Elise sat with bags under her eyes at the front of the room all alone behind a table. She fiddled nervously with her jacket zipper as she looked out into the mass—everyone was represented, from scantily clad women sporting fishnets and red lipstick to sporty types in their field hockey uniforms and even some more effeminate men who may or may not have come from the Boys’ House.
Once the crowd had settled in, Elise took the microphone. She coughed into her sleeve—a cold was overtaking her body, something her immune system had been unable to defend due to the pressure she’d been under lately. “Hi everyone. Thank you all for coming. I’m Elise, as many of you know.”
She was used to hearing hoots and hollers when she introduced herself. Now she was met by polite applause.
“We’re here to discuss the future of the Nude Spaces project. A few people have expressed concerns about the form the project has taken, and where it may be headed. So, I arranged today’s meeting to listen to everyone’s points of view.
One chubby girl with half her head shaved and the other half dyed neon purple raised her hand and spoke before Elise had even had a chance to call on her, “Yeah. Thanks, Elise. My concern is this: I originally thought this project was supposed to be about body positivity. So, why is it that only the girls who look like anorexic fashion models are getting all the attention?”
A dark-skinned girl with braided hair raised her hand. “The nightly shows have become so popular, they’re making it impossible for us non-performers to get laid. What’s a sister gotta do? I feel like I have to strip on camera before I’m gonna see any action. The only guys who are still having casual sex are the ones who look like models. But those dudes are few and far between, and they’re demanding some pretty extreme shit from the girls they do hook up with, from what I hear. Most normal guys are skipping the club scene and staying in their dorms. My girl told me they’ve started having viewing parties and I don’t even want to repeat what they do in those.”
There were nods of agreement from the crowd.
Another girl jumped in—this one dressed modestly with long raven-black hair, “In my opinion, the Nude Spaces project is exploiting women by teaching them their value comes only from their bodies and the sexual things they can do rather than their inner worth.”
“Yeah!”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you!”
The congregation was turning quickly. Or maybe they’re already turned, thought Elise.
Bella shot up from her chair. She had been sitting at the back, and clearly couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer. “What’s wrong with being validated for having a sexy body? My best friend from high school is an escort. She dresses up, makes herself look sexy, and sleeps with men for money. She tells me it’s the most empowering thing she’s done.”
The audience began to murmur and look at Bella as if she dropped a major truth torpedo.
Bella continued, “Sex work is hard work. Getting dressed up takes hours, and it’s expensive. The act of sex itself is strenuous, just as strenuous as being a plumber or a bricklayer.”
“She’s right!” one member of the audience chimed in.
Others nodded.
Elise breathed a small sigh of relief. There was still some hope, she reassured herself.
“Honestly,” continued Bella, “I can’t think of anything more liberating than a woman claiming her sexuality as her own, having fully consensual sex online or in real life with men on her own terms and making them pay for it. Sex work is how we end the Manarchy!”
“End the Manarchy! End the Manarchy!” people in the crowd chanted.
Another woman shot up. “This is ridiculous! There’s nothing empowering about it. Now rather than men exploiting women, we’re exploiting ourselves. Same shit wrapped in different paper.”
A few called out their agreement. Others yelled their disapproval.
What had started as a calm meeting had turned into chaos. Shouting. Arguing. Fighting.
“Guys? Guys! Everyone!” Elise was trying to get a word in, but even with the microphone, it was impossible. People were clearly very passionate about this topic. She put down the mic and crept out of the room. Those inside were too busy arguing to notice.
Chapter 8
Who runs the world, Girls?
The blurry world came into focus slowly as Elise blinked her eyes open. The two fuzzy windows in front of her merged into one. It was bright outside. She must have overslept her alarm.
Head still planted deep in the mounds of her pillow, she flopped an arm over to her nightstand and searched blindly for her pills. She knocked the pill bottle over, but there wasn’t the loud rattle she was used to when the bottle hit the floor. Her refill wasn’t due for another week. She grunted her frustration into her pillow. The muffled sound reverberated in her ears.
