This weekend I got an e-mail from Harpyness reader Melody, who pointed me to a recent article in Slate entitled “Why Is a Former Sex Blogger Rethinking Virginity?“. I was wondering what you think of it? Melody asked, so I read the article, by Double XX writer Jessica Grose. That byline immediately raised my antennae—more about that shortly—and I could see why Melody had mixed feelings about the article, which was about a recent conference at Harvard called “Rethinking Virginity.” The conference was organized by Lena Chen, a Harvard senior and former sex blogger. Grose describes Chen as:
…part of a handful of women bloggers who are sobering up quickly after their youthful indiscretions, and lately, the sober seems far more prominent than the indiscreet.
A brief recap of Grose’s sex-blogger tales of woe:
Chen started “Sex and the Ivy” in 2006, at the beginning of her sophomore year. The initial response to Chen was positive, and she felt exhilarated by the experience—freshman girls looked up to her, lots of people were reading her posts, and she was getting some freelance work out of it. At the time, she thought, “I was well-aware that my subject matter was slightly edgy and my reputation slightly soiled, but hardly unsalvageable, nothing a book deal couldn’t fix.”
Soon there was an awful backlash, which included a deranged ex-boyfriend leaking nude photos of Chen and many deeply cruel jabs from her pals at Harvard in the comments section of her blog and on IvyGate. “I always thought that people here are more progressive, but I think sexuality is an exception,” Chen told me. “They were saying I was a slut, I was a whore, but only behind my back…”
The resulting trauma gave Chen panic attacks and led her to take time off from Harvard. She stopped blogging about her sex life in explicit detail on Sex and the Ivy…and instead of referring to herself as a “bleeding heart nympho,” Chen now goes by the label “third wave radical Marxist feminist.”
Chen doesn’t apologize for her old blog, but she acknowledges that the early posts “reflected a painful desire to be liked” and that she’s lost a lot because of it. Her experience echoes that of other female bloggers who have written about their intimate lives. Emily Gould also does not apologize for her former antics in her new book, And the Heart Says Whatever. In a New York Times Magazine article, she wrote about the panic attacks she experienced as a result of the public vitriol she received after an unfortunate appearance on Larry King Live. Chen admits that she didn’t understand the potential repercussions when she started blogging.
I think Chen’s over-share-y, self-aggrandizing approach to sex is not unusual among young women. Sex, newfound freedom, the beginnings of feminist awareness and that “painful desire to be liked” can be pretty explosive when mixed, and thanks to the internet, the splatter is more public than ever. The leaked nude photos are especially violating—I’m truly sorry Chen experienced that.
Now, Grose says: ”Chen seems dedicated to making sure no one else goes through what she had to endure.” One hopes at least part of her approach would be encouraging young women to think hard about the long-term consequences of oversharing in a public forum. This may already be happening; Grose observes “People just a micro-generation younger than Chen are wise to the downside of overexposure and already seem less inclined to reveal themselves.”
Curiously, while she name-checks Emily Gould, who was never really known as a sex blogger, Jessica Grose makes no mention of her former Jezebel colleague Tracie Egan, the self-proclaimed “dick-liker” who blogged under the name Slut Machine for years. When she got engaged, Egan retired the moniker and conspicuously toned down both her Jezebel posts and her entertainingly lurid blog, “One D At A Time” (yes, the D stands for what you think it does), although not before using the blog to share details of spectacular rows with her fiance that were triggered in part by his discomfort with her promiscuous past. She ultimately password-protected the blog and ceased writing about sex on Jezebel. Given the topic, Egan and former Jezebellian Moe Tkacik—who also spent a great deal of time blithely cheerleading for unsafe sex—were conspicuous omissions on Grose’s part.
I think Chen and Gould and Egan’s experiences fall more into the “Yikes, I put that on the internet!” category than the “penitent Magdalene” category the article seems to hint at. They aren’t apologizing for their blogging past, and they shouldn’t have to. Talking openly—even ruefully—about the consequences of their actions isn’t the same as disowning them. But in a slut-shaming world there’s a perception that women should repent their slutty ways—or at least seem to—in order to redeem their reputations, and redemption comes mainly by serving as a cautionary tale for other young women. That really bothers me, as does the name of the “Rethinking Virginity” conference, even though Lena Chen said on her blog that:
“Rethinking Virginity” does NOT mean “reconsidering virginity”. Not. At. All. I was/am not preaching sexual abstinence (or ANYTHING for that matter). Just, no. Off the bat, let’s get that straight.”
