Erotiquette: A Love Story That Swings

By Nina Lee

A difficult marriage, a string of liaisons. Neither seemed to be what Juliana, a confident feminist with an academic career and best friend named Maddie living through the early 2010s, was looking for. Why, she decides, cannot one have both? A special someone to keep you warm, like a favourite brown woollen jumper on a chilly night, and other lovers to paint your life with colour and texture? Maddie disagrees, but for Juliana it was the only thing that made any sense.

If only she could find someone who agreed with her theory.

Then she meets Andy. Smart, fun and adventurous, Juliana soon wonders if she has finally found that someone. He leads her down alleyways barely imagined, into unseen worlds of threesomes, swinging, and biplay. Soon she is taking big steps beyond her comfort zone, always desiring to taste new sexual challenges, but wishing for some sort of guide to help navigate the sexual etiquette of this journey. Is she finally free of any sexual inhibitions, floating into a kind of sexual heaven, or is she losing herself, failing her feminist beliefs, falling deeper into a dark sexual abyss? And if she is falling, can she find a way out?

Or can she really build a future with Andy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nina Lee
• Release date: May 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9780646817668

Nina Lee

Nina Lee mainly writes short stories in a variety of genres, from historical to speculative fiction. But the biggest challenge she has set herself has been writing novel-length erotica. She continues her search for that perfect literary combination of intelligence, humour and sexiness.

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Erotiquette: A love story that swings

By Nina Lee

Copyright 2020 Nina Lee

Revised edition 2023

Smashwords edition

ISBN: 978-0-646-81766-8

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other notes

Cover acknowledgements: Template designed with GraphicSprings; image adapted from Erotica #2 9/30, Preusse 2013.

Sections of chapters one and two were previously adapted to create a short story, ‘Splash’, published in David Vernon (ed), The Scientific Method–twenty-four award-winning stories from the Stringybark Erotic Fiction Awards (Hall, ACT: Stringybark Publications, Smashwords Edition, 2019).

Contents

The Conundrum

The Experiment

The Meeting

The Decadent

The Threesome

The Club

The Keys

The Guys

The Conference

The Fall

The Dinner

The Test

The Birthday

The Spring

The Couples

The Dance

The Party

The Fist

The Article

The Truth

The Dean

The Friends

The Gang

The Ropes

The Pain

The Lie

The Beginning

The Acknowledgements

The Conundrum

Once I had a husband, but marriage didn’t quite fit the shape of me.

A bit like that fuchsia sweater Aunt Betti gave me for Christmas several years ago. She’d knitted the sweater herself and urged me to try it on immediately, despite it being a 36-degree summer's day. Aunt Betti struggled to pull the sweater over my head, panting as she squeezed in an arm, a shoulder, a shoulder blade. God, I thought, this must be what a penis feels like, gradually being encased within a constricting material. Restricting you from becoming more than you already are.

I gazed into the full-length mirror Mum kept near the front door of the house, so she could take one final look at herself, put that last bit of hair into place, before stepping out into the world. I prayed she stayed in the kitchen preparing the plum pudding to spare her the grief of witnessing the reflection before me. The colour of the wool clashed awkwardly with my copper tinted hair and lips, making my complexion look slightly jaundiced. It felt like ants were being released from the internal fibres, crawling all over my skin. I watched myself scratch at the invisible creatures, while wondering whether condoms came in fluorescent pink.

‘Oh Juliana, look how it shows off your small waist and big chest.’ Aunt Betti, standing behind me, firmly grabbed each body part as she emphasised its name, as if teaching new words to an English language class.

‘Aunty, please. There are toddlers about.’

I struggled to breathe as my skin colour changed to align itself with that of the wool. The heat seemed to make the sweater shrink further, apparently now with ambitions of replacing my skin altogether. Rather than lifted my breasts were crushed, and looked like they’d soon make contact with said waist. I pulled desperately at the tight neckline in a fruitless attempt at circulating some air, wondering how we would get this thing off again.

I seriously contemplated the use of scissors.

