Letters to the Editor
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You're all a bunch of prudes!
Sexuality is something that should be EMBRACED, not repressed. We should educate children about sexuality from the youngest ages, even kindergarten. That way they know their decision to sleep with as many people as possible is "okay", and that there is nothing to be ashamed of. Enough with the Christian theocracy this country has become.
Eliminate the age of consent!
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Age 15 isn't that abnormal
According to a 2002 CDC study on sexual behavior [www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/ad/361-370/ad362.htm],
Among American men:
Age.........Percentage who have had vaginal intercourse
15 .........25
16 .........37
17 .........46
18 ......... 62
Among American women:
Age......... Percentage who have had vaginal intercourse
15 .........26
16 .........40
17 .........49
18 .........70
So while it may not be prurient to publicly speculate on _anyone's_ experience with vaginal intercourse, it wouldn't be particularly shocking if a 15-year-old young lady, immersed in Hollywood, had lost her virginity, much like one quarter of her peers.
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as long as sex is considered UNwholesome, this situation will always exist in some form, as it always has
if sexuality could be seen as a normal and appropriate process of development like any other process of physical and mental growth and maturity it might be possible for some sanity in this area. I'm not holding my breath.
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I GOT LOGICAL FALLACY BINGO!
Courtesy of kufir77's last post! For just one paragraph, man, that's impressive.
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To Amity
"Not to mention stern declarations about how "losing your virginity sucks" — why not add a finger wag and a "young lady" at the end?"
"losing your virginity sucks" wasn't meant as a deterrent to young girls,it was meant as a declaration. As in, it's never as good as it's built up to be and can be painful; the first time is usually a little bit of a letdown.
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"Losing your virginity sucks."
you're not doing it right.
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geekgirl on deterrent and declaration
"losing your virginity sucks" wasn't meant as a deterrent to young girls,it was meant as a declaration.
Fair enough. It's still a sweeping generalization, though, and in a sense an idealization. "Losing your virginity never meets your expectations." The sordid impurity of deflowerment. The "letdown."
In other words, it's still about fetishizing virginity. Not everyone has such high expectations of their "first time!" Not everyone feels let down.
Negatizing the entire experience (or whatever the opposite of idealizing is) only contributes to the very depersonalization against which Rogers' article is supposedly inveighing.
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Britney is the what?
"teenage Lolita of middle-aged men's dreams"??? Give me a break. At least some of us - middle aged men that is - never saw her as that. We just saw a bunch of lame marketing ploys wrapped around a teenage girl. I would not place her in any fantasy, but rather in, say, the "person I would least like to be stuck next to on a long plane flight" sort of nightmare.
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oh no, I find myself agreeing with Electro Robot
I never agree with Electro Robot. But he's right, you guys must be doing something wrong.
I was fifteen. I had a great time. I would make a terrible candidate for an after school special because I didn't learn a lesson, didn't catch an std, didn't have a pregnancy scare, didn't learn that boys don't respect girls who put out... I just had an orgasm, and he treated me like a goddess, before and after.
I did it in my own house (my mother had previously told me that parking in strange places to make out was dangerous and she wanted me safely home, where I would be allowed as much privacy as I needed), with appropriate birth control, and I loved him a lot but knew on some level that I had no intention of being with him for all eternity, and that was okay. We both knew on the front end what parts went where, and what we didn't know, we had a lot of fun figuring out.
What the heck is wrong with Americans that makes most of them so fucked up about young people and sexuality? None of the Europeans I know are like that. The Europeans expect that teenagers are having sex, and having pretty good sex at that. Germany actually has an enlightened age of consent... 14... with a built-in caveat that a 14-year-old cannot consent to make it with a much older person, the partner must be 20 or younger.
The privacy (or lack of it) of our celebrities, now, that's a different matter. It's about time we stop letting the paps hide behind the First Amendment and point out that hovering in a helicopter over someone's house or pointing a camera up someone's skirt isn't speech, it's behavior. It's behavior which wouldn't be tolerated if the victim were a private citizen. Arrest the whole lot of 'em as peeping Toms and stalkers. That would have a hidden up side... actresses might then be expected to become famous for talent, not for forgetting their underpants.
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Wait...
Negatizing? Seriously?
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ER
Based on another post, Electro Robot appears to be a woman... I apologize for my assumption.
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IF THESE CHILDREN
and their parents would just say, "no thanks, I don't think I care to parade around and be the stuff of middle-aged men's sex fantasies" then maybe we could get rid of some of the filth that has become America's Funniest Home Jailbait.
And because no one will mention it, what are these mothers thinking buying, literally and figuratively, into all this madness? We wonder why our children are kidnapped, raped, murdered, beaten, and brutalized by men who just love their child sex fantasies, and yet these mothers can't get them dress up like little whores fast enough!
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Hey Mr. Taliban, tally me bananas!
I'm not saying females should wear burqas, but how did we get from the Sexual Revolution to punishing 5 year old boys who kiss girls who ask them to?
Specifically, when will feminism both celebrate and respect male sexuality?
Why is it okay for women to wear whatever they want, however they want, for as long as they want, but verboten for men to look at whatever they want, whenever they want, for as long as THEY want?
If most communication is non-verbal, then what message do women send by picking and wearing sexually-provocative clothing? I'm not supporting prudishness. Just sick of the shaming that gets heaped on men for being sexual.
Would a female CEO expect to be taken seriously if she give a speech in a bikini? Then why think clothes don't matter?
We don't need a taliban, yet we have one: feminists who want to ban manhood. Where are the "womandatory" harassment courses that teach females how to behave around men?
It seems just about any abuse of males is tolerated, from making penis jokes to brushing boobs against men at work, then acting innocent.
Men get played for saps. Guys "know" when we're being provoked yet feel powerless to do anything about it since abuse is deemed male-initiated. After all, if men "have all the power," how can they be victims?
Of course men DON’T have “all the power.” The fact that feminists could promote such a myth and make it stick shows just how powerless men are. (Not to mention the fact that in a society that mocks male weakness, few guys are going to admit they are powerless. That’d be like asking girls if they’d like to study mathematics after showing them a picture of a prune-faced female scientist,)
Our feminist times are Victorian. Then piano legs were covered lest they "arouse" males. Now bars/clubs warn men not to take advantage of women who drink themselves into stupors and act like hoochies...instead of telling the women to drink responsibly.
Then again, "responsibility" is not in the feminist dictionary.
Finally, about middle-aged men fixating on Britney et alia. The tragedy of Nabokov's LOLITA was that young Humbert was not allowed to mourn (express feelings!) the death of his first love. His 14-year-old inner life got stunted. It was not allowed to grow like his outer shell. In middle-age he was drawn to Lolita because she reminded him of his unfinished emotional business.
I suspect older men who pine for younger women were not allowed to develop their sexuality naturally. They probably get drawn to what they missed out on. If that's true, what does that say about America and its hyper-fascination with sex?
If you want to sell a car in Biafra, you stick a bunch of chickens on the hood. Starving folks pine for poultry. In America, we sell cars...and pretty much everything else...by surrounding them with "hotties".
Which is to say, sated folks don’t obsess.
'Nuff said.