In which I disagree with Violet Blue about teenagers and sex...

[elfs]

Violet Blue has an article, Sex Ed in the UK is Actually About Sex, in which she praises the UK National Institute of Health for actually telling kids that the reason people have sex is because it feels good:

I keep saying it over and over, but besides my 'abstinence is harmful' message that's starting to be heard, the fundamentals of sex ed fail because they're always (hysterically) avoiding the truth: that sex happens because it feels good. It's pleasurable on a lot of levels – that's why we go ecstatically crazy doing it when we get the chance to enjoy it. My fundamental belief is that sex ed needs to be taught by both scientific principles (health, reproduction) and by pleasure principles – so people of all ages can understand WHY they want to do the things they do.

But I have to disagree in part with Violet's statement that "sex happens because it feels good." I am reminded of an important article that appeared in the New Yorker, Red Sex, Blue Sex, in which the author shows that, for example, evangelical teenage girls are the most likely to engage in premarital sex that leads to pregnancy and the least likely to believe that sex will be pleasurable. (Jewish girls, oddly enough, are the opposite: they hold off their "sexual debut" the longest of any group and yet they're most likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable when they finally do it.)

Most of them become sexually active because (now agreeing with Violet) they don't know anything about it, even as the boy, who probably knows only that little bit more about wanting tab A into slot B, is pressuring them, and they're too embarrassed to admit that they don't know anything about it to put on the brakes. Shame and embarrassment, not desire or anticipation of pleasure, are the most common emotions young women feel up to and after their first sexual encounter.

The New Yorker article is a fascinating exploration of why evangelical girls get pregnant a lot and why that's actually "okay" (in some sense) to most evangelicals: straying from the abstinence-only message is an expected, venal sin that ultimately adds to the congregation. It's such a weird, mindfucked world, I'm glad I'm not part of it.

Comments

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

That comports with my experience as a Roman Catholic from a very devout household, but I have nothing further.

As recently as last night, I was commenting that I saw no reason that my sexual orientation should affect how I select life partners. This is both true and un-true. The current position of secular America is that you should have a strong sexual and romantic attraction to anyone you're considering living your life with.

However, I consider this demonstrably wrong as given by the current divorce rate — rather, people should select partners, if their goal is Traditional Nuclear Family, based on shared background and similar goals as well as some basic level of personality compatibility (so that shared goals are achieved, rather than destroyed by constant argument), rather than any sexual or romantic interest.

Sexual partners and romantic affairs should be lived entirely at the mandates of the genitalia and heart as mediated by the brain. What is basically a hormonal reaction is probably not the best way to select persons with whom you'd like to live, share finances and rear children. (If the only goal is conception and then rearing a child alone, I revise my position, but only slightly, as I've rarely seen any evidence that it works.)

Not a popular position, I'll grant, but it works for me, and interestingly seems to work for the French reasonably well (insofar that they report extramarital affairs of greater duration and rarity, but that such do not lead to divorce).

Data point: 27 year old female, living in Cambridge, Mass. Married twice, both times in both religious and secular sense. First marriage occurred at age 18 to a 22-year-old male during my military service, to extend military benefits to spouse and then step-daughter, with a view to adopting stepdaughter, which occurred within the year. Issue: two daughters, one aforementioned adopted, one biological (planned conception requiring fertility treatment). Divorce followed at age 22, after 1 year's separation. Second marriage occurred at age 25 to a 23-year-old male after long-term cohabitation, with a view to stabilising and ensuring legal rights for both partners as well as legitimising step-father / step-daughter relationship. However, Kinsey attraction has held at 4 by history and 5 by inclination since age 13, when loss of virginity occurred to an 18-year-old male.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Ah, but what you're suggesting would require separating sexual gratification from emotional fulfillment from religious edicts. And it would also require approaching all of them with a level of rationality most sheeple are unwiling or incapable of.

