Chen knew, as she told me later, that the culture reacts differently when women make the same decisions men do. Her own decisions were public knowledge, because she revealed them on her blog. Chen’s perspective on society, and Fredell’s, was borne out in the aftermath, as people wrote in to Ivygate, calling Lena Chen a slut, a whore,a total whore, a whore whore slut. And then someone by the screen name of Sex v. Marriage wrote in to say that most guys out there would rather end up with a girl like Janie.

– “Students of Virginity“, The New York Times on Sunday, March 30th 2008

It’s strange to look back to November when the NYT interviewed me for the above article. I don’t want to say I’m a completely different person now because I’m not (and on the surface, my life is basically the same), but a lot has changed in the handful of months since then. Last fall, I thought I’d finally gotten everything figured out. It’d been a year since my blog started, I’d already dealt with the fallout of being the Ivy League poster girl for sexual expression, and there didn’t seem to be any chance that I could top my debacle of a sophomore year. Then I went through what was probably the most traumatic experience of my life and I feel like even that description is an understatement. In the aftermath, I stopped posting regularly in this blog and I started chronicling all the un-sexy bits of my life instead. Gone were the things that made me infamous — blowjobs, lost condoms, attached men, cocaine jokes (okay, so the cocaine jokes stayed). In their place, I posted pictures of my friends at brunch, accounts of day-to-day school life, and quotes that amused me. Same life, less controversial take.

People have asked me recently — both readers and friends — if Sex and the Ivy is making a comeback. The truth? I really don’t know. I’m posting occasional entries, taking little steps toward resurrecting this website, and even now, I am not sure I want to bring it back full force. I like writing about sex and relationships and being able to resonate with my readers, but though I’ve learned to deal with the bullshit and stigma that comes along with this openness, I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with the amount of unwarranted intrusion upon my privacy. Sure, people call me a “whore” or “slut” or whatever the misogynistic term of the day is, but I can deal with that unfortunate consequence of patriarchal society. What I can’t deal with? Attacks on my family, judgments on my friends, people’s personal missions to out the guys with whom I’m involved, and crazy exes who disseminate my naked photos online. Criticism I can cope with, but attempts to systematically ruin my life or expose those I care about? Not so much. These are the consequences I don’t think I can ever be comfortable with or accept, the things I don’t think I should have to accept.

Here’s the number one thing I’ve learned from all of this: fame is fun for the first minute or so, but for the remaining 14, it just gets bothersome. It’s a constant struggle, especially after the photos appeared, to determine which opportunities are worth it and which ones compromise too much of my privacy. Nowadays, I turn down more interviews, answer personal inquiries more coyly, and share much less about my life. If you asked me now, I might not think it’s such a good idea to subject myself to an audience of 100 for a public discussion with the campus abstinence group. I don’t want to be a martyr, because frankly, it sucks to be told over and over that “most guys out there would rather end up with a girl like Janie,” that for some reason my writing about sex makes me less deserving of love. Even if I intellectually recognize that this is not the case, it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with blanket judgments about my value as a person.

I’ve been going out with someone recently, and though he’s made appearances on my blogs, no one but my friends know who he is. I want to keep it this way because I feel overexposed and not at all in control of what gets revealed about me. I want this little thing to be my own. And yet I get the feeling that sooner or later, if I don’t beat them to it, someone will out him. Because that’s how it always turns out. Because all it takes is one sighting of me with a guy for people to start speculating. The brave thing would be to say that I’m not going to live in perpetual anticipation of being outed or duck and take cover when I’m with him on campus or avoid writing about experiences I want to write about. The reality is more difficult. The reality is that I need to be careful, that I can’t defiantly declare “this is who I’m fucking so get used to it,” that I have to recognize the added risks that come with public life.

I used to tell people when I first started blogging publicly that I was figuring things out as I went along. I’m still figuring them out, which is why Sex and the Ivy is stuck in a strange limbo at the moment. I’m sure there’s a balance in there somewhere. I just have to find it.