‘Don’t be such a prude, Juliana. You aren’t getting any younger for goodness’ sake, nearly forty, isn’t that right. And now that your husband has left you…But don’t worry love, you’re sure to meet someone else soon. Especially in this little number.’ Aunt Betti winked at me in that conspiratorial way, a gesture that mistakenly assumed we shared more than a bloodline.

Sure to meet someone else soon. There it was. The mantra of family matriarchs the world over. A woman wasn’t whole unless she had a man. No male, related or otherwise, has ever said to me ‘don’t worry, you’ll meet someone else soon.’ The sweater was obviously part of Aunt Betti’s warped plan to ensure that someone was indeed met, to be followed by more wedding bells and a line-up of children, before it was too late. But I’m no Norma Jean or Jayne Mansfield, and this was not the 1950s. Not only could I not pull off wearing a tight pink sweater, I also didn’t need a man at all. Or could have as many as I wanted, depending on my mood.

My aunt was wrong in at least two more ways. I was certainly no prude. And it was me who left him. Constriction and restriction. Itching and suffocation. Fitted sweaters and rigid marriages. Sometimes you just have to cut yourself free and be open to trying on other shapes and shades.

There was another version of Aunt Betti in my life, albeit my own age. Maddie didn’t knit sweaters, but she had a glory box and a chastity belt. Sometimes it seemed she’d jumped straight out of the pages of some Victorian-era novel. Okay, maybe not a chastity belt, but she definitely acted as if she wore one, deliberately choosing celibacy at a point in life when you should make the most of what was left before it sagged, wrinkled or simply disintegrated.

The glory box, however, was quite real.

The box was a camphor chest, with scenes of beautiful gardens and ancient Chinese people in flowing gowns carved into all visible sides. Maddie had picked it up from some local market, or maybe it was a garage sale, just after her sex prohibition epiphany. Lifting the lid with the golden latch revealed exactly what you would expect to see. A bundle of tea towels in neutral colours to match any future kitchen. Two sets of queen-sized 1200-thread Egyptian cotton sheets – one in crisp white, the other vanilla (like the sex she was sure to have when she finally married, I liked to think). A thick, extra-large set of towels, white of course, sure to be eventually embroidered with the happy couple’s initials. A dinner set, white Noritake, plus the requisite silver cutlery. Two tablecloths – unexpectedly perhaps, a brightly coloured Aboriginal dot painting print she picked up on a trip north, and, as expected, one of white linen. And so on and so forth.

Maddie also liked to lecture me about men and my sex life. Like last night, when we met up for a regular whinge-and-wine at a local bar. She’d been in fine preaching form, complete with regular tosses of her long raven-black hair, sweeping away anything too raunchy that contaminated the conversation, as if it might be a sexually transmitted virus that fed on words instead of cells.

‘But Jules, don’t you want to find a man who thinks the sun shines out of your arse? Who wants you and only you? Who is loyal no matter what?’

I practically gulped down the rest of my third glass of Shiraz. ‘I think you’re confusing the man with his dog.’

Maddie breathed a deep, deliberate, impatient sigh.

‘Okay, okay. Yes, Mads, I do want a man who thinks I’m amazing. Recognises that I am amazing.’ I laughed then, that kind of spontaneous self-deprecating laugh that reveals you don’t really believe what you’re saying, that you’re some kind of fraud. It’s remarkable how often our own body turns out to be a traitor. ‘But that doesn’t mean I want to keep him for the rest of my life.’

‘But love is for life. It’s about marriage and intimacy and trust and devotion.’

‘Oh nonsense,’ I spluttered, wiping some rogue spit from my chin with the back of my hand. ‘First you need to separate sex from love. Sex is fun, but you don’t need love as a side with that. Love is a ruse, a trap that tricks you into giving up your independence. Before you know it, you’re no longer a person, but someone’s property. That’s what your trust and devotion really is, just an elaborate disguise for possession. I don’t want to control another human being, or them me, that’s just another a form of slavery. Your idea of marriage is the deceptive enslavement of women by other means.’

‘That is so cynical. And closed minded.’

