In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Sex and the College Girl

Jill

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This essay is awesome. It highlights not only how much good feminism has done for men and women, but illustrates that the golden 50s weren’t quite so great, and came fraught with moral and sexual panics of their own. In other words, today’s obsession with over-sexed college “girls” making immoral and deviant sexual decisions is nothing new; neither is the sexual schizophrenia that so many young women are caught up in. But I’ll take greater sexual liberties and more relationship bargaining power over fear of sex and waiting to be “pinned” any day.

I’m not going to excerpt much of the essay because you really, really should head over and read the whole thing. It does an excellent job of capturing just how trapped young women were, torn between the ease and safety of family life and a desire to have something more. The women have little negotiating power in relationships, and relationships are the expectation — there’s really no feasible alternative for the middle and upper-middle-class white people who inhabit institutions of higher education. Most of all, the essay emphasizes just how infantalizing the whole construction of womanhood was, and how easy it is for women themselves to become accustomed to wanting safety above all else (“What a feeling of safety not to have to worry about a date for months ahead! A boy might even get around to falling in love at some point, and that would solve the problem of marriage too.”).

Among other observations: Progressives (and women in general) have changed. Conservatives haven’t, and they’re still bleating about the same social ills that they were whining about 50 years ago (and 50 years before that). How familiar does this sound:

The modern American female is one of the most discussed, written-about, sore subjects to come along in ages. She has been said to be domineering, frigid, neurotic, repressed, and unfeminine. She tries to do everything at once and doesn’t succeed in doing anything very well. Her problems are familiar to everyone, and, naturally, her most articulate critics are men. But I have found one interesting thing. Men, when they are pinned down on the subject, admit that what really irritates them about modern women is that they can’t, or won’t, give themselves completely to men the way women did in the old days. This is undoubtedly true, though a truth bent by the male ego. Women may change roles all they wish, skittering about in a frantic effort to fulfill themselves, but the male ego has not changed a twig for centuries. And this, God knows, is a good thing, problems or not.

It also does a bang-up job of illustrating what feminists have been saying about sex: That if you keep it attached to a morality that requires women to refuse it unless a man invests sufficient capital, that refuses to “respect” women who give it away for free, and that punishes transgressions by making childbirth compulsory and pregnancy difficult to avoid, it’s generally going to be a shit deal for women. When sex is a shit deal, romantic relationships are probably going to be shit deals, too. And so marriage has to offer women something else. Here, it’s pretty clear that marriage offers women a few things: Security; a solution to the sexual land-mine of dating; and an escape from a real grown-up life.

Personally, I’d prefer marriage offered me companionship, love, stability, and life-long egalitarian partnership, not a live-in patriarch to make all the decisions while I smile and clean up after him. But then, I’m one of those crazy feminists you keep hearing about.

At no point in the essay was I thinking, “Wow, I wish life was like this again.” I wonder if even the “take back the date” crew at IWF want dating to look like this (answer: yeah, they’re probably nutty enough to think this all sounds dandy). But it was a nice juxtaposition of how far women have come, how much things haven’t changed, and how the morality police have been fighting the exact same battles since just about ever. The good news: They’re losing. When they have to resort to virginity rings and “abstinence is the coolest!” marketing gimmicks, you know they’re fighting an uphill battle. Society has largely moved on, social shame just isn’t making women feel guilty enough about sex, and a lot of us are doin’ it and having a fabulous time. Others are waiting (which may very well be until marriage), but I’m fairly certain that at least some of them are doing it because they can and because they want to, not solely because they feel socially obligated or pressured to be a “good girl” and refuse sex despite their own desires. Of course things are far from perfect and the sexual double-standards and disconnects remain; I’d argue that women and girls today face a whole new set of problems to parse through in being inundated with the “sex will kill you” abstinence crap at school and “show us your tits!” on TV at night. I don’t see us back-tracking to the good old days of this essay any time soon. And, unfortunately for the abstinence-only profiteers, there may be a declining market for “I was a virgin til marriage and all I got were these lousy stained bedsheets” t-shirts.

Thanks to Kyle for the link.

9 thoughts on Sex and the College Girl

  1. This article better articulates how much better off we all are than any of the studies I’ve seen thus far – it’s bewildering how this is pointed to as a halcyon time by anyone.

  3. Why would anyone want a return to 1950’s college life with its overbearing morality, dress codes, and patronizing micromanagement?? Within the pages of a 1953 Oberlin yearbook, they listed and described “dorm mothers” supervising undergraduates and cartoonish depictions of “proper parlor conduct”. For a second, it seemed the yearbook was describing an upper-class sheltered institution for children about to enter adolescence, not one for young adults seeking an education. What a patronizing and infantilizing way to treat college students.

    One concern about the essay, however, was how the author seems to normalize 1950’s undergraduate life as a series of social events attended mostly by upper/upper-middle class undergraduates punctuated with some academics. That was far removed from the experiences of some high school teachers and classmates’ mothers who attended comparably elite colleges. In addition to having to endure this sexual morality double-standard, they also had to balance academics and work to finance what their scholarships did not cover along with dealing with snobbery from their wealthier more socially “elite” classmates.