Another thing: I have a slight bone to pick with the New York Times for their description of me as a “small Asian woman in a miniskirt and stilettos“. For starters, I was wearing a Cynthia Rowley dress that day and those who know the designer would agree that she hardly makes anything that could be mistaken for a miniskirt. My heels were also far less precarious and more conservative than stilettos (I remember because it was raining and even I wouldn’t have attempted such ambitious footwear on Cambridge’s brick-lined roads). Also, was it really relevant to add “Asian” to the description when my ethnic background had no bearing on the story and my last name already made it evident? And “small”? Really? Is it necessary to couple that with “Asian”? Perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but the whole eight-word description makes me cringe. It reduces me to a New England dragon lady, which is totally inaccurate from the truth but totally suitable for the purposes of portraying me as Janie Fredell’s polar opposite. Maybe that works for the Times‘ purposes but one-dimensional characters don’t make up real life.

So about the whole well-adjusted approach to junior year thing? Yeah, not so much.

I’m beginning to realize that I still have a ton of unresolved anger from the last 365 days and I’m not quite sure how (or if) I should let go of it. So I’m just going to be honest about what is pissing me off, even though nowadays, I’m really vague and impersonal here (obviously, a reason for this, but fuck that). There are two major issues and I’m going to talk about one tonight, leaving the other for another PMS-y evening.

So Sex and the Ivy fucked up my sophomore experience in a lot of ways, but mostly, it came down to the fact that I had little to no privacy even when I was off-line. People were (and still are!) incredibly intrusive, sometimes in extremely disrespectful ways, and I basically broke down from the initial shock of being recognized and approached while going about my daily life at Harvard. I know that it seems like I asked for the attention, putting up a public blog and all, but ask my friends and any reporter who’s ever interviewed me: I already kept an online diary previously and this was just another journal; it wasn’t supposed to blow up the way it did. And though anyone who knows me will agree that I’m totally dramatic, no one will say that I exaggerated the consequences of the website. I definitely wasn’t driven to therapy because it was trendy. I needed it to cope!

Just so you kind of get where I’m coming from, a sampling of what I had to deal with last year:

* Identities of guys being revealed by total strangers who had Facebook-searched them to death.

* Having my personal information repeatedly posted on BoredatLamont.com. Being approached at Lamont. Lacking library-related privacy in general.

* Routinely introducing myself as “Lena” to people who responded with “I know.”

* Getting trash-talked by people who did not know me in front of people who did know me. (Um, hello. I do go to this school. What makes you think I don’t find out about this shit?)

* Being accosted by a drunken idiot at Red Party who followed me and yelled in my face “SEX AND THE IVY. TRUE OR FALSE?” about six times while I tried to escape a post-party mob.

* Being accosted by drunken Yalies at Harvard-Yale.

* Come to think of it, being accosted at parties in general. More or less, every time I went out and was in the presence of alcohol/drunk people.

* Having an actual stalker. (This was basically the low-light of the year.)

* In addition to being called a whore, slut, disgrace to Harvard/Asian/all women; having my family attacked. Like when people make accusations against my father for sexual abuse, because that is clearly the only explanation for my idiosyncrasies.

The fact that I had such a terrible experiences with people disrespecting my privacy means that I became extra paranoid and protective about it. Even now, I still occasionally flip out over privacy issues, though usually no longer my own. As a general rule, I don’t ever use real names on the page, unless the person is a public figure a la Julia or Rachel. I try to treat others’ reputation with as much delicacy as possible, which is why I never “out” anyone, not even the guys who turn out to be assholes deserving of public condemnation. So when I have overzealous readers come up to me and declare that they’ve figured out via random pieces of information that Aidan’s real name is _____ _____, I kind of flip the fuck out. Now granted, Aidan specifically was a lot easier to figure out by virtue of my lack of care in the early blogs, but he’s not the only person whose identity has been compromised. It pisses me off, because I don’t think that who these guys are in real life is that significant. It has no bearing on how people should view my writing or my representation of the relationship. Plus, revealing some identities would actually ruin lives, and it’s ridiculous that there are people curious or malicious enough to dig that deep.