So noted. Maybe call it something else next year to avoid confusion?
I’ve written before about how virginity and conscious celibacy—a term I prefer to “abstinence”—is entirely consistent with sex-positive feminism. But I cringe at the idea of reintroducing abstinence or virginity to the conversation; it seems like a reactivation of the Madonna-whore stereotype. Women like Lena Chen or Emily Gould may have overshared too much and been hurt by the response, but the slut-shaming response is usually the problem, not the actual sex being described.
That said, I think it would be a mistake to dismiss all disapproval as slut-shaming. Grose writes:
I asked the panel called “The Feminist Response to Slut-Shaming & Sexual Scare Tactics” what they thought of adults having nonmonogamous unprotected sex, and the response was uniformly, well, shaming. “They’re doing something damaging, and careless, and it’s not a choice I personally approve of,” said one panelist.
Melody, who tipped me off to this article, wrote:
The author said it was a type of slut shaming; I agree with the author, but I also agree with the panelist, insomuch that I don’t personally approve. I was trying to figure out whether or not I am slut shaming because of it, or if it is concern, or even if it is slut shaming masked as concern. Am I being too judgmental?
I don’t think that’s too judgmental, provided it’s the behavior—-not the person—that’s being shamed. I completely agree with the panelist that unprotected sex with multiple partners is a damaging and careless thing to do and I think it’s totally fine for her to say that personally, it’s not a choice she approves of.
Grose may call slut-shaming, but Jessica Grose has a knee-jerk response to criticism that I find deeply suspect. She once said in a magazine interview that:
You know, the whole point of Third Wave feminism is that individual choice should not be judged….if you choose to drink yourself unconscious in some random guy’s bed, that’s also your prerogative. To say that you shouldn’t would be paternalistic hand-wringing.
Grose seems to think that feminism means all choices women make should be immune from criticism, no matter how ill-advised, dangerous or self-destructive they are. I don’t buy it, and I don’t think Grose is doing feminism any favors with that characterization.
Putting your own health at risk for the sake of sex is foolish and self-destructive. Unless you’ve had brutally frank, full-disclosure conversations and agreed to share the risk—which I think very few people do—you’re also potentially endangering your partner’s health, which is immoral. Tracie Egan ignited a firestorm of criticism for this on Jezebel when she wrote flippantly about the fact that she had contracted multiple STIs, including herpes, which is incurable, but did not inform her partners of it and generally did not use condoms. I thought she absolutely deserved the blowback she got, which was less about slut-shaming and more about how Egan didn’t seem to care that she might infect others. Is that judgmental? Yes. But judging someone’s behavior is different from condemning them as a person, and judgement has a valid role in social discourse, even about things sexual. I think it’s completely legitimate to call someone on their foolish, dangerous or unethical behavior, even a fellow feminist.
The panelist Grose referred to defended herself in the comments section of the article, saying in part:
What I said in response to Jessica’s question was that, while I respect the rights of adults to make whatever choices they see fit in life, the problem with having unprotected sex with multiple partners is that it’s not an action that only effects [sic] you, or your partners, but also your partners’ partners, and their partners, and so on and so forth–and, as a result, from a public health standpoint, it was not something that I approved of.
Sex, like any other adult activity, comes with certain responsibilities. It should be a respectful, pleasurable experience for consenting adults. Both parties’ health and safety should be a priority. If those basic standards are adhered to, feminism shouldn’t judge the kind of sex people have—even if they do it in the streets and frighten the horses. But sex-positive feminism doesn’t mean that all sexual choices are good ones or that all sexual exploits deserve a slap on the back and a hearty “you go, girl!” Slut-shaming sucks, but so does thinking you can do whatever you want and damn the consequences, especially when the consequences hurt others.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Rethinking Sex Bloggers and Slut-Shaming @ http://bit.ly/ck5YL1 [...]
Oh this Jessica Grose?
http://jezebel.com/5015162/which-is-worse-roman-polanski-banging-a-13+year+old-or-hollywood-blindly-embracing-him-despite-it-all
Yeah, I have found her attitudes toward sex troubling in the past.
