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Chastened: The Unexpected Story of My Year without Sex
Seeking love in an age obsessed with sex, a journalist chronicles her year without
On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, Hephzibah Anderson glimpsed her college boyfriend going into a jewelry store with a smiling blonde-and in that moment realized it had been years since a man told her he loved her. This discovery led her to question a decade of emotionally frustrating relationships with commitment phobes. As she examined her past, she recognized that most of these relationships went off course at the precise moment sex was involved. Anderson decided it was time to spend a full year without sex to rediscover its meaning and purpose in her life. In this confessional account, Anderson shares the results of that year, narrating each month as she flirts, dates, and swoons but doesn't have sex. The results-her feelings about femininity, her body, and romance-are illuminating.
Told with Elizabeth Gilbertesque candor, Chastened reveals much about our contradictory cultural attitudes towards sex and the ways intercourse has been used as a shortcut to deeper intimacies. An antidote to the growing genre of another-notch-in-the-bedpost memoirs, Chastened is a refreshing look at what's to be gained by going without.
On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, Hephzibah Anderson glimpsed her college boyfriend going into a jewelry store with a smiling blonde-and in that moment realized it had been years since a man told her he loved her. This discovery led her to question a decade of emotionally frustrating relationships with commitment phobes. As she examined her past, she recognized that most of these relationships went off course at the precise moment sex was involved. Anderson decided it was time to spend a full year without sex to rediscover its meaning and purpose in her life. In this confessional account, Anderson shares the results of that year, narrating each month as she flirts, dates, and swoons but doesn't have sex. The results-her feelings about femininity, her body, and romance-are illuminating.
Told with Elizabeth Gilbertesque candor, Chastened reveals much about our contradictory cultural attitudes towards sex and the ways intercourse has been used as a shortcut to deeper intimacies. An antidote to the growing genre of another-notch-in-the-bedpost memoirs, Chastened is a refreshing look at what's to be gained by going without.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2009
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185 people want to read
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January 26, 2011
guys. what the fuck. this book SUCKS.
i am not sure why i picked it up. i think i read a review of it somewhere that made it sound potentially intriguing. it's a memoir kind of deal by a woman who made a personal vow with herself to not have sex (which she defines as "penile penetration") for a year. her vow was inspired by a chance encounter on the streets on new york city, when she saw her ex-boyfriend from college steering a smiling blonde woman into a jewelry store. she learned from a mutual friend later that they had become engaged. this happened shortly before the author turned 30, & it made her think about how she hasn't really had any real long-term relationships since she & the college boyfriend split up eight years earlier. in fact, no man since there has told her he loves her. this makes her think, somehow, that maybe it has something to do with sex--that maybe she has been divorcing sex from love & is reaping the rewards, in the form of casual sex & no love. it's never really entirely clear what the author hopes to gain from avoiding sex for a year, or what inspired the decision, but...let's just go with it.
the books starts with WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING DETAIL about her relationship with college boyfriend. if i was that dude or his fiancee & i stumbled across this book, i would not feel great about it. the next chapter is all about the last guy she had sex with, an older man named jake. i had a hard time with this character because a) he sounded like an asshole, b) i always feel weird about way older men doing it with way younger women, but mainly c) i kept picturing him as the short, balding bongo player on "flight of the conchords"...see here for a visual. yeah, the guy in the music video, playing the bongos. sexy? not so much.
& then the book slogs on, with hephzibah not having penile intercourse, but going on plenty of dates with various men. the main thing that made me literally want to throw this book across the room is that hephzibah CONSTANTLY maligns feminism. at first, she's all quick to say, "i'm not a feminist." okay. that's cool. i personally don't really understand why a woman wouldn't be a feminist, but whatever. some people don't like to label themselves. but then she starts pushing all these myths about feminism. she claims at one point that feminism's enduring legacy is that it called for women to abort male fetuses. WHAT? seriously? is she smoking crack? is she actually pat robertson in disguise? every political movement has its crackpot fringe extremists, but i can guarantee that aborting male fetuses was never a part of the mainstream (or even radical) feminist agenda, okay? she also goes on & on about how feminists are such big hypocrites because some women enjoy porn (what does that have to do with anything?) & some women became lesbians for political reasons (so the fuck what? what does that have to do with her vow of chastity?).
she seriously takes every chance she gets to ridicule feminism & talk about how useless & stupid it is. she claims that feminism basically achieved absolutely nothing, as proven by the fact that women's lives in, say, sudan, are not appreciably better than they were forty years ago. really? on what authority, exactly, is she claiming this to be true? is she secretly an expert on sudanese gender relations as well as a professional solipsist? i am the first to acknowledge that feminism as popularly conceived by this book (she basically equates feminism with either second-wave consciousness-raising sessions or with new york feminist collectives trying to close down the times square strip joints) didn't put as much energy as they could have into the issues of women in developing nations. but feminism has positively impacted women all over the world in large & small ways, & i think it's a crass generalization to suggest that the lives of women in developing nations have been unchanged for the last fifty years. though i'm sure it looks that way from the perspective of a self-centered white westerner whose biggest problem in life is when to confess to her most recent date that she has taken a personal vow of temporary chastity, which could potentially be compromised by enjoying a romantic weekend getaway in some palatial estate somewhere.