‘Wake up, Mads. A friend of mine once said that marriage is simply the reduction of life’s possibilities, and I agree with him. You stop growing as an individual, lose your curiosity about the world. Once you treat someone as property, you then need to protect your property, and it takes a lot of energy to stay so still. That’s when couples become really boring, having each other under constant surveillance. I’d rather live an insecure life of wandering than settle for Saturday nights spent sharing a Domino’s pizza and watching Love Island reruns together just because you can’t risk letting each other out of sight.’

Maddie rolled her eyes, something she was wont to do whenever she thought I was entering rambling abstract mode. She never really said anything, but I always thought part of her felt envious because I stayed on at university after we graduated with our respective BAs, mine majoring in Sociology and hers in Comms and Business Studies. First Class Honours was followed by a PhD on the effects of social media on contemporary dating practices and then university tenure. I was sure her constant sparring was an attempt to get the moral upper hand, to act superior in what she called ‘the real world’ of stock markets and real estate against my cloistered one determined by semesters and journal publications and unsuccessful grant applications.

‘Spare me the feminist lecture, I’m not one of your students. How is a relationship supposed to survive without commitment and trust? And can’t people grow and experience the new together? So, doctor-smartypants, what would your perfect relationship look like?’

I was more than ready with my own well-rehearsed sermon and leaned in closer to share it. ‘Trust, now there’s an interesting word. How about trusting your partner loves you even if they have sex someone else? Surely that’s a sign of ultimate commitment and absolute trust. If I’m with someone, I want to know they chose to be with me over anyone else at that particular moment, and every time they are with me. That they’re not with me just because they have to be out of some sense of obligation because, when they weren’t paying enough attention, they signed a bit of paper witnessed by god and government that said that they would, for better or worse. If at another moment they choose to be with someone else, they should be able to without me getting all possessive and jealous about it.’

Maddie’s hair flicked me in the face as it swept, and I flinched. ‘C’mon, that’s not a relationship, Jules. That’s called sleeping around, pretty much the exact opposite. You can’t rip out the nucleus of a relationship, the commitment and intimacy, and still have something meaningful left. Now, tell me what your ideal relationship would really look like. What’re the desiderata, the non-negotiables.’

I knew what it wouldn’t look like. There wouldn’t be any lying awake wondering why it was 2am and he wasn’t home yet. There wouldn’t be any subterfuge, the secret reading of text messages on a mobile left momentarily unguarded on the timber dining table. Or hiding around the corner from the office to see who he was meeting for lunch that day. There wouldn’t be the sound of crashing crockery, or the feel of the zygomatic hitting the corner of the quartz kitchen benchtop installed as part of the recent house renovations.

‘I suppose there would be a primary two,’ I conceded. ‘Two people who want the best for each other, no matter what. Even if it means sharing. Even if it means time apart. I want someone to cuddle up to, to keep me warm. But I also value my freedom, my right to be me, not a part, especially a subservient part, of some relationship and property merger. If I meet someone I want to sleep with, I want to go home to my warmth and tell him all about it. And the same for him. That could be part of our adventure together, sharing all our physical interactions with others with each other.’

‘That’ll never work, Jules. Everyone is naturally jealous of anyone competing for their partner. Perhaps it’s just some primeval instinct about reproduction and progeny, but you’re being totally unrealistic and, I reckon, dishonest with yourself. You’d be insanely jealous if your imaginary partner shared his imaginary bed with an imaginary other.’

‘No, Mads, I have tried monogamy and it is that that does not work. I’m absolutely convinced this is the only way forward. An evolutionary jump in human relationship development.’

‘A backwards jump to the stone age, I would say.’

‘Well, what would your perfect relationship look like?’

‘Like a dream dripping in honey spread over pistachio gelato.’

‘Seriously.’

‘I am serious. You know I’ve left the wilderness of casual sex and am saving myself for my perfect man.’

‘You mean like a born-again virgin.’

‘Kind of. I don’t want to share my temple of body with just anyone. It has to be someone worthy, someone special.’

‘You mean your knight in shining armour? Who must prove his worth? That’s so clichéd, Mads. You’ve been on this planet for nearly four decades. Surely you’ve learnt by now that such a man does not exist. Worse still, you sound like those personal fitness instructors on TV who harass obese people for popular entertainment when you refer to your body as a temple. Please don’t.’