I am troubled by the assumptions (not by you BeckSharper) that the majority of woman fall into two polar opposites of extremity. In fact, I would guess the majority of young women neither passionately embrace and advocate for virginity or have multiple sexual encounters and then blog about it. Like you point out, it’s just the same old tired re-hashing of the Madonna/whore dichotomy.
Why yes, bluebears. That Jessica Grose and that Tracie Egan.
Yeah, I hate the way this whole debate is phrased as being an either/or equation: you’re either a slutty sex blogger or a chastened, reformed sex blogger who’s “rethinking virginity.”
It reminds me a LOT of the evangelical Christian movement and its “born-again virgins” (i.e. women who’ve had sex but take a vow of chastity until marriage as a way of repenting and finding acceptance within the community). We don’t need any overtones of that shit in the feminist movement.
Methinks Jessica Grose wants a book deal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – so do I! – but she does seem to be quite fixated with this idea that today’s young’uns have gone all prudish.
She’s not entirely wrong (I think the pendulum has shifted since Female Chauvinist Pigs came out five years ago, as I wrote a few weeks ago http://rachelhills.tumblr.com/post/549200933/why-young-women-are-tired-of-talking-about-raunch-cultur), but in this case, making her current favoured argument came at the cost of accurately representing Lena Chen, and of accurately representing the Rethinking Virginity conference.
Two posts you might be interested in checking out on this topic include Lena’a own (http://thechicktionary.com/post/590254901/slate-why-is-a-former-sex-blogger-rethinking) and this excellent summary by Shelby Knox (http://shelbyknox.com/2010/05/13/young-feminist-bashing-rethinking-virginity-edition/).
Interesting post. I think that the framing of the conference is pretty problematic. I think that spreading STIs is… not good, but I think the framing of the way it’s talked about it kind of problematic. I might write some more on this over at my place…
I really like the distinction you make between penitance and privacy on Tracy and Moe’s part. I’m not a huge fan of either (though I find Tracy’s writing to be quite funny and wish the One D At A Time archives were still open) but I think she’s handled her transition to more of a television/marijuana blogger well.
I am against slut-shaming, but I’m pretty okay with stupid-shaming.
I’m not big for over-sharing. Frankly, I’m not interested in your sexual escapades, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t interested in mine. Anyone who chooses to share that information, especially over the Internet, is risking these very reactions, and frankly, there is no middle ground for most people.
Look, if you share your sex life, then you stop, so what? Whatever your reasoning for sharing in the first place or stopping later on, that’s really none of my business. To use a timeworn phrase: you made your bed, you lie in it. I’m of the opinion that what people do in the privacy of their bedroom is none of my affair. If they decide to publicize it, they must deal with the consequences of that, but that kind of information-sharing is not an invitation to shaming or abuse. I think it takes a lot of guts to put that kind of stuff out there, and I only wish we could all feel free to discuss the important issues of our lives, or what’s going on, in any regard, without the fear of drawing ire and vitriol.
There should also be no second-guessing; anyone who wrote about their sex life openly then decided to stop, probably did so because they wised up, either because it was hurting themselves or someone they love, or because they were exposing themselves to the seedier element that trolls the Internet looking for a cheap thrill.
@PhD – I’m with you. I’d say the exact same thing to a person of any gender or sexuality — having a lot of unprotected sex with different people is stupid, and you might want to be careful about what you put on the internet.
I do think that a conversation about what constitutes appropriate behavior towards others on the internet is somewhat overdue, culturally, but at this point it almost certainly has to be a generational thing. Parents, don’t let your children grow up to be internet trolls!
@Becky – Perhaps “Reconceptualizing Virginity”? Or is that too academic-speak?
I think that “virginity” is one of those hot-button words that people—bloggers, conference organizers, activists, religious nutjobs etc—like to throw around because it’s guaranteed to get people’s attention. I suspect that’s what’s being done here.
Unless they’re actually talking about young girls who haven’t had sex yet, they should find another term, IMO.
@BeckySharper: Somehow, virginity has maintained its magical, mystical quality, like so many things from the dawn of civilization. They use it because they know it will resonate on many levels for people, thereby attracting readers (a.k.a. customers).