she also goes on & on & on & ON about how the "sexual revolution" actually disserviced women by creating a chasm between sex & intimacy, so women were having more sex than ever but enjoying less intimacy. & this is based on...what historical or sociological sources again? or is it just an assumption based on nothing? she claims that this led to a lot of unplanned babies & single moms, & that is just so awful because pregnancy is SO DANGEROUS for women. she comes back to this "pregnancy is as close as a woman will ever come to death until she actually dies for real" theme again & again...without ever stopping to acknowledge that it was FEMINISTS that helped to legalize birth control access to single women, & it was FEMINISTS who helped legalize abortion, & it was FEMINISTS that enabled hephzibah to enjoy a decade of no-strings-attached sex while successfully avoiding unwanted pregnancy.
she also suggests that feminism is bunk because she has it on good authority that simone de beauvoir occasionally cried over men. i can't think of a better reason to throw a decades-long movement agitating for basic human rights for half the world's population out the window...can you?
anyway. back to the book. so she goes on dates. though it becomes clear that she considers any time spent more or less alone with a man (even just talking on the phone) a date. by that standard, i have dated a lot more than i thought i had. there is a section where she acknowledges her preference for older men & speculates that it is due to the fact that her father was largely absent from her childhood. she also suggests that most women prefer older men because, at the end of the day, women really WANT to defer to men (she actually says this), but because it is not politically correct to do so on the basis of gender anymore, they choose older men so they can defer according to age. um...suddenly it becomes apparent why hephzibah is so down on feminism. it's because she doesn't really seem to have a lot of respect for women, including herself.
she also suggests that she is avoiding sex because she has learned that she can't really have sex with a man without developing feelings for him. she goes on to elaborate, insisting that this is a problem that all women share, because women are just biologically wired to develop strong emotions for the men they bed. why, hello, biological essentialism & ridiculously outmoded theories on how the clan of the cave bear selected mates like it has relevance in the year 2011. i was wondering when you'd show up to the party.
later in the book, she begins to grapple with the possibility that maybe it's not sex that is the problem. maybe it's just male attention in general. maybe her desire for male attention is what distracts her from her work & her friendships & creates the intoxicating flood of emotions that she likens again & again to an addiction. & clearly, her vow of chastity is not preventing her from seeking out male attention in general. basically, she's hooked on the male gaze.
hey, hephzibah, you know what might help you with that? maybe...FEMINISM. seriously. if she could validate her worthiness as a human & a woman within herself, maybe she could spend a little less time seeking that validation from men, specifically in the form of sex, intimacy, or "love".
there are numerous points in the book where i actually felt a physical wrenching of sadness for how clueless hephzibah is about herself. she allows jake to swoop back into her life & does all kinds of sexual things with him (everything but intercourse, i guess), & at one point, he says, "i think i might love you, a bit." despite the fact that he has a girlfriend, & has had said girlfriend for the entire time that hephzibah has known (& been sleeping with) him. she split once when she realized he wasn't going to end things with his girlfriend for her...but she allows him to seduce her again by suggesting that it's just an undeniable physical connection. dear hephzibah, usually when we are doing sexual things (if not actual sex) with people that we have great big huge crushes on, we tend to think that our physical connections with that person are very special & noteworthy. once the crush is history, you kind of forget about the supposed physical connection.
anyway, hephzibah latches on to this pseudo-declaration of love & clings to it like a life raft. girlfriend is thirty & this is the best she's gotten since college? "i might love you, a bit"? i think we can all agree that that is legitimately sad.
& just a chapter or two later, she is telling another man about her plans to temporarily re-locate to new york city. her plans are being held up by complicated visa issues. he jokingly says, "i have a green card, which is halfway to citizenship. let's get married." hephzibah also latches on to this, painting it as basically a real marriage proposal, & worse, suggesting that getting a fake marriage proposal from a man she's not even actually dating was actually some kind of achievement for her. something to be proud of. it made me so sad. it totally reminded me of being in high school, listening to my lady friends pick apart the coded messages in what their boyfriends were saying to them. "he says he loves spending time with me? that's like saying he loves me, right? OMG he loves me!" except hephzibah is thirty. so it's very sad.
