Noli Irritare Leones

I’ve been listening to Dreamgirls, trying to learn the songs, and I’ve decided I particularly enjoy what they do with the two versions of “One Night Only.” While “Cadillac Car” contrasts a version that’s fun with an elevator music style version that sucks all the life out of the song, I actually like both the version of “One Night Only” that CC intends (and Effie sings) and the disco version that Deena sings, in different ways. And they compliment each other in an interesting way in their emotional tone, Effie getting all the angst of the temporary fling, as she sings “Let’s not pretend to care” in a way that suggests “I’ll pretend not to care,” while Deena bounces past all the touches of doubt in the lyrics to express more the enthusiasm of an encounter that she welcomes even knowing it can’t last, “Come on, big baby, come on.”

zuzu of Feministe is blogging her way through a critical review of Dawn Eden’s The Thrill of the Chaste. And, by coincidence (or maybe not so much of a coincidence, since it’s a common enough topic in the blogosphere), Elliot just the other day wrote about a Rolling Stone article which evidently painted a picture of just the sort of downside of the sexual revolution that Dawn likes to highlight. Elliot writes:

I’ve gotten in trouble for saying this kind of thing before, but damn the torpedos, I’ll say it again: my overall impression from the article (and others like it, and observing human nature) is that a culture of sexual abandon typically ends up being pretty bad for women, and I do mean ‘bad’ in a feminist sense. I’m sure someone can point to a matriarchal culture somewhere that was different (or the bonobos)- but in the modern North American context this sort of thing seems to keep playing itself out.

Speaking strictly as a male animal, I’m sure it would be highly (physically) pleasurable to be a feckless, drunken frat-boy at that sort of place. But speaking as someone with a conscience, I wouldn’t want any daughter of mine (nor any female relative or friend) to end up subject to that kind of culture.

Because this is Elliot, and not Dawn, the comments thread turns more ambivalent about our cultural shifts in attitudes toward sex, with Elliot agreeing that

Good point. I tend to think that some sort of ‘revolution’ was inevitable once the changes in birth control technology happened. And I don’t see the ’50s or any other era as being some golden age for women. I just wonder if some happier balance was possible.

Indeed, it’s hard to see the past as an altogether more innocent era. Even if I could bring myself to believe that the past would have offered me something better in my relations with those of my college boyfriends who were white (and, for reasons I’ll get into further down, I’m not sure the past was so perfect even there), that whole picture of past innocence falls apart pretty badly when the guy’s black. Let’s see, which should I prefer, the world in which I could risk getting my heart broken, or the world in which my advances could get someone lynched? Given those choices, I think I prefer the world where he doesn’t still love me tomorrow, but is alive to go on and love someone else better.

At the same time, I share some of Elliot’s (if not so much Dawn’s) caution about the sexual revolution. In theory, we’re all much freer from judgment, less constrained, better able to pursue our own happiness. In practice, that’s not how I lived my own post-sexual revolution college life, and it’s not so clear to me that it’s what the world is like now. People on the have-lots-of-sex-freely end of the sexual continuum (note that I do not say “sex-positive” people here) aren’t particularly inherently more inclined to respect other people’s choices than people at the other end of the continuum. To the extent that the people who want more sexual partners and more sexual abandon wind up on average being more often men, that does mean that the sexual revolution has its downside for women.

Conservatives, at this point, will jump in to point out how all these tales of sexual abandon gone sour show the failure of feminism. Dawn Eden writes:

What should be disturbing to anyone who still believes the word “feminist” has positive meaning is how she, Ellen, and other chastity detractors appear unable to write about the subject without urging that opposing views be silenced. It’s as though they believe women are too dizzy, stupid, and impressionable to make an informed decision when chastity is presented to them as an option. Apparently, among those who worship the god of “choice,” one choice is verboten: the choice to be chaste.

Not buying. I’ve read nothing in either the Guardian article Dawn cites, on among her many detractors in the blogosphere, saying that she and other chastity advocates should be silenced. Disagreement, even deep dismay, at someone’s views isn’t at all the same thing as trying to silence them; free speech isn’t a “no tagback” thing.

Most of all I’m not buying that feminism is what’s wrong with our current cultural attitudes toward sex. To my mind, a lot of what’s gone astray with the sexual revolution is too little feminism, not too much. It’s having the goal posts move as to what level of premarital sexual activity people are expected to be having, but with the same tired old roles: hey, women, now instead of being expected to be gatekeeper and be sure no sex happens before marriage (or no sex but some moderate amount of necking, or sex only with your fiance, or some sex but never admit it, or whatever the heck that 50s standard actually was), you can, instead, be the one who needs to be sure that your “number” of partners isn’t too high – by some ill-defined standard that no one agrees on. And, most of all, the sexual revolution sells women short when it’s tied to minimalist notions of what “consent” means. And that sure as hell isn’t feminism.

