This weekend, The Today Show tackled the topic of abstinence, interviewing Janie Fredell, co-president of Harvard’s True Love Revolution.
When thinking about the extremes of what sex and empowerment mean, there tend to be two drastically opposing views. You can either have sex as your sense of empowerment or you can withhold from it for the same reason.
While Janie brings up some interesting points about waiting to get married, I can’t help but disagree with the statement that she and her boyfriend have a great relationship because they’re abstinent. People who have a healthy sex life can also be successful in their relationships.
Here’s the real question: does this mean girls love me so much that they just can’t help not touching me? Or do they love me so much that they can’t stand to sleep with me and ruin our potentially lovely futuristic marriage? Either way, I’m pretty sure they all want to do me in some way or another.
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Blakeley makes all the abstinent girls go “Heeeeeyyyy”…
March 31st, 2008 at 10:07 amWork it, you innocuous pimp, you.
Blakeley; aka “La Ley” for abstinent girls.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:20 amWas her article really entitled “Abstinence: The New Pink?”
Secular, abstinent, ivy leaguers?
Yeah, give me my Jewish, sex-positive, state-school girlfriend any day of the week.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:12 pmGARRETT: Good call, where can I find one of those?
March 31st, 2008 at 6:57 pmwait, do they really have oral sex? and do they really think that counts as “abstinence” for anyone other than a pro-lifer? because oral sex is really fucking intimate. and the idea that you can be abstinent and still have oral sex, or even give/receive handjobs is really offensive to me. i mean, i know a lot of abstinent people then, but they don’t consider it that.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:43 pmAl:
It’s kind of along the lines of the whole “technical virginity” argument. Which is also… pretty offensive. At least in my book.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:20 pmAL OOF: They should have asked her, what a lame interviewer in my opinion. I’m more offended she didn’t ask… so ahhh, you must give him a ton of BJ’s and HJ’s then right? Am I right? Come on… tell me, please?
March 31st, 2008 at 9:28 pmAnd a really, really good interviewer would have asked about anal.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:48 pmOn second thought, part of me feels bad about busting on Janie…but then I’m lame. I guess it’s cool that she has the guts to stand-up and defend what can’t be the most popular stance on a college campus. Plus, she opens herself up to smart-ass remarks from perverts like me who want to know if she counts butt sex.
So, on the one hand, I applaud Janie for standing up for her lifestyle.
On the other, I think the problem is where she says something-like, we want to show that people “can control their sexuality, not be controlled by it.” The implication being that simply by denying yourself “you are in control.” That’s like saying that you’re not going to eat Twinkies and then spending every second of the day thinking about cream-filled, golden-delicious cake; even if you don’t consume the Hostess snack cake, you’re still the Twinkies’ bitch. So I think the True-Love definition of controlling your sexuality needs to be revised.
And should you really be trying to “control” it? Get comfortable with it. Embrace it. Accept it. Practice it responsibly. Sure. But “control” it….that takes me back to when I was 13 and I stopped masturbating for a month because they told me in Christian Health class it was a sin. After three weeks I couldn’t see straight. (Am I rambling yet?)
(And btw, does True Love count mutual masturbation, which also can be pretty damn intimate?)
So to to conclude, I actually think abstinence can be a valid choice…but it’s no different than any other lifestyle, certainly not superior to actively having sex. If you’re into abstinence because that’s what suits your emotional and maybe physical needs, good for you; but don’t presume that it constitutes a “better way.”
I think if they dropped that attitude some of their negative press would go away, regardless of whether they stay “secular” or not. I also think it would help if they talked more about anal. They don’t have to be for or against it, they just need to talk more about it.
So good for you, Janie. Way to represent. Just make sure it’s what you really want and respect that it may not be right for everyone.
I’m gonna go have a Twinkie.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:19 pmXORN SMITH:
1. I was totally with this girl right up until she said that her boyfriend and her had a great relationship BECAUSE they were not doing it. That to me seemed ignorant and it seemed like something any far winged person would say.
2. It’s cool she’s standing up for herself but her boyfriend can’t get laid from his own girlfriend hehehehe. Sorry, it was too easy… unlike his girlfriend. WHOOO-HA!
3. Mutual masturbation! YES! What a poor interviewer! So many unanswered questions!
4. I don’t knock anyones weird stuff unless I have like a really good joke for it, but even then I don’t really “mean it”… ok, I mean it but I don’t feel bad that I said anything about it. Not that I don’t feel guilty, because I don’t.
5. If she wasn’t like, hey look at me! I’m on da teevee and I don’t have the sex! I think people wouldn’t care. I mean I know LOTS of people I know who are TRYING to get laid and can’t, why aren’t they on The Today Show?
March 31st, 2008 at 10:32 pmThe abstinence “movement” as a whole is deeply offensive as it immediately sets up one position as pure and all others as varying degrees of wrong. It’s not simply disagreement, it’s judgement.
If someone chooses to wait for the right person, the right time, marriage, the equinox, the end of the bush administration or some other arbitrary event to get it on, more power to them.
I for one think that you do yourself and any potential partners a disservice by treating sex with too much of a ginger hand.
An ex of mine’s father once said “If my kids were in their 20’s and had never had sex or a physically intimate relationship I’d feel like I’d failed them as a parent.” Ballsy thing to say to a guy who was “defiling” his daughter.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:38 pmRichard,
Points all well taken, especially number 5. I was thinking the same thing…in college I could’ve involuntarily been president of my own abstinence club, and no one wanted to interview me about it. Hell, most of my friends and I could have started our own Justice League of Abstinence if we wanted to. So, yeah, there is that.
(And Justice League of Abstinence is a way cooler name than True Love Revolution.)
March 31st, 2008 at 10:42 pmXORN SMITH: Agreed on all counts and I laughed at all as well.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:59 pmTrue Love Revolution sounds like a bad VW campaign.
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