Lena Chen: Badass Activist Friday!

It’s Friday, and we all know what that means! Interviews with your favorite badass feminists and activists. Whether social media queens and kings, creative artists, sex educators, or just kick-ass personalities, these people harness righteous anger, instigate movements and inspire cultural change. We’re here to honor them and their work, but more importantly, to highlight how we can all get up, plug in, and Just Start Doing.

Today’s badass is Lena Chen. She made her debut on the internet with her blog Sex and the Ivy. These days, she’s a feminist and queer activist and a writer who has contributed to a variety of magazines and papers, among them The Boston Globe, Glamour and Salon. She has also worked with the National Campaign to End Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, where she hosts the video series Sex Really with Lena Chen, and starting this month she’ll also be hosting a new video series called Sexy Times at gURL.com. Currently she blogs at her own blog, the Chicktionary.

And here she is!

On your website, you call yourself a “reluctant sexpert”. Why reluctant? How do you feel about the work that you do now, and where do you see your aim?

I have a love-hate relationship with the term “sexpert”, because I don’t think anyone is necessarily qualified to be giving advice on topics as personal and complicated as sex and love.  Of course, that doesn’t prevent tons of folks from using the term and profiting off it by selling books, workshops, consulting services, etc. The romance industry is booming. There’s no shortage of people who are willing to pay big bucks in search of The One and certainly no shortage of “sexperts” willing to take advantage of them. I find this incredibly distasteful, which is why I’m conflicted about adopting the term myself, but I’ve been labeled this way for so long that I’ve more or less accepted it. And since it’s inevitable that there will be so much overly simplistic and sexist advice out there, I throw my hat in the ring in the hopes that I’ll be able to influence people for the better.

Still, I always acknowledge that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all rule that applies to all individuals or couples. I speak from a combination of personal experience and reproductive health expertise, but I don’t purport to have all the answers.

You had your start with a sex-blog, Sex and the Ivy. In a 2011 article at Salon, you talk about the repercussions of your blog, both positive and negative, as well as your own feelings about the reactions. Have you ever regretted writing the blog? In the article you conclude that sexual freedom does not exist. Where do you see the biggest obstacles to sexual freedom, and what do you think needs to happen, first and foremost, to change things for the better?

don’t live with regrets, and although writing Sex And The Ivy has definitely exposed me to the seedier side of the Internet and made me extremely jaded about the feasibility of changing people’s sexual attitudes, I do think I’m a stronger person and a better writer for the experience. Like the commenters on the Salon article, many people assume that because I stopped blogging about sex, it must mean that I came to regret my earlier writing. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but these days, I simply don’t have the legal recourse or the emotional energy necessary to deal with the potential consequences.

I dealt with many different types of criticism when I was writing Sex And The Ivy. It ranged from the self-righteous pearl-clutching you might expect of social conservatives to outright slut-shaming from anonymous trolls. The former didn’t bother me that much, since I knew that my lifestyle was incompatible with many people’s moral or religious beliefs, and of course, I don’t expect everyone to agree with my opinions. The latter, however, was really disturbing. For years, I’ve had to deal with very severe online harassment and concerted attempts to ruin not only my reputation, but the reputations of my friends, family, and boyfriend. This has contributed largely to my decision to stop writing about my personal life, yet it seems that no matter what I do or how much I scale back, I remain a target. Earlier this year, for example, an anonymously written hate blog began outing my readers, which has had a direct impact on my ability to use social media and comments in communicating with those who follow my work. The funny thing is that the more people are attacked, the less credible my attackers seem. It’s one thing to target a single blogger you don’t like, but an entirely different thing to also start slandering anyone and everyone who is close to her.

I don’t have an answer to how we can make the world a safer and more tolerant place. I’ve essentially written off the need for societal approval at this point, and I wish more people did the same. We care an astonishing amount about our social reputation, which is why so many folks keep their sex lives under wraps or conceal their sexual orientation or preferences. I don’t think anyone should ever be pressured to come out or to reveal private details, but I live as publicly as I can precisely because I want to demonstrate that it’s possible to have a bunch of casual sex and still be happy and fulfilled. This is my very small way of contributing to sexual destigmatization.

In one of your episodes of Sex Really you talked to some other feminists about dating while feminist. How do you incorporate your feminist ideals into your romantic life? Have there been instances of that not going well at all? How about a success story, where a date or partner surprised you in a positive way?

Last year, I wrote a personal essay for GOOD Magazine about dating a man who turned out to have a major Asian fetish. That was definitely one of the more anti-feminist romances I’ve had, but these days, I’m much more aware of warning signs and I’m even picky about platonic relationships I have with men. Part of this may be because I’ve grown up and my social circle has naturally narrowed, but I also think my preferences have been influenced by my ideological development.

I’ve been in a relationship for the past four years, and my boyfriend Patrick is someone who shares my views on gender and sexuality. We don’t plan on getting married or having children, but we’re completely committed to each other and we’re currently in the midst of planning a transcontinental move to Berlin. It’s been very reassuring for me to be with someone who isn’t judgmental about my sexual history or threatened by the fact that I write very openly about taboo topics. For me, “dating while feminist” has never been about splitting things down the middle or going tit-for-tat. Patrick and I contribute different things to our relationship, but there’s a kind of natural division of labor which, in our case, has felt fair and feminist.

Starting this month, you’ll be hosting a new series called “Sexy Times” at gURL.com. What’s this series going to look like and what will you be doing there?

Last year, Alloy Digital relaunched gURL.com and hired me as the Health, Sex, & Relationships expert. The site has actually been around for a long time, and I even read it semi-religiously back when I was in middle school. I loved it because it was one of the few outlets in which girls could get sensible sex ed and dating advice that wasn’t all glossed up the way it was in most teen magazines. Now that I’m the one dispensing the advice, it totally feels like everything’s gone full circle! The web series we’re doing is a really fun, informal way of helping girls make sense of complicated issues like body image, sexual orientation, long-distance relationships, virginity and abstinence, and contraception. These are serious topics, but I try to tackle them in a tone that appeals to teenage girls. I’m pretty used to academic and literary language so this is honestly a bit of a challenge for me. I absolutely love it, though, because I always want my work to be relatable for lay audiences.

What projects do you have planned for the future? What are you hoping to accomplish in 2012?

I’m currently writing a book proposal for a fictionalized memoir based on Sex And The Ivy. I’ve been planning a blog-to-book project since 2007 and the proposal has existed in various incarnations over the years. It’s just recently that I’ve decided to shelve my other freelance projects in favor of working on this in earnest. I have a bad habit of overcommitting and taking on so much that I’m not able to fully focus on what really matters to me, which is my personal writing. I’m hoping to complete the proposal before my move to Berlin in the summer of 2012. What happens after that is anyone’s guess – I’m excited about the uncertainty!

Tags: activism, badass activist friday, blogging, feminism, lena chen, sex education