Sex and Logic?
I logged on to myspace the other day for the first time in a while and I actually took the bait on the whole myspace-multi-media-experience thing. I clicked on the featured books link because Prude was the featured book and I've been hearing about it so I thought it might be interesting to see what myspace had to say.
The consensus that I've heard and that myspace has endorsed about the book is that it's got a good message (i.e. girls are having sex too young and they aren't prepared for and don't understand the emotional issues involved or the potential consequences and that the problem is likely a result of the focus American culture puts on sex and being sexy), but the message gets lost in political rhetoric (i.e. the author of this book would like no one but married couples to have sex and thinks we should consider the possibility of legislating it because that may be the only way to change our national narrative to something slightly less sex obsessed).
I have to admit I haven't read the book, I've only read about the book. I'm not really planning to read the book either, and I'm not actually planning on writing a lot about the book itself, more about it's premise.
The thing is that I agree with the book's tag line ("How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)") and since I can't speak to the rest of the book I'm going to talk about that. Maybe I don't agree with the last bit. I mean there are cultures out there far more sex obsessed than America's, and I'm not sure it's so damaging to the nation or the national identity, but I agree it's damaging to girls. I might also argue that it's damaging to boys too though this book, I suspect, isn't so concerned about the boys and may even go so far as to claim (or at least imply) that it's natural for boys to be obsessed with sex and to seek it out even at very young ages placing the responsibility for stopping it on the girls. It's a fairly commonly held belief that boys are supposed to be constantly trying to get in a girls pants but the girls don't have to let them.
Leaving that aside, I agree that girls are damaged by having sex too young and even sort of agree that the sex obsessed culture is partly to blame. Of course the sex obsessed culture is only really responsible for about half the girls that have sex too young. The other half have sex too young because of the bizarre need girls have to compete with each other, but that's another story (and one I've already dealt with). So for now let me just deal with the first half.
Yes, the culture is sex obsessed. Case in point, a couple nights ago I was watching the Colbert Report and he had on Tim Harford, author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World. Somehow the interview devolved into a discussion about unprotected sex. The logic man's response to Colbert's claim that unprotected sex is irrational was that, yes, it is, but that as it's become more and more risky to have unprotected sex people do the rational thing and turn more and more to oral sex. Which is so much better right? Is it, really? Maybe the physical consequences are lower with oral sex though that's debatable (new research is pointing towards HPV, which is spread just as easily through oral sex, as a leading cause of mouth and throat cancers, outpacing even tobacco). So, maybe the physical consequences are lower but the emotional ones are just as harsh (if not more so). If I had a young daughter, lets say 12 years old, would I, or should I, be glad to find out that she'd just blown half of the guys in her 7th grade class because at least that way she can't get pregnant and her risk of catching something is lower (though certainly not non-existent)?
Surely the consequences that ensue in the short term for girls when they have sex too young (both physical and emotional) are bad, but I'm more concerned about the long term consequences and the negative feedback loop that's created. Kids that have sex too young grow up and become adults who are desensitized to sex or view it purely as entertainment or as a weapon which just leads to an even more sex obsessed culture and so on and so on. How do you convince people that the idea that it's "just" sex is harmful? Somehow I doubt this book is going to convince many people who didn't already agree so what can I say that would change people's minds? I can't advocate legislating it, passing a law that only married people can have sex. First of all because I think outlawing sex would be as ridiculous and ineffective as outlawing marijuana use has been, but more importantly because I don't think it would be right to say only married people can have sex unless people were legally allowed to marry anyone they wanted and that's not the case yet.
I'd say that the answer lies with parents but as Keanu Reeves (as Tod) said in Parenthood, "you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell you need a license to catch a fish! But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father", and the same holds true for mothers. Even if you have great parents who teach you all the right things about sex there's no guarantee. Circumstances intervene sometimes. What I said about girls being competitive, sometimes even the strongest, most well adjusted girls fall prey to that trap. Not to mention which people, especially kids, will almost never take anyone's word for something when they could find out for themselves.
I don't think I have any answers to this one. I don't think Carol Platt Liebau does either. All you can do is, if you have kids, teach them that sex is more than just physical and then hope. Hope that they listen and hope that in this one case they can learn from the mistakes of their predecessors rather than having to make their own.
The consensus that I've heard and that myspace has endorsed about the book is that it's got a good message (i.e. girls are having sex too young and they aren't prepared for and don't understand the emotional issues involved or the potential consequences and that the problem is likely a result of the focus American culture puts on sex and being sexy), but the message gets lost in political rhetoric (i.e. the author of this book would like no one but married couples to have sex and thinks we should consider the possibility of legislating it because that may be the only way to change our national narrative to something slightly less sex obsessed).
I have to admit I haven't read the book, I've only read about the book. I'm not really planning to read the book either, and I'm not actually planning on writing a lot about the book itself, more about it's premise.
