Like a Virgin, Part II - The Angry Feminist Awakening

By my sophomore year in high school, I mellowed a bit.  I decided that I shouldn’t be so judgmental, and that if other people wanted to have premarital sex, it wasn’t my business, as long as they were safe about it.  I had my first boyfriend at that point, and he, like many teenage boys, was desperate to finally get laid.  He explained that it would be terrible to be a virgin when he went to college.  I said nope.  (Thinking back on it, I have no idea why he thought that would be a persuasive argument to use.  What did I care if people in college made fun of him because he didn’t have sex before the ripe old age of 16?  I mean, I loved him and all, but it was a pretty pathetic appeal.)  He tried the love angle (“It’s OK to have sex as long as you love someone, and we’re in love, so we should have sex”), but I held my convictions and legs together firmly.  Sure, I had no problem blowing him (my idea, thank you), but I was not going to fuck anyone until my wedding night.

Eventually he dumped my semi-chaste ass, and I became a militant feminist partially as a result (although I was heading in that direction anyway).  The funny thing about becoming a militant feminist is that it had the exact opposite effect on my thinking about sex than one might expect.  You’d (especially if you were Rush Limbaugh) think that someone who hated sexism would swear off sex with guys forever and “become” a lesbian.  Yet once I knew how marriage enslaved women and historically made them the property of their husbands (as opposed to their fathers), I knew that I’d never get married.  This created a dilemma: did I really plan to never have sex with a guy?  Hells no!  Even though I hated men, I was still attracted to them.  Thus extramarital sex was OK, and clearly necessary in life.  But not just yet.  I was only 16 years old, and still not ready, although I did start a rocking condom collection for fun.