On Sunday mornings I like to read the New York Times Magazine – or at least I skim through and read stuff that looks interesting, William Safire if I don’t think he’s being too self-indulgent, and always the Ethicist, of course. Today I came across this article, “http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/magazine/30Chastity-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine ,” which focuses on a Harvard student who is the president of a group called True Love Revolution (puke!), a chastity club that promotes abstinence until marriage with so-called logic. Oh. My. God. Allow me to rant for a little while.
They avoid religious reasoning (though the group’s founders were strong Catholics), which in abstinence debates I find far more compelling even if not personally applicable. At least if you say, “God wants you to wait,” we can just disagree on that one point and go our separate ways, no harm no foul. What I detest is this group’s distorted use of logic, philosophy, and feminism, and the annoying attitude that came across in the article. Some people decide to abstain, and of course that’s fine if that’s the right decision for them. But I hate being preached to that abstinence is better, for some list of idiotic reasons.
At least it doesn’t seem to be just a Hymen Preservation Society, a notion of virginity I find absolutely silly (in general I find capital-V Virginity to be a silly concept, too, but if we’re just taking “virgin” to mean “sexually inexperienced,” then that’s a serviceable word). They are against anything beyond hugging and kissing. Save it for marriage – and since marriage is the foundation for family, “it” really just means penis-in-vagina intercourse, followed by kidlets, retirement in Florida, and eventual side-by-side burial plots. Am I stereotyping? Gee, stop me if I’m stereotyping. I’m just some slut, don’t mind me. (Disclaimer: I may have accidentally conflated the Harvard group with a similar group mentioned, based in Princeton, with slightly more extreme views. I glanced at their website and glanced quickly away.)
Side note: speaking of PIV only, the group’s president, Janie Fredell, says oral sex is “disgusting and disrespectful." Dude, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.* Actually, I’ve heard this attitude from a distressing number of women my age (college), including those who are far from virgin lands. It’s one thing just to not be a huge fan of oral sex. People have unique preferences, and I respect that. But “disgusting”? If that’s the first adjective that springs to mind, then either you’ve got some issues about your vagina, or, honey, he ain’t doin’ it right.
*That’s the thing about abstinence-promotion groups, isn’t it? You’re being lectured by people who have zero familiarity with the topic at hand. At least it’s slightly better than grown-ups I’ve known who would wax loquacious about their wayward teenage years, extolling the inestimable value of abstinence… to which I always want to reply, “Easy for you to say, asshole, you never abstained!”
(I can’t even conjure up a way it could be construed as disrespectful. If you’re just shoving his head down [or hers, of course; I’ve been assuming male-on-female oral sex here - how heteronormative of me!], then yeah, that’s not very polite. But if someone’s lavishing pleasure upon their partner like it’s the only route to Nirvana, then what the hell is wrong with that?)
Oh, and about the gays: they can’t get married, so their obligation is to remain abstinent for life. Good luck!
In short, their philosophical “feminist” position is that women have control over their bodies. Cool, yeah, I’m with you so far. I take obvious exception, though, to the follow-up that the only way to be in control of your body is to Just Say No, 100% of the time. No intercourse, no foreplay, no dry humping in the backseat of the car… absolutely no orgasms at all. When asked about masturbation, the group’s president just said, “Oh, God, no!” Replace the “no” with “yes” and you’re a bit closer to my position.
But mostly it’s no sex with boys. After all, in case you guys hadn’t heard, there’s a bit of a double standard going around, and if women have sex, they are devalued. So the True Love Revolution (can I get another puke for that name?) is fighting the culture… by not having sex. Gee, my inclination would be to fight the double standard. Maybe that’s just me.
But my biggest problem here is the false dichotomy: wait until your wedding night vs. be a promiscuous whore who’s giving it away to anyone who makes eye contact. Nice logic, Harvard. They decry the hook-up culture. Okay, that’s fine. I think the hook-up culture on modern college campuses sucks in a lot of ways. That’s why I never participated (along with the fact that I avoided alcohol for a long time, which speaks a lot to the reason the hook-up culture exists in the first place). But it’s a little late for me to wait until marriage. There’s a huge middle ground, a middle ground I am delighted to occupy. When you’re with someone you love, you wait until you both feel ready, you respect each other, and you both care about each other’s needs, why the hell shouldn’t you have sex? For God’s sake, it’s fun. If you’re clean, monogamous, and neither of you is slutting it around on the weekends, you’re not likely to catch all the scary diseases they warn you about. Use protection, use good judgment… sure, it carries risk, but so does anything worth doing.