Me? I believe that nobody should be getting married by the government. The state has no business monkeying with a religious sacrament. As for those 1300+ rights-n-responsibilities that heteros currently get through the one-stop-shopping of the state marriage license, split 'em up.

Make everyone have to sign all 1300+ legal documents. Make it clear to anyone tying the knot just what they're getting into. And, while they're at it, they can also sign contracts spelling out what would occur if the Happy Couple ever split up. Lawyers who currently specialize in divorce could then become Marriage Lawyers, profitting from people's joy instead of misery, a win-win for them.

As for those couples who couldn't afford to hire a "marriage attorney" themselves, let them use the one from their church. After all, churches have enough money to fund political campaigns. So they have more than enough to keep a marraige attorney on retainer. (evil gryn)

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[larinawarnock.livejournal.com]

As someone who had their first child at 16 and grew up in a semi-evangelical home, I agree with 90% of what you say here, but I think it leaves out the important point of the paradoxical environment that most girls in evangelical homes must reconcile. In an envangelical home, sex is dirty/sinful AND it is what you do for the man that you love. In fact, it is a duty to the man that you love. So while that young girl may not know anything about sex, they have been taught that it is the ultimate symbol of devotion to a male partner. And young girls are incredibly devoted, or believe that they are, or believe that they should be.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Which 90% of "Amen" do you agree with then? :-D

[(Anonymous)]

The part that starts with "In which I disagree with Violet Blue..." and ends with me looking sorta dumb for hitting the wrong reply button. Argh!

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

:-)

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

I find this point interesting.

As a devout Catholic young woman, I was not taught anything of sexuality. There was no pro-sex nor anti-sex message being taught.

In fact, I didn't even realise I'd been raped, or in fact, lost my virginity until well after the fact. I knew I'd been mistreated, but I didn't know exactly what men were equipped with, or what it looked like, or anything else, nor did I know the reproductive health process beyond the science of it — I didn't know what sex was, period.

And I was Internet aware, but this was 1995, getting Internet porn required UUdecode and I'd never cared, I was barely pubescent.

At any rate, I have severe fertility issues but was myself a teen-aged mother, getting involved with a gentleman of my acquaintance, four years older, that I'd met while waiting tables for a summer out of boredom. (Long story.) I met him when I was 16 and his daughter was 8 months old. We married when I was 18, I adopted his daughter six months after the marriage. (My elder daughter's mother has problems, though not ones that prevent contact — breaking off contact was due to these problems rather than a coercion towards adoption as young women often feel.)

Anyway, I had very intermittent cycles after menarche (which was itself abnormally early) and had been put on birth control pills to "regulate" the problem not long after my virginity was lost. I stopped using contraceptives at the time of marriage with the intent to conceive a sibling for my elder daughter quickly, and when six months passed with no result, I was prescribed Clomid.

So my two children were born when I was 15 (and coincidentally in my first week at college) and 19. (You can read my history above if you're interested.)

I became a teen-aged parenting activist, and regret none of it. I was acquainted with Allison Crews (http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/9731/when_i_was_garbage/) before her tragic passing a few years ago. She grew up in a fundamentalist household as well, and with her death, her son is now being reared in it. I wonder how he'll turn out.

I don't see sex as sinful or wrong or even really, well, that interesting in most cases. I think that had I not made choices I did as a teen-ager (to cross the railroad tracks, basically), I might have ended up in the missionary corps as a nun, as I am generally a very dispassionate person, and while I enjoy human company, I am not very intimate with people.

I've done this on my own terms, and both my husbands and I have gotten along quite well, as well as the various lovers I've taken over the years, but, well, I'm a bit of an ice queen. :shrug:

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

*sigh*

I just have to shake my head in disbelief.

It's sad. So many Str8s get their knickers in a knot about someone, "turning their child gay," yet they don't bother to teach those same kids about heterosexuality, preferring, instead, that the kids learn it off of the streets.

I mean, really, now!