Do you ever get tired of talking about sex?

[holdouttrout]

I haven't yet. ;-)

I clicked on this article about the different attitudes liberal and conservative people have toward sex. It's pretty interesting, and right on the money, I think.



It brings up some weird memories for me--memories of the books I read back when I was an adolescent, including at least two published through Focus on the Family. Memories of abstinence-only and "abstinence-plus" education. It's weird how jarring I find some of that information now. I really believed that sex before marriage was always bad, and that abortion was worse. Getting pregnant as a teenager was bad, but mostly only because it meant you'd had sex outside of marriage. I got glimpses of how hard it was to be a teenage mom from a couple of people I knew who had gotten pregnant, but then, they'd had sex, and you weren't supposed to do that.

It's a callous way of looking at teen pregnancy, and I definitely don't think it says much for my ability to think outside of the box at the time.

Conservatives have this idea of, "If you would only listen to me, everything would be fine!" That's what abstinence-only education is. They either don't realize or don't care that people will do their own thing, regardless of what they say, and further, that some people actually hear what they're saying and disagree with them.

I'm not convinced they're convinced teens are people, either. Looking back on my time as a teenager, I'm amazed at what I thought, how I thought about myself, and how much I've changed from that time. Adult Trout would not say the same things or do the same things as Teenager Trout. However, I recognize that I was still a whole person. I had some crazy ideas about love and life and I hadn't really *thought* about some things because they seemed obvious to me, but I generally knew what I was doing.

For too long, the conventional wisdom has been that social conservatives are the upholders of family values, whereas liberals are the proponents of a polymorphous selfishness. This isn't true, and, every once in a while, liberals might point that out.

On the other hand, liberals often think of conservatives as naive, unintellectual people who are just hiding from reality, and I don't think that's true, either. Conservatives don't *like* reality. They have an entirely different set of values, and would greatly prefer everyone else to hold those values, too. After all, if everyone believed the same way they did, wouldn't everyone be better off? Kids wouldn't get conflicting messages about sex--they'd just stay abstinent (because, after all, no kid would experiment with sex if the evil media wasn't telling him to). People wouldn't get abortions, because they'd stay abstinent outside of marriage, and there's no other reason to get an abortion. People wouldn't get divorced, because people...wouldn't get divorced. They'd obviously get along, because God would help them. Or something. Men wouldn't hit their wives, because men never hit their wives unless they live in an evil culture.

I was trying to find the logic here, because I'm sure there must be some here somewhere. Never mind. I give up.

Comments

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

The lesson: human beings give you diseases and parasites. Wear a condom.

Also, gay sex won't get you pregnant.

[fearless-leader.livejournal.com]

true, and true.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Also, gay sex won't get you pregnant.

But that just makes it worse! Unnatural!

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

You know what's unnatural? Cheese in a can. I think it should be outlawed.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

No kidding. Can't we all agree on that?

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

EZ cheese is anathema to society!

[gdwatson.livejournal.com]

Unnatural but oh so tasty. You need to get the "sharp chedder," though, so that it at least pretends to be *cheese-flavored*.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Your opinion has been noted...you heretic.

[splash-the-cat.livejournal.com]

HERESY! BLASPHEMY! *clings to can of EZ Cheeze*

[bulky-monster.livejournal.com]

EZ cheese leads to the FIRES OF HELL! Renounce your ways!

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Interesting article. I think what really stood out at me was the huge difference between what the groups wanted to create and what they did - why are the members of that conservative, pro-marriage, pro-abstinence group having sex younger and getting divorced more and having more teenage pregnancies?

The "middle-class morality" in that article actually fits me and how I was raised to a T. When I turned 9 my mom gave me some books and told me about sex, and I got older-appropriate books as I aged. I had pretty good sex edn in 8th grade and 10th grade as part of health class - here's how reproductive systems work, here's what STD's here, here's forms of birth control and ways to protect against STDs and how well they work, and abstinence is the only way to ensure you stay 100% safe.

In 6 years of Hebrew school and time with a teenage Jewish youth group and such...never once was sex mentioned. Never once were we told what was appropriate for our behavior. The only advice my mom ever gave me, after I started college, was not to have sex until I was capable (emotionally, financially, situationally) to deal with the possibility of becoming pregnant.

I think what always throws me about reading about things like purity balls and stuff is that "these people" who seem so against sex are also so incredibly focused on it. It feels like they think about it and talk about WAY more than I experiences in my liberal upbringing.

On the other hand, liberals often think of conservatives as naive, unintellectual people who are just hiding from reality, and I don't think that's true, either. Conservatives don't *like* reality. They have an entirely different set of values, and would greatly prefer everyone else to hold those values, too

Well, first off, liberals spend plenty of time not liking reality and trying to force their view of a better reality on the world.

Second off, isn't it naive? Isn't it naive to keep pushing abstinence-only education when study after study after study proves it doesn't work? Won't people who are married need that information too, anyway? I mean, you keep falling off the horse and maybe you should see if there's something wrong with how you're riding?

