Tipster John Hill forwarded Bwog a most interesting link: Trojan is kind enough to release a ranked list (warning: PDF) of American universities on the basis of their standards of sexual health. Breathe easy; Columbia took 12th place of 139 (third among the Ivies, after Harvard and Penn, and 51 places above those filthy Cornell types). Notably, Brigham Young took the coveted 121 seat. Bottoms up!

The New York Times Magazine covers sex publications, marking the eighteenth time in as many years Bwog has read about H-Bomb; interestingly, the aforementioned Harvard publication was granted college funding, unlike, say, Columbia's Outlet.

No mention of sex pieces in non-sexual college publications? Following in the footsteps of our favorite "explicitly, absolutely, without a doubt straight woman," today's Spec sex column, "Embracing Your Inner Slut," begins, "A few weeks ago I arrived home to find one of my roommates involved in an orgy."

And that's all the news that's not fit for print.

A few tipsters report that Morton Williams has special floral baskets for single supermarket shoppers. Perhaps the idea is that you'll spot each other while choosing between fruits..."Do these melons look juicy?"...and leave together, or something.

This development comes with lots of high- and middle-brow buzz about Laura Sessions Stepp's new book, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. It's frightening, Stepp says, what sexual experiences girls from GW and Duke will admit to, with little shame.

Former Spec sex columnist Miriam Datstovsky had some words of wisdom to share on the "hooking up" culture, as quoted in the New York Times: "As an overall thing, I don't think there's anything to be concerned about...College is the time when you make most of your mistakes."

-JDC

You'll never know who she is, but you'll read her anyway. Send questions, propositions, and fan mail to bwogsex@gmail.com. Welcome to the Belle Jar.

I dedicate this Valentines Day to Lisa Nowak. Some people can go the distance for love.

Walking across campus last night, I counted eight guys and girls carrying flowers to their objects of love, regard, and obsession. Beneath scarves and ski masks, their eyes spoke volumes: "I've got someone, I'm going to see them, O'Keefe this motherfuckah." The clock struck twelve, and it was Valentines Day. It was sweet.

Well, at least until I remembered that these people were probably in relationships. Close friends and anonymous hookups rarely buy each other flowers. Flowers are a big symbol. They're innocence; they're passion; they're female genitals. That kind of baggage is awkward in a friendship. But LOVE, love knows no bounds, and that's basically the problem. If relationships and the people in them could restrain themselves, today and every other day would be a lot easier. Consider the following a guide to being the two-wheeler that makes other people want to be your third.

The Face-Munchers:

Public displays of affection are endearing on a distant, detached, entirely impersonal level. You laugh when dogs sniff each others' behinds, and maybe, on a nice spring day, you smile at a kissing couple. (Unless they're both hideous.) But there are those who overstep these bounds, plunging you and your vision into a state of great turmoil. Perhaps, like Oedipus, you too reach for the dress pins. I like to go up to these people and gently ask them to part--leave room for Jesus.

Everyone and their sister (publication) has a sex columnist these days, and--being the blatantly imitative blog that we are--Bwog decided to get one of its own. There's a lot we could say about this nameless muse...but we'll let her introduce herself. Welcome to the Belle Jar.

Update, 1/23, 8:38 PM: You can e-mail the Belle Jar at bwogsex@gmail.com.

I am explicitly, absolutely, without a doubt, not a straight woman.

I'm not a member of the Columbia Queer Alliance, and I don't play rugby—unless we're talking euphemistically. If I you passed me on the street you'd have no idea I was gay ("lesbian" has too many syllables).

But here I am, anonymously, a Bwog sex columnist, at least until one of you delights me by creating a website about how I violate everything you hold dear.

Why am I writing this column?

What you want to hear: I have always dreamed of being a sex columnist. Ever since I bought my first pair of Dr. Martens, learned to fire a gun and realized I wanted to be cuffed to a bedpost by Detective Olivia Benson on SVU, I've pined for this very moment. My hero: Dan Savage, my enemy: Rick Santorum. I learned about dental dams at the age of 12. I've never used one, but I'm ready.

God's honest truth: my editors thought this college should have a sex columnist who knew what it meant to be a feminist, to admire and understand women's bodies, and to be slightly more enlightened than your average Druid dressed in Dolce.

