Shalit collects a number of tremendously funny quotations from people who claim they are not aroused by the most intimate encounters with someone of the opposite sex. Somehow, for assuming that there was anything sexual about a nice young man and a nice young woman just rolling around together on the floor and pinning each other down for sport, I was made to feel that I had the dirty mind. Yale students don t blink at the ubiquitous sexualization of their environment because they truly believe that it isn t sexual for them at all. By removing all the restraints on the erotic lives of students, the administration has turned Yale into a place where everything is eroticized yet nothing is really sexy. Male and female students shower in neighboring stalls, carry condoms on key rings, and allude to kinky sex without realizing it.
Women dress in men s boxers and V neck undershirts, at once revealing and slovenly.
Nobody goes out on dates, yet nobody is a virgin either. Girls develop eating disorders, while guys complain that the girls are unattractive. Both worry about date rape, because nobody knows what is permitted and what is not. The pervasive eroticism at Yale and other campuses forces the students to detach themselves from their natural inclinations. They were mature, which is to say, emotionally detached, but that meant they were essentially clinical about things that to me would seem extremely intriguing and occupy my imagination for hours.