Letters to the Editor
Leeandra Nolting
Published Letters: 177 Editor's Choice: 10
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um, no...
[Read the article: Caitlin Flanagan is ba-ack!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ideally, we shouldn't be "liberating" young women to behave as young men have (at least in this country, at least in this past century) been expected to--that is, to get a wide variety of sexual experience as soon as possible, or at least before the age of twenty. Ideally, we ought to be raising the standard for young men.
Teen sex isn't "inevitable," nor is it inevitable that teenage boys are more interested in sex than girls--we just perceive it that way. On the first, look at the modern Asian nations such as Japan--you'll find that most kids--girls AND boys--are virgins throughout the equivalent of high school. Do Japanese kids have fewer hormones and less exposure to the media, or not fall in and out of love like American kids do? Somehow I doubt it.
And as for the "boys will be boys" mantra, look at the literature and attitudes of the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Back then it was the GIRLS who were thought to be hornier (and this isn't some medieval Church paranoia--stuff like Boccacio's "The Decameron" was meant as secular entertainment). And pregnancy and childbearing often meant a horrible, painful death in those days...and you know THOSE girls were well aware of the risks.
Yes, we ought to be supporting teenage mothers and not ostracizing them. And we ought to not tell kids outright LIES about contraception in the name of "promoting abstinence." But shouldn't we be "promoting abstinence" among high school kids anyway? Does anybody really think it's a good idea for 14- to 18-year-olds to be having sex?
How to go about this, though, without a religious affliation: an interesting take on this is in Viktor Frankl's "The Doctor and the Soul," in which he advises that the doctor (or teacher, or whoever is in charge of sex education) must both have the moral trust of and moral trust in the student, and to advise them to only enter into a sexual relationship with someone they truly love--and by "truly love", they must be willing to put the other person's needs before their own. Because of the risk of a life-derailing pregnancy, that would for most high school kids mean delaying having sex (or at least the kind of sex that would make babies--I'm not quite sure how the good doctor would have dealt with the question of oral and anal sex;).
Of course, this would mean that teachers would have to have few enough students to actually have meaningful interactions with them, and would have to be idealistic enough themselves to capitalize on teenage idealism about love...
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in all fairness...
[Read the article: Caitlin Flanagan is ba-ack!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In Japan, rates of teen sex have roughly DOUBLED in the past fifteen years...though they are still about half of what American rates are (and teenage birth rates are roughly one-seventh--possibly in part due to no moral stigma being attached to abortion). Doctors and social workers over there are attributing this sudden spike to a combination of factors:
1. a traditional culture in which talking about sex is taboo.
2. children who do not accept the traditional mores of their parents' culture, and parents who turn a blind eye to this.
3. a huge influx of Western TV and movies in which casual sex is treated as the norm, coupled with the idea among teenagers that anything "American" is cooler than anything "Japanese."
4. a recent, well-known "schoolgirl" fetish, in which it is considered desirable for/by young women to act like stereotypical porn stars while wearing their traditional sailor-suit school uniforms. (Japanese parents and teachers are not happy about this trend crossing over from anime to real life).
Sound familiar?
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interesting...
[Read the article: The great pantsuit debate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I personally don't care what other women wear. I prefer to wear knee-length skirts for work (I work in art sales) because I'm on commission and I sell more to both men and women, both straight and gay/lesbian, when I'm wearing a skirt.
But I'd be damned if I would like my boss telling me I had to.
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vagina dentata...
[Read the article: "Teeth"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Um, don't guys spend approximately 98% of their waking hours trying to figure out how to put their dicks where most women DO have teeth?
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the pro-legalization crowd...
[Read the article: The economics of prostitution]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...likes to point towards the Netherlands as a society that isn't sexually repressed because it accepts prostitution. To which I'd always argue, why, if prostitution is just another job over there, are most of the "girlies in the windows"
1. Eastern European
2. Thai or Vietnamese
3. African
4. West Indian
You don't see that many girls from middle-class Dutch homes going into the business.
Do I know whether it should be legal or not? No. But you can't argue it's the same as a dancer using her feet to make a living (even if she does destroy them with pointe shoes in the process). With prostitution, you are selling not your body, but a process of your body that either God or evolution designed TO MAKE MORE HUMANS.
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thank you!
[Read the article: Why I hate partner yoga]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The yoga guru is right on the money about American yoga classes being the equivalent of genuflecting to disco music.
This would be why, unlike what seems like every other woman in America, I don't do yoga. Even without the idiocy that is "partner yoga," what's taught as "yoga" in America generally isn't yoga. It's a cannibalization and misrepresentation of Hindu WORSHIP, and although I am not a Hindu, I think that the religious traditions of others should be respected.
If you want to do the postures/breathing excersizes to improve strength, flexibility, relaxtion...fine. But it's NOT YOGA, and don't call it what it is not.
(BTW, very little of Tantric Yoga has to do with spicing up your sex life, either.)