The Virgin-Slut Syndrom – A Modern Lady Chatterely Tale

A few years ago I had a fling with a brilliantly crazy musician/radio presenter. I arrived at his doorstep one night (Halloween) with my costume still on (Naughty Chamber Maid) and a couple of not so innocent hours later, after the costume was safely resting on the floor he drunkenly told me in the dark, in all earnestness, that he thought I had the grace of Queen Noor of Jordan.

A couple of years later, in a fetish club in Berlin (I was doing some sociological-anthropolgical research), a male friend who joined me, drunkenly told me I had the air of a Madonna-Whore about me.

Needless to say, at this stage I started to wonder whether I should be offended or complimented and over the past few years, on many occasions, I have tried to understand the true meaning behind those drunken slips of the tongue…

It struck me that Women today are stuck in a pseudo-gender-equality mental-limbo. True, we might all be verbally promoting gender equality at the work place. Feminist bra burning in the late 60′s has certainly provided us with the privilege to open our mouths more freely in the search of gender independence, legitimizing our drive to be successful, go into politics, become single-mother households, and challenge many Tarzan-dominated environments.

God knows our mothers and grandmothers fought hard to get us out of the kitchen and put us on Wall St. and in the White House - but have things really changed? when it comes to our passions, libidos and desires – are we really up there – looking men straight in the eye? and if so, are men looking straight back…. into our eyes that is, not our breasts?!

Being a single girl in her 30′s I sometimes wonder where the fine line between right and wrong really lies when it comes to what a woman wants in terms of “Dangerous” liaisons.

Clearly the need for intimacy and physical contact is something that we all desire and experience, and those of us who have passion for life, food and culture, often tend to have a healthy libidal appetite too and thus greater passion for experiences of the flesh, regardless of our gender. 

Yet somehow – it’s still not really 100% ok for a girl, is it?!

For men it’s simple; as penetrators – the whole process is rather “external” and thus, it renders Male escapades totally legitimate. Men are not  physically invaded which makes it easier to “wash the evidence off” physically, mentally and especially emotionally  - the number of partners, the locations, the kinky desires, somehow end up always being perfectly legitimate and in fact tend to be perceived as positive reinforcement of masculinity  - married or not, in a relationship or not, straight or bi - somehow, even though it may be frowned upon at times, it appears to be part of the Male gender’s DNA  (Hey – we all still love Clinton!), i.e. – at the end of the day we can never truly blame them because ”it was dead when they got there”!.

And us girls?! Men seem to want us to be their sweet black panthers, their naughty lovers, their sexy secrets… Men want it all – and at the same time paradoxically want us to still be Virgins.

Men want the purity…. they want to know there were no others before them, they want to be the ‘deflowerer’ of our dirty innocence, they want to be the subject of our desire in experiencing passion, lust and eroticism.

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was so ground-breakingly controversial, that it took years for the book to be properly published in the Western world.

The ideas and the language used in the book were a strict social taboo in the early 20th Century due to the Protagonist’s (Constance) realization that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also live with her body.

Although the book can now be found in most book stores (at least in the western world), is the female desire to live with her body truly and fully accepted as legitimate by society rather than rendering her easy/cheap/slut or whore?!

Dear boys, no matter how much marketing “Gender-Equality” gets, it seems you don’t want us to wear bras, not because we are equal – but purely because you want your mates to know your GF has killer tits that don’t need any strappy-support…. it gives you cult male status amongst your gender, or in other words, yes – you still havent quite evolved to a stage of realisation that allows you to accept female desires as equal to male desires without it posing some form of threat to your manhood.

As a growing teenager I was intrigued and fascinated by controversial literature such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Marquis de Sade’s Justine, Nabokov’s Lolita and De Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses, this same curiosity has led me to explore other passions in my life as an adult, such as art, culture, people, music & food - all which have made my life an extremely rich, colourful and exciting mosaic.

And so I can only say this; I am not a Virgin, but I am certainly no Slut either – I am simply a woman who is not ashamed to feel passion and desire and act on it, a woman who probably has bigger balls than most men she knows and is damn proud of it.