Lena Chen

Marie Claire | "The Asian Thing"

I talked to Ji Hyun Lee for this April 2012 Marie Claire feature on Love & Race. The piece I’m quoted in examines Asian American women’s experiences with fetishization in dating and relationships. As interracial couplings become more common, how do racial biases and misconceptions impact those who are fetishized and what does it reveal about the culture in which we live? Last fall, I wrote about my own encounter with a fetishist for GOOD Magazine’s Dealbreakers column.

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Happy Summer!

The past two months have been a whirlwind of deadlines, travel, and house guests, but now that Patrick’s finally graduated, I get to call him Dr. Boyfriend, and I’m excited to figure out the post-Boston gameplan. (I’ve been living here since the fall of 2005! Another winter? I can’t handle it.)

My novel is chugging along but I know the blogging has been sparse. Here’s a fly-by update of what I’ve been up to:

Visiting DC, Provincetown, and Vermont - a nice change of pace from NYC, which never really feels like a break
A ton of reading, some for inspiration and others for recreation
Meeting the prolific Ian McEwan, who is responsible for two of my favorite novels, Amsterdam and Enduring Love
Perfecting a submission for the anthology Good Girls Marry Doctors
Rejecting the institution of marriage for the umpteenth time

No promises as to when I’ll return to regular blogging, as I’m more concerned about off-line work for the moment. That said, I’ll be redesigning TheChicktionary.com (and possibly even this site) some time within the next year. It’s one of the top items on my post-book to-do list! Feel free to continue sending in reader questions, though I may not be able to answer right away :)

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Wait to have sex? | YouBeauty.com

Say you’ve started seeing someone you really like. As far as you’re concerned, how long will it take before you have sex?
1-2 dates

3-5 dates

6 or more dates

Only after the wedding

If you’ve ever read my Bedsider essay on the first time I shared dinner and bodily fluids with the Roomie, you already know my stance on first-date sex. Granted, not everyone wants to start off their relationships with a bang (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun!) and that’s pretty understandable given that we each have varying degrees of tolerance for strangers in our bed and morning-after regret. So when I spoke with Nadia Goodman for her piece on deciding how long to wait, I struggled to give universal advice on a topic with not-so-universal opinions.

I feel like a lot of the anxiety over having first-time sex with a new person stems from the desire to make things go perfectly, and timing is one of the few things that we can actually control. Dating can be a high-stress affair complete with expectations, fantasies, and assumptions - who knows what pans out once the clothes are off? And though I am not the type of person who wishes they could take back their sexual history (or really, any part of my personal history), I wish there were a way to express that I’ve had dissatisfying or disappointing experiences in the bedroom without folks assuming that it means I wish I could take it all back. Because the truth is, I don’t want to take it back, not even the bad, awkward, unremarkable sex - isn’t that stuff at least partly responsible for making me more aware of my needs and desires? For me, the risk of jumping the gun by jumping someone’s bones is well-worth taking, precisely because I wouldn’t want to be with a person who would judge me for that.

So, those are my two cents. Now I’m curious to hear how you would answer the question I posed in the beginning on the post.

(Source: lenachen)

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Here are some snapshots from last month’s second annual Sex, Love, & Dating Conference at Rutgers University :) Since I had a big gap between my two workshops, I took the opportunity to sit down and chat with some really lovely students.

Below are the workshop descriptions - I’m becoming bored of talking about the hook-up culture, to be honest. After writing my thesis on the topic and blogging at length about it, it seems like I’ve learned all that I can. That said, I’m thinking of developing the slut-shaming workshop into a full-length talk for next year…

Hooking Up & Getting Down: The State of Casual Sex & the College Romance

Half a century after the sexual revolution, premarital sex is today the norm, and social conservatives lament the rise of the so-called hook-up culture. What does dating in college look like today? Are abstinence advocates onto something when they warn that casual sex has effectively killed romance? Will fooling around before marriage endanger your future marital bliss — or even make you less likely to marry? What if you want to opt out of hooking up altogether? Part-interactive workshop, part conversation, this talk takes a humorous look at dating through the ages and encourages audience members to explore modern courtship through their personal experiences. Come prepared to share your opinions and questions on topics like first-date sex, consent, peer pressure, and dating rules.

Slut Walks, Walks Of Shame, & Sexual Double Standards

Hussy. Whore. Harlot. Tramp. “Slut-shaming” may be a modern term but the stigmatization of women’s sexuality has a rich cultural history. The fear of social reprisal can affect everything from the way we dress to how we communicate with our sexual partners and peers. In a society with supposed sexual freedom, how does slut-shaming reinforce existing gendered norms and threaten young people’s identity and emotional well-being through cyber bullying and real-world harassment? How does the “slut” label limit our ability to vocalize our desires or express ourselves, and how are double standards stratified by race, class, and religion? Most importantly, is there a way to reappropriate the term “slut” and reclaim it in the name of sexual liberation? This talk discusses the speaker’s personal experiences with “slut-shaming”, the “fallen woman” as a social construct, and the ways these stereotypes manifest themselves in pop culture and in our everyday lives.

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In the latest episode of Sexy Times, I give advice to girls who aren’t quite ready to come out yet. Do you have an obligation to tell your friends and family about your sexual orientation? What happens if you aren’t ready yet? Watch the above video and check out the past editions of the Sexy Times series over at gURL.com.

(Source: lenachen)

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Headed to California for Sex:Tech & Pomona College event

Hey guys! I’m headed to San Francisco to attend Sex:Tech, the 5th Annual Isis Conference on New Media, Youth, & Sexual Health, where I’ll be speaking on a panel about online intimacy and relationships. Then I’ll be in Los Angeles from April 3rd to 6th to do an event at Pomona College. It’ll be a hectic week of work and travel, but I’m hoping to see both of my parents and some friends while in town. I’m going to try to make it back to California at least one more time (when I don’t have any professional obligations) before I make the big move to Berlin. And maybe next time, I can bring the two boys?

Below is the info on the two events :)

xoxosms: Authentic Relationships and Online Identities
11:30am, Monday, April 2nd at Stanford Court Renaissance in San Francisco, CA

How do we navigate online identities and relationships? Can you really “know” someone you’ve never met? Is it safe to form relationships online? Enjoy a film screening of “xoxosms”, a new short documentary by Nancy Schwartzman that follows two star-crossed lovers in the digital age. Following the screening, we’ll discuss the idea of “digital intimacy”, and the authentic and healthy relationships to be found and nurtured online. Featuring Nancy Schwartzman (Filmmaker and The Line Campaign), Cory Silverberg (sexuality.about.com and ISIS Board Member), Heather Corinna (Scarleteen), and Lena Chen (Sex and the Ivy).

Writing Sex Positively: A Discussion with Lena Chen
7pm, Thursday, April 5th at Pomona College in Claremont, CA

What is sex-positive writing, and at which point does it become a political act? How has the feminist or sex-positive blog-o-sphere reshaped social activism and cultural criticism? Is the Internet an effective tool for social change or does it merely maintain the status quo and replicate offline power structures? In a moderated conversation, Lena Chen, a “reluctant sexpert, a feminist and queer advocate, and a walking case study on bad publicity”, will discuss her career as a blogger, speaker, media commentator, and activist. She’ll answer questions about the future of new media and publishing, professional options for feminists and progressives, and the pros and cons of working within the non-profit industrial complex. RSVP for the event on Facebook.