Meredith Aska McBride | Reclaiming the walk of shame

"Orgasm is the body's natural call to feminist politics," wrote feminist author Naomi Wolf. Go out and sit on Locust Walk on a Sunday morning, though - are Penn's women just not getting any satisfaction? Why won't anyone make eye contact?

We're all familiar with the walk of shame: The endless march across campus in f***-me pumps and clothes that are clearly not meant to be worn in daylight, paired with sex hair and morning breath.

This is a uniquely female phenomenon. "Guys," said a female College sophomore, "consider the exploit and walk back . acts of victory." This may be a generalization, but disheveled women are definitely more suspect walking across campus in the morning.

"I felt like . people were judging me for walking home in the same clothes I'd been wearing the night before," she said.

Most people seem to think, she continued, that a mascara-smudged woman has been caught after doing something naughty, and should be judged for it: "Shame on her for getting herself into that situation."

But what is there to be ashamed of?

Go ahead and be ashamed of pressuring someone to go farther than he or she wanted; be ashamed of being unsafe or of having sex with the wrong person or at the wrong time.

But don't be ashamed of having freely made the adult decision to have sex, if it's with the right person in a consensual, safe context.

We were told time and again as we made the transition from high school to college that we are now adults, and have to stand behind our decisions. Following this logic, it seems that there are two ways to avoid the infamous walk of shame: Either don't be ashamed of what you've decided to do, or change your actions so that you can take pride in them.

Women shouldn't necessarily take the stereotypical straight male's approach to casual sex. Liberation from sexual norms does not mean we must confine ourselves to others that are just as restricting in different ways. But we have to approach our sexual collisions as equals - as people, not as genders.

Sexuality is complex. Sex isn't always deep and emotional and meaningful and romantic. Neither is it always a steamy puzzle of body parts to be fit together and rearranged at will. But whatever it is in any given moment is no one's business to judge or control but those who have created that moment.

Your average Penn woman would probably enjoy her Sunday mornings a lot more if she adopted some "masculine" confidence in her sexual decisions. Our men, on the other hand, could benefit from paying more attention to the emotional and interpersonal implications of their sex lives.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote, "Every time you liberate a woman, you liberate a man."

Allowing women to swagger a bit frees men to show vulnerability. Releasing women to be honest about the fact that they have (and seek out and enjoy) sex could take some of the pressure off of men to pretend that sex is their primary motivator.

The feminist struggle in 2007 is far from where it was in 1967, before Roe v. Wade, or from where it was in 1917, before women could vote. Many, though not all, of the seminal governmental battles have been fought - and won.

Now that we take our legal rights for granted, modern feminism has become largely invisible. Feminists can now wear bras and shave if we want to; wearing makeup doesn't mean that we've abandoned sisterly solidarity. You can't necessarily walk down the street and pick out the feminists by their Birkenstocks.

This means that we have to show our feminism through our lifestyle politics. We don't have to feel ashamed of having an orgasm with someone we're not dating, or of walking home afterward smiling, as long as we freely entered into that situation.

There's also no shame in remaining a virgin until or beyond graduation, or of only being comfortable with certain forms of sexual activity in well-defined contexts.

What's important is that whatever we choose, we choose it not because we are women, but because we are autonomous adults.

Meredith Aska McBride is a College sophomore from Wauwatosa, Wis. Her e-mail is mcbride@dailypennsylvanian.com. Radical Chic appears on Wednesdays.

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