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Read other letters about this article
@ kryptogal
BUT, the fact of the matter is that your daughters are really just making a rational calculation based on what they see around them. If they follow your advice and become, say, a scientist, they will get to live an average middle class life and probably marry a similar guy. And they'll have to work really hard to do that. If, on the other hand, they became a successful model, they would live a life of fabulous riches, fabulous travel, fabulous men, and lots and lots of POWER. Without having to do virtually any work. Is it really so shocking they would go for the latter? People aren't saints. They will usually strive to obtain the most power for the least effort.
This is, as you say, sad but true, and it's a reason why some parents homeschool. My reasons were a bit different, but I'm well aware that our lives would be less pleasant if we didn't spend more time with like-minded people or on activities we enjoy than we do absorbing pop culture. I unplugged the cable a long time ago. Everyone is much happier.
It's hard to do, though, because it means giving up the rewards of pop culture for yourself, too. Not watching TV means being left out of a lot of conversations. Thankfully, it also gets you into a lot, and I like those better, but I'm well aware that there's a sacrifice or two to be made. There always is. A.K.A. Smith is right. Most parents don't unplug the cable because they can't live without it.
My parents also unplugged the TV when I was a kid, and although it made school even worse than it might have been, as an adult, I'm glad. They did me a huge favor, one I'm passing on to the next generation.
@ dick dworkin
I suspect that anonymous2s son is less thrilled with the asexual world they are living in than she is or that she thinks he is
Not at all. First of all, he's in his early teens, not his late teens. Sex would be premature at his age, no matter where he was getting his education. In a few years things will change, but right now, he'd still rather play Mario Kart.
He also has a stepbrother a bit older than he is, and gets a ringside seat to high school social games. He wants none of it. He's still at an age where he bathes reluctantly with soap and water. Bathing in Axe so as to compete with every other boy who's bathing in Axe isn't his idea of fun.
You seemed to have missed a crucial piece of my description of him: he's a computer nerd in desperate need of orthodontic work. If you think he would be popular in school, you have another think coming.
Every so often, I ask him if he'd like to go to school. We have some good ones here, and he even has friends in a few of them. Every time, he says no.
Now ironically, you also said this: Isn't it just possible that people would have a better chance to develop all of their abilities in a balanced way if instead of fighting a war against sex and sexuality everyone involved, parents and kids, could acknowledge reality.
This is, actually, why I homeschool. I have a kid with exceptional talent in an unpopular area and low-average talent in a more popular one. I pulled him specifically so that he could develop in his own way, without having to scale back on his strengths or over-push on his weaknesses in order to meet the latest educational trends.
As an added plus, he's also developing outside of the adolescent sexual-social hierarchies that develop in larger, unrestricted schools, which we're seeing here can be extremely damaging to both sexes.
A boy in his early teens who's a computer geek who will spend his entire teen years either with severely crooked teeth or braces is not being picked on by other boys or ignored by girls, and you have a problem with this? You think he's stifled or unhappy?
As the boy himself would say, ROFL.
I'll bet most women against pornography/prostitution are e.g. also pro-lifers.
I'd like to know the answer to that too, it certainly seems like it isn't true, or at least hasn't been true in the past, of the high profile public speakers on the subject. It's true that that isn't necessarily a good guide to who thinks what.
As someone who spends way too much time around hard-line Right-wingers, I can say that it's probably true that most of the devoted anti-porn and anti-prostitution folks are on the Right. They want to save sex not just for marriage, but for heterosexual marriage sans birth control. Anything else is unacceptable.
It sounds like a joke, but they're quite serious about it and have been doing a lot of quiet but effective work behind the scenes for years.