anyway...finally, FINALLY, the book & the vow are over. the epilogue is so rambling & non-sensical, it's almost unreadable. hephzibah tries her hand at a little sociological analysis, discussing statistics about teenage pregnancy & such forth. it's pretty terrible. she writes something about teen girls being "pressurized" into sex. um...i think she means "pressured". the words are not synonyms. i kind of can't believe this woman is a professional writer (she does a lot of work for magazines). it's obvious that she wants to wrap her story up in a neat bow about how she had sex with a great man after her vow was over & now they are engaged. i mean, she claims to not want that because it's the pat way that memoirs about being single women always end...but it's not hard to read between the lines & smell the defensiveness that belies the truth. anyway, that does not happen. she has sex with kind of an asshole man & the sex is terrible & hephzibah is still single. it is unclear that she learned anything from her year of chastity except maybe how to snag a literary agent.
i did the heavy lifting, reading this horror show. learn from my mistakes.
i am not sure why i picked it up. i think i read a review of it somewhere that made it sound potentially intriguing. it's a memoir kind of deal by a woman who made a personal vow with herself to not have sex (which she defines as "penile penetration") for a year. her vow was inspired by a chance encounter on the streets on new york city, when she saw her ex-boyfriend from college steering a smiling blonde woman into a jewelry store. she learned from a mutual friend later that they had become engaged. this happened shortly before the author turned 30, & it made her think about how she hasn't really had any real long-term relationships since she & the college boyfriend split up eight years earlier. in fact, no man since there has told her he loves her. this makes her think, somehow, that maybe it has something to do with sex--that maybe she has been divorcing sex from love & is reaping the rewards, in the form of casual sex & no love. it's never really entirely clear what the author hopes to gain from avoiding sex for a year, or what inspired the decision, but...let's just go with it.
the books starts with WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING DETAIL about her relationship with college boyfriend. if i was that dude or his fiancee & i stumbled across this book, i would not feel great about it. the next chapter is all about the last guy she had sex with, an older man named jake. i had a hard time with this character because a) he sounded like an asshole, b) i always feel weird about way older men doing it with way younger women, but mainly c) i kept picturing him as the short, balding bongo player on "flight of the conchords"...see here for a visual. yeah, the guy in the music video, playing the bongos. sexy? not so much.
& then the book slogs on, with hephzibah not having penile intercourse, but going on plenty of dates with various men. the main thing that made me literally want to throw this book across the room is that hephzibah CONSTANTLY maligns feminism. at first, she's all quick to say, "i'm not a feminist." okay. that's cool. i personally don't really understand why a woman wouldn't be a feminist, but whatever. some people don't like to label themselves. but then she starts pushing all these myths about feminism. she claims at one point that feminism's enduring legacy is that it called for women to abort male fetuses. WHAT? seriously? is she smoking crack? is she actually pat robertson in disguise? every political movement has its crackpot fringe extremists, but i can guarantee that aborting male fetuses was never a part of the mainstream (or even radical) feminist agenda, okay? she also goes on & on about how feminists are such big hypocrites because some women enjoy porn (what does that have to do with anything?) & some women became lesbians for political reasons (so the fuck what? what does that have to do with her vow of chastity?).
she seriously takes every chance she gets to ridicule feminism & talk about how useless & stupid it is. she claims that feminism basically achieved absolutely nothing, as proven by the fact that women's lives in, say, sudan, are not appreciably better than they were forty years ago. really? on what authority, exactly, is she claiming this to be true? is she secretly an expert on sudanese gender relations as well as a professional solipsist? i am the first to acknowledge that feminism as popularly conceived by this book (she basically equates feminism with either second-wave consciousness-raising sessions or with new york feminist collectives trying to close down the times square strip joints) didn't put as much energy as they could have into the issues of women in developing nations. but feminism has positively impacted women all over the world in large & small ways, & i think it's a crass generalization to suggest that the lives of women in developing nations have been unchanged for the last fifty years. though i'm sure it looks that way from the perspective of a self-centered white westerner whose biggest problem in life is when to confess to her most recent date that she has taken a personal vow of temporary chastity, which could potentially be compromised by enjoying a romantic weekend getaway in some palatial estate somewhere.
she also goes on & on & on & ON about how the "sexual revolution" actually disserviced women by creating a chasm between sex & intimacy, so women were having more sex than ever but enjoying less intimacy. & this is based on...what historical or sociological sources again? or is it just an assumption based on nothing? she claims that this led to a lot of unplanned babies & single moms, & that is just so awful because pregnancy is SO DANGEROUS for women. she comes back to this "pregnancy is as close as a woman will ever come to death until she actually dies for real" theme again & again...without ever stopping to acknowledge that it was FEMINISTS that helped to legalize birth control access to single women, & it was FEMINISTS who helped legalize abortion, & it was FEMINISTS that enabled hephzibah to enjoy a decade of no-strings-attached sex while successfully avoiding unwanted pregnancy.
she also suggests that feminism is bunk because she has it on good authority that simone de beauvoir occasionally cried over men. i can't think of a better reason to throw a decades-long movement agitating for basic human rights for half the world's population out the window...can you?