I just thought it was funny as hell that they asked me.

You see, I don't have regular sex; I have head on, high-speed collisions. I get whiplash and there's usually broken glass. I take down insurance information, not phone numbers. And I've never slept with a guy, although I know many, many people who have, and who have reported back. I've thought about it the way I've thought about taking Econ—probably better for my financial future and legal rights but, at the moment, terribly tedious and likely soporific. It's something I've been meaning to get around to doing and just haven't had the time or willpower to accept or even correctly interpret an advance.

The internets are afire with talk of this weekend's "Modern Love" column in the NY Times, authored by one Ashley Cross, a reputed student at our very own university. The mysterious Ms. Cross, who could not be located by Facebook, Columbia directory, or truly thorough Googling (unless she happens to own this site), has come under attack for defending her relationship with a Harvard student suspended from the institution after being accused of rape. In her piece, Cross divulges the two are no longer together, her ex-lover's apparently attractive assertiveness having been suppressed by the re-education programs he was ordered to attend as part of the plea bargain he worked out after criminal charges were filed (which also included house arrest). Still, she is now seen by many as having severely downplayed the allegations against him-- and helping to cast doubt on future rape accusations.

A tour of the controversy so far: a thread on the topic at liberal politics blog Daily Kos, where some seem confused by the fact the story has not run as a straightforward news item and others link the social implications of Cross' piece to the Duke rape case, has run to 340 responses; Gawker questioned Cross' reasoning...twice, Harvard's Gadfly ran lots of Crimson documentation on the question of the rape case, and IvyGate wants Cross' number.

Winter Break came to a crashing close today, but for some over the holiday weekend, waiting for human contact proved unbearable. In the spirit of helping these forgotten few find love, Bwog presents some of the lost souls from around our neighborhood who turned longingly to Craigslist in the twilight of their freedom...

I. SM seeks Hoodie Hookup

Green hoodie at Columbia Library - m4w (Harlem / Morningside)

You were wearing a green hoodie when I cut in front of you to get to the printer today in Butler. I was hurried. You were courteous. Can I repay the favor over coffee?

(I was wearing a black hoodie.)

II. Tobacco Lobby for John Edwards Staffer Endorsement?

riverside church tonite - w4m (Harlem / Morningside)

you were outside smoking a cig when i walked by. your greeting made my night...

III. Anything but Dormcest

Why are you screwing your roommate? - w4m

When you know you should be with me!

Because porn and politics go together so well, we decided to combine the two.

Outlet (which doesn't exist in hard copy because funding didn't happen)

Sex sells, but weird sex sells better!

Disturbing non-sequitur

How they did it in the Auld Country

Last minute Christmas gifts for....not your mother

Would that we could all be porn stars

Columbia Political Review (their issue isn't linkable yet, so all links go to the PDF)

Sex! Race! Politics! The Nobel Prize! (page 8)

Populism: not just for student club elections (page 12)

The Baker Bunch (page 18)

Communism? Corruption? Nah...(page 22)

Why it's harder to fill lots of little holes in the Big Easy rather than one big one in the Big Apple (page 27)

What Columbia students think about something they don't think about (page 34)

Just when you thought the dialogue around Columbia's sexual atmosphere couldn't get any worse...Ann Coulter got involved. Today on FOX News, Bwog's favorite channel, she opined (click for video!) on the Daily News "report" "exposing" our "creepy" carnal persuits. Money quotes:

"I really think you should get a picture of some of these [S&M] clubs and a picture of the young College Republicans and the Christians, because someone who has to join a club at college to have sex? Probably not your lookers." Conservatives don't care about kids having premarital sex--just WEIRD premarital sex!

"This has been well documented. Christians have more sex, better sex, more sexual satisfaction...you want a sex club, become an evangelical." Then assume the missionary position.

And responsible for all of this? "Most of all the culture of children raised in households without two married parents. Ask the girls in that club how many grew up sleeping in the same house as their fathers."

And that's the word.

Bwog must interrupt its holiday programming for this important announcement.

