I’m sad to see that free-spirited Lena Chen has concluded that “sexual freedom is a sham.” She slept with 30 men while attending Harvard and she wrote all about it on her blog, becoming something of a sensation, not to mention a controversial figure. In this essay, she discusses how she learned shame after it was imposed on her through derision, mockery, and cruelty. It’s not pleasant to see such a free-spirit crushed.
I don’t write about my fear that I am not good enough for the man I love or my concerns about what his family thinks of me or my suspicion that I am not, after all, a good writer despite my chosen career path. In reality, I’m actually kind of emotionally fragile and insecure. But because I’m not interested in spending more of my young adulthood deflecting misogynistic slurs and shielding loved ones from incrimination by association, I’ve simply stopped writing about the many things that continue to scare and confuse me. I’ve long believed that there is nothing embarrassing about admitting human frailty, but when I try to write about college nowadays, I catch myself pulling back from every little unflattering anecdote, rewriting the circumstances and characters, and wanting to put forth a more attractive version of who I am. Though I am never overtly disingenuous, I occasionally feel like I’m living a lie of omission by not owning up to being constantly plagued by the same doubts that haunted me at Harvard: that I am not merely unworthy of a school but that I am too damaged to be worthy of love.
Among the arsenal of insults flung at me, that particular put-down has always been the most hurtful, and it was that put-down that I anticipated when I told Marie Claire that I slept with 30 men and that, yes, they could put that in print, along with my name and my photo. Given all that I’d previously shared, this particular fact seemed rather innocuous, even downright trivial, in comparison to tales of lost condoms and the morning-after pill. Still, I couldn’t help feeling queasy that this would be the final nail in the coffin of my sexual allure. At the same time, by participating in the interview and shoot, I was afraid of threatening the entire image I worked to build over the past three years: one of a confident broad who’d been around the block and had a few things to teach the world about sticking it to the Man. So I found myself in a situation that was oddly foreign: I felt self-protective.
This instinctive desire was oddly missing through most of college. I learned it slowly as a result of being gawked at and bullied online. My 19-year-old self would have scoffed at my hesitation to tell it like it is. The same person who now questions her tendency to share too much was once surprised that her writing was put in the category of “confessional.” Because doesn’t that suggest that I felt like I was doing something dirty or wrong? It’s not confessional, after all, if you don’t feel a tad guilty about what or whom you’ve done. And if I’m honest, I never did feel bad for writing Sex And The Ivy and I never once felt the need to apologize. Shame wasn’t something that came naturally to me. It was something that I learned against my will, and now that I know it inside and out, I don’t know how one can possibly unlearn it. Sexual freedom is a sham.
I can confirm for Ms. Chen that she is a very talented writer. And, whatever her doubts, she’s more honest than most.