‘I just want to wait for the right person. Someone to laugh with. Someone to cry with. Someone who respects me. Someone who makes me so horny we could make love all night, but is respectable enough to take home to mother for Sunday lunch. Someone who loves me as I am.’

‘Now you’re asking for too much. Seriously, though, that’s not so different to what I want, Mads. I just want to have other people sometimes too.’

‘Oh, Jules, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a committed relationship and be free to sleep around. You must make a choice. That’s just the ways it is. Now, enough, let’s dance.’

A band had set up on the stage in the back corner of the bar and began playing some hit from the 1990s that I hated then but suddenly felt nostalgic towards now. People were already moving to fill the space in front of the slightly elevated stage, not really a dance floor but more of a pushing back of tables. Dancing seemed like a reasonable option considering talking had now become infinitely more difficult with the increased competition between sounds.

‘Sure. It will give me a chance to see if there’re any possible take-aways on the menu here tonight. I’m not like you, saving myself for some idealised person I will never meet. As that great philosopher Cynthia Ann Stephanie once said, Girls just wanna have fun.’

I didn’t take anyone home that night, but the conversation with Maddie unsettled me. What if I was wrong? What if I did have to make a choice? Could I go back to monogamy ever again? Marriage had burned me, made me lose myself, and it had taken a lot of effort and support from my other best friends, Merlot and Malbec, to find me again. I was strong now, emotionally and physically. I could open my own jars and carry my own bags. I could have sex with any man and cum magnificently without a care, with no silly fantasies of building an open-plan-three-bedroom-double-garage-on-an-almost-fifth-of-an-acre-block-in-the-outer-suburbs-future together. But honestly, I also missed those special moments of intimacy with a someone. Of rolling around naked and tangled on the floor while singing along loudly to a song you both loved in 90s and laughing so much there were tears rolling down cheeks.

Though I’d never admit that to Maddie.

I breathed in the poisoned burning air, tasted its slow journey from mouth, to throat, to lungs, and back again. Watched as it blew confidently out of my pursed lips and over the balcony towards the trees in the park, only to be consumed by the cool night air.

Then I did it again. There was something meditative, I decided, about smoking. Not that I often did. I had smoked in my late teens and twenties, but fear of cancers and a fiancé who didn’t convinced me to give up the habit. But it seems bad habits can’t be eliminated, they simply go into hibernation. A bit of stress, a difficult challenge, or the poor example of friends easily awakens them from their slumber. I was terribly disappointed that this habit was so bad for the health. The natural rhythm, inhaling and exhaling, was conducive to relaxation, an assistant to contemplation.

And I was contemplating sex. Or, more specifically, bad sex and what to do about it.

I glanced back over my shoulder, towards the naked man now snoozing in my queen-sized bed. I knew a few things about him. His light brown hair was thinning on top. He had a large mole on the right side of his abdomen. He liked to say, ‘but listen to this…’. A lot. He had a slight problem with sleep apnoea, and a big problem with maintaining an erection.

But I didn’t know his name. And didn’t want to.

Names made things too intimate in the wilderness, as Maddie had called it. The hunt was for a facilitator of sex, not an actual three-dimensional person. A name made them real instead of being part of my fantasy, revealed they had a life, a job, friends, hobbies, dreams. Wives and girlfriends. I also didn’t let them stay, as that too bred unwanted familiarity. A few years ago, a friend gave me a small brown ceramic wombat as a birthday gift, meant to symbolise my creed to never let a man I slept with stay overnight. A wombat eats roots, shoots and leaves, as the saying goes. A comma strategically placed after the third word turns the phrase into an analogy for fucking, ostensibly, like a man; no room for emotional attachment. And names were intrinsically intimate. You screamed at someone with a name. You walked away from someone with a name. You cried over someone with a name.

I gave the wombat a permanent home on my bedside table, where I could always see it and be reminded.

Sometimes, though, I liked to assign my own names to these nocturnal conquests. Mr Slow-but-Steady. Sir Can-we-go-again-yet. Dr I-prefer-Doggy-Style. This one I had named Mr Floppy. A lack of emotional intimacy is also known to encourage cruelty and indifference, or so I believe.