The New York Daily News, that staid bastion of equanimity, has declared that Columbia is out of control, and they're not talking politics: this time, it's all that wild crazy sex. The 1,200-word feature story (which ran online with the dubiously related picture at right) cites example after example to prove that Columbians have finally gotten too randy for their own good. Among them:

Exhibit A: An undercover Daily News reporter witnesses a lecture in Hamilton in which a man named "Dov" flogged a female student volunteer with various objects.

Exhibit B: Miriam Datskovsky weighs in. "Everything is so much easier and so much quicker," she told the paper. "You go to dinner and then have sex."

Exhibit C: "Smut TV," in which CTV airs "hard-core porn" involving "a naked couple engaged in sex." Financed by the school. Broadcast into dozens of rooms and lounges. Really.

Bwog must concede, Columbia has fallen to the purveyors of vice...now if only a little more of it would come our way.

Overheard in Ferris Booth:

Guy 1: "Was he up?"
Guy 2: "No, I don't think so."
Guy 1: "If you're going to fuck a chicken on stage, get hard."

Thanks to tipster Lars Dabney and his sharp ears.

Vowing to "protect the world at large from horrible sex advice" and claiming that Spec sex columnist Miriam Datskovsky "is a violation of all of our human rights," anonymous tipster "Captain Subtext" has informed Bwog of the Fire Miriam Datskovsky blog. The site primarily contains frighteningly thorough critiques of many of Miriam's columns and of those who have praised her work, and further correspondence with its mysterious proprietors reveals that they next plan to target Ms. Datskovsky's vanity website. If you want to know just how far these guys are willing to go to refute every word of Miriam's columns, look no further than this nitpicky comment, which is just the tip of the iceberg:

Miriam: "There will forever exist those expectations that the logical side of our brains insist are false, but our desires hope to be true"
Fire Miriam Blog: "Desires can't hope, Miriam."

Miriam has declined to comment on the site.

The creators have attempted to preempt the inevitable criticisms with a FAQ at the bottom of the page, in which they reveal that they resent the "gender bias" in the selection of sex columnists, "pretty much" all adore the Red Sox, and plan to start a "Fire Miriam Facebook Group". Is all really fair, Bwog asks, in lust and war?

Watch out, the nerds are gettin' it on! And writing about it! Here comes Outlet, Columbia's "new erotic review." In light of New York magazine's blog post about the new online sex rag, Bwog staff member Sara Vogel picked the brain of editor-in-chief Kimi Traube, CC '08, about fonts and porn.

How do you respond to New York magazine's blog observation that Outlet is composed of "vaguely intellectual undergraduate musings" and doesn't show enough skin? Why does Columbia need a magazine that talks about sex, but doesn't show it?

I'd hardly say we "don't show sex." The primary purpose of the magazine is to provide a forum for open discussion of sex and sexuality to the students of Columbia's campus, but we are quite delighted to display student submissions of erotica. We are just starting to get noticed, however, and as such we're just starting to get said graphic submissions. If you want to see more or different erotica in Outlet, submit some! Have your friends
submit some. Photographs, drawings, whatever, we're interested.

Why'd you choose Courier as your font? You have to agree that New York's blog is right about it being "decidedly unsexy."

I like Courier, personally. We were kind of in a crunch to put the layout together, so I just happened to pick it. This is only our first issue, and we're planning to revamp our layout to something sexier and less obvious as time goes on, so that may change. Although I have to admit, I've never really thought about the sexiness factor of fonts.What would be the "sexy" font?

Porn shots after the jump...

Ruggles, Monday evening
"We're so deep into it that it would be dick for him to pull out."

Deep into what?

Outside a laundry room:
Guy: "Again, I am NOT going to put on your underwear!"
Girl: "I really hope someone walked by when you said that."

From your lips to Bwog's ears.

After checking out "The Cambridge Companion to Foucault" and "Foucault: A Critical Reader" at Butler, one B&W staffer was told by the guy working the counter -- a scruffy, lanky twenty-something -- to "Be careful."

Knowledge is power.

Thanks to Ashley Nin, Andrew Flynn, Jessica Cohen.

Spectator Takes on Russia, World Oohs and Aahs

McDonald's Opening Deserves Headline

Fuck Naked Parties. Fuck ME!

Flier-Posterer Responsible for Posting Fliers

Latino Studies Deep-Sixed for Less Intimidating Hispanic Studies