Lena Chen

How The Internet Changed My Sex Life | Audrey Magazine

I was a guest columnist for Audrey Magazine’s Fall 2011 issue. Here’s a snippet of my piece on how online dating has altered the way we choose partners:

With the array of choices online, it’s tempting to rely on search features that comb through user databases to spit out results based on age, ethnicity, religion, education and even dietary preferences. The criteria with which you can assess potential partners range from the trivial (pet ownership status) to the maddeningly obscure (foreign languages spoken). Should a romantic decision really come down to whether someone is more of a dog person or a cat person? The Internet can make dating seem like an interview process. It’s easy to get caught up in looking for the next best thing or to falsely believe that you don’t need to compromise on your vision of an ideal partner or relation- ship, because there’s always that elusive better offer.

In this day and age, what happens virtually isn’t distinct from “the real world”; it’s part of it. I think OkCupid, Grindr, and similar services can be really fantastic ways to meet people (as long as you don’t get addicted, as SO many of my friends have). I know plenty of folks who have turned online flirtations into offline relationships, but just as many who end up in unfulfilling cycles of serial dating.

The article’s not up on the magazine’s website yet, but my editor just sent the PDF to me. To read the whole thing, click here.

(Source: lenachen)

Dealbreaker: He’s Got an Asian Fetish | GOOD

Here’s an essay I wrote for GOOD Magazine about a very political issue that wields its head in my personal life. A snippet below:

By the time I met Pierre, I’d already encountered countless fetishists trying to score submissive mates or a membership in the Joy Fuck Club. What’s more, I thought I knew how to avoid these guys—the kind of men who said they were looking for “Asian princesses” in their dating profiles, who expected me to walk on their backs one night and wield a wok the next.

But I soon learned that while a negative bias against a minority group is fairly easy to identify, a fetish can be much trickier to detect and dissect. Are attempts to speak Mandarin just misguided efforts to impress me, a non-native speaker? Should I be flattered when a guy compares me to Lucy Liu, an Asian actress to whom I bear little resemblance? Is being attracted to a woman for her race really any more offensive than dating her for her looks? Unlike sexually transmitted infections, there’s no test for yellow fever, and a fetishist is rarely inclined to disclose the affliction.

Click over for the full piece.

Split The Tab! Negotiating Contraceptive Equality In Relationships | Sex Really

To recap the latest in contraceptive news: the new birth control legislation will provide free coverage for many Americans, but there are still plenty of folks who won’t qualify. If you’re one of the unlucky people without full coverage, you might want to consider talking to your partner about splitting the bill. That’s the subject of my latest webisode for Sex Really, and it’s a pretty tricky one to tackle. When I write for teen audiences, I frequently get asked, “How do I know if I’m ready for sex?” and as a general rule of thumb, I think if you’re not ready to talk about sex and its ramifications, then you’re not ready to be having it. One can apply that to relationships too — you should be getting down with people with whom you can discuss What Ifs and sexual histories and preferred condom brands! That said, the reality is that there are such things as stranger sex and ill-defined faux-mances. We don’t always know the folks we fuck, these can be really awkward conversations to have, and depending on the nature of your relationship, financial assistance from a partner might not be something with which you’re comfortable. (Not to mention that our partners can be just as strapped for cash as we are, and it can be hard to determine how much of reproductive health costs should be shared.)

All of that is to say that I understand if you don’t want to bring up prescriptions and co-pays on your next date. There are, however, some pretty huge ramifications to shouldering the cost of contraception alone, so if your partner is in a position to help out, I encourage you to have that conversation. Check out this informal Urtak poll I conducted of readers:

• A quarter of respondents have stopped using birth control or switched methods due to cost.
• 31 percent of respondents said that cost has deterred them from obtaining a prescription.
• Only 36 percent of respondents have ever split the cost with a partner.
• Nearly half of respondents would try a different method if cost weren’t a factor.
• And perhaps unsurprisingly, those who had experienced an unintended pregnancy were also more likely to report that cost had played a role in their contraceptive decision-making.

