(Adding to Gabe’s post below on the NYT Magazine student abstinence piece)

I thought that while the the author, Randall Patterson, does try to present the abstinence activists in a credible way, some of the most hilarious parts of the article are the contrasts between the female and male True Love Revolution leaders. In particular, the opposite reactions of abstinence proponents Fredell and Keliher to hormonal lust and masturbation are worth a look.

On dealing with ‘urges’:

The one great difference between them seemed to be in their experience of abstinence. Fredell was unaware of that gap. Whenever sexual urges struck, she told me, she was able to manage them by going on a long run and assumed that everyone should be able to do the same. “The biological drive can be overcome,” she said. “It’s not like it reaches a peak, and you have to go out and have sex.”

“And you don’t go down the street thinking you’d like to have sex with him, him, him and him?” I asked.

“No!” she said, abruptly. “Is that what men do?”

It seemed a good time to talk with her about what else Keliher had told me. He described the act he has never experienced as something “breathtakingly powerful” that “lights all of your body on fire.” He spoke of his lust as “this untamed beast.”

Fredell was incredulous: “Leo said that?”

On masturbation:

“To the matter of masturbation, [Keliher] said, ‘This was really tough for me . . . because when you have a habit that’s so deeply ingrained, it’s hard to stop.’

Fredell, when asked about masturbation, just said, ‘Oh, God, no!’

On this note, I’d be curious to know how Fredell’s disdain for masturbation fits in with the “alternative” feminism she propounds. Is the apparent revulsion connected to something liberating for women? Is it her Catholicism that causes this position? Does the True Love Revolution frown upon masturbation? If so, why? Is it about denial of all sexual pleasure not connected to true love?

I agree with Gabe that a better spelling out of some of the philosophical underpinnings would have really helped the activists seem logical rather than reactionary. Any hardcore abstinence activists/philosophers want to fill in the blanks?

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