For context, not trying to make any specific point — I was at the conference, and it was very clearly about deconstructing the concept of virginity and de-linking “not having sex/having sex for the first time” from “pure, innocent, ethically superior, cis and straight (and frigid, mousy or anti-sex)” baraqiel, “Reconceptualizing Virginity” is academic-y and maybe wouldn’t have been quite as catchy, but I think it’s more accurate!
The conference kicked off with a discussion of how virginity has been constructed historically and culturally. The panelists talked about the gendered nature of the concept of virginity, its relationship to property-based marriage, its relationship to control of female sexuality and modesty, its relationship to class, and lots more. Then they moved on to the panel Jessica Grose is discussing, about resisting slut-shaming. Later in the day, there was a panel about queer sexuality and its relationship to “virginity”, then the panel (also mentioned by Grose) about a sex-positive vision of abstinence.
As Trixie said in the comments to Grose’s article, she deliberately framed her answer as “In terms of public health” unprotected sex is unwise, and the other panelists chimed in talking about their personal objections to unprotected sex on this-is-putting-you-and-others-at-physical-risk grounds. There was also specific discussion about the fact that it is important to distinguish between pointing out that some specific behavior is unsafe and conservative hand-wringing over how young women will be morally and emotionally devastated by non-patriarchy-approved sex. The moderator mentioned that in some contexts, like acting in adult films where there is stringent STI testing in place, she has no problem at all with unprotected sex.
So — I don’t want to assume bad faith, but I get the sense that Grose went to the conference with her article mentally half-written, and saw what she wanted to see, which was Lena Chen as a newly minted sexual conservative.
Well said, Dork.
This post raises in my mind the differencce between having principles and shaming. In our culture, liberals to be very reluctant to describe anyone’s behavior as immoral or unethical. We seem to think that raising ethical problems is tantamount to attacking the person him or herself, and, as BeckyS points out, there’s a big difference. We can’t leave this sort of analysis to the wingnuts. How are we supposed to improve ourselves, other people and the society in which we live if we’re not willing to give and take criticism of this kind? Liberals *do* know the difference between right and wrong, and we *do* care. Good people can do bad things, and the behavior in question is a case in point. Having unprotected sex knowing you have active stds and deliberately failing to warn your partner is a despicable, selfish thing to do. End of story. Not much is less sex-positive than that.
The other big problem raised here is this crazy impulse people seem to have to expose their most intimate thoughts and acts. I don’t believe that doing so was so very common until the last 10 years or so, when the interwebz really became integrated into society. It seems ironic, to say the least, that we are so concerned about threats to our privacy on the net when we ourselves are blithely posting information of the most personal kind. Then when people react to it, whether fairly or not, we are upset. The thing is, the net is a window, not a mirror. You’re not just writing for yourself and whoever you might invite to share your thoughts. I can’t understand how people who have lived with the net their entire lives are failing to understand this.
I follow a lot of people on Twitter who went to the “Rethinking Virginity” conference, which, I think, was sponsored by a LGBTQ group at Harvard and was designed to be a response to a growing abstinence only presence on the Harvard campus. From what I could tell of the live-tweeting I saw coming out of the conference, it was about evaluating virginity as a concept, where the idea of valuing “virginity” comes from historically, how it has been used to control women, how the concept of “virginity” marginalizes queer experiences, etc. Grose seems to have completely misunderstood the event. It was a reaction TO people who promote virginity as a worthy thing to preserve until heterosexual marriage, rather than a promotion of virginity.
Becky, I meant to ask how you’ve dealt with this sort of thing, since you’ve written some personal, explicit material. Has it been a problem for you?
@MM: No, not really. I can’t say I’ve ever had anyone slut-shame me because of what I’ve written. Then again, I think what I write is pretty mild compared to real sex bloggers like Lena Chen or Tracie Egan.
Also, I’m very careful about privacy—both my own and that of my partners. What I’ve blogged about accounts for about 5-10% of my private life, and the juiciest stuff has been left out. I’m not especially exhibitionist by nature and I don’t want to inadvertently hurt or expose anyone I’ve been with.
(Although when I wrote about getting dumped by text, the dude in question was not thrilled that it wound up on this blog, but I pointed out that I didn’t use my real name or his, so he wasn’t at all identifiable, except to him and me—and later to the Harpies who met him at a party. Oh, and if he don’t want to be called out for acting like a douchebag, he probably shouldn’t act like a douchebag.)
