It’s extremely countercultural for a woman to assert control over her own body.

If men are commonly more promiscuous than women, it is only because the culture allows it, she said. Fredell was here to turn society around. “It’s extremely countercultural,” she said, for a woman to assert control over her own body. It is, in fact, a feminist notion. Conventional feminism, she explained, teaches that control of your body means the freedom to have sex without consequences — sex like a man. “I am an unconventional feminist,” Fredell said, in the sense that she asserts control by choosing not to have sex — by telling men, no, absolutely not.

Her girlfriends are surprised that she can maintain a relationship without having sex, she said, but her boyfriend, at Georgetown, “knew from the get-go what he was getting into.” Fredell does not make sexual demands of him nor does he make demands of her. “So I’m free!” she said. “I’m free to experience the emotional and intellectual and spiritual intimacy of another person.” By closing herself off to sex, she claims to have found the humanity in her boyfriend and to have opened herself to an experience of love. “I’ll share this with you,” Fredell confided. “He said conversations with me were more enjoyable than sex would be with anyone else.” Every woman, she said, should have this “incredibly moving experience” of being appreciated for who she really is.

From NYTimes Article

~ by mentalimaging on July 6, 2008.