I do, though, want to differ with some in the feminist blogosphere as to just where I find fault with the conservative side. Some people get really bent out of shape by any suggestion that waiting till marriage to have sex could be a good thing. At all. Now I can understand the reasons for this: A) You’ve got a group of people who are super adamant that any premarital sex at all is really, really bad. B) You’ve got the fact that 95 per cent of the people in this country have had premarital sex, C) Should sex education in public schools be all about how really, really bad premarital sex is? And nothing at all about contraception? When even the people who did wait for marriage mostly want contraceptives afterwards? In this context, it’s hard to even suggest that waiting till marriage could be a reasonable choice at all, without risking having people read you as saying that sex is bad and dirty and therefore needs to be saved for the one person you love (as the saying goes). At least, such a suggestion needs to be accompanied by copious disclaimers about how fucking an entire football team may also be a reasonable decision for some individuals.

There is a reason, though, that I keep coming back to some measure of defense of the whole “sex within marriage” standard (though not as a basis for sex education in public schools). It’s not just not just that I have to admit it’s a plausible reading of Christian tradition. It’s certainly not that my own church demands it – Pacific Yearly Meeting Quakers are pretty liberal on sexual matters. It’s not that I had the same empty and unhappy experience of premarital sex as Dawn did. I wasn’t a groupie, didn’t sleep with lots of people, and generally didn’t make the same mistakes twice. I’ll be frank and say that I’ve invited myself into a guy’s bed – no pressure needed there! – and was thoroughly delighted with the experience, and didn’t regret it in the morning. I’ll further say that at a certain gut level, I’m incapable of feeling bad about all of my premarital experience, gay or straight (though some of it I do feel genuinely bad about). And I think that’s OK. Whatever God may require of me now, I doubt it’s for me to feel bad things about not being virginal on my wedding day.

But I do know what it’s like to be pressured, on sexual matters. I know what it’s like to give in to pressure, to a degree. I know how very bad that felt, letting my own boundaries slip, and I know just how good it felt to get up the nerve to say no, stop, and to have it stick. “No” is one of the most valuable words in the language, especially when it comes to sex. That includes no because you’re not ready yet, no because this isn’t the person you want, no because this isn’t the approach you want, no because this isn’t relationship you want, and it also includes no because you’re determined to wait for marriage. Religious reasoning aside, I think the value of the word “no” is important enough not to mock that choice.

At the same time, I share Jill of Feministe’s dismay at the whole purity and integrity ball phenomenon. In fact, Jill nails perfectly the line I’d draw:

There’s nothing wrong with abstinence or chastity itself; those are valid sexual choices. But it is wrong to structure our sexual choices on an ideology of gender dominance in which men are the actors and subjects, and women are the subjugated objects.

Yes, yes, yes! These are the things that are problematic.

A sexual morality that revolves around purity, rather than responsibility:

Detweiller told another story about a man and woman coming to the altar, about to be married, when another guy comes up from the audience and holds the bride’s hand as the ceremony is performed. More guys come forward, until six are holding onto the bride. When the groom asks her what is going on, she replies, “These are guys from my past. They don’t matter to me now, but I gave them a piece of my heart. What’s left of my heart is yours.”

Yes, women, if you marry in, say, your early thirties, and have managed to sleep with six different men over the years – you sluts! – you’re doomed, doomed, doomed, tainted for life, with only a sliver of your heart left to give to your husband, now that you’ve finally found him.

Trying to take girls – who will generally, you know, be self-supporting adults by the time they marry – and go back in time to the day when they’d be under Daddy’s care until that wedding day:

I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

Really screwy views about the difference between the sexes. No, I’m not talking just about treating boys and girls as different and giving them different lessons – in theory, I could imagine a hypothetical world that both assumed that men and women had different approaches to sex on average, and somehow respected both. In theory. But this world isn’t it:

Baker also told them that while they might not believe it at the time, the girl they may date in high school is probably not going to be the one they will marry. “So you’re dating someone else’s future wife,” he told them. He also told them that someone else may be dating their future wife.

“If you knew somebody was with your future wife,” Baker asked them, “touching her in ways you wouldn’t like, pressuring her, how would that make you feel?”

“Touching her in ways you wouldn’t like, pressuring her” – notice how that phrasing ignores completely the difference between pressuring a girl to do something she doesn’t like, and doing something with her enthusiastic consent – maybe even at her express invitation – that her husband won’t want to think about too closely later? Even from a point of view that values premarital chastity, that’s a distinction that should matter. Moreover, I can’t see how any approach to premarital chastity can possibly be realistic which pretends that women don’t themselves want or get anything out of sex.

In it’s own weird way, this whole splitting of roles between men and women seems to me to do the same thing as that “Let’s not pretend to care” of the song with which I began – split love and sex apart. If love is the thing that women naturally need, all Hallmark cards and roses, before they can be ready for sex, while sex is the thing that men are always eager to do, if not constrained by respect for a woman’s future husband, doesn’t this in some way make too much, not just of the difference between men and women, but of the difference between love and lust? Is it really so rare to both really want someone to love you and have a hard time keeping your hands off him, because you want it and not just to please him? Since when is falling in love the opposite of sex?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 7:19 am and is filed under Music, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.