During 24 hours of feminist lectures and luncheons, several famous feminists from across the world urged women to redefine sexuality and actively fight sexism at this past weekend's feminist conference at Penn State.

For the program titled "The Politics of Sexuality: Multicultural Feminist Perspectives," more than 300 students and community members packed the HUB Fishbowl all day Saturday to hear eight women's views on sexuality in society. Keynote speakers included feminist theorist and activist Andrea Dworkin and black women's health movement leader Byllye Avery.

"The more we aggravate the gravel, cause little ripples, that little ripple will turn into a big wave and cause change," said Susan Edwards, a law professor and criminologist at the University of Buckingham in England. Edwards was a panelist who spoke about prostitution in Great Britain.

Another panelist, Aurora Javate de-Dios, chairwoman of KALAYAAN, the League for the Liberation of Women in the Philippines, agreed.

"Women's empowerment includes finding their voices to articulate their dreams," said Javate-De Dios, chairwoman of the Department of History and International Studies at Maryknoll College in the Philippines.

Javate-De Dios, Edwards and most other speakers agreed that today's women's movement is largely unsuccessful, as indicated by sexism in the military.

Military prostitution provided a lively topic of talk at Saturday's panel discussion featuring international feminist scholars. Panelists included Javate-De Dios, Edwards and Sigma Huda, a Bangladesh lawyer and international advocate of human rights.

Javate-De Dios demanded an end to the glorification of soldiers, saying, "We must break the silence about American servicemen being good boys."

Rather than fighting constantly for peace in the Middle East, many soldiers visited Saudi Arabian brothels after finishing drills, said conference convener Kathleen Barry, associate professor of human development at Penn State who introduced the panel. Most of the panel echoed that belief.

Javate-De Dios accused the military of running a "brothel city" since the war's beginning in January. Prostitution occurred at the largest U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, she said.

Huda said women in her country who become prostitutes flee from economically unstable and sexually oppressive households, she said.

Edwards said that 98 percent of Great Britain's women plead guilty to prostitution, although they are the true victims of crime.

Another conference speaker presented her views on fraternity rape on college campuses.

Peggy Reeves Sanday, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said fraternity rape deals with social construction, not human behavior.

"Pulling train" is fraternity lingo for gang rape, Sanday said. Individual members can also rape women by "working a yes out" when women say no, she said. Both techniques usually involve intoxicating women to weaken their resistance, she said.

"(Men who join fraternities) have an obsession with power, and they have been promised male dominance by the brotherhood," she said.

Sanday distinguished between rape-prone and rape-free campuses, saying that rape-prone campuses often display extreme homophobia, heterosexuality and athletic expenditures.

Another speaker, Lebanese poet, novelist and scholar Evelyne Accad discussed "Unveiling Sexuality in War: Is there Hope in the Middle East?"

Accad encouraged women to change their male-defined ways of thinking about sexuality.

"To transform the world, we must transform the very substance of our erotic sensibilities," she said.

Another topic addressed Saturday was lesbianism. Janice Raymond, author and professor of women's studies at the University of Amherst in Mass., blamed the myths and negative attitudes toward homosexuality and lesbianism on male heterosexist attitudes.

"Sexuality isn't just constructed by a society or by a culture," she said. "Somebody constructed them."

Raymond also addressed the recent controversy about allegations that Lady Lions coach Rene Portland bars lesbians from her team.

"Many people, like basketball coaches, believe that lesbianism is not only congenital but contagious so they wage a campaign to stamp it out," she said. "The coach obviously doesn't want herself and her team confirmed as dykes."