Sex For Sinners

This past Valentine’s Day, a nasty surprise greeted me in my mailbox. The True Love Revolution (TLR), a new pro-abstinence student group, had sent cards to all freshman girls reading, “Why wait? Because you’re worth it.” While I don’t actually mind being “alone” this time of year, the group roused me to actually care on Valentine’s Day because of its faulty logic, sexism, and misleadingly innocuous method.

The TLR aims to promote awareness of the abstinent community on campus and to counter what its members see as social pressure to have sex. At 88 members, their Facebook group (not to be confused with the group “I’m Saving Myself for Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex”) is illustrated by a photograph of a blooming white rose, as chaste and pure as our Puritan founders would have expected their brides to be.

The very name TLR essentially invalidates the relationships of sexually-active, non-married couples, as if to suggest that abstinence is the only way to find true love. Worse, by targeting women with their cards and didactic message, they perpetuate an age-old values system in which the worth of a young woman is measured by her virginity.

They even presume to depreciate the worth of women who choose not to wait, implying that they have given in to the beast and cheapened themselves. Such inherently judgmental tactics nullify the group’s claim “to promote respectful and open-minded discussion of abstinence issues.” Even as the group purports to promote tolerance, with its non-sectarian status and supposed openness to members of all gender identities and sexual orientation, it nevertheless belittles those who don’t follow its teachings.

The groups cites all manner of unverifiable claims, from “married couples have better sex,” to “kissing and cuddling are underrated,” and abstinence “reduce[s] your chances of depression, divorce, and STD-induced infertility,” as further reasons to convince students to wait until marriage. I suppose we are to infer from this garbage that regretted pre-marital sex is the cause, rather than a symptom of, low self-esteem, failing relationships, and poor intimacy. It’s certainly true that some students feel undue pressure to have sex, and that many give in, but any subsequent problems have more complex roots than the mere act of having sex.

TLR does have a role on campus—in supporting those who do make the personal choice to abstain and enabling them to better withstand peer pressure. The student community should in turn be respectful of such choices. But the advocates of “true love” overstep the mark when they preaches the value of personal decisions to the everyone on campus.

TLR emphasizes that “sex is a big deal,” and while the point is open to debate, the statement implausibly assumes that unmarried, sexually-active couples would disagree. Sex can be a manifestation of love and a critical step to intimacy. It can empower, liberate, and fulfill in a very unique way. But at its core, sex is essentially a personal choice. Whether students regard it as meaningful or insignificant and decide to participate or abstain, either way, problems with self-worth arise when they feel social pressure either way.



Rachel M Singh ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Matthews Hall.