Want to know how you can start a conversation about sharing costs? Four women offer their experiences, perspectives, and strategies on the latest episode of Sex Really.

(via lenachen)

Nope, I haven’t forgotten about those New Year’s career goals I made. I had a personal essay out this past weekend in Sunday Life, The Sydney Morning Herald’s weekend magazine. I’m counting this toward my monthly goal of one personal essay byline the annual goal of breaking into eight new pubs. Come to think of it, this may also be my first international byline! Pretty exciting stuff … racking up the milestones ;)

So you see that cover teaser “I Don’t: Saying No To Marriage”? Yup, that’s my essay. It’s a reworking of a piece I wrote on this blog nearly a year ago, and I gotta say, I’ve only become more sure about my position on marriage since then, even though my relationship has surpassed the three-year mark and people *cough* Chinese relatives *cough* are starting to make all kinds of assumptions despite my best attempts to dissuade them. In any case, let me state for the record that I’m not “against” marriage in that I’m judging you for having one. I’m not naive about the coercive way the government incentivizes marriage, so that oftentimes, it’s not much of a choice at all, not even for fairly privileged Westerners. Hello, I’m in love with a dude who could get deported, and I know people who have gotten hitched for health insurance. There are some pretty good, practical reasons to tie the knot. I just wish these benefits didn’t only come with marriage, that folks who rock the single life or have multiple partners don’t get the shaft, that we don’t automatically assume those who don’t get married are “just not serious about each other” or less fulfilled as human beings.

And you know, I can completely empathize with the desire to share one’s love in front of family and friends and to shove cake into your lover’s face and to dress up like a Pretty Pretty Princess*. But how many of us think about why the state is involved in our personal affairs and why we need a rubber stamp to make it “real”? We want it so bad that there’s an entire social movement devoted to obtaining the institution despite its rather questionable history. I actually used to be a huge advocate for marriage equality, and witnessing that debate over the past few years has just turned me off from marriage even further. While I believe that queer folks are entitled to the same protection and rights as anyone else, I think it’s a shame that same-sex marriage has become THE issue and that there’s an absurd amount of money being funneled into the goal of obtaining heterosexual privilege. (I’m not going to go into a huge rant about what else that money could be used for, but suffice it to say that it’s not going toward advocacy efforts to improve the lives of poor queer people of color.) Why not dismantle the institution altogether instead of leaving single people or poly folks in a lurch? Are non-marrieds any less deserving of these privileges?

Anyhow, I’m not going to get carried away here and repeat my thesis (which, by the way, I finally extracted from the depths of my hard drive). I’ll leave some links for further reading:

Valentine’s Grinch (Part I & Part II)
Marriage Is Like A Country Club (CollegeCandy)
How Feminism Misses The Point When It Comes To Marriage
Why I’m Against Gay Marriage (And Marriage In General)
Jessica Valenti, Weddings, & Social Expectations
Reader Question: “Do you think you will eventually marry Patrick?”

My article is available online here, but you can also click below to see a high-resolution version of it:

Psst … my friend Rachel Hills has a piece in the same edition of Sunday Life, on living as an ex-pat in London!

* Totally not being facetious here. My friends all know that upon my 30th birthday, I’ll be throwing myself a gigantic party involving all of the above elements in lieu of ever having a wedding. (And yes, there will be a registry.)

lena talks about making (and keeping) a purity pledge. | gURL.com

It almost seems as if Disney stars are contractually taking purity pledges. We’re not the only ones taking note that many of them have opted to publicly speak out about abstinence and even wear “purity rings.”  At 18, Selena Gomez is pretty serious about keeping her purity pledge to wait until marriage to engage in intercourse. But others are going back on their word. Most recently? Joe Jonas, who made the pledge to keep his virginity but has recently lost the ring.

Obviously, it’s not our business to discuss whether or not he’s actually getting it done with Ashley Greene, but what we do want to note is that he’s obviously reconsidered his purity pledge. And you know what? That’s not a bad thing. A lot of gURLs and guys do.

In the vid above, I answer a question from Kelly who took a pledge years ago but is now rethinking it. Here’s my advice for her, and Joe!