Anita Taylor on "Don't Be a Slut" - September 8, 2009
Sometime ago, I discovered Anita M. Taylor's blog entitled "Dont-Be-A-Slut" . With a title like that, how can a blog NOT be intriguing? I just had to see what it was all about! Anita sums up her blog as "Everything I wish I had known in my 20s about sex, self-respect and what not to do." Let me tell you, there are blogs out there that really don't hold my attention for long but I have been a faithful reader of "Don't Be a Slut" for quite some time now (I'm even a subscriber and eagerly look forward to her entries).
Anita's stories make me laugh, they make me sad, they make me cringe (and all sorts of other reactions) but they always keep me riveted from beginning to end. This woman has an unbelievable story to tell and it isn't always pretty but it's real, it's raw and it's honest. It makes you fall in love with her and it makes you have a huge amount of respect for what she's come through and the life lessons she's learned. I am so excited that she agreed to do an interview with me. I think you'll find yourself spending a good amount of time reading her blog, just as I do. Let's see what this fascinating lady has to say.
1. Anita, you probably get asked this question a lot but I'm dying to know why you decided to put some of the most personal and intimate experiences of your past life out there for the whole world to read about?
Why blog about my sex life? Because it was an area of my life that I’d never been able to make heads nor tails of, an area of confusion, of shame, of pain. It dawned on me that I couldn’t be the only “seemingly nice girl” who had become a “secret slut” and was drowning in shame. So I decided to share my story in the hopes that it might reach girls like the one I used to be and help them make better choices. That’s not to say I didn’t have qualms about writing about some of my most embarrassing moments, or that I don’t still have moments of panic right after hitting “Publish.” I never would have predicted I’d be as wide open as I’ve been, but I feel like it’s important to tell the whole truth, not just the parts I think are socially acceptable.
2. Anita, your life has certainly been one adventure after another! I would imagine that writing about your father, the different men you've known, the jobs you've had, and other events in your past must bring up memories that you've not thought about for a long time. Is that difficult at times? What are your thoughts on this?
The ironic thing is that a lot of what I blog about is stuff that I thought about constantly or that was festering just under the surface, and blogging has allowed me to finally stop thinking about them or to think about them in a whole new way. I’ve found it to be mostly cathartic, but yes, when I’m in the thick of writing about a situation, reading old diaries and asking myself the tough questions about how I got into this or that situation, it can be very intense and painful. Or hilarious. I laugh and cry out loud as I write.
3. One of my favorite parts of your blog is your fascinating story about "Brown" (I've read every word of it). Brown was the first man you were truly in love with. It sounds like an unhealthy roller-coaster of a relationship which broke your heart when it ended. What do you think are the most important things you learned from being in that relationship?
I think the most important thing is that you can’t change a man. Brown was always very clear and up front about what he didn’t want, and what he didn’t want just happened to coincide with what I wanted more than anything. So I arrogantly thought I could change his mind, and that was a form of manipulation and abuse on my part. I also learned the importance of letting go. Mentally and emotionally, I hung on to the broken dream of our relationship for almost a decade. I don’t feel like I really got closure until I wrote the last blog post about him a few months ago. So I spent more than nine years mourning something that wasn’t all that good for me, and that was time when I wasn’t dating, mating or moving on with my own life.
4. Your father sounds like a brilliant, fascinating and sometimes troubled soul. Your relationship with him was certainly a challenging one (to say the least). How do you think it affected your attitudes and relationships with the men in your life?
I think that most of the men I chose – especially some of my earlier boyfriends that I’m just beginning to blog about now – were replicas and recreations of my dad. I consistently chose men who were disrespectful, verbally abusive and controlling, then I railed against their control in much the same way that I railed against my dad as a teenager.
5. One part of your blog really struck a chord with me. It was about your epiphany regarding all the wrong men you've "dated and mated". You said that "You were dating who YOU were at the time" . Can you talk a little bit about this?
I wish I could take credit for this as an original thought, but I believe it’s something I heard Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith say in a sermon. Over the course of my life, I’ve done lots of personal growth and self-help work, and consistently, most “experts” say that girls date their unresolved issues with their fathers (and boys do the same with their mothers). Through my method acting teacher, Eric Morris, I was exposed to the “subpersonalities” work of Hal and Sidra Stone. One of the things they say in their books is that we’re attracted to the parts of ourselves that we deny and push away. So there isn’t a “victim” and a “victimizer.” Both are different sides of the same coin, and they attract each other because they’re alike. So essentially, it wasn’t “poor little me” and “big bad them.” I attracted the rage and self-hate that I felt inside, consistently choosing men who weren’t kind to me.
6. I also like your words of advice for women: "When in Crisis, Don't Date" . In other words don't think that adding a man to the mix will help the situation (get better and get healthy first). I'm curious to know the reactions you've gotten from your readers regarding this excellent advice?