Recently, I was interviewed by a person who I was POSITIVE had an agenda in revealing someone I was previously involved with. It seriously takes something huge to get me riled up nowadays, and this incident left me completely pissed because it wasn’t just my own name on the line. In retrospect, I think I really misjudged the situation, and I probably overreacted (though my friends definitely agreed with me at the time). But I couldn’t help it. We couldn’t help. I’ve been so used to having my privacy routinely disrespected that I automatically assumed the worst.

Along the same lines, I am immediately disinterested in people who are interested in my blog. My social circle has closed in dramatically over the past year because I don’t trust most people, their intentions, or their preconception of me. Considering the number of people I have met from just getting approached, you’d think that I’d be BFFs with a third of the school. The reality is that Rody and a couple sophomores are the only people who have ever made the jump from readers to friends and they happened very early on last fall before the minor breakdown, etc.

This year, I’m totally fine discussing my website and usually gracious about questions, but depending on my mood, I can be more or less receptive to being approached in public. I can understand why someone might want to strike up a convo about my website, but if they don’t know me (or know a good friend of mine who did an introduction), the appropriate forum is email, not coming up to me while I’m grinding with someone on a Saturday night. That’s just really awkward. For both of us.

An example, from this weekend while I was at a party:

Random Guy: “Hey, you’re Lena Chen!”

Me: “Uh, yeah.”

Random Guy: “You had that discussion with that conservative lady, right?”

[me thinking: if by "conservative lady" you mean my friend Janie Fredell, sure!]

Random Guy: “Well, I want you to know that I’m all for your side!”

Me: “That’s … great.”

Random Guy could’ve meant one of two things: 1) he’s all for sex, or 2) he’s all for me having sex. Both of those things are extremely awkward. I don’t need to know either of those things. Thus, the second he left, I turned to my friend (who I had been grinding prior to this awkward exchange) and said: “Got recognized. Night’s over. Time to go!”

Which is a pretty good reflection of how my entire sophomore social experience worked. Got recognized, declared the night over, and went home. See how this whole blog thing might have been a little intrusive upon my college experience?

First off, I’m test-driving Disqus, a just-launched comment system recommended by the very knowledgeable tech blogger Paul Stamatiou.

Second (and this is NOT to detract from my very serious plea to follow), I am really starting to get into techies — and I am not just referring to Paul’s smoldering good (Greek?) looks. Computer nerds suddenly became hot as of last week. What’s up with that? Maybe we look for in others qualities we’d like to see in ourselves. And I could use some fluency in this php bullshit.

Third, someone save my website before I destroy it. A few issues I’m having with this baby:

1. My theme Dipdolt White 1.0 (designed by Darjan Panic and Brian Green) is not widget-compatible which is extremely inconvenient. I could attempt to make it widget-compatible but will probably fuck something up in the process.

2. “Preview” is broken on Wordpress 2.3 and I need to upgrade to 2.3.1. Um, I barely got out of the last upgrade alive.

3. I recently allowed readers to subscribe to my updates. I’m subscribed myself but I’m getting two emails whenever I post something. Is this happening for everyone or just me? Sorry if this is annoying you guys!

I’ve been blogging for about 14 months and I’ve learned a hell of a lot about how to use and run Wordpress. I love the fact that I still have yet to succumb to some IT person. (The longest period of downtime this site has ever experienced was just a few hours and that was Bluehost’s fault, not mine.) I may deride my own tech abilities all the time but the truth is that I’m not nearly as incompetent as I make myself out to be.

