Oasis Aqua Lounge owner Jana Matthews. The club on Mutual Street is four storeys of easy-to-clean surfaces, with sanitizing wipes, baskets of condoms and lots of places to mingle, including the back of a hippie van and a heated pool. The U of T Sexual Education Centre is hosting a party there next Monday. (Torstar News Service)
The University of Toronto Sexual Education Centre (SEC) wanted to kick off its annual Sexual Awareness Week with a bang -- no pun intended. So the group scheduled a get-together for next Monday at the Oasis Aqua Lounge, a downtown club "that bills itself as a water-themed adult playground, where swingers are welcome and sex is allowed everywhere but the hot tub," Metro News reports.
Despite the fact that the group is attending a club where sex is permitted everywhere, SEC outreach coordinator Dylan Tower, 22, says they are not bankrolling an "orgy."
"Our executive director made it very clear that this is not an orgy, we’re not funding an orgy…People are allowed to have sex on premise," he said. "[T]here is not any type of 'You should be having sex when you’re here.' It’s very much, come and enjoy the space, there’s no prodding or pushing in that direction."
As far as the University of Toronto is concerned, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement that they will not "attempt to censor, control or interfere with any group on the basis of its philosophy, beliefs, interests or opinions expressed unless and until these lead to activities which are illegal or which infringe on the rights and freedoms."
More from Metro News:
The event begins in the daytime, and organizers are asking students to keep their clothes on until 7 p.m., when the “party becomes clothing-optional so you can get naked with all your new friends.”SEC is an affiliated levy group of the University of Toronto Students Union. Undergraduate students pay .25 cents a term for the services, and can opt out if they choose.
The group’s mission is to foster a sex-positive attitude in the greater U of T area, by offering information, programming, safer-sex supplies, and peer [counseling] in a welcoming environment. Their sexual awareness week includes a discussion on sex positivity, an interactive sex toy demonstration and an afternoon of pornography. The first event is the party at Oasis: the organization rented the club and lowered the price to $5 a person. (Admission for couples is normally $80.)
Tower went on to say that "sex positivity" is about coexisting, not disagreeing about what is morally right. The group outing is a safe and cheap way to introduce students to the sex clubs of Toronto, he said.
“We just make sure that everyone, no matter what they’re into, can communicate about it, and have a great experience socially, without people being like, 'You can’t do that, that’s gross,'" he added.
The group will reportedly provide a “myriad of safer-sex supplies” so “everyone can be as safe as possible” and volunteers will be around to “make sure everyone is respectful and having the best experience Oasis has to offer."
Bu it's not an orgy.
