Viva la Vulva

It’s a pretty common misconception that conservatives are considered closed-minded, and liberals have a much more open way of thinking. I clarified my stance on this sophomore year while talking to Joel, saying that I am a closed-minded liberal. Sure, people are entitled to their opinions – but if they oppose some issues that I align myself with, they clearly have the wrong opinion.

A good example of this came up a few weeks ago when I was planning a group project with some ladies from my politics of fertility control class. Our topic was sex ed, and few things get me more riled up than having to picture small children being indoctrinated to hate their bodies.

This was an upper level womens’ studies class, so there wasn’t much opposition to our plan: show a whole bunch of fundamentalist videos, talk about virginity pledges (and those goddamned purity rings). The goal of the presentation was to make everyone in the class want to gear up a VW van and drive to Washington to bring down the man.

I may have been a little overzealous in ripping on those saving themselves. I made a joke and a girl said something to the effect of, “we should clarify that abstinence only education is bad, but abstinence is the only way to protect yourself from STD’s and pregnancy 100%. So, we shouldn’t totally rip abstinence apart”

My reaction expression was something between horror and smelling a bad fart. It did not go unnoticed. I weakly tried to save face, mumbling something like “oh of course we should say that… that abstinence is superior”.

In trying to iterate my staunch anti-abstinence sex ed views, I had come off looking whore-tastic. This is difficult to do in a group of women who use frank, personal examples from their sex lives to “broaden the academic discourse” in our class.

Just as I was beginning to feel like I was secretly a radical, militant feminist, I was then told in my other class this week that I was “ashamed of my own sexuality”. Obviously, this stems from my inability to reclaim the… c word. I can’t even type it, I have to use the asterisk or I get the willies. Regardless, one fellow student told me that my inability to find empowerment in the c word means that I am ashamed of my own sexuality.

I am just one person, with just one viewpoint on sex: Get it if you want it, bitches! Somehow my opinion on this can receive disapproval by both sides of the feminist spectrum (the politically correct progressives and the bat shit crazy, c*nt loving radicals). I kind of like my perch in the middle, where I am just close enough to touch each side, and far enough away to run off when they start preaching.