As promised, here’s the link to my personal essay for Salon on learning sexual shame from my sex blogging days in college. It only took an hour before I got my first “You will never find a husband comment”! That’s got to be a record, right?

I also got this comment earlier today on the blog, likely in response to the article:

Hello Lena. I am writing this anonymously since I really don’t feel like filling out forms and registering on your site. I will gladly email you my personal info if you feel like you want it after your read my post. I doubt you will and I also feel like this will not be replied to or put on your wall.  Keep reading after the next line and trust that it’s all going somewhere and isn’t simply a blasting of you or anyone.

You are whore and disgrace to women.

The fact that I am not a misogynist and do believe in female empowerment is why I say this.  Having had sex with more men than one could have fostered any sort of meaningful relationship with is crude, empty, and vulgar. Note* I didn’t attach a number to such things but rather a character quality.  What does it say about someone who pops their dick in any woman’s mouth? Note* I just switched genders on this.  Man or woman it does not matter. There is no double standard. Men who sleep around are also seen and prejudized against as “pigs,” “hustlers,” “players.”  Girls having sex as  young as 13 will start even younger and those blowjobs to a different guy each day during recess will cum (pun very much intended) more readily the more such behavior is glorified or made okay. I personally and many if not all of my friends would have no respect for a woman who has slept around or even “Sucked” around men who she hasn’t known on a deeper level for a year or so. No one wants to marry a whore or have children with a whore.  No one wants the mother of their child to have had such little sense of worth and self respect for themselves.  If woman want empowerment it starts with respect.  Have some for yourself though it’s too late in your case. You sound like a rape victim or molestation victim with severe unresolved psychological issues to be blunt.

Now. Why would anyone in the world leave a comment like the above? This is something I’ve asked myself over and over and over since I started blogging in 2006. If you read the comments over at Salon, there’s enough chastising to last an unrepentant harlot a lifetime! (Note to readers: do not actually read comments to Salon article lest you become triggered/incensed/completely disheartened by the state of humanity.)

You know what the above sounds like to me? “You are a whore and a disgrace to women and will never find a man to marry or inseminate you BECAUSE MY FRIENDS AND I THINK SO.” Sorry, dude, but opinions are like assholes! Everyone has one and yours is a bit … narrow, if you know what I mean. Theodor Adorno once said, “The idea of the free expression of opinion, which indeed cannot be separated from the idea of a free society, necessarily becomes the right to propose, defend, and if possible successfully champion one’s own opinion, even when it is false, mad, disastrous.” Poorly supported Internet arguments are a great example of how freedom and opinions can actually lead to appalling displays of ignorance.

Here’s the deal: I don’t typically engage with comments like this but the multiple LOGIC FAILS pain me so greatly that I’ll address this one. You don’t get to say “Everyone believes X” by using you and your friends as proof. You don’t get to say “Women are only empowered if they do X” by using your personal preferences as a gauge for where one’s individual liberty begins and ends. You don’t get to assume things about my psychological history when you do not know me and are not my therapist.

Speaking of my mental health, I will gladly admit to being ALL KINDS OF CRAZY, because, hey, I don’t think I need to be ashamed of the fact that I was incredibly unhappy in college, but in my history of therapists, none of them have ever implied that my blogging is the result of “unresolved psychological issues”. If anything, they agreed that Harvard quite literally drove me nuts and that the World Wide Web and my classmates were judgmental pricks who likely caused the depression and anxiety I suffered through undergrad. It is completely possible to determine that sexual morality is repressive and harmful without having experienced any of the trauma that random Internet people have suggested that I’ve suffered. But whatever, go ahead and make offensive generalizations about survivors of sexual assault! Isn’t that just way easier than rational thinking? (On the off-chance that the sarcasm doesn’t translate, I am being 100 percent sarcastic.)

One thing that the above commenter asks strikes me as particularly illogical: “What does it say about someone who pops their dick in any woman’s mouth?” Answer: THEY CLEARLY LIKE BLOWJOBS! That’s it. That’s all that tells you. One’s eagerness to place one’s penis in a mouth does not say anything about whether one pays taxes on time or remembers to call home for Mother’s Day or tips well at dinner. You can draw almost no generalizable conclusions from a predilection for oral sex. Nor can you draw any conclusions about a person from their number of sexual partners or their sexual history. You don’t know them. How in the world can you think that you know their motivations for doing anything in life?

For the record, I don’t think anyone or any gender should be shamed for their sexuality. Men shouldn’t deal with policing of their bodies and sexual behavior, but I do bring up double standards because there is a clear difference in how female sexuality has been legislated and policed by both state and community. And while dudes have been subject to some of the same norms as women, the latter — by virtue of reproductive capability — have been much more frequent targets. The majority portion of the negative feedback I receive is based on my gender. (A significant portion is also based on my race. Think: “Me love you long time” type of shit.) In this day and age, I don’t have to worry about being forced into a nunnery for women of ill repute, but I am routinely told that I will never find a husband, that I am not being “a lady”, that my self-worth is tied to my vagina’s ability to appeal to potential suitors. Men do not get anywhere close to this sort of criticism, in part because no one assumes that a guy’s primary goal in life is to get hitched but also because the white, male body has not historically been a site of repression. Men who do get harassed for their sexual choices also frequently exhibit behavior perceived to be “feminine” (e.g. being sexually submissive in bed, having sex with men, being the receptive partner/bottom, etc.) or possess qualities that society reads to be dangerous (e.g. being of a person of color, a HIV-positive person, etc.). Which is also problematic, but has different underlying causes.

The single thing the Salon commenters did get right, though? I’m probably never getting married. Fine by me. This ho-skank has been contentedly living in sin since 2008.