The other night, a 38-year-old single New Yorker named Mr. Bloom went to a party, a party that was organized and held by the consulting agency he founded. Suffice it to say, Mr. Bloom is extremely successful in the music and entertainment industry. So you can get some idea of his field, both Mr. Bloom’s company and the one where he works a second job as a co-producer utilize propaganda depicting scantily clad girls, the types you might see in Maxim if there were a Maxim that specifically catered to DJs. Mr. Bloom has a good job: he goes to a lot of these parties and is pretty much required to flirt. In any case, the party was wild as far as parties go, so Mr. Bloom was nervous he’d be hung over when we spoke the following morning. But he was pretty lucid as he boasted to me that he had gotten lucky—not got-laid-lucky, but fooled-around-lucky—at the party, and if we had been talking in person, I’m sure I would have seen a Cheshire Cat-like smile spreading across his face.

This story isn’t all that special, except for the fact that the 38-year-old single New Yorker isn’t actually a Mr., she’s a Ms., and her name is Fiona Bloom. But other than that, those are the details with which she introduced herself to me. Perhaps what distinguishes the real Fiona Bloom and the fictional Mr. Bloom (besides the fact that she has a body like the ones pictured in her company’s flyers—hot) are the following phrases that she offered to clarify her hook up at the party: “I’m not that kind of girl” and “It was a big deal.” It’s hard to imagine a man excusing a casual sexual encounter, and it’s even harder to imagine him considering such an encounter a big deal. So if Bloom hadn’t confided these things to me, I might not have known she was any different from the stereotypical man.

Bloom, like many New York women, is leading a bachelorette’s life, one that doesn’t differ all that much from a bachelor’s life. They are career-focused—ambitious, at times aggressive—characteristics that for so long have been considered masculine. And they are sexual—adventurous, even promiscuous—characteristics that are also considered typically masculine but become the stuff of male fantasy when exhibited by a woman. And since these same women are the ones who are often considered liberated, it seems a major part of female liberation is being masculine.

Like many men who have been forced in the past to choose between romance and career, Bloom blames her busy schedule for her recent dry spell (which, congratulations, ended the other night). But she is not alone in being alone. In 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 28.7 percent of Bloom’s fellow female New Yorkers in the 35- to 44-year-old bracket had never been married, up from 16 percent the previous year. Sixty point nine percent of her younger cohorts, age 20 to 34, were in the same boat, up from 45.5 percent the year before. Needless to say, these are significant increases.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett Ph.D., who coined the term “emerging adulthood” (referring to the period after adolescence and prior to adulthood which he posits is becoming longer), says that one major reason people are getting married later in life “is that premarital sex is widely accepted and people no longer need to enter marriage in order to have a regular sexual relationship.” If the term “premarital sex” sounds so foreign to you that he might as well have referenced la bête avec deux dos, keep in mind that those in Bloom’s age group are the first for whom sex outside the confines of marriage is, for the most part, considered the norm.

Lisa Jervis, editor and co-founder of the magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, notes that women no longer “‘need’ to go from their father’s house to their husband’s house.” And while such independence is great (otherwise it’d be much harder to gorge ourselves on raw cookie dough or bleach unwanted body hair), it seems so-called sexual liberation is often misconstrued as liberation, period.

When I tell Bloom about OneLegUp NYC (OLU), which is the female take on typically male dominated sex clubs (yes, where people have actual S-E-X), she sounds inspired and says she’ll have to try it. The organization’s founder, Palagia (who goes by one name like one of her sex icon forbearers, Madonna), has been attending erotic parties since she was 18. She says of her organization, “I wanted to create an environment where women felt safe and they could explore their fantasies in an erotic atmosphere without feeling uncomfortable or incapable of doing that.” There are 1,000 members from all over the world who attend these soirées, all of which are held in NYC, and perhaps they’ll be more “When you get to be my age and you don’t have a significant other, I’m all for that. Why not? We have to stay active and young somehow,” Bloom says, “A nice dinner, a bottle of wine—that gets a bit boring after a while.”

