Crisis of Faith

Time to get autobiographical again:

Semi-recently, I hit it off with a guy (friend-of-a-friend) at a party. We exchanged numbers, agreed to get together the following Friday. Awesome!, I was thinking. I felt like a normal person. Someone who could make a date without hooking up! Then I took him home with me.

I wasn't sure why. Moreover, I wasn't sure why I felt bad about it. My friends, the next day, pooh-poohed my ambivalence--which meant something, seeing as I am probably the sluttiest* among them, and they are mostly relationship types. I think part of it was that they liked the idea of me dating this guy, and I was already sensing it was not to be. But also I felt weird because I wasn't sure WHY I brought him home. It was totally my doing, but the situation did not demand it--I wasn't feeling particularly randy** and, as I said, I'd been excited by the chance to NOT hook up with someone. I believed he'd call. I later pretended to think that, because I'd slept with him, he now wouldn't call...but actually I was 10% hoping he wouldn't. And I spent the day genuinely feeling BAD about sleeping with him, and, of course, bad about feeling bad. (My specialty.)

I was thinking about it this morning. And then, providentially, a link via Feministing to the blog of a Women's Studies teacher at a community college. This particular entry recounts his students' reactions to Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism, which I have sadly not read (because, as I've said, I grew UP on feminism and am only now actually reading theory), though it's next on my list. Anyway, here he describes the response of one student, who's sexual past sometimes had her labeled a slut:

Some of those choices brought her pleasure, she says; others brought her humiliation and hurt. But all brought her further along the road towards becoming a feminist. And reading this section in Full Frontal Feminism moved her deeply. She felt validated. Rather than getting another lecture about her complicity in her own exploitation, from Valenti my student got much-needed affirmation that, in her words, “it’s okay to fuck — and it’s okay to fuck up. We can learn from our fuck-ups.” Nothing I could have said meant as much as what she read in Jessica’s book.

[Original emphasis.]

Now, I'm no adolescent, and my recent history does not involve "humiliation and hurt," per se, but it's good to remember that just because I write a stupid blog and have long been people's Feminist Friend, that doesn't mean my every action--and reaction--has to be exemplary. I'm still not quite sure which I'm talking about--the hook-up or the regret--but both are instructional. Frankly, getting laid used to be difficult (thanks Dalton and Wesleyan!), and I think I'm still not used to the idea that I could like a guy without immediately boning. I have, once or twice this year, not-been-in-the-mood, which is a new experience. But I don't recommend screwing out of habit. And that's my lesson of the day!

*I know, I know.
** I know, I know.