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that there's a threshold at which kids who commit to purity end up losing the positive effect of making that pledge. It only works if it's something you really want to do, despite opposition. *g*

I wonder if people who do the pledges realize that the more kids who take them, the more damaging to the premise in the long run?

Purity balls the way the articles talk about them creep me out. Father/Daughter dates that are more about spending time with dad don't.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I hadn't expected that threshold. I mean it makes sense that it has to be something you really want to do - odds are those people would have waited without the ball or pledge. I was amused that they only wanted to keep it if it kept them "different" - oh, teenage rebellion and humanity's needs to be "unique" and "repressed"

I doubt the runners realize, or would change anything if they did.

YES. Fathers taking an interest in their daughters is a good thing. Fathers obsessing over their daughter's virginity freaks me out. Also, two people are involved with sex - why don't they have the same level of purity enforcement on the boys? That always pisses me off.
(I think purity balls partly bother me because of the implication that a daughter's virginity belongs to her father - too close to daughter as property to be sold to the best bidder)

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

why don't they have the same level of purity enforcement on the boys?

I don't know! Actually, I have many theories about this. One is that no one expects guys to be able to pull it off. Two is that there's a lot of "Well, girls are responsible for the reactions they get from boys because of how they dress/act." (Which I believe is partly true, though I wish someone had told me when I was a teenager that duh, the guy is ultimately responsible for what he chooses to do.) Three is that, honestly, a guy's purity just isn't that big of a deal in our culture. It's a very stupid double standard.

(For instance, a girl who sleeps around is a slut. A boy who sleeps around has poor self-control.)

I definitely remember hearing the same rhetoric used for guys in my church groups, just not to the same effect.

And, holy cow on the purity ball thing, because YES. Talk about holding up virginity itself as a sort of commodity belonging to a man instead of a woman herself.

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of my theology professor in college who scoffed at the attitudes toward sex that were prevalent at my (oh so very, very, very socially conservative Christian) college: the message, he said, seemed to be "sex is dirty; save it for the one you love."

But I do understand why people are trying to advocate what they're trying to advocate. And sometimes it works out fabulously; I know lots of very happy people who did it all in textbook evangelical fashion. But there are also lots of people for whom the world just doesn't work that way.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

"sex is dirty; save it for the one you love."

In my experience, the people talking to us bent over backwards to avoid saying that sex itself was dirty. It was sex outside of marriage that was the problem. Looking back, I'm not sure it's all that helpful to the majority of kids hearing it. I was pretty damn brainwashed, though. *g*

Even if you believe the message, things might still not work out for you.

[nandamai]

Have you seen The Education of Shelby Knox? It's excellent.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

I have not, but the article made me want to pick it up. *adds to queue*

[mayogate.livejournal.com]

I'm not tired of it yet.

What about this one - loosely related - I read it yesterday:

Slightly lower-brow than yours though *shrugs*

http://boards.msn.com/UKNewsboards/thread.aspx?ThreadID=829851

xx

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I think we do need to take responsibility for the impact we're having on the Earth, and I'm not sure what the answer is--we're sort of programmed to have lots of children, at least biologically. The big problem I see with population restrictions is that they impose upon people's moral consciences as well as their biological imperative. It's sort of untenable either way.

[poetressforgod.livejournal.com]

I do get tired of talking about sex (does that mean I fit the blue model :) ), but this article was more interesting than most.

Two quotes that stuck out to me:

"the high point in the life cycle for risk-taking and experimentation"
If I was reading that correctly, they were talking about the mid-20s for women. Which is funny to me as that is TOTALLY TRUE for me. I am far mroe willing to take risks now than I ever was as a teen, and more inclined to do typical "rebellious teen" things than I ever was before. Hell, I almost got a tatoo on my vacation! Also, that goes the same for my "sexual urges". I might have had more raging hormones as a teen, but I was far less likely to do anything about them.

"Rather than spending our unmarried years stewarding and disciplining our desires, we have become ashamed of them. We persuade ourselves that the desires themselves are horrible. This can have real consequences if we do get married." Teenagers and single adults are "told over and over not to have sex, but no one ever encourages" them "to be bodily or sensual in some appropriate way"--getting to know and appreciate what their bodies can do through sports, especially for girls, or even thinking sensually about something like food. Winner goes on, "This doesn't mean, of course, that if only the church sponsored more softball leagues, everyone would stay on the chaste straight and narrow. But it does mean that the church ought to cultivate ways of teaching Christians to live in their bodies well--so that unmarried folks can still be bodily people, even though they're not having sex, and so that married people can give themselves to sex freely."
I would say that learning to have physical contact with friends and family without it having to be sexual would be a part of that list. I wish I could have done more interactions with my own body, and i probablly still should, learn what it likes and dislikes and what it can do. You know, yoga or something. They spend a lot of time doing stuff like that in acting 2 I hear. Also, I'm not sure that I have any real idea how to be sensual without it being sexual. Also also, I defintly belonged to the group the bought into the idea that the the desires themselves are bad. While my friends (and therefore myself) would have been more of the Reds that is described in the article, I think my mom was much more Blue. I got sex education starting in 4th grade, every year through 10th. And I have the feeling Mom would have responded more Blue-like if I ever had been having sex: She probablly would have take me to the doctor and gotten me birth control. A comment she made this last trip makes me actually think my mom might be worried that I am almost 25 and still am not having sex. How's that for a twist?