OLU offers two kinds of events to keep boredom at bay: Eat Ins, which are for members only, and Take Outs, to which all are welcome. Single men are not allowed at Eat Ins, only couples and single women (though it is predominately a heterosexual forum). Palagia says her organization is “female dominated, and the women make the rules and the women can break the rules.” But reversing the classic gender roles of dominant male and submissive female still qualifies as embracing stereotypes.

Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, says, “I am sure that there are some women who find it liberating to behave just like a man. But how many? The truth is most women crave love, intimacy and commitment.” She adds, “If a woman is intimate with a man—and she enjoys it—she is attached. Many men, amazingly enough, are not like that; they can have a great time and then move on. Women are at a great emotional disadvantage when it comes to casual sex. To think otherwise is foolish.”

So there is CAKE, a milder alternative to OLU, which only offers membership to women—though they may invite male guests. Melinda Gallagher, self-proclaimed feminist and president, co-founded CAKE back in 2000 after graduating from NYU with a degree in human sexuality and finding that there was no forum to explore specifically female sexuality in the real world. “CAKE is an entertainment company that promotes female sexual empowerment,” says Gallagher. But she is quick to add, “We specifically don’t promote or produce sex parties. We would rather explore some fun theme and allow the actual sex to happen in the privacy of people’s bedrooms.” She continues, “Women are more comfortable keeping that stuff in the bedroom but exploring the nuances of it out in public,” which implies recognition of some distinction between men and women when it comes to sexual openness. “It’s not about promiscuity or being out there or having to do everything and everyone,” Gallagher clarifies.

There are about 1,500 CAKE members in New York, primarily between the ages of 21 and 35. Events have included a porn party (where video clips were screened), a masquerade party, a lingerie party, a lap dance party and a strip tease-a-thon (where bras and underwear were not removed). But let’s face it; CAKE’s women-centric mission belies the conventionality of such seemingly radical sex play. Haven’t there always been men who want women to watch porn, strip out of their sexy lingerie and give them lap dances? The Hiltons, Lohans and Spears of the world have built their reputations on gyrating in as little clothing as possible and, recently, flashing their naughty bits, and they’re certainly popular with the opposite sex. But should they really be our female role models?

“I’m really wary of equating sexual empowerment with social and political empowerment, although there are links and they do happen kind of concurrently,” Jervis muses, “I really want to stress that you cannot draw any kind of straight line between sexual empowerment and actual political change. I think that risks reducing our political goals to something a lot less powerful, like, ‘Oh, look: I can do whatever I want in my sex life and that means I have political power.’ Obviously, that’s an over-simplification.”

Gallagher thinks that there’s no one way to be a liberated woman, though she fears that may not be understood. She says sarcastically, “If you’re an empowered woman, then you have to be X, Y or Z, and if you don’t fulfill those criteria, then you’re not empowered enough” (where X, Y or Z currently refer to the aforementioned characteristics: ambitious, aggressive and adventurous).

Perhaps New York City is beginning to experience a backlash against this X, Y or Z school of thought that refuses to acknowledge any differences between the sexes except for, you know, penises and vaginas. Natural Selection, a speed-dating event hosted last Wednesday night by Pocket Change, would imply just that. But is a return to the 1950s woman the only alternative to these women who are “the new men”? The sole requirement for participation if you are male is that you be wealthy. Not share in Fire Island wealthy. Rather, men age 25 or below must make $200,000 or more, men between 26 and 30 must make $300,000 or more and men over 30 must make $500,000 or more a year to participate. Alternatively, you could have $1 million or more in invested assets or $4 million or more in trusts.

Documented proof was required for each entrant. As for the women, the only condition is that they be hot (and available). The eye of the beholder in this instance belonged to Janis Spindel of Serious Matchmaking Inc., who reviewed each applicant’s photographs. Tickets for eligible men are $500, but only $50 for women. There were approximately 600 applicants this time around. That’s 600 men and women from one of the most forward-thinking cities in the country to whom a reversion to typical gender roles appealed.