anyway. back to the book. so she goes on dates. though it becomes clear that she considers any time spent more or less alone with a man (even just talking on the phone) a date. by that standard, i have dated a lot more than i thought i had. there is a section where she acknowledges her preference for older men & speculates that it is due to the fact that her father was largely absent from her childhood. she also suggests that most women prefer older men because, at the end of the day, women really WANT to defer to men (she actually says this), but because it is not politically correct to do so on the basis of gender anymore, they choose older men so they can defer according to age. um...suddenly it becomes apparent why hephzibah is so down on feminism. it's because she doesn't really seem to have a lot of respect for women, including herself.
she also suggests that she is avoiding sex because she has learned that she can't really have sex with a man without developing feelings for him. she goes on to elaborate, insisting that this is a problem that all women share, because women are just biologically wired to develop strong emotions for the men they bed. why, hello, biological essentialism & ridiculously outmoded theories on how the clan of the cave bear selected mates like it has relevance in the year 2011. i was wondering when you'd show up to the party.
later in the book, she begins to grapple with the possibility that maybe it's not sex that is the problem. maybe it's just male attention in general. maybe her desire for male attention is what distracts her from her work & her friendships & creates the intoxicating flood of emotions that she likens again & again to an addiction. & clearly, her vow of chastity is not preventing her from seeking out male attention in general. basically, she's hooked on the male gaze.
hey, hephzibah, you know what might help you with that? maybe...FEMINISM. seriously. if she could validate her worthiness as a human & a woman within herself, maybe she could spend a little less time seeking that validation from men, specifically in the form of sex, intimacy, or "love".
there are numerous points in the book where i actually felt a physical wrenching of sadness for how clueless hephzibah is about herself. she allows jake to swoop back into her life & does all kinds of sexual things with him (everything but intercourse, i guess), & at one point, he says, "i think i might love you, a bit." despite the fact that he has a girlfriend, & has had said girlfriend for the entire time that hephzibah has known (& been sleeping with) him. she split once when she realized he wasn't going to end things with his girlfriend for her...but she allows him to seduce her again by suggesting that it's just an undeniable physical connection. dear hephzibah, usually when we are doing sexual things (if not actual sex) with people that we have great big huge crushes on, we tend to think that our physical connections with that person are very special & noteworthy. once the crush is history, you kind of forget about the supposed physical connection.
anyway, hephzibah latches on to this pseudo-declaration of love & clings to it like a life raft. girlfriend is thirty & this is the best she's gotten since college? "i might love you, a bit"? i think we can all agree that that is legitimately sad.
& just a chapter or two later, she is telling another man about her plans to temporarily re-locate to new york city. her plans are being held up by complicated visa issues. he jokingly says, "i have a green card, which is halfway to citizenship. let's get married." hephzibah also latches on to this, painting it as basically a real marriage proposal, & worse, suggesting that getting a fake marriage proposal from a man she's not even actually dating was actually some kind of achievement for her. something to be proud of. it made me so sad. it totally reminded me of being in high school, listening to my lady friends pick apart the coded messages in what their boyfriends were saying to them. "he says he loves spending time with me? that's like saying he loves me, right? OMG he loves me!" except hephzibah is thirty. so it's very sad.
anyway...finally, FINALLY, the book & the vow are over. the epilogue is so rambling & non-sensical, it's almost unreadable. hephzibah tries her hand at a little sociological analysis, discussing statistics about teenage pregnancy & such forth. it's pretty terrible. she writes something about teen girls being "pressurized" into sex. um...i think she means "pressured". the words are not synonyms. i kind of can't believe this woman is a professional writer (she does a lot of work for magazines). it's obvious that she wants to wrap her story up in a neat bow about how she had sex with a great man after her vow was over & now they are engaged. i mean, she claims to not want that because it's the pat way that memoirs about being single women always end...but it's not hard to read between the lines & smell the defensiveness that belies the truth. anyway, that does not happen. she has sex with kind of an asshole man & the sex is terrible & hephzibah is still single. it is unclear that she learned anything from her year of chastity except maybe how to snag a literary agent.
i did the heavy lifting, reading this horror show. learn from my mistakes.
Read
November 26, 2020The author is attempting to recover the meaningfulness of sex for herself, and discover what it is that is really important in intimacy, so has decided to forgo sex for a year- specifically, penetrative intercourse (everything else goes). For many months, this is a vow she keeps private.
There is some discussion of what sex means to young women these days, and the changes wrought by feminism and social expectation. That piece of the content is smart and interesting. I think I was expecting more of that journalistic examination. It is outweighed by the mostly interior monologue following dates, assignations, chance encounters, failures and possibilities with men. Men men men.
I think I also expected less sex. For a year ostensibly without sex, it reads like a tell-all sex blog, where every encounter and every male action or word is burdened with sweeping adjectives and teased apart in search of meaning.
