By: Jizzabelle Lovejoy, ΣΘΝ Sorority President and Observer Columnist
Hello again, Dear Readers. Housekeeping first!
First off, I want to thank all the sisters and CU students and staff who came and helped out with the Food Bank launch! We did some good around here and I’m thinking next time, we’ll set up at the Hathian strip mall, so be on the lookout for when we finally set a date!
And second, If you haven’t heard the most recent CU Campus podcast episode, I highly recommend giving it a listen. Professor Carly Cox (yes, that Prof. Cox) and Donny D touch on the reality show and sorority schism.
Of note, Carly and Donny’s Panopticon inversion is genuinely brilliant. When everyone is vying for attention and status, visibility becomes an incentive instead of a deterrent. Surveillance only increases the noise…they got that exactly right. And their closing point of what crisis manufacturing will do for the type of leaders Columtreal produces? Spot on and harrowing.
Other points were not so accurate. We’re not all in it for clout and attention, as I doubt Lucky, Isla, and Io are. Some of us are using the platform for something else entirely. I could go on, but the shorthand is that I agreed to feature in the reality show so I could use it as a megaphone to put forth my views regarding sexuality, and criticize the most Dark Triad tendencies of society itself…reality TV included.
Yup. I wanted to take down reality TV from inside it. And how I developed another one of those views is right here in this piece, Dear Reader.
See, I’ve often discussed that one of my major goals, both in my life and for the sorority, is to chip away at the damaging, outdated idea that a person’s virtue as a human being, (especially a woman’s), has anything to do with her sexual experience. Slut shaming was mostly alien to me in captivity, so here’s how I encountered it, and where my mind went from there, to form a half-joking hypothesis in the middle of Professor Windsor’s class.
Gents, if you’re wedded to your patriarchal notions of women and sex, get ready for a bumpy ride. I’ll stick up for you all in another piece, I promise.
A Boy and a Man Refuse
That first summer after arriving in town, I was alone in Murphy’s pub one night. This was a few months after Sigma Theta Noir took me in, and some time before I became sorority president. Construction had not yet seen Murphy’s give way to Looters.
The Barkeep
That night’s bartender, in his thirties, who shall remain nameless, took an interest in me. Once we were alone, he’d go on about some kind of Navy SEAL background, which seemed doubtful, and offered some ambrosia, our local aphrodisiac of choice. Eleven years of captivity, with dire consequences for refusing or resisting sex, and learning to enjoy it for its own sake, have made the thought of declining sex odd to me…like declining air. The experience also left me with a higher baseline arousal than most, rendering ambrosia moot. So I explained to him that I was quite eager and didn’t need it, and touched on my past as a trafficking survivor.
His reaction to that revelation was telling. His interest in bedding me took a complete 180. Then, he went on about how my pussy was probably banged loose, and how I must have metric fucktons of emotional baggage.
On the contrary, I’ve never been a size queen, with 5-7 inches being my sweet spot in a male partner. Furthermore, Kegel training has made me quite capable of massaging whatever I welcome inside. As for emotional baggage, I had recently been discharged by my therapist after establishing what she agreed is a surprisingly functional relationship with my sexual inclinations.
Hence, I wasn’t as offended by his assertions as I was puzzled, and curious about how he arrived at them. After all, he labeled me before even getting to know me. He was clearly operating on bad information. Now, a year removed from that exchange, discussing this with a friend, I would pose my response thusly:
“In our hyper-connected internet age, if a grown male has only understood sex through religion, porn, redpill, and locker room talk, and never had the inclination or possibly even the cognitive ability to question what he’d been fed and find better information, then maybe the most proper response when he spews bullshit isn’t indignation…it’s pity.”
–Me
But, at the time, he didn’t want to get into all of that, as it was just “common sense,” per his assertion. I wondered…common how?
