On a morning, when we have had three powerful women on the BBC political flagship show-a top political journalist-the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Leader of the Opposition- we're reading about this shagbag who actually left Sheffield University-threw away a golden chance- to make herself a bucket of warm tripe.
Again I would argue that you rather make the lady in questions case, who has thrown up a paradoxical socio-sexual mirror maze of sorts. If women feel distressed, embarrassed and ashamed at the instrumentalisation of their sexual desires, will it not be because of social attitudes like this?
Attitudes that are informed largely in part by traditional, patriarchal, socioreligious conservative morality, the goal of such paradigms historically being to make women ultimately pleasing and controllable for marriage and 'respectability' (make an honest woman of her etc) also having children. Especially her husband's children. A woman who is sexually unfettered must necessarily therefore make herself undesirable, because she does not belong to any man, (and eschews being a woman worthy of bringing home to ones mother as a pp said) she therefore must pay the price of public shaming and is not fit for marriage, or society, or to again exist within the patriarchal framework of belonging to a man, taking his name etc without shame over her previous sexual expression. This is the undertone.
A woman's vagina is therefore not truly hers as it is fettered by public opinion and religious politics. The male penis isn't, or hasn't traditionally been similarly fettered.
So the message is, a woman cannot have both. A woman who takes her sexual power for herself, cannot still be deemed to have worth, despite her seizing her agency. But who is applying this metric of worth? And is it appropriate to attach a notion of one's worth to how they enjoy sex or how many penises they enjoy? The concept of self-worth should perhaps just be that, self determined. As long as this woman enjoys it and consents and declares not to feel any shame, why is her self-determined concept of worth diminished? Why should it be denigrated? Why is it assumed that she should feel regret and shame in later life?
You mention women in powerful roles traditionally employed by men, but I would argue that a woman using her agency to have sex outside of traditional notions of 'nice girl' womanhood is a massive symbol of women's agency and an important, if uncomfortable one. Women have had powerful positions in history, but women have never been allowed and still aren't allowed, to be sexually aberrative or sexually liberal in the same way men are without the penalty of public shame and censure in 2024. At best in our uncomfortability, we assign a victim status and reduce her agency, even when the woman in question comes from an extremely privileged reality, in which alternative choices are plentiful.
Your language is also objectifying of her, which is also interesting. Whom has now objectified whom? Is she objectified by indulging willingly in a group sex activity, or are we objectifying her by assuming a denigrative and punitive judgement of her and tying the notion of a person's worth to the amount of men they sleep with, as opposed to the amount of power and agency they take and choose to use?
To my surprise, I find myself considering this to be a powerful work of art. In the same way one finds modern art sometimes ugly and deformed but still thought provoking.
I think she achieved her aims.