But — and this is a big but — despite all my stubborn independence, I have to admit that if I don’t start finding a professional, one of these days I probably will break something. There are some things I just don’t know and won’t ever know about programming and computers and websites unless I take a class or something (some people are self-taught, but I guarantee you I am not those people). And considering how terrible I am about these things (never backing up, dropping my PowerBook down a flight of stairs, etc.), the day I accidentally delete Sex and the Ivy is very, very near.

So. I know I’ve asked before and been really shitty about responding, but is there anyone reading who wants to be my go-to IT savior? All that’s required is a ton of patience, minimal time commitment (basically, just during periods of crisis), and Wordpress or general programming knowledge. Catch me at elle [at] sexandtheivy [dot] com if you’re interested, and let’s disqus! (Get it?)

Reach my new Disqus comment system by clicking on the post title in the meantime while I figure out how to add the comment link back. Will fix this promptly and explain why I made the jump in a soon-to-be-written post sometime after midterms, papers, and presentations kick my ass. Butt-healing scheduled for after Thursday.

UPDATE: Thanks to the very helpful Jason Yan, co-founder of Disqus, the comment link has been re-added and Disqus on Sex and the Ivy is good to go!

Lately, I’ve done so much work on this website and so very little work on academics! Some blurb updates follow (the picture, by the way, is of me and my blockmate Sue getting ready to go out):

* Readers can now subscribe via email to be notified when new entries are posted. If you’re already a registered users, you’re automatically subscribed. Not interested? Opt out through the subscription page under “About”.

* The Daily Pennsylvanian sums it up well: “She uses [her blog] to chronicle her sexual encounters, mental-health issues and drug use.” In other words, I am a bipolar coke whore. A literary one, but still.

* I’m going to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. Already have the green dress and wings, so all that’s left is a wand! I hope I can pull her off with my black hair or else I might just look like a random fairy. Not going blond though, lest I appear as if I’m channeling a Ganguro chick.

* Still have no idea what you want to be for Halloween? Check out the selection at Pierre Silber which has fully embraced the “slap on a hat, put on a short dress, and call it a costume” concept. Last year, I was a Mile High Captain. If you buy something through my link (or any of the ads on this page), your questionable Halloween outfit will also sponsor my tuition.

* If you’ve ever wondered what might happen if PostSecret and Lolcats had a love child, then my friend Ryan has got the answer. His project Lolsecretz is a hilarious and spot-on satire of the two memes. Check it out for kittens and scandal.

* Had an interesting dining hall concoction for lunch today and I feel inclined to share with the Harvard readers. Recipe: Assemble a sandwich with cinnamon raisin bread, pepper jack cheese, chicken strips, tomato slices, and barbecue sauce. Toast in the panini grill until cheese is melted. Bon appetit!

* Apparently, the Pennypacker freshmen are doing the dirty dirty.

* “Savage Love” columnist Dan Savage is coming to Boston College this Thursday. The event is sponsored by BC’s GLTBQ Leadership Council and all the details are online. A longtime reader myself, I might just trek it out there to catch the guy speak.

* Added a Contact page with all my various contact info and social network affiliations. Just joined Twitter, by the way, and my status updates will appear on my sidebar. A FAQ will be coming soon for answers to important questions like “When did you lose your virginity?” Just kidding — it’ll be an endless gallery of shoes. Or a link-swap policy. Whichev.

By the way, Sex and the Ivy is now running on Wordpress 2.3. Yes, I upgraded all on my own. If you recently found the site down in the middle of the night, that’s probably because I was in the middle of a serious tech boo-boo. Been staying up over the past week (often in a sustained state of panic) to do web-related fixes in order to minimize downtime in the day. Can someone please give me an award for “Blogger Most Likely To Crash Her Own Website Who Miraculously Hasn’t”?

Sometimes when I’m writing something dirty (like in my semi-frequent forays into erotica), I get embarrassed about it so I type the sentence really fast and look away from the screen immediately, as if that means I won’t get caught.

Ridiculous, I know.