There is a new trend across college campuses in the US, and it reserves its uncompromised right to make utmost use of the First Amendment. Harvard dropped it as the H-Bomb while at Boston University (BU) it broke ground as Boink, and as it mushrooms across the continent, the craze is eliciting as much explosiveness and –stimulation?– as the titles suggest. America has witnessed the birth of the first exclusively sex-themed student publication, made for college students by college students. But these are not your typical socio-cultural commentaries: the magazines are not a forum for sex-related issues as much as they are simply an explicit and graphic acknowledgement, fulfillment, and appreciation of sexual desires. Some call it distasteful; others insist it is campus pornography.

The H-Bomb, which is directly sponsored by Harvard as a student publication, targets “anyone who likes sex” and is delivered free of charge to dorms; BU’s Boink operates outside of official university lines, but proudly calls itself the “College Guide to Carnal Knowledge.” The magazine hires students to pose nude as a supplement to its stories and prescriptions, and remains free from censorship since it is not officially affiliated to BU. Lobbyers in other universities are pushing their administrations to consider this basic right to expression, indicating that the nature of such publications is to promote sex as art and sexual expression as liberating. The liberal young minds behind them are ultimately crafting their way into a redefined sexual revolution, one that pushes a ‘sex-positive’ attitude even into the constrains of university policy.

Talk of a ‘sexual revolution’ in Western societies is traced to the Industrial Revolution, when advances in science and medicine prompted important developments in women’s health care, especifically contraceptives. In the 1930’s, the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich officially coined the term, at a time when Freudian psychology had just legitimized the existence of a powerful human sexual drive. And in the 1960’s, revolutionary America embraced the idea of a liberated sexual order. The outcome was not so much a change in sexual morality and practice, as it was liberation of attitudes on sexual identity and expression.

Like all things Western, the sexual revolution has become universalized, albeit in varying form and degree. The new 1999 constitution of Venezuela dictates no discrimination based on sexual orientation; in 2003, China saw the release of a popular book that spoke of “humanizing sex” by releasing it from personal ethics. And as societies open and close their doors to various sex-related issues –as we await the final verdict on America’s new campus craze– one constant remains. This revolution, among others, is yet to whirl into the Arab world. This is not to suggest that what we need is immediate sexual expression in the arts and literature; but we do need to recognize that matters of sex are directly related to matters of development, through gender-equality and health-care.

While the West continuously refines its sexual revolutions to include key policy-issues such as same-sex marriages and now, freedom of expression, the Arab world seems to stagnate at simple sexual evolution: will we ever be able to carve a place for Arab sexuality among the dizzying contradictions of our society? The key, perhaps, to our social liberation is liberation from historical circumstances first. The post-colonial scapegoat is timeless in Arab society, but constant reference to our colonized past and bitter suspicion of the West continues to hold us back from independent progress. Everything need not be related to a Western plot to de-stabilize and corrupt our society, including the democratic and sexual revolutions. The sexual revolution will come, somewhere along our tiring hike to development, and will urge a better understanding of our roles in society; but there is powerful potential in the idea that paying attention first to this basic aspect of human development will make all other change must more feasible.