But I rather thought I’d been eminently charitable. Mr Floppy had struggled with a recalcitrant softening at the moment of entry. He then appeared to give up, suddenly arising from the bed and standing to face me at its end. He was framed by the window, momentarily making him look like a painting of some desperate soul lost in the night by a Munch or Courbet. I felt a sliver of sympathy float alongside my growing frustration. Glancing down from his face, I saw his hand working hard to rectify the situation. A little too hard, I worried, that would likely result in quite the opposite effect. When you want a healthy shrub to grow, you must treat it just right. Enough water to hydrate without drowning the roots. Enough fertiliser to nourish without burning the plant.

He was over fertilising my plant.

I had to take control, distract him into an erection. I used a small cushion to elevate my back, hips slightly raised, and parted my legs to create an easy view of the stage. He proved a good audience, watching my finger as it slowly circled the star of the show, my clitoris. I sensed his breath and hand slowing as my breathing deepened. Closing my eyes to enjoy the sensation of rising wetness, I slid a finger easily inside, out again, and repeat. I held the finger up to the chandelier above, observed it glistening as I turned it slightly side to side. I had the sudden urge to taste it. Tangy, with an edge of sweetness.

Now less interested in how Mr Floppy and his flaccid penis were getting along, I turned over on the bed, discarding the cushion and trapping my hand between pubis and mattress. This is the part I love, when your skin seems electrified, creating friction when your naked body moves against the bedclothes, nipples on the verge of combustion. I wondered what I might look like from behind, my buttocks moving back and forth, fingers continuing to rub clit, breasts dragging along the sheets. I wondered what my moans sounded like to him, whether he noticed my quickening breath, the increased tensing of my extremities. My eyes rolled back as I considered whether he would feel the vibrations of my climax, advancing towards him like a teasing wind.

I lay there for a minute, catching my breath. When I turned, not much had changed in the scenery. The plant was still being fertilised, and no better off than before. At least I’d achieved something out of the encounter. I excused myself and went to the bathroom, and on my return found him asleep under the red and black duvet. I had no idea unsuccessful wanking could be that exhausting. Or maybe he had got himself there in the end after all. Bravo. I hoped he had cleaned up.

I breathed in, blew out the smoke. Mr Floppy proved part of a recent trend of disappointing encounters. One was too young and nervous to know what he was doing, and had trouble working out which bit went where, as if we were Ikea parts. One came too quickly and failed to attend to me afterwards, and I cannot abide selfishness in bed. Others turned me off as soon as they opened their mouths and objectionable words tumbled out – racist, sexist, grammatically incorrect. The effort to be sexually free and independent suddenly seemed exhausting, time consuming, and with little reward. Had I failed to notice I’d become lost in the wilderness? Did I have to become like Maddie to find my way out? Did I want to find my way out? One thing was certain: Aunt Betti’s sweater, despite its vivid colour, was not going to help.

I shivered, the night air having completed its invasion of my unprotected body. I stubbed out the cigarette, walked back to the bedroom, pulled a silk kimono-robe around me and tied the sash. I nudged the loudly snoring, still naked Mr Floppy. A few droplets of saliva were discernible in the corner of his crookedly parted lips.

‘You’d better get dressed ‘cause I’m calling you a ride home.’

‘Whaatya?’ He drooled, confused at the disturbance. ‘What ‘r you doin’?’

‘Calling you a ride. So you’d better get dressed.’

‘What time is...’ He started to nod off again.

‘C’mon get up.’ I poked him in the arm, just lightly. ‘It’s now after three.’

Mr Floppy slowly pulled himself into a seated position, looked around, rubbed his reddened eyes. I wondered if his penis was now the same colour, but didn’t care to check. ‘Hey, can’t I just stay a couple more hours? It’s nearly morning, anyway.’

‘Nope. I’m calling you a taxi. Should be here soon.’

‘Jeez, you’re a bit harsh.’