When asked whether Natural Selection is an impediment to gender equality, Jeremy Abelson, president of Pocket Change, says, “They [women] fought so hard for it, then they went out and achieved it and realized it wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be … What we’re doing is not politically correct, I understand that. But I think that those trends [towards all things being equal in relationships] are out of date.” He clarifies, “I think that there is a general trend towards acknowledging gender differences in relationships and the reason I think [this] is because the modern woman wants to be treated like a woman, wants to be taken care of. There have been more women that have applied for this [than men]. Women want to be taken care of, it’s an innate characteristic in women.”

Janis Spindel, a former fashion executive and the mother of two daughters who recently celebrated her 22nd wedding anniversary, notes, “It’s a very superficial and shallow world out there and men are very superficial and fall in love through their eyes. So with men, the first thing is always about attraction. With women it’s about intelligence, sense of humor, blah, blah, blah.” She adds, “In this day and age women do have careers just like men, they’re making the money, they have the power, the title. So in terms of this event, I’m picking the women not just in terms of their looks, but I’m [specifically] picking soft spoken, feminine, sexy women who are not the driven, hard, angry, bitter business girls.”

But Spindel’s sentiment is becoming increasingly rare in cities like New York. Most readers would cringe at her description of “bitter business girls.” In fact, many will likely conclude that the women who participated in Natural Selection are the ones most worthy of criticism (and not just because they want a rich man, but because they are actively pursuing one man in the first place).

In fact, when asked if being promiscuous, in conjunction with being career driven, is a sign of a liberated woman, Bloom acknowledged that she believes it is. She explains that while family is important, many of the women who pursue it diligently “are insecure, they’re women who haven’t really gone for it, they play it safe,” adding, “it’s a lot harder to be a strong, independent, go-getter career woman.” Maybe, maybe not, but to belittle typically female goals in favor of typically male ones might not be so much a sign of gender equality as a sign of belief in male superiority.

Certainly, it’s a sign that the male standard of liberation remains the ruler against which we measure women.

Jervis says, “There are definitely kind of pockets within feminism where if you know yourself well enough to know that you don’t want to be going out and having random sex with a lot of people, that’s somehow seen as you’re making that choice because you have bought into traditional gender ideas of how women behave, and that’s not actually true. For some women, and for some men, that’s not what they want. So I think any rigid notion of what kind of sexual behavior is good or feminist, that’s just not useful, not accurate, it’s not going to fit for everybody. We can’t have one set of standards for sexual behaviors that are supposed to apply for everyone, and that’s just as true whether that’s feminist standards of behavior or traditional gender standards of behavior.”

If, as Spindel asserts, men are superficial—or for that matter, emotionally detached, even selfish—how did women become convinced that such qualities were worthy of emulation? Perhaps it’s idealistic, but it seems a world where men and women alike are offended by such stereotypes should be the goal of feminism, of humanity. Dr. Sue Klavans Simring, co-author of Making Marriage Work For Dummies, says it’s important to correct the current double standard that exists for both men and women “so that men don’t have to play that [stereotypically male role] if they don’t want to and women can if they want.”

“Today, there is a lot of effort to get the sexes to be the same,” Sommers says, “Femininity and masculinity are empowering in different ways. And male/female differences and tensions are a source of great joy, pleasure and happiness in the world. I hope today’s young adults have the good sense to defend themselves from all the social engineers who are trying to impose androgyny upon them.” She adds, “Men and women are different—but equal.”

When asked if she’s interested in finding someone for the long haul, Bloom (our Bloom who said that those who actively pursue family life are “playing it safe”) confessed, “In the back of my mind, I’m trying. I definitely do want to settle down at some point. I don’t want to be 45 or 50 and wake up and say, ‘Yeah, I still look good. For a 50-year-old, I look like I’m 35.’ But to go home alone at night at that age would be a sad travesty, so I pray that won’t happen to me.”