Uh, anyways, that was probably more than anyone needed to know....

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I'm WAY more daring now than I was as a teen. :-)

I'm not sure that I have any real idea how to be sensual without it being sexual.

I think that is somewhat of a cultural thing. I'm not quite sure how one could be divorced from the other, either. ;-)

A comment she made this last trip makes me actually think my mom might be worried that I am almost 25 and still am not having sex. How's that for a twist?

I find it funny, personally, and I think it really does start to become an issue. "Oh, no. What if the reason my child hasn't had sex yet is because there's something wrong with him/her?"

[gdwatson.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for evangelicals as a group, but as an evil, sex-hating conservative, I can speak for myself. :-P I will start by saying that most abstinence education and such is awful, and that this is based largely in the patronizing attitude that we as a society (liberal and conservative alike, though on different issues) have toward teenagers; I agree that teenagers need to be treated like real people, but I doubt that our current institutions are capable of that.

"Conservatives have this idea of, 'If you would only listen to me, everything would be fine!'"

I'd settle for "everything would be better." I don't think we can do fine, given fallen man and all. And of course I know that people disagree with me about moral issues; if there is a transcendent morality (and no relativistic set of principles can really be called morality), then someone is wrong. Obviously, I hold the principles I do because I believe them to be correct, so I must conclude that the people who disagree with me are wrong. I might (and often do) respect them as people, but I can't simply assume that everyone's views are equally valid-- they can't be.

I'm not under any delusion that in a conservative utopia extramarital sex would go away. Social pressure might make it less common, as would moral consensus-- but it's not going away. I'm not entirely sure how that relates to abortion, however, and I think that may be why the blue commentators are mystified at the reaction to the young Miss Palin. She should not have slept with her boyfriend, no, but that's done. She now has a baby to consider, one toward whom she and her now-fiance have great responsibilities, and accepting those responsibilities in the face of the difficulties that will clearly come is admirable.

There, I think, lies the crux of the abortion issue: Does the fetus have the rights pertaining to personhood? If yes, then abortion is virtually never permissible. If no, the most one can reasonably ask for it is anesthesia. The question of abortion is not, fundamentally, about sex.

As for sex, I think many difficulties would be reduced (not eliminated, clearly) if people were to marry at younger ages than they now do here. For a number of reasons, it's not socially or economically wise for most Americans to marry at eighteen or so.

</diatribe>

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

I found the whole article fascinating because I come from a background that social conservatives fear/denegrate/abhor, and the result was reasonably close to what they want.

My parents divorced when I was young, so during my teen years I lived with my mother and stepfather (a Palestinian MOSLEM no less!), and visited with my father, who had divorced his third wife, and was living with his girlfriend. My parents are both liberals, who made sure I had a thorough sex education, and made it clear to me that it was my decision when, where, and with whom, but that having me young (they were 20 and 22 respectively when they had me) had been difficult, and that if I became pregnant, it could seriously limit my options in life, particularly since as the mother I would bear more social pressure to derail or delay my career for the sake of the baby. Both my parents are pro-choice, and vocal about it.

So I went off to college a virgin, in part because I didn't want to limit my options, and in part because in 1976 most boys (not all!) were a little leery of dating someone that was as bright or brighter than they were and not willing to pretend otherwise. And I met a boy, and sophomore year at the end of the year, he and I discovered each other. We discussed contraception, discussed what we would do if it failed (we both are pro-choice but could not abort a child of our own, even if it meant raising a child with Downs Syndrome, or delaying our graduations), and waited until our chosen method was effective and moved in together our junior year, and graduated Sunday (him), Monday (me), and married (Tuesday). That was in 1980.

So here I am, a liberal, from a liberal background, married to one man for 28 years. That would be the boy I lost my virginity to 30 years ago. We have two VERY PLANNED biological children and two children adopted out of foster care (because we think we're good people, but not so wonderful that we get a free ticket to overpopulate the planet just because we want a larger family). Isn't this close to what the Evangelicals want?

Our biological children (23 & 19) have thus far been doing as we did, and waiting for that right one to come along, in spite of all the sex education we've given them, because they seem to agree with us that it is simpler to not have to worry about bringing a long and varied sexual history to the marriage bed, and because they seem to have listened when we said that if they were not capable of discussing contraception with their partner and their doctor,and acting responsibly and with the expectation that they would deal maturely with the consequences of contraceptive failure, they weren't mature enough for sex. The other two are 13 and 6, and time will tell with them. We have an intact nuclear family, and will be together until my husband or I die. We have a plan. We're going to check out at the age of 208, in our sleep, together, sharp as tacks, but finally ready to rest!;)

Our secular humanist nuclear family has (so far ) produced one social conservative Republican soon-to-be-Catholic (23) one secular humanist agnostic (19), a Goth-but-I-bet-this-won't-last (13), and a questioner-of-all-authority who will probably always do so(6), and two fogeys (us, 50). What a strange ride it is.