There is some discussion of what sex means to young women these days, and the changes wrought by feminism and social expectation. That piece of the content is smart and interesting. I think I was expecting more of that journalistic examination. It is outweighed by the mostly interior monologue following dates, assignations, chance encounters, failures and possibilities with men. Men men men.
I think I also expected less sex. For a year ostensibly without sex, it reads like a tell-all sex blog, where every encounter and every male action or word is burdened with sweeping adjectives and teased apart in search of meaning.
September 10, 2010
things that made this book absolutely awful:
1. the author defines sex as "penile penetration." so in her year of chastity, everything else is allowed. at one point, she describes receiving oral sex, which, really, is about as far from chastity as almost anything i can imagine.
2. the author's first action of chastity is buying a new chaste wardrobe, as though not putting out has anything to do with the way one dresses. then she seems a little put off that no one notices the differences. i think i would be more upset if all my friends said, "look at you, you're not dressing like you're easy anymore!"
3. the author very quickly becomes delighted by how much more attention she seems to get from men when she's not giving it up. at one point, a suitor joking asks to marry her to resolve immigration issues. she's all, "that's more marriage proposals than i ever got pre-chastity."
4. her whole reason for chastity is whack. "i'm tired of having sex that doesn't result in true love forever. let's see if not having sex can get me a ring on this finger." (this is not a quote from the book. it's my summary.)
5. the whole last chapter, the wrap up, reads like a chapter in the rules. i didn't like the rules when i read it in 1997, and i'm definitely not into it now.
1. the author defines sex as "penile penetration." so in her year of chastity, everything else is allowed. at one point, she describes receiving oral sex, which, really, is about as far from chastity as almost anything i can imagine.
2. the author's first action of chastity is buying a new chaste wardrobe, as though not putting out has anything to do with the way one dresses. then she seems a little put off that no one notices the differences. i think i would be more upset if all my friends said, "look at you, you're not dressing like you're easy anymore!"
3. the author very quickly becomes delighted by how much more attention she seems to get from men when she's not giving it up. at one point, a suitor joking asks to marry her to resolve immigration issues. she's all, "that's more marriage proposals than i ever got pre-chastity."
4. her whole reason for chastity is whack. "i'm tired of having sex that doesn't result in true love forever. let's see if not having sex can get me a ring on this finger." (this is not a quote from the book. it's my summary.)
5. the whole last chapter, the wrap up, reads like a chapter in the rules. i didn't like the rules when i read it in 1997, and i'm definitely not into it now.
August 2, 2010
I'm surprisingly pleased with this book: it isn't so much about avoiding sex but about giving in to the aspects of our emotional lives that are, amid current trends of hookups, often thought of as unnecessary, outdated, or inefficient. The writing is clever and (in places) beautiful; there are delightful scenes in which the author does things just because they make her happy--like spin through lobbies of hotels that seemed magical to her as a child, just to breathe the air. I haven't finished yet, but it looks like the final conclusion is going to be that it's worth trying something seemingly eccentric with one's emotional life--because, unless we give in to those internal urges (see? It's a book, in some ways, about indulging), we'll never realize how nuanced they can be.
May 21, 2023
Incredibly boring. It had such a good premise and failed miserably.
Read
December 31, 2023Read as research for my next project.
July 29, 2011
Chastened is exactly what the title states: Hephzibah's unexpected story of her year without sex. I loved it. The inside of the book jacket made me nervous that this was going to be a story that tried to persuade young women to change their attitudes and take on promises of chaste behavior. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, Hephzibah seems almost apologetic that many of her experiences seem contrary to feminism.
From the beginning, part of my fascination with the story was by how similarly it parallels my own. I actually felt like I could have written this book. I wanted to call my best friend and shout, "someone wrote my story! This book is me!" I loved Hephzibah's personal stories, her descriptions of her relationships, the way she detailed her encounters. I felt particularly connected to her relationship with Jake - I had a similar one in my early 20s that dragged me through enough turmoil that I took my own chaste year. Her depiction of animal lust and how she equated that to love; how she ignored his statements that he wouldn't leave his girlfriend, that he didn't love Hephzibah; how she crumbled and opened her heart and her legs to him each time he called - despite vows that she wouldn't - she does it amazingly well. It touched my heart. Hephzibah is funny and smart. I thoroughly enjoyed the quotes and thoughts she pulled in from writers, theologians, actors, etc. that she used to relate her own experiences.
The reason I gave this book 4 stars, instead of 5, is because I was not as taken by Hephzibah's ventures into society analysis. Some of the topics felt a little far-reaching, or that her generalizations were too big for the greater society. However, there were many I did enjoy. I believe her thoughts on feminism and sexuality are spot-on. The epilogue pulls it all together quite nicely.
