The celibacy club at Harvard.

Does celibacy require a social club? Does a celibacy club deserve a lengthy NYT Magazine article? Don't be silly! It's a celibacy club at Harvard. That's what makes it newsworthy in NYTworld. "Harvard" is named 22 times in this article.

Anyway, it is slightly interesting. The reason for a club is not so abstinence types can find love. It purports to have a somewhat intellectual — Harvard-worthy? — quality to it:

“People just don’t get it,” [Janie] Fredell said. “Everyone thinks we’re trying to promote this idea of the meek little virgin female.” She said she was doing no such thing. “I care deeply for women’s rights,” she said. Fredell was studying not just religion but also gender politics — and was reading Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” alongside John Stuart Mill’s “Subjection of Women.” She had awakened to the wage gap, to forced sterilization and female genital mutilation — to the different ways that men have, she said, of controlling women. One of these was sexual. Fredell had seen it often in her own life — men pushing for sex, she said, just to “have something to say in the locker room,” women feeling pressured to have sex in order to maintain a relationship. The more she studied and learned, the more Fredell came to realize that women suffer from having premarital sex, “due to a cultural double standard,” she said, “which devalues women for their sexual pasts and glorifies men for theirs.”

She said she read in Mill that women are subordinated in relationships as a result of “socially constructed norms.” 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.

Actually, that sounds incredibly lightweight — as if Catharine MacKinnon had never existed. But presumably the Times is not terribly sympathetic to Fredell and the values she represents.

The NYT doesn't link to the club's website, but here's the link to True Love Revolution. To my eye, the aesthetics are so poor that it clicking there opens a flood of mistrust. That blue background with a red flower, those ugly frames, the mismatched fonts. Their argument is about psychological wellbeing, but their website is driving me crazy.

Let me cut and past something from the FAQ:

Aren't people who have sex before marriage happier than people who can't get any?

Wait! That's an insane way to ask the question. I thought they were resisting and saying "no, absolutely not." Now they are people who can't get any?

Actually, premarital sexual behavior has the potential to negatively affect your emotional and mental health. Early sexual activity and having multiple sexual partners is strongly associated with increased depression, greater likelihood of maternal poverty, and higher rates of marital infidelity and divorce in future marriages.

Why are they arguing about "potential" and the statistical odds? Why is there a correlation — and does it apply to elite college students? And if you want to be philosophical, shouldn't you speak in terms of the individual?

Sexual activity in both men and women involves the release of powerful bonding hormones that are designed to help married couples stay together permanently and trust each other. Within marriage, these bonds are a cause of joy and marital harmony; but for non-married couples, such bonds can cause serious problems. When these relationships come to an end, the partners often feel a palpable sense of loss, betrayed trust, and unwelcome memories.

Did that answer the question whether you'll be happier if you abstain than if you go ahead and have sex? Can you really control the flow of hormones and the accumulation of bad memories by not having sex? Isn't the fear of future bad memories itself a source of unhappiness?