Letters to the Editor

• Why People Can't Admit Their Kids are Having Sex

  [Read the article: Condoms, condoms everywhere]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Actually - most people don't care if their sons are having sex, in a kind of 'don't ask, don't tell, and don't leave any evidence like an unwanted child' kind of way. It's the daughters that are the problem - most parents can't bear the idea of their daughter having a pre-marital sex, much less a pre-marital sex life. Fathers think, I remember what *I* was like at that age, and I don't want my daughter to be the victim of the kind of sex-starved cretin *I* was. They never stop to think maybe it's their son's behavior that needs modificaiton, oh no - let's just put the fear of God into the daughters, and their potential suitors. Much easier to condemn a whole gender to a lifetime of sexual neuroses then try to correct any inherent unfairness in the traditional value of "boys who do it are just being boys, girls who do it are being sluts."

  Society glorifies the sexual attractiveness of nubile young women...but always with said young women in passive roles. Imagine if those girls stopped being passive, and seized on their sexual power. Oh my God! The world as we know it really *would* end, and a new world would take it's place - a world where young women chose male sex partners on the basis of their own criteria, vs. waiting for the male gaze to reassure them of their attractiveness (and therefore, worthiness) and ignite/release them from the chains of virginity. If girls seized control of the proprietorship of their own bodies, well, sex with them would no longer be made out to be this incredibly sepcial, too-hot-to-imagine experienece the media portrays. It would just be normal, common, unremarkable. In other words, normal. Like boys.

  In this vein, parents and conservatives are terrified that if they provide easy access to condoms and STD information, their girls will lose any inhibitions they have about sex. As if the condoms are like Cokes - you see one behind the vending glass and think "Bobby's been pressuring me for sex but I'm not sure I'm ready yet but hey look - I can buy a condom (and a Moon Pie) for 50 cents! Let's get down!" Actually, there shouldn't be anything 'wrong' with this attitude - we don't do much in this society to suppress or admonish boys with this attitude, so why not allow girls the same latitude? But responsibly speaking, most intelligent people can agree that it's better our children approach sex with a sense of responsibility to their own emotional and physical health. And readily available condoms will not inhibit this sense of responsibility, but rather promote it.

  I'm sure many conservative men wonder why their wives don't have orgasms, or wish they wren't in a sexless marriage, consider straying if they are, and are outraged when their wives do the same. Funny how no one ever connects these adult sexual dysfunctionalities to the pressure we put on our girls to be 'good', while boys are given free rein to explore their sexuality naturally. Do people really believe that girls who have been pressured to be the ones to say 'no', to think of themselves as bad and slutty if the 'give in', to fear that the word will get out when they *do* give in & thus have their reputations destroyed, and to bear all the burden of pregnancy/fear of pregnancy...do people really believe these girls will somehow be magically transformed, when they've reached some illusory safe adult age, into responsible albeit raging nymphos ready and willing to please the man in their lives? Do men just not see the connection between the early sexual suppression of girls and the epidemic of adult women with low libido and inability to orgasm?

  Coke machines might well be contributing to making kids fat. Condom machines won't be making kids any more sexually active than they would have already been - they will simply be contributing to making such activity safer, and lending a much-needed patina of adult respsonsibility to the decision. How can that be anything but good?

  Permalink Thursday, February 16, 2006 11:17 AM