There were so many quotes and passages that touched me, I'll list a few below:
"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more virtue than malnutrition." -Alex Comfort
"A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to prove you're a lady"
Elegance is not about putting on a new dress, it is radiated from within - Coco Chanel
"Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions." -Aldous Huxley
"In the past I would probably have listened to that campy advice to get myself over one man by wriggling beneath the comforting weight of another" -Hephzibah Anderson
From the beginning, part of my fascination with the story was by how similarly it parallels my own. I actually felt like I could have written this book. I wanted to call my best friend and shout, "someone wrote my story! This book is me!" I loved Hephzibah's personal stories, her descriptions of her relationships, the way she detailed her encounters. I felt particularly connected to her relationship with Jake - I had a similar one in my early 20s that dragged me through enough turmoil that I took my own chaste year. Her depiction of animal lust and how she equated that to love; how she ignored his statements that he wouldn't leave his girlfriend, that he didn't love Hephzibah; how she crumbled and opened her heart and her legs to him each time he called - despite vows that she wouldn't - she does it amazingly well. It touched my heart. Hephzibah is funny and smart. I thoroughly enjoyed the quotes and thoughts she pulled in from writers, theologians, actors, etc. that she used to relate her own experiences.
The reason I gave this book 4 stars, instead of 5, is because I was not as taken by Hephzibah's ventures into society analysis. Some of the topics felt a little far-reaching, or that her generalizations were too big for the greater society. However, there were many I did enjoy. I believe her thoughts on feminism and sexuality are spot-on. The epilogue pulls it all together quite nicely.
There were so many quotes and passages that touched me, I'll list a few below:
"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more virtue than malnutrition." -Alex Comfort
"A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to prove you're a lady"
Elegance is not about putting on a new dress, it is radiated from within - Coco Chanel
"Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions." -Aldous Huxley
"In the past I would probably have listened to that campy advice to get myself over one man by wriggling beneath the comforting weight of another" -Hephzibah Anderson
May 4, 2020
Starting her tale right as she makes the decision to be celibate is great for pacing but robs readers of background information needed to understand why Anderson made such a 'drastic' decision. Why did she feel the need for a new chasten wardrobe of turtlenecks? Was she formerly a provocative dresser, and no longer wanted to the type of attention cleavage can garner? Knowing the type of men she had dated before the vow would help readers know if she would have rejected the men who propositioned her even without it.
Anderson states one of the reasons for the vow was to learn how to hold out for someone who would be devoted. Despite her declaration, she continues to entertain an old flame who blatantly shows he has no interest in giving her devotion. But then again, we have no idea what her definition/criteria of a relationship is, so maybe a man with a girlfriend is her idea of a relationship.
Anderson's stream of consciousness goes in and out of play by play of dates, rants on women's portrayals in movies, other cultures' views on chastity, and feminism. There is no self-aware personal evaluation of herself, making it difficult to get a sense of who she is. What part of the stereotype of a girl who grew up without a father does she identify with or not? Does her international lifestyle hinder her date-ability? What cultural differences does she see between England and the United States, if any? I don't know and Anderson doesn't say. Her behavior and view of herself are unchanged after the year of celibacy, getting her no closer to the goal of devotion and making the whole ordeal feel like a weary (the only emotion she expresses) waste of time.
https://singlecatladyreads.com/chaste...
Anderson states one of the reasons for the vow was to learn how to hold out for someone who would be devoted. Despite her declaration, she continues to entertain an old flame who blatantly shows he has no interest in giving her devotion. But then again, we have no idea what her definition/criteria of a relationship is, so maybe a man with a girlfriend is her idea of a relationship.
Anderson's stream of consciousness goes in and out of play by play of dates, rants on women's portrayals in movies, other cultures' views on chastity, and feminism. There is no self-aware personal evaluation of herself, making it difficult to get a sense of who she is. What part of the stereotype of a girl who grew up without a father does she identify with or not? Does her international lifestyle hinder her date-ability? What cultural differences does she see between England and the United States, if any? I don't know and Anderson doesn't say. Her behavior and view of herself are unchanged after the year of celibacy, getting her no closer to the goal of devotion and making the whole ordeal feel like a weary (the only emotion she expresses) waste of time.
https://singlecatladyreads.com/chaste...
April 1, 2023
An interesting take on something that has become so normal in our culture. I especially appreciated reading about the journey of chastity from a non-religious woman, who doesn’t have some sort of agenda to push, but who wonders if they way everyone else does things isn’t the best way for her. It’s not a generalization, it’s just her story. My only real complaint is the ending kind of seemed to undo the lessons learned over the course of the year, but I guess that’s real life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 29, 2011
Hey Mom, you probably don't need to read this. :-)
After having reached the halfway mark in a yearlong journey that seems not-so-different from that of the author, I thought it would be interesting to read about another woman's experience in "taking a year off." The first few chapters scared me a little - Anderson seemed to be in my head, pointing to some of the same flawed theories on relationships between people and between love and sex that had taken me through my twenties as motivation for her vow (and my own not-quite vow).