I don’t think having nonmonogamous protected sex nonmonogamous unprotected sex are even in the same category of behavior. Maybe because I’m a child of the 80s. Unprotected sex is unthinkable. When did it become judgmental to acknowledge how dangerous that is?
Oversharing on the internet is also pretty unthinkable to me, but I can’t say I haven’t benefited from other people’s oversharing, in the same way I benefit from reading about other women’s experiences with work, parenting, friendships, etc. Not to mention One D at a Time was HILARIOUS.
Also, isn’t the ultimate solution to slut-shaming changing the shamers, not the sluts?
Very interesting to know, LSG and funnyface.
@PhDork: Yes!
Regarding the Eagan/Tkacik brand of “sex-positive” writing, it always struck me as using the master’s tools to dismantle his house kind of stuff. Like, traditionally, purity is the measuring stick: virgins are better and worthier. It seemed to me like Eagan-esque writers simply inverted that: the more you fuck and the more provocatively you fuck, the cooler, more progressive, and more worthy of admiration you are. There is often a lot of direct and indirect…prude-shaming (?) in that type of writing. I have a lot of problems with pure choice feminism, but even if that’s your cup of tea, simply inverting the female sexual totem pole is not really embracing all choices; it’s just reconfiguring the hierarchy in a way that still leaves many women out.
It’s funny, but when I used to read Tracie Egan’s various oversharing blog entries, the sex stuff wasn’t that outrageous. TMI? Sure, but nothing that out there, or at least not in my experience. What bugged me was the rampant substance abuse, and how open she was about snorting coke and smoking pot and passing out from various drugs. All I could think was, how the heck was this woman getting jobs? Don’t most employers drug screen?
And yes, the whole “I have an STD but I’m not telling guys because herpes is so whatevs” was appalling. Full disclosure is the only ethical option. If the guy still wants to have protected sex, cool. If not, well, that’s his informed choice.
@Tall in Heels: the more you fuck and the more provocatively you fuck, the cooler, more progressive, and more worthy of admiration you are.
Exactly. And also the more feminist you are. I have a huge problem with that.
I also think the whole “I just don’t give a fuck because I’m so fucking fabulous with all my unbridled wild sexxxy fucking/drinking/drugging!!” bravado is deployed to cover up much darker, unhappier emotions. That’s usually how it goes, in my experience.
@beckysharper: Agreed.
Hi guys! Glad that the Slate piece got people discussing the content of the conference, especially on a blog I really admire. As other commenters have already pointed out, the Jessica Grose piece was a complete mischaracterization of the conference and of my personal life. I am not and have not ever encouraged people to become abstinent. What the conference did do was interrogate notions of sexual purity and critique the heteronormative sexual standards that lead to the shaming of queer and female sexuality. None of that is made clear in the above piece, which heavily implies that conference attendees were “shamed”, when in fact, the only sexual act (of the many discussed) that panelists ever explicitly disapproved of was unprotected, non-monogamous intercourse (because of the public health risks).
For a more accurate take, please refer to the conference website: http://bit.ly/d5LbB5
And if any of you are interested in discussing this topic further, my contact info. is on my blog at http://thechicktionary.com
@Tall-in-Heels Regarding the Eagan/Tkacik brand of “sex-positive” writing, it always struck me as using the master’s tools to dismantle his house kind of stuff. Like, traditionally, purity is the measuring stick: virgins are better and worthier. It seemed to me like Eagan-esque writers simply inverted that: the more you fuck and the more provocatively you fuck, the cooler, more progressive, and more worthy of admiration you are.
Beautifully put. I 100% agree.
Grose’s article was either journalistically incompetent or blatantly dishonest. Her lead was that Lena Chen, former sex blogger, helped organize a conference about reconsidering virginity–which Grose further implied to be a conference advocating voluntary celibacy. The conference, which featured Sady Doyle and other well-known feminist bloggers, was actually about debunking the whole concept of virginity. (I.e., is it even a coherent idea and even if it is, why should we care about it?).
None of this had anything to do with Chen’s sex blog. She decided to stop blogging about her sex life because she was stigmatized and shamed. She later found a boyfriend and settled into a more private, monogamous existence. She never embraced chastity or expressed regret for her sex life as such. She eventually gave up on the blog, but that’s hardly the same thing.
Thanks, Lena!