She rolled over and stared at the ceiling blankly. There were noises coming from next door. In fact, it wasn’t just next door. Elise could make out sounds of banging, moaning, screaming, giggling, and buzzing, seeping through her thin dorm room walls from all directions. In the past few weeks, more and more girls had begun empowering and destigmatizing themselves by starring in their own online shows.
Since the town hall meeting, The Foundation had taken greater control over the project. They had expanded the project to be viewable across the planet without any restrictions. That step had brought in millions of viewers and truckloads of cash.
The project was no longer called the Nude Spaces project but had been instead renamed to the Horny College Sluts project. Elise had made the announcement of the name change at a press conference, lauding the new name as a “celebration of non-monogamy.” She hadn’t been sure she believed her own words, but the media had eaten it up. Sex did sell, after all. Mix sex with women’s rights, and you have yourself a front-page article. Every. Time.
Elise hadn’t come up with the new name herself, of course. It had come directly from a marketing team provided by The Foundation who had conducted extensive research before making a decision. Of course, Elise hadn’t received the order directly. She never did. Lyn had called her to her office a month or so ago to let her know. It hadn’t been a discussion. Elise had had no say in the matter. Neither, Elise imagined, had Lyn. These were orders from above that were to be obeyed.
Which worked well for Elise. After all, she didn’t do much thinking of her own anymore. Not since she’d begun taking the pills.
Her condition had gone from bad to worse after the town hall meeting. After she’d snuck out, Elise had decided to go for a walk. There was a park nearby that was usually pretty empty in the evenings. Her mind had been swimming. She couldn’t shut off the voices inside her head. They’d started a few weeks earlier, and had been growing louder by the day. That day, it was as if they were shouting -- as if they were mimicking the loud arguing inside the meeting. Had she done the right thing? With the Vaginist movement, that was. Or had she really set women back by a century? What was The Foundation, anyways? Why was Lyn so tight-lipped about them? Why did everyone follow their orders from above so blindly? Without any sort of argument or debate? Suddenly, everything she had thought made perfect sense—with the direction of the movement, her total confidence in Lyn, her belief that she was doing good for her gender, no longer made any sense at all. The voices came from all directions, and bounced about in her skull—that’s what it seemed like, at least. Her vision spun. She remembered the world going black.
The next thing Elise remembered was waking up the following day on a park bench, shivering. Her head hurt. Had she fallen? She was lucky she hadn’t been robbed. Or worse.
She’d headed straight for Lyn’s office.
“Call this number, make an appointment right away. Dr. Patchara is excellent in dealing with these cases. Mention my name. She’ll take good care of you,” Lyn had said almost casually, handing Elise a piece of paper upon which she’d scribbled the psychiatrist’s details, while barely looking up from her desk. Somethin
g had changed in Lyn, Elise recalled noticing at that moment. Her movements and words lacked the grace and elegance that Elise had come to think of as Lyn’s signature. Her features had withdrawn, and the sparkle in her eye was gone.
Still, Elise had obeyed.
She’d walked out of Dr. Patchara’s office with a diagnosis of “internal monologue” and a prescription for pills that, according to the doctor, would make her “right as rain by morning.”
Elise had always been a big daydreamer. She’d always been pragmatic, continually talking to herself and thinking things over. Making sure she played both sides of an argument out in her head as best she could before moving forward with any important decision. It was only after meeting the psychiatrist she realized that all this chattering inside her skull was the cause of her anxiety and depression. Well, that was the doctor’s explanation anyways. And it had made sense. If she could stop doubting every decision she and others were making, there would be no more cause for worry. No more distress.
And sure enough, the next morning, the voices had silenced. When she had awoken, she remembered searching for them and hearing nothing. It had been a strange sensation, to go from being nearly deafened in her own head, feeling almost possessed by these voices, to having them be gone all of a sudden. Without a trace. But Elise had been glad for the peace and quiet.
