Comments on: Department of Missing the Point

By: bmc90

bmc90 — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:36:00 +0000

Oh I wish these people would grow up or try to. As an adult, do you think you are going to have a life long support group for your sexual choices? Do you think the average person cares whether you are saving it for someone or not. They. don’t. If some Harvard students need someone to validate their decisions at this stage of their lives, I just feel sorry for them. As for those colleges that try to referee this conduct, how do they think their graduates are going to handle living in an apartment on their own in a strange city with roomates? I’m all for having housing choices for students who don’t want to see their roomates’ tie on the door all the time or deal with a kegger in the hall, but that should be because the student wants it, not mommy and daddy. And it is SO true that those from the most repressive high school enviroments are the WORST partiers.

By: Peggy, as she is

Peggy, as she is — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:37:41 +0000

Harvard’s So-Called ‘Educated’ Abstainers

while still acknowledging the concerns of the abstinence crowd.

Then, today, catching up on my reading, I find zuzu’s writing on Harvard’s abstinence organization. I don’t know whether

By: This Is SERIOUSLY... « In One Ear…

This Is SERIOUSLY... « In One Ear… — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 01:00:30 +0000

[...] irginity pledge. How did they do it?! But let’s face it…it’s really the fault of colleges anyways. Kids would remain v [...]

By: edith

edith — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:51:58 +0000

High fives, again, to all of us in the “Ugly Trolls” Club. I think we should have a party, where none of us hooks up with each other, and we don’t drink. Does anyone like Scrabble?

anna, could you please insert a Cluless reference in every comment? OOOO, classic!

By: anna

anna — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:01:15 +0000

I don’t want to spoil things for people who do enjoy sex. But I think it might be nice to have a non-judgemental students club for asexuals, just to talk about being asexual in a sexual world, the way LGBT student clubs talk about their realities in a straight world. And I think it would be nice to see some media representation of older virgins as normal people instead of repressed, ugly freaks.

But why should anyone listen to me? I’m just a virgin who can’t drive. :)

By: BStu

BStu — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:50:28 +0000

Ugh. Okay, I went to school across the Charles at Boston College. A Catholic university. Yes, sure, a Jesuit Catholic university, but also right across the street from the Archdiocese. Well, before they had to sell their land to us to cover some debts of some sort. Predictably enough, there is no student sex magazine at BC. Condomns weren’t passed out in the dorms. Heck, sex was actually formally against the rules on campus. Yeah, it was realistically uninforcable, but you weren’t supposed to have sex in your dorm room. And at this very sex hostile academic environment, guess what?

They still had date rape seminars for incoming freshman that don’t mention abstinance because the seminar isn’t about sex. Its about rape.

Look, I’m all for people waiting to have sex. And I’m all for some acknowledgement that not everyone in college (or high school) is having sex. What I’m not for is self-righteous tut-tutting of people for being “immoral” for having made different choices for themselves. This isn’t a pro-abstinance group. Its an anti-sex group.

By: firefalluk

firefalluk — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:31:00 +0000

you know, I slip up and have sex every week, more or less, but I always returnt to abstinence.

By: exangelena

exangelena — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:44:25 +0000

And ya know, you could just call it the “Ugly Trolls club” and not the non-having sex club.
Edith – I think I love you too :)
Whenever I express distaste about being expected to look and act like a stripper or porn star, then people (including self-professed feminists and liberals) are always like, “ewwwwwww you’re anti-sex!” It’s unfortunate that looking/acting like a stripper or porn star is the only way acceptable for women to express their sexuality. Elinor at #59 talked about drinking, too – I’m apparently part of the anti-saloon league, uptight and holier than thou because I don’t guzzle beer at frat house keg parties, although I do drink, but apparently not in the quantities/venues/liquors acceptable for someone my age.
I also think that the anti-virgin hysteria, which is rather common among feminists/progressives, is pretty rooted in misogyny. For men who are virgins (or even don’t have sex as much/in ways as they’re *supposed* to, whatever that means), then they are still seen as not living up to our model of male sexuality … the regressive concept of men being sexually ravenous monsters. For women who are virgins, that means they must be ugly, which is unacceptable for a member of the “sex class” (as Twisty puts it so succinctly.)

By: exangelena

exangelena — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:33:57 +0000

Alix at #40 – “Here, let me try this: what if everywhere you went, you heard people talking on and on and on about, oh, eating worms? And every. single. book. you picked up had an obligatory worm-eating scene, and every. single. movie. had to interrupt its plot to show the lead character eating worms, and every other workshop offered everywhere is about worm-eating: its joys, its dangers, how to properly ingest them, whatever. And everywhere you go people are asking you about your worm-eating habits, and oh why AREN’T you eating worms? What the hell is wrong with you? You don’t like the taste? THERAPY FOR YOU! You’re too busy? LIAR! IT DOESN’T TAKE THAT LONG! SCHEDULE IT IN!!! HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF HUMAN IF YOU DON’T EAT WORMS!!!!!”
I laughed so hard I almost cried, because it is so true. I think I love you :)
And actually, a Non-Driver’s club wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Since everyone where I live assumes that if you didn’t get your driver’s license and a car on your 16th birthday, then you’re a socially inept dork, and basically all of life is constructed around the premise that you have a car, that might be a nice thing. (I do have a driver’s license, but I don’t drive very often and I can’t afford my own car. I think it must be even worse for people who don’t know how to drive at all.)
Driving, or having sex, should not be some sort of characteristic that makes you “normal”. I mean, if we set a default like that for everything, then why have the Young Democrats – who would want a club that’s for “Non-Republicans” – or why have an association for atheists, aren’t they “Non-believers”.

By: Elinor

Elinor — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:54:28 +0000

I remember an article in The Walrus (Canadian magazine) a couple of years ago describing what happens to novels in translation. One author described receiving a copy of his or her book translated into Japanese, and finding that the translator had randomly inserted sex scenes into the story — because the original text didn’t have any sex scenes, and the Japanese publisher felt that books without sex scenes didn’t sell.

As a secular person, I’m seriously annoyed when political candidates have to talk about their religious beliefs, although that doesn’t generally happen in Canada — but in the States, holy shit, it’s constant. Another thing I think might be similar is alcohol — at many universities, the number of social events and conversations that revolve around binge-drinking is pretty substantial, and those of us who don’t drink or don’t drink a lot can get pretty sick of it.

An even more common scenario is those of us who got both messages, both the “sex is sexy and women are sexy and you should be sexy to be a woman and it’s fun and do it or not be a woman or fun” AND the “sex is for sluts and idiots.”

Hell, sexual people get that message a lot, which is probably why we have this “raunch culture” where being a sexy woman is defined as embracing your inner prostitute and/or idiot.

I guess I’m inclined to shrug it off in the case of undergraduates because a lot of them are pretty new to sex, so it makes sense to me that they’re fascinated by it. But I can see how it’s annoying.