The Shepherdess doth protest: frightening blog post assures women that one-night stands are good for them

The article can be found on Good Days, the blog connected to indie clothing company Unruly Heir.

And here are the winning quotes:

"...sex really doesn’t always have to be about a meaningful and intimate connection; sometimes it’s about doing what feels good in the moment."

(It's only human bodies we're talking about here.  They don't have to be meaningful all the time!)

"'[the one-night stand] is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not ‘taking’ and the woman is not ‘giving.’ No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone.'"

(Clearly, the only constituent to ethical sex is that no one turns it into a "power game".) 

"A little sexual adventure doesn’t mean anything about you morally."

(Just the same way that your actions "don't mean anything" about your character.)

"One nighters are a good way for women who have a hard time separating the physical from the emotional to try to experience a purely sexual encounter – without ANY expectations."

(I hate those days when I have a hard time achieving disconnect between my body and my soul.)

The funny thing is that the whole article reads like a satire of today's hook-up culture.  The sad thing is that the author's not trying to be funny.

What took the cake for me was that, in list item #5, the woman says that a casual encounter can be great for "revenge sex" against someone who's cheated on you.  In item #6, she goes on to warn: "don't be a man's fallback girl, you know, the one he’s using to get over his ex or sleeping with until someone better comes along."  So...it's okay for women to use and objectify men, but not vice versa?  That's a double standard that makes total sense.

Perhaps what makes this kind of post truly frightening is the context in which it appears. This isn't Cosmo magazine. It isn't broadcasting graphic sex advice. Nor is it telling women to objectify themselves for the sake of pleasing men: somehow, it's telling women to objectify themselves for the sake of pleasing...themselves.  ('Go ahead and sacrifice your integrity - it's ok, because you'll feel good!')  This woman's writing for a blog whose presentation is chic, sleek, and sophisticated; people will assume that its content must be equally forward-thinking.  It's delivering lies in the most convincing of ways: with style.  And, in terms of rhetoric, this article is quite intelligently-written. Well-composed, yes; but not wise enough to encourage people to live well, wholly, and wholesomely.

Ironically, Refinery29 (where I found the article) hits the nail on the head - “One-Night Stands: Empowering or Soul Crushing?” Sadly, they take an ambivalent stance on what should be a merely rhetorical question. Whether such ignorance is feigned or sincere, they claim to really have no clue if it's good for a woman to sever her emotions from the rest of her being - as if any woman who took a sincere look into her heart wouldn't know the answer to that.

Now I'm incredibly tempted to create a new meme, for use in situations like this.  I'd call it, "badass shepherdess".

See this sheep prod?  It's going to attain a "meaningful and intimate connection" with some backside.

;)

image source: wikipedia.org