‘No offence intended. I can’t sleep with someone else in the bed and have heaps to get done tomorrow.’ It was all true, but I also had no intention of making anyone else coffee and toast in the morning. Especially someone who had made me do all the work.

‘But, listen to this. What if I sleep on the sofa?’

‘Taxi is summoned. Haven’t you got someone to get home to anyway?’

Mr Floppy muttered something under his breath that sounded rather like ‘terse bitch’ and began to reassemble his clothing. I didn’t care, he wasn’t someone I would ever see again.

I changed the sheets as I listened to the vehicle leaving, breathed a sigh of relief, and jumped under the duvet, reclaiming my space. I glanced at the wombat, but for the first time felt disconcerted instead of reassured. I was still sure my relationship theory, the one I’d shared with Maddie that night, was right. But perhaps the constant cycle of strangers in my bedroom was not the way forward after all, and I drifted off to sleep while devising new ways of testing it.

‘I’ve decided to try it your way. For a while anyway.’

Maddie sipped her not-too-hot-soy-latte. ‘And which way is that?’

I paused then, for dramatic effect. Slowly licked the cappuccino froth from my spoon, holding Maddie’s gaze, as if trying to seduce a man.

‘I’m going celibate.’

The not-too-hot-soy-latte spurted from Maddie’s mouth, a few drops landing on the collar of my shirt and cheek. ‘Jules! You can’t be serious.’

I had achieved exactly the reaction I’d aimed for, yet her words offended me. ‘Why not? Seems pretty easy to me. No need to dress up anymore or put on makeup. No need to pluck or shave or wax or laser. Ever hear of that phrase if you want a job done properly, best do it yourself? Had to do that in the bedroom lately anyway, so I could easily keep myself entertained at home.’

‘That’s my gig. You can’t steal my life, get your own one, Jules.’

‘But we could compare notes. Consider this an experiment, a gathering of data. A testing of hypotheses, a pilot project for six months or so. Then celibacy is all yours again.’

‘Oh heavens, you wouldn’t last a week. I think my mind is going to explode.’ She attempted to shake the shock right out of her head, as it if could transform into nanoparticles of dust and be expelled through hair and skin.

‘I’m thinking, maybe we send mental signals, kind of like pheromones, out into the world that affect the type of person we meet. If you send out a signal that says I don’t really care about you and who you are as a person, I just want to use your body then you’ll be unlikely to attract someone you might want to keep around. And I’m wondering if instead you send out signals that say I’m looking for a keeper, and the qualities you’re looking for, like job selection criteria, whether you’ll find just such a person. I want to see whether changing my approach changes the men I attract.’

‘Sorry but that doesn’t sound like a mind-blowing theory, Jules, more like common sense. And you do realise you’re experimenting on real humans with real feelings here. Surely you’ll need ethics clearance for that.’

I rolled my eyes, an imitation of Maddie. ‘Want to order another coffee? There’s so much planning to do.’

‘Sure. And some toast and avocado.’

I called over the cute waiter with the short ponytail jutting out from the back of his head. As he cleared the table, I was sure he gave me that glance. You know the one. The one that says: ‘you interest me’. I wondered if he’d been listening to our conversation, and smiled back into his eyes as he took the order. But I was determined to stick to my plan, and eager to see whether this new shape would be a good, albeit temporary, fit.

The Experiment

‘So, is there a relationship between sex and patriarchy?’

Teaching is a funny thing. Sometimes when I walk into a classroom, I feel so vulnerable, convinced the students will think I’m a fake, or an idiot, or just too old. At other times teaching is quite empowering, when a student answers a question or writes an essay and you can see that they get it, whatever it is you’ve been struggling to teach. And yet even then, I’m never quite certain that my role was essential – would they get it just as easily, more easily, with a different mentor? Come to the same conclusion, or a better one, on their own?

Most of the time, though, teaching is just unpredictable. You never know what you’re going to get. A room full of absence as no one has completed the set readings. A brilliant comment from a switched-on student that gives you new insights into the topic. Verbal fisticuffs. An amazing class discussion that runs over time as no one wants to stop. Most of the time, though, a lecturer’s life is enshrouded in self-doubt and infused by sheer exhaustion. Making it to the end of semester with only a minor nervous breakdown or two seems a major achievement.