In general, I’ve found that when I write about things that are uncomfortable or confrontational or shocking or dark, crickets start chirping in the comments section, or the people who write in are the people who agree. I think it’s tough advice to swallow if you’re in love with love, as I was for most of my adult life. If the hope of a man swooping in and making it all better is the only thing you live for, you’re going to think it’s stinky, stupid advice. But hopefully, someone will read it, heed it and be better for it, because I truly have found that guys I’ve dated while in crisis (and one could argue I was in crisis for most of my 20’s) have always turned out to be part of the ongoing problem, not part of the solution.
7. One thing that surprised me about your life was that you lived in a foster home for awhile. Wow! That has got to have a huge effect on a young person's life. Looking back, do you think you learned any positive life lessons from having to go through that?
Looking back, I really want to laugh at myself, because I was two months’ shy of high-school graduation and 5-6 months’ away from going off to college … so you wonder why I couldn’t have just sucked it up and toughed it out with my dad for that short period of time. I was never officially a foster child or a ward of the state; my dad reluctantly signed papers making me an emancipated minor, and a foster-care agency that the wife of my high school assistant principal worked for placed me with my foster mother. It was, in retrospect, one of the best experiences of my life, because it was the closest I’d come to family normalcy (as abnormal as it was) since I was a small child. And it also gave me the much-needed perspective that as hard as I had it, lots of kids had it much, much worse. My foster sisters’ lives made mine look like cotton candy and fluff.
8. Anita you talk about your college years and going to Yale University (and graduating cum laude). That's a huge accomplishment! However, you didn't feel like you fit in there. Once it was all said and done, were you glad you went? If so (or if not) can you talk a little bit about that?
I hated Yale. And I’m only glad I went when I take the philosophical approach espoused in the poem Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.” If I hadn’t gone to Yale, I wouldn’t have had the experiences that shaped my twenties. But it was difficult, awful, un-fun. And the ironic thing is that as much as I hated it, it was, in many ways, my last, great tangible accomplishment. I didn’t go on to become rich and famous, a captain of industry, a devoted wife and mother, or any of the things that define success in our culture. So for a long time, my only “cocktail-party anecdote” and “resume stuffer” was that I graduated with honors from a prestigious school that I hated.
9. You mentioned that a seminar leader once told you that you had a victim mentality and that you were just like your mother. How did you feel about being told that at the time? How did that statement effect or change your life?
That statement hit me like a ton of bricks, and ultimately changed my life. Before that, I had no concept that I had a “victim mentality.” I honestly thought I was a victim and that bad things just kept happening to me. I didn’t know that I was a causative agent in my own life. Now, when the victim mentality pipes up (as it often does), I’m better able to recognize in the moment that I’m not taking responsibility for my own life and my own happiness.
10. I have so much admiration for how well you've come through some really difficult situations in your life. Some women would not have turned out so positive and well-adjusted. Where did you get your strength from? Are you a spiritual person?
I have always been a spiritual person, but I’ve never really thought of myself as being “positive” or “well-adjusted.” For most of my life, I thought I was a depressed, messed-up mess. It’s only in the last three years or so that I’ve developed anything even vaguely approaching healthy self-esteem. Ditto for the “strong woman” thing, too. Throughout my life, lots of people have admired my strength and resilience, but I never felt strong. I felt like a weak chump who kept getting taken advantage of, in both my work life and personal life. But through it all, I’ve had hope that my life could change for the better, that the next self-help book, magic potion, alternative practitioner, witchdoctor or seminar would fix what was wrong with me, and that kept me going through the toughest of the tough times. Now I’m experimenting with the audacious, shocking idea that maybe nothing’s wrong with me and that maybe there’s more to love than to fix.
11. Anita, I can't help but think that you've probably gotten feedback from women who have found your stories and advice helpful on some level. I think that many women can somehow relate to your past (we all have a past too). Is this true? If so what are your feelings and reactions about these ladies being able to relate to you and your blog?
We live in a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t-culture that reduces women to vulgar, sexual commodities, and that punishes us if we’re not young, hot, thin and willing, and that punishes us even more if we cross the invisible line and actually become the sluts that our society both glorifies and vilifies. I suffered in silence, thinking I was the most shameful, undercover slut in the universe, berating myself for my “loose morals” and “lack of sexual willpower.” When I posted my first few entries, I expected hate mail or judgmental comments, but instead got private notes from female friends who confided that they too were over the “15 sexual partners” threshold or who confessed that they had been molested as children or whatever their story was. I also got personal email from women who had fallen prey to the same unscrupulous “Hollywood talent manager” who nearly turned me into a stripper. So I learned I wasn’t alone in my so-called fallen-woman status, which has been very healing for me.