  4. exholt, I’ve noticed a trend at my University towards the infantilizing of students. Most notably, the school sent home letters to parents last year urging them to discourage their (adult) children from participating in an all day all campus drunkathon (“Unofficial” St. Patrick’s Day). Furthermore, it’s almost impossible to be considered independent of your parents for college, unless you’re married, have a kid, or 24. That means, most importantly, that if your parents refuse to even fill out the application for financial aid, you’re screwed and the school won’t do anything, as i found out the hard way.

    Most people I’ve talked to, even current college students, still think of college students as children and that they need more “supervision.” I find the idea appalling, as we’re adults, damnit.

  5. I’d also like to see something on the intersection of academics and the social double-standard. I remember one time when I was an undergrad a bunch of alumni came through the physics building touring the campus prior to getting the “it’s your 50th reunion year, give us money” speech from the college administration.

    Anyway, there were some women in that group who had majored in astronomy, and told how they had had to either: 1) lab partner with a boy who could be out observing at night, and hope that he made detailed enough notes, or 2) break curfew and then somehow figure out a way back into the girls’ dorm. No academic exemptions were allowed to the rigid rule that women must be in lockdown at night.

    This was at a pretty liberal institution, that has been co-ed since its 1860s founding. (Carleton College, in Northfield, MN)

  6. To be fair, the portrayal of Oberlin in that 1953 yearbook is completely alien to the institution I attended in the ’90s. Students managed their own academic and personal affairs without much interference from the administration. NSA sex and GLBT relationships were so integrated into campus life that no one I knew gave it a second thought. Every year we would hold the Drag Ball, one of the most popular campus events of the year for all students, regardless of one’s sexual identity. One could say that Oberlin had a sexually liberated campus.

    If anyone was foolish enough to come on campus to publicly call for a return to the ’50’s era college life, most students would mock and tease them mercilessly. If s(he) persists, it will be followed with a campus protest.

    exholt, I’ve noticed a trend at my University towards the infantilizing of students. Most notably, the school sent home letters to parents last year urging them to discourage their (adult) children from participating in an all day all campus drunkathon (”Unofficial” St. Patrick’s Day). Furthermore, it’s almost impossible to be considered independent of your parents for college, unless you’re married, have a kid, or 24. That means, most importantly, that if your parents refuse to even fill out the application for financial aid, you’re screwed and the school won’t do anything, as i found out the hard way.

    The sending of the letter home is troubling….sounds like they are returning to the practices of the 1950’s era where parents and even prep schools were allowed to see your collegiate report cards at the end of each semester.

    The financial aid thing, though, is implemented because the colleges and the federal financial aid feel that the parents/child should pay a portion of their educational expenses if they are deemed financially able. They probably want to make sure that if the parents are middle or upper/upper-class, that the parents don’t attempt to avoid paying their share.

    I knew a straight-A student in a similar fix in my frosh year where his wealthy parents did fill out the forms….but he was found ineligible and those parents told him they were not going to pay for it despite being able to afford to splurge on multi-million dollar vacation homes and luxury items. He ended up having to balance a 30 hr workweek, taking out heavy loans, and taking class overloads so he could attempt to graduate early. How he managed to do all that, maintain straight-As, and remain respectful towards his parents is unfathomable to me.*

    In my case, I was quite fortunate and lucky to receive a substantial college scholarship that along with working summer and odd jobs during the school year, meant my parents did not have to pay a cent of my tuition at Oberlin. There was no way my family could have afforded the high price tag otherwise.

    * In my familial culture, wealthy parents who refuse to invest in children with great academic potential because they desire to spend the money on luxuries for themselves are looked upon disdainfully as “uncultured” and avaricious.

  7. I went to DePauw, a little liberal arts college which was academically strong, with a largely progressive faculty, but a crazily reactionary and Greek-dominated student culture. In the late 90’s and early 00’s, when I was there, guys were stilling pinning their girlfriends and this was considered a big deal. It was odd, because no one seemed to actually like the whole process. Girls felt obliged to push guys they didn’t even like that much into a sort of quasi-engagement and the guys would get ritually humiliated by their frat borthers throughout the process. I remember seeing a guy I knew tied to a chair and thrown into a frozen pond by his brothers after pinning his girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong, there were still hookups and the like, but this retro-50s ritual stuff existed parallel to it. Very strange.

    As for the increasing infantilization of college kids, I think that’s tied to just how expensive college is any more. In the 1960s, California residents could go to the UC for free and in other states a student could earn enough from a summer or part-time job to pay in-state tuition and room and board at a state college. Now, parents have to cough up huge amounts of money and co-sign enormous loans to to get their kid a degree. If a student changes majors or fails a course, and needs to stay an extra semester or two, that’s thousands of more dollars down the drain. Parents have an investment to safegaurd now.

  8. I didn’t really see how men have received an alternative outlet for their sexual frustration. They still remain sexually repressed.

  9. When I cleaned out my closet, I found my handbook from Michigan State from freshman year 1959. We were referred to as ‘women’ until it got to the parietal rules (curfew). Then we were called ‘girls’. No, it didn’t prevent unwanted pregnancy or inhibit aggressive male students (or non-students) and the female dropout rate was high because of it.
    I sent the handbook to NOW last year before their national convention in Detroit.
    Birth control was forbidden for single women and was generally hard to come by for married women also. The policy was for women to marry young and breed early and often to keep the post war economy going and to keep women out of men’s jobs that they had previously held in WWII.

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