I repeated the question and looked towards Carla, a student who usually did the readings, or at least had something interesting to say. Most tutorials had a version of Carla, a human life buoy to save you from drowning in a sea of silence. She was slouched back into the poly moulded chair, her ripped-denim-almost-covered legs spread wide apart, as if she had large balls that needed room to decompress. Her short spiky hair stabbed at the air. Carla took the cue, as I hoped she would.

‘Well, women are often portrayed as sex objects, on film, TV, in advertisements, in men’s magazines, and so on. The old sex sells thing. Women commodified. Capitalism meets patriarchy and all that.’

‘Thanks, Carla. Does that mean women can’t dress in a sexy way without participating in their own oppression?’

‘I think feminism is, like, stupid,’ moaned Bethany without taking her eyes away from the glittery iPhone in her hands. There were always the Bethanys too. The ones more than happy to share an opinion based on nothing but their opinion. I was sure the Bethanys could only read things on a screen rather than a printed page, and of no greater length than the average Facebook post. Tl,dr. Too long, didn’t read. ‘I mean, it’s all, like, this bra burning, man hating stuff. Men are sexualised on telly and stuff too. And women are, like, equal nowadays anyways, so who needs feminists? Endangered species, I say.’

‘What a load of crap! Women are so not equal. And feminism is making a really cool comeback – some are saying we are entering a fourth wave.’

‘Good points, Carla. But Bethany is actually on to something – Bethany get off your phone, please. That is, the idea of feminism as it came out of the second wave is rejected by a lot of young women today. Why? Why is equality between men and women so contentious?’

‘It’s not so much that it’s rejected, but changed.’ The Jennifers. They are the ones who are quiet most of the time, but when they do speak you know there will be substance. ‘When we dress up to, say, go out clubbing, we want to feel sexy, and what’s wrong with that? That old-style feminism is boring and irrelevant. You know, 70’s feminism or whatever. We do have more power today, more opportunities and stuff. But we want to be powerful and pretty. Our models are the Beyoncés and Lady Gagas rather than the Greers.’

Murmurs of agreement resounded around the room. Jennifer had succeeded in awakening the rest of the class.

‘I like Lady Gaga,’ one of the male students added. ‘She’s hot. But you know, I wouldn’t want to take her out or anything.’

‘As if she’d want to go out with you,’ someone called out.

‘Why not Jonathon?’

‘Because she’s also pretty damned scary.’

Dozens of eyes turned in unison towards me for a response. Jonathon fidgeted. ‘Why do you think she’s scary?’ I asked.

‘I dunno, she’s got a lot of power, I guess. You know, lots of money, popularity and stuff.’

‘Fifty-five million Facebook friends.’

‘I said get off your phone, Bethany.’

‘Yeah. That’s a bit, I dunno, aggressive or something. I mean, the woman wears meat for Chrissake.’ The Jonathons preferred to sit in a corner, never took notes, and were first out of the door when the class ended. They usually did not to speak, but when they did managed to agitate a significant portion of the class.

‘That’s so boring, Jonny. Women can’t be the breadwinners still without threatening masculine pride? How did men come to rule the world anyway with such fragile egos?’ queried Jennifer.

‘And balls,’ added Carla.

‘I guess by controlling women.’

‘How, Jennifer?’ I encouraged. ‘Controlling what?’

‘Umm, their bodies?’

‘And perhaps by trying to define their sexuality for them, what it should and shouldn’t look like. The women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and ‘70s was also concerned with sexual liberation, you know. But Jonathon’s reaction is a telling point – women who are strong and sexy, challenging the status quo, and in this case rich, are sometimes seen as threatening, to men and to other women. Lady Gaga is not new in this – has anyone heard of Mae West?’ I noticed some students taking out their devices, tapping and swiping away.

‘She was an actress in the mid-20th century who said cool things like Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet.’ Giggles ensued, but they were likely aimed at my poor impersonation of the rhythmic Brooklyn accent and the swing-hipped walk, rather than Ms West’s wit. Sometimes you feel the