Now that her internal monologue had been switched off, life seemed a lot more simple to her. The world seemed to have been blanketed in a fuzzy grey haze. Nothing seemed to bother her much anymore, especially when she took double or triple the dose of pills, which she’d started doing as her body had adjusted to the medicine’s effects. She could now easily ignore the loud noises of the crowds and dissenting voices of girls who wanted to accuse her of being a traitor to her gender and of selling out.
Elise grunted again and pushed herself up, swinging her legs around and getting out of bed. Her head was banging. It had been twenty-four hours since she’d had any pills and she was starting to feel the biting hunger of withdrawal overtake her body.
Her phone buzzed on the vanity unit for what must have been the fiftieth time that morning. She grabbed it absentmindedly. Unlocked it. It continued to buzz even as she was turning it on.
106 new messages. Jesus.
She opened the first. Then the second. Then the third. Then she scrolled to the tenth, twenty-seventh, and forty-first. They were all the same. What seemed like every member of the student body had forwarded her a video entitled Dr. Gordon Hendrixson Warns That College Girls Are Turning Into Sluts and Whores At Alarming Rates!
Elise remembered Dr. Gordon B. Hendrixson well. He was the professor she’d gotten kicked off campus a few months back for his misogynist bullshit. Elise replaced the phone on the unit.
She had no interest in watching his new video—no matter how many people had sent it to her.
Elise opened her closet and grabbed her garments. Bra. Underwear. Black shirt. Gray skirt. As she did up her shirt buttons, she noticed her blank expression in the mirror. She barely recognized herself. But she shrugged. At least the voices are gone.
She needed to see Bella before class. Elise marched down her dorm room hallway toward her girlfriend’s room, as she often did when she wanted to discuss their Vaginist work for the day. As she walked, she managed a faint smile. The moans and groans and other such noises emanating from the rooms she passed were almost comical.
When she reached Bella’s room, she noticed the door was wide open. Elise poked her head in and gasped. The room was empty. Bella had moved out. She walked in, and stormed over to Bella’s closet, opened her drawers, even checked her secret hiding spot inside the metal bed frame where she kept her weed. Nothing. Something was wrong.
Elise collapsed onto Bella’s bed. She twisted her face, furrowed her brows, and scratched her chin. No explanation would come. It didn’t help that her mind was clouded from the meds that remained in her system and combined with the agony of withdrawal, her efforts to come up with a plan or even a reason for Bella’s sudden departure were futile.
Elise did what she always did when she needed answers: she headed to Lyn’s off-campus Vaginist offices.
After speeding down the route she’d come to know so well, Elise tugged on the office doors but found they were locked. They were rarely locked during the daytime.
Elise listened for a moment. She could hear voices inside. Lyn and … Bella! And a few others. She rang the bell. The voices went silent. A moment went by, then another. She rang the bell again. Elise held her head in her hands and rubbed her temples. They pounded with increased force. She didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t anymore.
Not knowing what to do, Elise slumped against the door and sank to the floor. She put on her earphones and checked her phone. Yet another person sent her the video entitled Dr. Gordon Hendrixson Warns That College Girls Turn Into Sluts and Whores at an Alarming Rate! Elise sighed and clicked the play button.
A shiny logo reading NPC News flashed across the screen, alongside dramatic music and a cheering crowd.
Then, a reporter gave her opening: “This is Jane Reindeer, and today we have with us the controversial Dr. Gordon B. Hendrixson here to talk about his explosive allegation that female university students are rapidly turning into, as he calls them, ‘sluts’ and ‘whores’,” she announced to the audience.
The camera panned out to show Dr. Hendrixson. He wore a gray suit over a blue checkered shirt. His collar was loose. His hair looked darker. Had he dyed it? A curly cocoa coif tumbled down his forehead. He smiled at the camera. “Thank you, Jane. It’s a pleasure to be here.”
