UPEI Student Union

W.A Murphy Student Centre

550 University Avenue
Charlottetown PE

February 24th, 2018

To: Student Council, UPEI SU

Re: Sex and Love Week

Hello Student Union Council,

We are the Queer Collective, a group which represents the LGBTQIA2S+ community on PEI.
Membership includes, but is not limited to, people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, agender, and/or two-spirit. We are a group of UPEI students
who have opened a society to create a safer space and community on campus and PEI, while also
striving to further issues around the university and island as they relate to the LGBTQIA2S+
community.

We are writing you, the UPEI Student Union, to talk about the Love and Sex week on campus in
February of 2018. Although the Union assured groups such as the Student Diversity Office and
persons commenting on the facebook event pages that the events would be inclusive, we feel that
the events fell short of this objective. While we would like to acknowledge that attempts were made
to make the events more inclusive, below are a list of examples in cases of where the campaign fell
short.

1. During trivia on Wednesday, February 14th:

a. The use of prize tickets discriminated on persons based on their gender, implying
that an individual’s gender/sexuality can be determined through their gender
expression. This is discriminatory as it prevents gay men from winning a toy that
could be used for anal play, and excludes gender variant/trans as it assumes a
man-identified person has a penis and woman-identifying person has a vagina. This
act implies that all participants are heterosexual and/or cisgendered.
b. The lap dance competitions asked for 1 male volunteer to sit in a chair while 5 female
volunteers gave him a lap dance, and vice versa. An alternative more inclusive lap
dance would have been just a random group of people regardless of gender giving a
student a lap dance.
c. The volunteers were not advised in advance about what they would be doing on
stage, there were no ground rules for the lap dances, nor were the volunteers asked
whether or not they were comfortable participating. This event created the possibility
of harm and unwanted touching for the volunteer.
2. In a love and sex week, people should feel that there are inclusive events for them. The
queer community was surprised to see that there were no events for queer students or an
 opportunity for heterosexual students to overcome their biases and stereotypes towards
various forms of queer sex. This further de-legitimizes forms of sexual intercourse that are
not heterosexual in nature.
3. Love and sex week would have been a perfect time to run an education campaign on love for
everyone, and inclusiveness for queer students. However, this was lacking.

Overall, the Queer Collective, friends, and allies do not feel as though the event was inclusive. It
was very heteronormative. While we understand that you wanted to have positive discussions about
sex, love, and relationships, and for many UPEI students it fits into man/woman relationships, the
event was not inclusive for people all genders, sexualities, and identities. We would have liked to
have seen more than straight/gay distinctions, as there are many people and relationships that don’t
fit into those binaries, either. Specifically, we wish the events had been more LGBTQIA2S+, queer,
trans*, and non-binary inclusive and positive. In the future, it would be ideal if students who identify
in this way are consulted and included in planning of events.

Sincerely,

Justin Clory
Rory Starkman
Brittany Ashley Eugenia Jakubiec

On behalf of :

Queer Collective, friends, and allies of the UPEI Queer Community