Make Chaste

There's a mini-trend spotted by the Education Life section of the New York Times today. Seems that some students at Ive League campuses (Harvard, Princeton, M.I.T.) have started up chastity clubs. Brings new meaning to abstinence-only education.

Aside from the fact that this idea sets women back a few hundred years, I take issue with the article that describes these campuses as liberal. Liberal compared to what? Some Christian college in the mid-West? Does anyone remember Harvard's last president being quoted as saying women weren't as good as men in math? And what about Princeton's eating clubs (mentioned in another story in the same section), which only started admitting women in 1991?

While feeling the need to bond over trite, moralistic pap and discussing mutual abstinence is misguided but relatively harmless, the idea that all of this is quietly veiled in religious zealotry that is bubbling up in campus life in mainstream collges is worrisome. Two of the campus societies are named for Elizabeth Anscombe, a Roman Catholic who, according to the Times "condemned contraception." Not sure, as the Princeton anti-sex club promises, that forswearing contraception helps with empowerment or dignity. Fewer choices are exactly the opposite of empowering, sex or no sex.