Two Ends of Experience
Seven months later, early into my sorority presidency, I would come across a young man on campus who would inadvertently answer my question. We shared deep, interesting conversations. It’s uncommon to find one at once so attractive and so unassuming. He also has an accurate sense of self, neither putting himself down or inflating his self worth. What’s more, he is the process of religious deconversion, actively rejecting the assumptions he grew up with, and readily acknowledges what he doesn’t know.
Just the sort I gravitate towards. As I went to offer my body, he stated that while he was very interested, he was a virgin, and wished to “hold on to his virtue a bit longer.”
The wording struck me as odd, and that’s when it clicked… society has thoroughly conflated the notions of virtue and chastity, especially regarding women. In response, I gave him another assumption to challenge stating that virtue and chastity are two separate things. Regardless, he’d waited this long, so he might as well make his first time special.
A month later, he would be freshly broken up with another, and would express to me his regret for giving her his V card. Tellingly, he called it his “virtue” again. In consoling him, I said this:
“You didn’t give her your virtue, just your chastity.”
–Me, consoling a friend who regretted the girl with which he lost his virginity
Then we made passionate love. Thus, my life and this sorority gained purpose, for which that man has my profound gratitude.
My Cheeky Hypothesis
Some time ago, in the pre-history class of Professor Windsor’s history course, I put forward a half-joking idea of how this whole chastity/virtue nonsense began. I argued that it must have predated writing, and thus, historical record, with some unnamed, forgotten tribal chieftain, who, owing to his station, was highly desirable and had his pick of available women from the tribe. Early hypergamy, if you will.
That chieftain, like many men, wanted his partners to think he was an absolute rock star in the sack. But, rather than communicating with his partners, finding out what gets them off, and actually becoming a better lover, he took the lazy route. He opted to choose the least experienced females of the tribe, thereby denying his partners a basis for comparison.
Eventually, the idea caught on, and became a norm. It would catch on with the next tribe over, and the next. As agriculture and civilization took root, norms would become traditions. Religion would follow, turning traditions into dogma. And eventually, dogma became law.
Faculty Reception and Implications
Granted, the true origin of regulating women’s sexuality most likely has as much, if not more, to do with ensuring certainty of paternity than easing performance anxiety. Nonetheless, Professor Windsor found the idea intriguing. She posited that it’s entirely plausible within what we know of the formations of social dynamics and hierarchies, evolutionary psychology, and the dawn of civilization.
When I approached her again for permission to cite her for this article, she offered this take as well:
“The idea that performance anxiety is a universal male trait is one I don’t find entirely implausible. It takes a specific kind of confidence to be intimate with someone who has more experience than you. If you can’t handle that, you might try to change the rules of the game instead of trying to improve yourself. Men have historically had the power to do exactly that. The obsession with female virginity persists in many cultures long after paternity certainty became a solvable problem with DNA testing. The fact that the behavior didn’t disappear when its supposed original justification (paternity certainty) became obsolete is presented as proof that the real reason – deep-seated insecurity – was never addressed.”
–Professor Lara Windsor II
Alas, without written record, my hypothesis remains unsupported by evidence. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to call performance anxiety universal among men, it does take an unusually confident man to bed an experienced woman. I know of one in particular, who, despite his own relative lack thereof, can walk tall with regard to his performance.
In time, I want to unpack and research several key moments and figures across recorded history to get a better picture of exactly how and why we arrived at our current cultural sexual malaise, and where we’d go from here. But that’s a massive undertaking to be done in due time.
A Closing Invitation
So, Dear Reader, now that you’ve heard my thoughts, I want to know what YOU think.
If you agree with me, then what experiences with double standards and slut shaming led you to be of like mind? If you disagree, then what led you to that line of thought? I would like to know!
If enough readers want to speak up and have their opinions on it in the paper, I’d love to put together another piece compiling these responses. So, find me out and about on campus, e-mail in, or stop by the Journalism office and let’s hear what you have to say!
Until then, be unapologetically you. Unless of course, you’re a slut-shaming jerk. In which case, stop that.
