Claremont McKenna College Hosts Porn Star to Teach Students About BDSM

Claremont McKenna College hosted porn star Mia Li this week to help students learn about BDSM sex acts.

As a part of Claremont McKenna’s “Sex Week,” porn star Mia Li gave a lecture on BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, sadism, masochism) sex acts. The lecture, which was called “Intro to BDSM,” took place on Tuesday evening on campus.

The lecture’s description invited students to attend to learn more about non-traditional sex acts. “Curious about kink? This workshop is intended to introduce the basic principles of BDSM and provide an open Q&A to answer all your questions to support safer play when going beyond vanilla.”

“Sex Week,” according to promotional materials, was designed to promote positive ideas about sex, particularly from the female perspective.

One anonymous student at the college said that having Li on campus helped shift perspectives on women in porn. “[H]aving a porn star on campus does many things in my opinion,” the student said. “First, it humanizes women in porn, who are often just portrayed as sex objects.”

“Second, it helps reduce the prevalence of the subversive woman stereotype where they are not supposed to have opinions,” the student added. “By having a porn performer on campus, it shows that women can be outspoken and don’t need to necessarily think of themselves as second-class citizens.”

In a piece by the Claremont Independent, one of the student newspapers at the college, the author points out that “Sex Week” is funded by mandatory student fees.

Sex Week—primarily funded by Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC) and the mandatory student fees it collects—intends to educate on healthy sexual relationships and consent. Last year, a large portion of the funds were used to provide free and confidential STI (sexually-transmitted infections) testing for CMC students, but this year, event organizers did not receive the funds to provide this testing.

Claremont McKenna isn’t the first college to host a BDSM-themed event. In March 2018, Northwestern University hosted a dominatrix during its “Sex Week,” that taught students about certain BDSM practices. In December 2017, Princeton University also hosted a BDSM-themed workshop.