Through the Archives: History of Sex at Cornell
By Colette Rose for Sex FW21
“Sex is one of those things that sometimes makes people giggle or embarrassed,” expresses Brenda Marston, the inaugural curator of Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection.
In discussing the taboo nature of sex, she explains, “There’s a very long history of sex being seen as a private thing that should be not talked about frankly and should be regulated by laws and social mores. Because of that, archives didn’t do a great job of documenting attitudes about sexuality and experiences of sexual and gender identity. So, that’s the large task that I have to try to correct in my work.”
When asked about how the definition of sexuality has changed over time on campus, Brenda reflects, “When I first came to campus in January of 1989, it was a very intense period of the AIDS crisis before effective medical treatments had really been discovered and shared. So, a lot of the campus work around sexuality was about trying to convince people to follow safe sex practices and to be able to have a positive feeling about sexuality––even though AIDS had created so much fear around things like casual sex and same-sex sex.”
She continues, “the other things that I’ve noticed maybe in the past five years is a new focus on the issue of affirmative consent. Even though there’s been a lot of activism against rape and anti-sexual harassment throughout my time here, I think the focus on really articulating your sexual consent is new and really positive.”
Cornell has always been at the forefront of student sexuality advocacy and Brenda relayed the fact that we have “the second oldest queer student group at any college in the country, second after Columbia. Gay students formed an official group in 1968––which was before the Stonewall riots.”
The history of Cornell’s student groups who deal with matter of sexual identity are well documented in the Human Sexuality Collection and particularly in their “Speaking of Sex” exhibit from 2014 which was curated by Brenda and can still be accessed online. Of the hundreds of fascinating artifacts, some of the most compelling and inspiring are three t-shirts that gay and lesbian students at Cornell hand silkscreened and sold to make money for bus tickets to New York City to participate in the first gay pride march on Stonewall’s anniversary.
The study of archives isn’t simply a matter of looking at ephemera individually but also noticing patterns in the collection of artifacts. Brenda observed that in the “archives of Cornell’s queer student groups, you can really see an evolution there of the terms they used to identify themselves. At first gay meant gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, and cross-dressing kind of altogether. The first name of the group was the Student Homophile League which is a very kind of 1950s-60s term and they quickly changed their name to Cornell Gay Liberation. Then over time they changed it to Cornell Gay and Lesbian Liberation, Cornell LGBT Coalition, and then there was also a group called DASH––Direct Action to Stop Homophobia.”
In considering the history of sex and sexuality on Cornell’s campus, Brenda concludes: “It’s interesting thinking back about the very heavy and serious issue like rape and sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, and the very fun and empowering aspects of sexuality. A lot of times it’s during college that people are forming their identity and hopefully have the ability to do that with freedom––to explore what kind of adult they want to be.” As Cornell students, sex, within the context of sexuality and its history on campus, is an integral part of self discovery.