Aside from being slightly creeped out by some of the similar experiences we've had (which really just made me feel like a huge cliche), I began to really enjoy her writing style, which at first seemed a little overly embellished, but which I quickly found particularly entertaining. I would have enjoyed this book even if I didn't feel any personal connection with the story.
Spoiler alert:
I appreciate the fact that Anderson's journey didn't lead her straight into a long term relationship. The end of her book just reinforced for me what she had gained from her year of chastity, which had not been defined as finding true love, but rather as an opportunity to reflect on her poor habits and make the changes she needed to get back on track with what she wanted out of relationships. That's all I'm hoping for from my own journey, plus a little physical and emotional space to do some long term goal setting.
After having reached the halfway mark in a yearlong journey that seems not-so-different from that of the author, I thought it would be interesting to read about another woman's experience in "taking a year off." The first few chapters scared me a little - Anderson seemed to be in my head, pointing to some of the same flawed theories on relationships between people and between love and sex that had taken me through my twenties as motivation for her vow (and my own not-quite vow).
Aside from being slightly creeped out by some of the similar experiences we've had (which really just made me feel like a huge cliche), I began to really enjoy her writing style, which at first seemed a little overly embellished, but which I quickly found particularly entertaining. I would have enjoyed this book even if I didn't feel any personal connection with the story.
Spoiler alert:
I appreciate the fact that Anderson's journey didn't lead her straight into a long term relationship. The end of her book just reinforced for me what she had gained from her year of chastity, which had not been defined as finding true love, but rather as an opportunity to reflect on her poor habits and make the changes she needed to get back on track with what she wanted out of relationships. That's all I'm hoping for from my own journey, plus a little physical and emotional space to do some long term goal setting.
April 27, 2011
I picked up this book because the premise intrigued me, but unfortunately my interest waned after the first chapter. I kept reading, hoping it would get better, but it didn't. I feel like the author couldn't decide whether to make this a personal memoir or a treatise on dating, chastity, and feminism in the modern age, and as a result the book felt very confused, something that was definitely not helped by the writing itself. I am a fan of concision-I believe that it shouldn't take a page or more to say something that can be said in a sentence. However, the author is fond of long-winded descriptions that don't add anything to the story. In one chapter, she spends almost a page describing the soundtrack at a bar. The point of this description? To compare it to how she's feeling on the date. Something that could have been said in a sentence or two. Overall, this book needed some major editing-by the end, I was skimming sections. I'm surprised that I even finished it.
April 22, 2012
I kind of go by a rule of thumb that if I won't finish reading a book, it gets a 1. I actually think that Anderson is a competent writer, so maybe this isn't fair -- but I'm getting weary of this whole practice of coming up with experiments to write about thing. I don't actually care about her sex life enough to read the book.
To be candid, I thought she had some sort of actual reason to be doing this (maybe an unfortunate assumption based on what sounded like a Biblical name?) -- religious, medical, whatever. Or she had some kind of unusual person experience that made her seriously question her lifestyle and struggle with it, or struggle with something. She doesn't ever even sound like she likes sex enough to have much of a conflict giving it up.
It did make me more wary of the entire memoir genre now, though. I'm going to try and avoid manufactured "experiences" from now on (thankfully, I've already read the manufactured "Flunking Sainthood," which, unexpectedly, I loved.
To be candid, I thought she had some sort of actual reason to be doing this (maybe an unfortunate assumption based on what sounded like a Biblical name?) -- religious, medical, whatever. Or she had some kind of unusual person experience that made her seriously question her lifestyle and struggle with it, or struggle with something. She doesn't ever even sound like she likes sex enough to have much of a conflict giving it up.
It did make me more wary of the entire memoir genre now, though. I'm going to try and avoid manufactured "experiences" from now on (thankfully, I've already read the manufactured "Flunking Sainthood," which, unexpectedly, I loved.
September 4, 2014
I appreciated the candid, introspective, and often philosophical look at sex--what it has been and what it is now in society, and what it could be. Peppered with quotes from preeminent thinkers, philosophers, and "sex-experts", this was a far more compelling read than I thought it would be. And while she didn't go so far as to recommend chastity universally, she certainly looked more carefully at its benefits than has been done in a long time, that I am aware of. The story of the year itself--her romantic hopes and disappointments, titillation and near-exploits--was not particularly interesting to me. It was the slightly more objective perspective on sex, instead, that kept me reading. As a 15-year married and chaste woman (Hephzibah points out chastity can be part of a sexual relationship, and I agree) it was good to reflect on the deeper, more spiritual and symbolic meaning of sex.