“Let’s jump right in, shall we?” the interviewer pushed forward. “Some have called it creepy the way you talk about today’s female university students. What gives you the right to refer to them as sluts and whores?” the interviewer placed a strong emphasis on the last few words.
“A lot of these women are referring to themselves as sluts and whores,” said Dr. Hendrixson, without hesitation. “Many of them are claiming that the word slut is a positive thing because it means a woman is no longer tied to the restrictive monogamous sexual norms of yesteryear. The word whore is treated with even higher regard because they believe making a man pay for sex is a way for women to use their bodies to assert power and control over men.”
“You don’t think the words slut and whore can have positive meanings?”
“No, Jane,” replied Dr. Hendrixson. “I don’t. These girls are setting themselves up for a lifetime of misery and suffering because of their short-sighted behavior. No self-respecting man wants to date a slut, and nobody wants to marry a whore.”
“Well, that’s precisely the point, isn’t it?” asked the interviewer. “These young ladies aren’t interested in dating or marriage.”
The audience cheered wildly. They were clearly Vaginist-leaning.
“They will yearn for stability once they realize their bodies are no longer youthful, that men aren’t giving them the same validation they once received, that they have to do increasingly more degrading sex acts just to keep the men interested. By the time they wise up, I’m afraid it may be too late. Nobody will want them.”
The interviewer’s eyes went wide with shock at his last statement, and she fiddled with her notes. Dr. Hendrixson’s know-it-all responses could throw anyone off—even the most practiced of reporters. She took a visible intake of breath and smiled, regaining composure. “You seem pretty obsessed with antiquated misogynist ideas of women getting married and having children.”
“That is a woman’s primary function,” Dr. Hendrixson jumped in.
She jumped right back, “To get married and have children?” She laughed. “And may I ask, Dr. Hendrixson, which century you are living in?”
“Society depends on the monogamous pairing of the sexes. Strong cultures are built upon it, and when a society’s women start to become promiscuous, it leads to the disintegration of the social fabric. Sexually reckless women d
egrade a culture’s moral foundations and make their cultures vulnerable to invasion by foreign cultures. Foreign cultures that will come in and establish a more rigid male-female dynamic”
Clang! Krrrrrr!
Elise could hear sounds behind her, coming from inside the office. She quickly paused the video and pulled out her headphones, clambering to her feet. She could definitely make out the moving of chairs, the opening, and closing of doors, drawers, and cupboards. Now she knew she wasn’t imagining it.
Elise stood up and banged on the door. “Open the door! I know you’re in there!”
The sounds went silent again. It had been too long since her last pill and her mind was starting to swirl with wild thoughts:
What if Dr. Gordon Hendrixson is right? What if encouraging college girls to become sluts and whores is setting them up for disaster? Why is Lyn so intent on beefing up this project? Does she have a hidden agenda? What happened to Bella? Why has Bella always been so keen to push the Vaginist movement further and further towards slut-positivity? Shouldn’t women be empowered through self-development instead?
The thoughts seemed so logical. She didn’t understand why they hadn’t occurred to her before. Or had they? It was right around when she’d started having doubts about the direction of The Vaginist movement that Lyn had sent her to the doctor who had put her on these insanely addictive meds.
Unable to stand her own mind arguing with itself, tears swallowed her vision and streamed down her cheeks.
The next thing she knew, she was slamming the sides of her fists on the locked door, pounding as hard as she could. “Open the fucking door! Open the fucking door!” she screamed.
The door unlocked. The handle twisted. It was Bella.
She opened the door just enough to squeeze out, and quickly closed it behind her, glancing around her nervously.
“I didn’t know we were having a meeting here this morning,” muttered Elise, swallowing her tears. “Why wasn’t I informed? And by the way, why did you clear out your room?”
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