Don’t even get me started on the other corny claptrap that you hear from all the abstinent groups. This shit pissed me off long before I was any kind of active. You know, you’re hurting your future husband (or wife; at least at Harvard, they’re equal-opportunity) when you have sex, you’re devaluing yourself, you’re making sex no longer special… They even spread “facts” that have been “proven” by “science” that turn out to be complete bullshit. There’s zero evidence that premarital sex leads to poverty, higher divorce rates, or (my favorite) “an inability to bond.”
But if you wait, it all pays off when you’re married! Everyone knows that losing your virginity is the most beautiful, wondrous thing that can ever happen to you, a passionate night of joy, oxytocin, and sparkles!!!
Here’s another problem about being lectured about sex by people who’ve never had it: it does. not. work. like. that. Without getting super-TMI here, I will say that I was fully prepared for my experience not to be a bucket of rainbows. I did not expect to orgasm, or even to have very much fun. Still, I felt ready, I loved (love) my partner, and I wanted to do it. He did, too. So we did. It was awkward as hell and it hurt like a motherfucker. I understand this is not uncommon for first-time premarital trysts.
We are both educated young people. (Not long after the mutual deflowering, we went to a seminar by two sex educators on female orgasm, which promised to teach us everything we needed to know. Both of us walked away saying, “Well, that was fun, but I didn’t really learn anything…”) We were prepared with all the trimmings. We were about as ready as we could be – or so I thought! If only we’d had a marriage license, which would have conferred superpowers upon my vagina… and especially if he’d never ever so much as brushed against my lady-parts before that night, and I had never laid eyes on a penis**… if we hadn’t already practiced giving each other lots and lots of orgasms… Yeah, yeah, that would have been MUCH easier.
**I think if I were a blushing bride all worked up for my wedding night, I would already be nervous enough that, with one glimpse of that thing, I’d pass out. I mean, Christ, have you seen one? Oh, my bad, Ms. Fredell may not have.
And just for the record: so far my bonding powers are intact, I am not yet divorced or in poverty, I have no diseases or babies… and I have done it more than once.
But I’ve saved the best for last, the single paragraph that made me want to punch this chick in the face… or at least use words that I, strident feminist that I am, save for very, very special people:
I agree. Wholeheartedly. Orgasms are fab, but love is better. Love is the best thing in the world. I have never known anything as wonderful as the experience I’m having in this, my first love (we’ve been together a little over a year, both young and full of all that cliched passion). I am really disgustingly pukingly happy because of love. Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love. So what’s the problem?
Here, I’m gonna put that last sentence again.
You stupid fucking self-righteous bint! What the fuck is wrong with you that you believe sex and love are mutually exclusive? Really, honestly, you believe that because my boyfriend pays lip service to my bajingo, it means he only loves me for my labia? I cannot even evaluate how many levels of fucked-up this is. I am forced to yell the same two words over and over again: FALSE DICHOTOMY! FALSE DICHOTOMY! FALSE DICHOTOMY! The options are not sex-or-love. The options are not my-perfect-beautiful-experience-every-woman-should-have or the-miserable-bondage-of-sluttery. Oh don’t mind me, I’m a slave to my hormones! And this is equally offensive to men, who only appreciate women because they’re a handy place to stick a dick (except your boyfriend, who appreciates you only because you won’t let him stick it there).
Look, chick, I am appreciated more than I’ll ever fucking deserve. Conjugate it: I love, he loves, we love. AND SOMETIMES, WE ENJOY BEING NORMAL SEXUAL BEINGS. Mature adults in a mature relationship can handle it without devaluing all that is good in the world, and just because you’ve chosen something different doesn’t mean yours is the best decision for every woman, for every couple. Grow the fuck up! Jesus!
And get down off that fucking high horse; you’ll break your precious hymen.
