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Readers Reckon

Chaste. Chased, or Both

[By Correspondent Cynthia]

"Salient" flutters "Truth's" backpage where the headline "Girls who would rather be chased than chaste" hits every male eye; and insinuates "would I rather be chased or chaste?" and sits leeringly back awaiting the comments which will sell "Salient" to everyone from Vice-Chancellor to youngest fresher.

Would I rather be chased than chaste? Why not both? Cynthia, of course, is the Goddess of Chastity and watches over all her namesakes to preserve that good name. Unfortunately some compilers of the Oxford Dictionary became annoyed and defined; "Cynthia—woman desirous of remaining single." They identified chastity with this state of desireless desire—quite wrongly. It is possible to have one's cake and eat it too. Cynthia (the Goddess) makes sure of that. As you can imagine old Cynthia has a somewhat busy existence and has not time to guard other members of our fairer sex who weren't blessed with her fairy godmothership at baptism. For them I cannot answer. Are they really confronted with this choice—chastity or chasing? Do men suggest the incompatibility of the two for their own unsubtle ends?

For a highly evolved woman chastity is of the natural order of things.

Nature provides certain defence mechanisms, e.g. reaction to tickling and sexual sublimation, in order that she may abstain from running off into a cave with the first man who attracts her and so that she may exercise powers of discrimination when mature enough to choose a mate. The greatest secret a woman keeps from her man is the fact that he did not choose her. She chose him.

There is no choice on a woman's part though about whether she is to be "chased to not. All women are. Merely her feminity is enough to have men buzzing round like bees attracted to nectar. Women have a choice too in whether to display their essential feminity. Some women do have psychological blockages installed by influences in their environment. One of the Psych, II text books give an example of this.

A retiring young girl blossoms into a lively personality when the attentions of three honours types over a year give her confidence to overcome the need for the protective defences she had developed.

If the choice really existed—chastity or chasing; if the two were completely separated—a woman by her very nature would choose chasing. Women thrive on the attentions of men and there has to be something a great deal bigger to take the place of those attentions if they are to be denied and the woman remain sane and essentially simple.