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Q & A
Q&A: Chastity is so out, it's in, says author Mary Jacobs, May 2, 2007
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Dawn Eden
Dawn Eden, the "Jewish-born journalist turned salty Christian blog queen," is fighting fire with fire. She's challenging unexamined assumptions of popular culture with her own hip, unconventional perspective. In her new book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On, Ms. Eden advocates the joy of no sex from the perspective of a veteran of the New York singles jungle who tried the Sex and the City lifestyle and found it wanting.
"Today, as the fruits of the sexual revolution prove to be loneliness, divorce, and disease, chastity is not only back, it's the new revolution," she writes. "So out, it's in."
Ms. Eden spoke recently with Associate Editor Mary Jacobs.
Having spent several years as a single woman, you've decided not to have sex until marriage. Why?
Growing up, I saw how my divorced single mother slept over with her boyfriends. That made me believe that sex was just something grown-ups did because they wanted to; marriage had nothing to do with it. Likewise, when I left home for college, I saw that, in the wider culture, sex was treated as merely one more item on the consumption menu of life. There was nothing sacred about sex or marriage. At 31, I had a religious conversion, where I realized that God was real and that Jesus Christ was His son. At that point, I knew that I wanted to be married. I also knew that sex a là New York City -- bowing to urges and temptations, rushing into sex in the hope that love would develop or using sex in the hope of landing a commitment -- wasn't cutting it.
Before my conversion, I knew that casual sex was unlikely to lead to something permanent. But I did believe that if I were in a real, loving, committed relationship, I had to have sex. I believed no man would marry me unless he tried me first.
In light of my new faith, I realized that, all the sex I had ever had -- in and out of relationships -- never brought me any closer to marriage or even being able to sustain a committed relationship. Whenever I had sex outside of marriage, even -- no, especially -- in a loving relationship, I had to put up an emotional wall to protect myself. With a sad irony, that same wall would prevent me from attaining the intimacy I really desired.
When you meet men, do you tell them that you're chaste? How do you bring it up?
Well, I have the advantage in the sense that I have a book now. I no longer have my amateur status. [Laughs.] In general, I'll vet guys. I'll try to find out, how important is faith to them? How important is family? How important is marriage to them? I don't think those are wrong questions to ask.
I think any man of integrity will tell you how important marriage is to him. You don't want to say, 'Well, how important is it for you to marry me?' But in general, do you believe in marriage? It's perfectly appropriate to ask those values questions and any man who has integrity will appreciate being asked, because it shows that he's being viewed as more than just a possible hookup.
I don't have a boyfriend at the moment, but even so, I believe that right now I am closer than ever before to being not only married, but happily married.
In your book, you made a distinction between "abstinence" and "chastity." Could you explain?
I appreciate you asking that question, because that's one of the important messages of my book. Abstinence is static, whereas chastity is a growth process. Abstinence is physically the closing off of oneself to sex outside marriage, whereas chastity is metaphysical. It encompasses reserving sex for marriage but it's really a spiritual disposition. It is from the inside out, where one is opening oneself up to the grace of seeing other people as gifts rather than objects.
I've seen a number of books with themes similar to your book: A Return to Modesty, Unprotected, Female Chauvinist Pigs. What's going on here?
I think that people are questioning the fruit of the sexual revolution. People are seeing that these solutions that were considered panaceas are not proving to make people fulfilled. They're realizing that the idea that feminists have propounded -- that sexual freedom is liberating women -- is a myth. It only frees women from the protections that they had in the past that made happiness possible for them.
People are becoming more aware that women are not truly empowered by a societal mandate to have sex with whomever they want whenever they want outside of marriage. Women are starting to articulate a kind of philosophy of liberation for women that is not women's lib, but rather, is liberation from the societal pressure that is contrary to their bodies and contrary to their desires.
I think it's good that people are able to express what's wrong with the culture. But the pleasure principle and various pagan philosophies are always going to be with us. And in our consumer culture, making women lonely is what sells. You don't see a married woman with kids blowing her Christmas bonus in the shoe department at Macy's. Advertisers have a vested interest in keeping women single and lonely, because they're the ones that buy impulse purchases.
What sort of reaction have you gotten to your book from non-Christian readers?
One of the endorsements for my book came from an unusual source, a writer named Rachel Kramer Bussel, who wrote a sex column called Lusty Lady for the Village Voice. In writing about Lauren Winner, a feminist, pro-choice author, she portrayed [Ms.] Winner as a "good" abstinence advocate as opposed to those fundy, wing-nut angry, close-minded extremists, like me. I was well-used to feminist criticism; I had been criticized very viciously on blogs like Pandagon.net, the blog that's now famous because blogger Amanda Marcotte was hired and fired by the [John] Edwards campaign. I was one of Amanda's favorite whipping-girls because of my pro-life stance.
So I sent [Ms.] Bussel a chapter from the book, and wrote to her that I hoped she would see that I was not trying to be judgmental. She actually gave me a very nice, qualified blurb for my book. She wrote, "I can't say I agree with everything in it... but there were some chapters I really related to. As a single woman myself, Dawn has given me a lot to think about." So I felt very affirmed that I had succeeded in writing something that would actually appeal to the audience it's supposed to help.
You're pretty blunt. How are Christian groups reacting?
I've actually gotten a wonderful response. Because of my being a new convert to Catholicism, I've been embraced by that world, which I'm grateful for. But I wrote my book in a purposely non-denominational style because I didn't believe the message should be limited to any one denomination. I believe it's a universal message.
I'm thankful I've gotten attention from Campus Crusade for Christ, also from the Albert Mohler radio show, the Rabbi Daniel Lapin radio show. Also, Relevant magazine is featuring me. I'm really glad that the message is getting out cross-denominationally. Because every denomination is feeling pressure from the outside world on its young people, which eats into the family values that are central to the Christian faith.
I never watched Sex and the City because the few episodes I saw just seemed dismal. Sex seemed almost like a compulsion. What's that about?
Yes, there is a compulsion in the pattern of women having sex outside out of a committed, monogamous relationship. But although my book is targeted at tearing down the Sex and the City fantasy that a woman can have a sex like a man, at the same time, I try to stress that all sex outside of marriage is damaging because it forces the partners to detach. Because they're saying one thing with their bodies and they're saying another thing emotionally.
Sex is the most physically self-sacrificing act that we can perform. If we're having it outside of marriage, we know that we can't give ourselves completely, because to give of yourself completely is to give yourself forever. As long as the person has an out, as long they can walk out the door with no judge to go to, with no kid, no property to divide up, then one can't give oneself completely. Partly because it's too scary to think, 'What if that person does walk out? Or I walk out?'
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When you meet men, do you tell them that you're chaste? How do you bring it up? 
I'm thankful I've gotten attention from Campus Crusade for Christ, also from the Albert Mohler radio show, the Rabbi Daniel Lapin radio show. Also, Relevant magazine is featuring me. I'm really glad that the message is getting out cross-denominationally. Because every denomination is feeling pressure from the outside world on its young people, which eats into the family values that are central to the Christian faith. 
