CHASTITY BELT

Yesterday’s warm weather put my hormones on high yearn. It’s mating season, in evolutionary terms, and the women of Cambridge were, knowingly or not, doing the equivalent of the mating ritual. On one side of the T car I stepped into, for instance, was a girl in shorts putting nail polish on her toes, tan, lean legs spreading to allow her access. Turning away brought no relief. I was standing above a woman whose dress seemed to be more a frame for her breasts than protection for her modesty. It cupped her, offered her, like a pair of hands.

So it seems brutally amusing that, on what was essentially day one of the year’s God-given season of going forth and multiplying, I was reading in the Times about the chastity and abstinence crowd at Princeton. These people complain of “an atmosphere that not only condones sexual activity among young adults, but ... expects it.”

One member is Jennifer Mickel, 19, from Louisiana, who was disturbed by the talk at an intercampus women’s forum.

“The discussion was very sex-focused, like about having rape kits in medical centers and condoms and the morning-after pill,” Ms. Mickel said. “And I asked, ‘What do your schools have for women who are not having sex?’ And the room fell silent. These delegates are appointed by their schools to be experts on these subjects, and no one had anything to say about abstinence.”

Yes, Jennifer, the room fell silent. No one had anything to say. Because it is impossible to have something along the lines of condoms, morning-after pills or even information about an act that consists of not taking place. Nothing is needed for nothing. One should ask, rather, what you were doing in a conversation about sex when your interest is a lack of same. It’s doubtful your peers are trying to join conversations about the best ways to sublimate sexual urges into chastity and abstinence, because they’re not part of the discussion.

There are no weight-loss books, products or programs — nor, for that matter, are there menus, specials or buffets — for people who do not eat. There are no gym fees or surging, rippling muscles for people who do not exercise. And there are no pop quizzes, class schedules or graduation ceremonies for people who do not go to school. That’s how things are.

The Princeton group’s president, David Schaengold, says its intent is “not ideological” but that

We don’t believe that human beings should be used as instruments or objects. We think the proper relationship between humans should be one of respect and love, and we think promiscuity and random hook-ups are completely destructive to respect and love. Dignity itself is a moral standard.

Perhaps good judgment and sensitivity can be a moral standard as well, and perhaps his group can consider the possibility that not every sex act, even a random hook-up, is devoid of respect, sweetness and even love. The positions of people such as Schaengold are invariably insulting, because they claim the moral high ground with no evidence except that of ideology, and inject time-wasting nonsense into conversations of substance — like creationism and intelligent design taking up time and space in a scientific discussion of evolution.

Or like abstinence and charity in a discussion of having rape kits in medical centers. Which, oh my very young and deeply silly Jennifer Mickel, has nothing to do with promiscuity or even choice, but is a terrific if unconscious revealer of your “nonideological” agenda. All the more revealing, in fact, because it was unconscious.

So don’t take this in a sexual way, but, well ... fuck off.