Best line: “Thanks to a society that no longer believes in healthy boundaries nor explains why they are important, students on college campuses are learning to be experts in infidelity; they are studying how to lie and cheat with their bodies and affections.”
by Viviana M Garcia
Students on college campuses are learning to lie with their bodies and affections, but some are working hard for change. Read more…
Caitlin Flanagan has an interesting article in the Atlantic. In it, she discusses the narrative some proponents of the sexual revolution had in mind when they promoted the new sexual morays to the next generation of girls. That narrative can be called “The Boyfriend Story.” What is the “Boyfriend Story”? It is “the gossamer-wrapped quest for true and perfect love.”
Flanagan describes how her mother was one of those who hoped her daughter would attain happiness via the “Boyfriend Story.” (Emphasis added).
[M]y mother became one of those kindly, kooky older ladies whose dedication to volunteering at Planned Parenthood bordered on the unseemly, given the distance between their age and their own need for the services provided. She was part of a generation of women who helped build an infrastructure not just of attitudes but of medical services (from birth control to abortion) rendered to teenage girls and built on a host of assumptions: that a girl is capable of great sexual desire, and that this desire should not cause her to lose her chance at an education or an independent life; that a huge number of modern mothers were committed to helping their daughters incorporate sexual lives within a normal teenage girlhood, one in which sex did not cleave the girl instantly and permanently from her home and her family. These mothers were willing to run as much interference as was needed to make these things possible—with dads, who tended not to be as enthusiastic about the prospect of a cherished daughter’s becoming sexual; with PTAs, which often balked at the kind of sex education these beliefs would require; with the long-entrenched double standard that said a boy could have sex and retain his good reputation, but a girl who went all the way was ruined. Read more…
I’m pretty sure a couple of movies have been made with topics similar to this. The difference here, of course, is this woman’s plan was not for the sake of comedic effect.
by Carolyn Moynihan
Maybe something is changing for the better out there among Generation Y. A British journalist in her early 30s has written a book about renouncing sex for a year in order to get control of her emotional life. It’s called Chastened. Read more…
Reality TV is a sewer. And I don’t just think that because I’m an EEEEEVIL right wing curmudgeon. Even the guy’s at the E! network television series The Soup think so.
[T]he show [The Soup] generally reinforces traditionalist values. Bear with me here. Admittedly, when partisan snipes sneak into the script, they’re usually aimed at Republicans. And yes, I’m aware that Keith Olbermann is a huge Soup fan, which does give me pause. Nevertheless, the vast majority of The Soup’s content features McHale flogging the entertainment industry for its gutter values. He repeatedly rips celebrities over their insufferable self-importance-a theme that conservatives can appreciate. (That McHale reserves a special brand of antipathy for Tyra Banks wins him extra points). He also blasts the depraved, over-sexed “stars” of reality shows who seem willing to jump into bed with whomever it takes just to extend their 15 minutes of fame by a few seconds. His frequent references to sexually transmitted diseases are always good for a chuckle, but they also subtly remind the audience of how disgusting promiscuity and its consequences can be. While many of these dreadful shows actually celebrate the ignorance of those who appear on them, McHale will have none of it; Read more…
This article from the Georgetown Hoya could be considered appalling. (I think that is approximately the view of my friend Tony Listi, who called it to my attention.) I think it is highly instructive. (Listen to me shift into Professor mode: sorry, I can’t help it.) This author who frets about “recycling” an old hook-up, is actually illustrating that the “organic” approach to human sexuality is truer to the facts than is the “consumer” approach.
First, some definition of terms: “recycling” means having sex with a hook-up partner a second time. Read more…
Right on! This is right up te same alley as what the Ruth Institute is doing with its It Takes a Family conferences and with Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s Smart Sex book.
by Carolyn Moynihan
CNN has run a story on the movement among college students to shun the hook-up culture prevalent on campuses and encourage dating and abstinence. Read more…
When Elizabeth Wurtzel was young and beautiful, she had her pick of men. And, it seems, from her article in Elle Magazine (analyzed here by Stuart Schneiderman) she made some poor choices as to what to do with that gift of beauty. Rather than settle down with “Gregg,” whom she found boring, she pursued drama and excitement with a line of men unsuitable for her and unsuitable for marriage. Read more…
In the last week or so, Stuart Schneiderman has had a number of very good articles about hooking up. I keep kicking myself for not blogging on them. But his latest article is here.
Take a scene from Sunday morning campus life. A coed has embarked on a walk of shame. As she walks across the campus, dressed as she was for last night’s party, she knows that everyone knows what she was doing the night before.
Does she feel shame because she has done something wrong or because society has a negative attitude toward the free expression of female sexuality? Does she feel shame because she gave it away for free, thus, devalued her sexuality, or because society suffers from a Puritanical intolerance of women’s sexual pleasure?
From there, Schneiderman expertly spins out the issue in various angles. A must read.
Sean Hannity reports that #100 on his list of wasted stimulus money” $219,000 on an academic study of female hook-up patterns at Syracuse University. Note that the professor/principle investigator explains that hooking up is a public health problem, or at the very least, correlated with public health problems. Why, then, do we not discourage hooking up, the way we discourage smoking and driving without seat belts? Instead of spending “stimulus money” to study a preventable public health problem, why not do something to actually prevent the preventable public health problem?
Remember yesterday’s post about Sex Week at Yale? Why aren’t the administrators at Yale taxed for their share of the public health costs they are creating? (This calls to mind a bigger problem: no one makes any money from people living chaste monogamous life-styles, whereas somebody makes money from each and every problem that flows from non-monogamous sex….)
My colleague Jamie Gruber found this and posted it over at the Ruth Youth blog.
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