I'm Not A Girl...

Truth be told, I'm no feminist, I'm not a parent, and I shouldn't even be on my high horse on this subject after posting so much about my celebrity crushes. But between that recent post from the Eminem fan, the saga of R. Kelly videotaping sex with a teenager, and some alarming statistics about sexuality among teenagers, I have to admit that I'm a little too worried about what we've been teaching our young people about sexuality... and other matters of the heart.

Look at the R. Kelly case, for example: Apparently the young woman in question was lured into his lair with promises of stardom - she wanted to be a singer, she wanted to meet celebrities - and he, being the big R&B star that he is, took advantage of this situation and turned it into a power play by telling the girl how pretty and sexy she is and how important it is for both of them to have sex. I don't want to get into more of the lurid details (the rest of the Internet is full of those) but the point is that there are men out there like Robert Kelly who will do anything and everything to take advantage of the vulnerability of young girls. And the fact that sex is being used as a leverage factor for "popularity" (especially with young men) still disturbs me to no end.

The point here being that society as a whole has yet to address the fact that we do not teach enough about the rules of trust and respect. Respect has nothing to do with sex or power, if it even can be helped.

I know that I didn't listen to my mother and my teachers when they all told me that "boys aren't everything in life," which still causes me trouble to no end. But I still marvel at the fact that I'm still one of the few women in my generation - among my parents' circle of acquaintances, that is - who didn't end up with a baby out of wedlock, or didn't get stuck in an unhappy marriage, as a result of chasing after some unattainable "romantic" ideal by being in a relationship. If anything, I think that I actually saved myself by making the lifestyle choices that I've made in the last few years - moving away from my parents and making a life for myself being the two most important ones.

So which lessons would you choose to take from all of this? (More on this issue will be addressed in an upcoming journal entry for Dangerous Days.)

Comments

The point here being that society as a whole has yet to address the fact that we do not teach enough about the rules of trust and respect.

And Rule #1 is to trust and respect yourself.

We can tell our young people "always do this" and "never do that." To a large extent that's necessary. But if we don't couple that with an effort to tell our young people that each of them is special in some way and to instill in them a strong sense of self, it's like taking an egg, painting it gray, and placing it in your rock garden. It looks OK at first glance, but will crack under the slightest pressure.

True trust and respect comes from within, having enough confidence in yourself that when temptation strikes, you can successfully withstand it not because some outside authority tells you to, but because you know in your own heart that it's not good for your own sense of well-being.

It sounds like a bleeding heart liberal argument, yes. But the manipulators (sexual or otherwise) are going to be out there and they're not going to go away. If we have a generation of young people who are strong on the inside, they won't be so easily manipulated, sexually or otherwise.

But I still marvel at the fact that I'm still one of the few women in my generation...who didn't end up with a baby out of wedlock, or didn't get stuck in an unhappy marriage, as a result of chasing after some unattainable "romantic" ideal by being in a relationship...

Which shows that you have a VERY good grasp of Rule #1.

You know, I've been trying to come up with my response to this, but I just can't seem to articulate it well. I figured I'd at least say so, though — the thought is worthy of comment; I just can't come up with exactly what my comment is.

In short, I'm simply too much of a bastard relativist liberal (no matter what my wife says about my conservative streak!) to accept the line that we're all going to hell, that kids are exponentially worse today than they were in the "Good Old Days," and that putting "Family Values" on everyone's agenda will save us.

Yes, marriage isn't taken as seriously today as it once was. (There's the whole "starter marriages" concept, for example.) But I also can't declare that universally as a bad thing. There are great single-parent households, and there are terrible, abusive, oppressive long-term marriages. I certainly bristle at any suggestion that government enact policies that encourage marriage as a solution to broader social ills — as I do present regulations (taxes, mostly) that sometimes penalize it.

To be quite honest, I think "family values" are a load of crock. Like what Ryan said, I've seen all sorts of relationships work out in ways that my parents' generation would never have expected - young marriages, single-parent families, gay couples who choose to have children, straight couples who choose not to - and as long as I see that everyone's comfortable with their decisions, I'm all for that.

The other reason why I don't believe in "family values" is that I an a great believer in parental discretion. Again, it's another matter of trust, in which the families themselves make the choices for themselves rather than an institution - say, the government, the church, or the mass media - making the decisions for them. I especially recall a discussion I had with my folks about why, in spite of their devout Catholicism, they ultimately decided not to send us kids to Catholic school. Their answer, in so many words, was that they both felt that a Catholic school would prove to be too stifling for my intellectual freedom, and I didn't need the additional stress of conforming to religious rules.

(But that's just my family talking; as for the rest of the Church, that's, ahem, another story altogether.)

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