The thing is that I agree with the book's tag line ("How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)") and since I can't speak to the rest of the book I'm going to talk about that. Maybe I don't agree with the last bit. I mean there are cultures out there far more sex obsessed than America's, and I'm not sure it's so damaging to the nation or the national identity, but I agree it's damaging to girls. I might also argue that it's damaging to boys too though this book, I suspect, isn't so concerned about the boys and may even go so far as to claim (or at least imply) that it's natural for boys to be obsessed with sex and to seek it out even at very young ages placing the responsibility for stopping it on the girls. It's a fairly commonly held belief that boys are supposed to be constantly trying to get in a girls pants but the girls don't have to let them.
Leaving that aside, I agree that girls are damaged by having sex too young and even sort of agree that the sex obsessed culture is partly to blame. Of course the sex obsessed culture is only really responsible for about half the girls that have sex too young. The other half have sex too young because of the bizarre need girls have to compete with each other, but that's another story (and one I've already dealt with). So for now let me just deal with the first half.
Yes, the culture is sex obsessed. Case in point, a couple nights ago I was watching the Colbert Report and he had on Tim Harford, author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World. Somehow the interview devolved into a discussion about unprotected sex. The logic man's response to Colbert's claim that unprotected sex is irrational was that, yes, it is, but that as it's become more and more risky to have unprotected sex people do the rational thing and turn more and more to oral sex. Which is so much better right? Is it, really? Maybe the physical consequences are lower with oral sex though that's debatable (new research is pointing towards HPV, which is spread just as easily through oral sex, as a leading cause of mouth and throat cancers, outpacing even tobacco). So, maybe the physical consequences are lower but the emotional ones are just as harsh (if not more so). If I had a young daughter, lets say 12 years old, would I, or should I, be glad to find out that she'd just blown half of the guys in her 7th grade class because at least that way she can't get pregnant and her risk of catching something is lower (though certainly not non-existent)?
Surely the consequences that ensue in the short term for girls when they have sex too young (both physical and emotional) are bad, but I'm more concerned about the long term consequences and the negative feedback loop that's created. Kids that have sex too young grow up and become adults who are desensitized to sex or view it purely as entertainment or as a weapon which just leads to an even more sex obsessed culture and so on and so on. How do you convince people that the idea that it's "just" sex is harmful? Somehow I doubt this book is going to convince many people who didn't already agree so what can I say that would change people's minds? I can't advocate legislating it, passing a law that only married people can have sex. First of all because I think outlawing sex would be as ridiculous and ineffective as outlawing marijuana use has been, but more importantly because I don't think it would be right to say only married people can have sex unless people were legally allowed to marry anyone they wanted and that's not the case yet.
I'd say that the answer lies with parents but as Keanu Reeves (as Tod) said in Parenthood, "you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell you need a license to catch a fish! But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father", and the same holds true for mothers. Even if you have great parents who teach you all the right things about sex there's no guarantee. Circumstances intervene sometimes. What I said about girls being competitive, sometimes even the strongest, most well adjusted girls fall prey to that trap. Not to mention which people, especially kids, will almost never take anyone's word for something when they could find out for themselves.
I don't think I have any answers to this one. I don't think Carol Platt Liebau does either. All you can do is, if you have kids, teach them that sex is more than just physical and then hope. Hope that they listen and hope that in this one case they can learn from the mistakes of their predecessors rather than having to make their own.
posted by Beth at
8:16 PM
2 Comments:
One thing that's important to remember when thinking about when people should do it is that teenage sex was not invented in the 80's. Up until pretty recently, it was normal to be married in one's early teens. Teen pregnancy (within wedlock at least) was normal until very recently.
I recently watched "Schlock: the secret history of American B movies", something every really cultured person should do, and one of the B-movie directors commenting on his "Teenagers from Mars" or something like that said something like " I think it's the first time the word 'teenager' appeared in a movie title'" this was in the 1950's.
The idea of a teenager is a totally new thing. Before teenagers were invented (in the 1950's) there were just kids and grownups. And adulthood started at 14 or 13 or something depending on where you were.
So when we talk about how teenagers are having sex now, we should keep in mind that they have always done that, and that they have more often than not been encouraged to do it. So teenagers not having sex is actually the new and different development of modern culture.
I'm a little drunk, okay more than a little, but I think I'm still going to stand by all that I've commented here when I'm sober.
You make a good point except that when teens were encouraged to get married and have sex young that was sex for procreation. What the book Prude is, and I am, discouraging is teens, or anyone really, having sex just for fun. Not that I don't think sex is fun or that people shouldn't enjoy it or should only do it for procreation, I'm just saying that fun shouldn't be the only reason and it often is, especially when it's kids doing it. Now it seems like people don't understand that there's more to it than just geting off. Just like people in the past didn't understand that there was more to it than procreation and encouraged their kids (and/or forced them) to marry and procreate with someone approprite, in order to continue thier bloodlines or whatever, with complete disregard for love. I would argue that both the past attitude and the present one are bad.
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