January 25, 2011
i literally grabbed this off the shelves of the library near my job in a 30-second-oh-god-i-have-to-get-something-to-read-on-the-bus-ride-home-or-i-will-die-of-boredom frenzy. i really wasn't expecting a whole lot, but i found it to be interesting, well-read and full of interesting quotes. yes, as a slutty non-monogamous queer woman who doesn't give a fuck about getting married, ms. anderson's issues weren't exactly my issues. but we both grew up under the same patriarchy, just responded in different ways. also, i laughed aloud when she reminisced about hanging out with the weird kids back in high school, saying something to the effect of, "Our gang was made up of weird kids with names like Ocean and Dante...and Hephzibah." ha!
April 4, 2011
Didn't actually finish this. Made it 30 pages in and then gave up. For all the sex, this book was kind of boring. Bridget Jones wannabe, but not as charmingly self-deprecating, just sort of silly sounding. Don't want to have sex until you're in love? Go for it. No need to make a year's experiment out of it. Millionaire Matchmaker does this all the time! Have some liaisons you think were unwise? Join the club. Just don't whine about it in a tell all book unless there's something exciting to tell about.
August 9, 2012
I said to the hubs, "This book about the woman who doesn't have sex is boring." He goes, "She's not having sex. What'd you expect?". And that basically sums up this book. Too light on her personal discoveries and too heavy on history of dating, courting, sex and relationships. She does come to the obvious realization that settling for casual sex means going without the more important things she wants in a relationship: true love, intimacy, committment, a husband. It's not bad; it just wasn't good.
July 31, 2010
Reading a book about someone else's self-imposed chastity is less interesting than I'd hoped it would be. It wasn't very long before it became laborious, and I struggled to finish.
I found the narrative somewhat confusing in parts, as though I were reading the description of someone's dream. Characters are introduced abruptly with limited context, which caused me to flip back, thinking I'd read the previous pages too quickly.
This book is bound to delight someone, just not me.
I found the narrative somewhat confusing in parts, as though I were reading the description of someone's dream. Characters are introduced abruptly with limited context, which caused me to flip back, thinking I'd read the previous pages too quickly.
This book is bound to delight someone, just not me.
September 2, 2010
Impressed with the diligence that the author gave the subject of intimacy in todays world. Sex can be simply be fun or something very special; it all depends on how one wants to approach it. The highlight for me: how her friendships with the desired sex evolved without the promise of sex at the end. A great read!
September 29, 2010
I tend to enjoy books that are not geared toward me. I am not the target audience for this, and I didn't really care for it, either. While there are some interesting digressions on sexuality and feminism, it was mostly sort of a book where I kept asking why I should care. And, ultimately, I didn't really care all that much, so...
September 11, 2010
My antidote after watching too much Sex and the City. Anderson is smart & perceptive when it comes to analyzing the Western culture's obsession with sex. What I like is that she examines the glorification of sex as a member of society herself rather than removing herself from its equation. Part narrative, part social expository it offers food for thought.
December 10, 2018
Despite the weary ventures into clothes & shoes - I *loved* this book! She put into words so many of my feelings & experiences - it was amazing! (all other ways too describe it just felt sexual... lol)
I felt validated in a profound way... hidden among the story were things I needed to hear in a big way.
I felt validated in a profound way... hidden among the story were things I needed to hear in a big way.
July 20, 2011
Overall, I found it lacking. She talks about sex and love and relationships a considerable amount, and a little tiny bit about the history of those things and the feminist movement. I think it would have been vastly improved by more conversation about other cultures and histories about sex and chastity.
It felt like there wasn't enough of a story to write a whole book.
It felt like there wasn't enough of a story to write a whole book.
July 20, 2011
I found the author indecisive and she drove me crazy at times. I wasn't sure why she included some of the information she did - it didn't all add to the memoir. Characters dropped in and out, sometimes very abruptly. Didn't know why some characters had names and one other only had an initial?? Not a waste, but I definitely put it down a lot.
September 27, 2011
is it really such a momentous thing not to have sex for a year? If so, well, no need to scapegoat me or sacrifice me for political reasons, natural selection will weed me and my kind out soon enough... seriously though, who cares, and should we? isn't sex just a meme that keeps advertising going? and who likes advertising anyway...
June 23, 2012
I wouldn't say there was anything unexpected about this book, despite its title. She is a beautiful writer, so there's lots of great vocab and some of it is very eloquently put, but then the other side of the argument is that maybe if she were a better writer it would have been more compelling?
Saw it on a library shelf and decided to give it a chance...we'll see how it goes.
Saw it on a library shelf and decided to give it a chance...we'll see how it goes.
March 28, 2011
I had high expectations of this book but was disappointed to find that it was basically a glorified chick-lit novel (albeit based on the author's experience). However it is worth reading the very beginning as well as the epilogue.
November 4, 2015
I listened to the audio book. I felt that this book was very witty and personal and addresses a lot of issues facing the modern woman. It is written in a style that is fun to read as well as informative and intellectual. I would happily read this book again.
August 26, 2010
More a of 3.5 star rating, but a really interesting book with suprising insight.
October 12, 2010
Blech. A waste of my commute.
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