to a woman who was worried that her nipples aren't very sensitive. Most of the questions I get boil down to 'Am I normal?' I'm here to reassure students that they are."

In 2001 Fulbright approached Washington Square News, NYU's free paper, with an idea to resume their sex column. Previous columnists enjoyed detailing their erotic memoirs for anyone in the Village who'd listen, but this native of Iceland was more interested in helping NYU students solve sexual crises. Fulbright's background in sex education and her knack for dirty details has made "Sexpert Tells All" a hit on campus. Her first book, The Hot Guide to Safer Sex, will be published in June 2003.

"People assume it's wilder up here, because of NYU's reputation," she explains. "You can meet anybody in the city and not have to worry about ever running into them again."

With columns on threesomes, female ejaculation and even one titled "Anally Ambitious," Fulbright's writing can get wild for a student newspaper. But, she persists, the most common complaint she hears from NYU women isn't nearly that exotic. "They don't get enough oral sex. For a lot of women, that's the way they attain orgasm. College guys focus on penile-vaginal intercourse like it's the goal of all sex. But I have girlfriends who have admitted the way their hands are stroked can lead to orgasm."

Forget foam parties and fraternity orgies. Oral sex, according to Fulbright, is the biggest trend on college campuses today. "People are trying to find what they can do for sexual pleasure without actually having sex in the traditional sense," she says, explaining it's how most students wary of STDs choose to experiment. "Basically, the question now is, 'How can I give good head?'"

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After she graduates, Meghan Bainum wants to keep writing about sex. "I really like The Playboy Advisor," she says.

She has a few parting words of advice for her classmates. "God, college is such a screwed-up place. Suddenly you're thrown in with thousands of people your own age, and so many of them are going through the same messed-up, confused time. College is the first time you're having sex outside your parents' house. I think it's just scary. The thing is, it's OK to have sex, and it's OK to not have sex. It's OK to do whatever you want. But at least talk about it. It'll make everyone's sex lives better."

"It's important to me to be a sex columnist who does sexy stuff," says Meghan Bainum (left), resident sexpert at The Daily Kansan. "If I'm preaching but I'm not doing, why should anyone bother listening to me?"

Social Studies

Natalie Krinsky The vale Daily News

On blow jobs: "I am an avid swallow supporter. (Wow. My popularity rating just skyrocketed with the male demographic.) I figure that swallowing is like taking cough syrup. Sure, it's a little painful at first, but eventually the taste will go away, and it's pure loving from then on. I found that eight times out of 10, Yalies agree with me on this point Especially males. Swallowing, they all said, is clearly where it's at."

Yvonne K. Fulbright Washington Square News

On faking an orgasm: "She could be screaming like a banshee, digging her nails into your back, tightening herself around you like a cobra squeezing its prey, gasping 'Harder, harder!' between breaths and just be putting on one hell of a show." When a man is faking it: "All a guy has to do is grunt, give a body shudder or throw on a porn-star face and he can fool his partner."

Teresa Chin The Daily Californian

On penis size: "True enough, a big member doesn't guarantee you sex-god status. You have to know how to use the darn thing. On the same note, a love stick can have enormous potential to satisfy—even if that's the only enormous thing about it. What this all comes down to is technique, knowing how to do what you want with what you have. Size is no guarantee you won't end up with the short end of the stick."

Meghan Bainum The Daily Kansan

On role-playing: "Although spanking was a punishment back in the day, when done in passion, and not by your father, it can be quite exciting. Both spanking and sexual restraint can play nicely into several different sorts of fantasies. Be a schoolteacher or nun and discipline your 'student' with a ruler. Go out and buy a French maid's outfit, or a Batman cape—let your imagination run wild."

"Sex is my deal, my job and it's usually on my mind in one way or another."