sexuality

It’s hard to know these days whether to see the glass half-full or half-empty: Obama won a historic election powered by the youth vote and women.

On the other hand, it’s hard to know when the economy is really going to hit bottom.

Maybe we should be relieved that we’re heading into this season of gratitude. To be sure it may take us all a little longer to count our blessings this year, or to figure out what counts as a blessing these days, so here are some thoughts from my Girl Talk perspective.

I’m thankful for:

1. Blue Sex—Margaret Talbot has a fascinating analysis of some recent and forthcoming research about teens, sex, and religion in the New Yorker. Talbot takes her title, “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” from sociologist Mark Regnerus’s research. I can’t do justice to the full article here, but I was especially struck by what Regnerus identifies as a new “middle-class morality.” According to Regnerus middle-class, well-educated young women “are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risks.”

This is great news for middle-class, well educated young women (and their parents).

But I’m even more excited about what it suggests for young women who are not middle-class, and for those of us who do education and advocacy work to support all girls and young women, because we can work together to create the potential for a “bright future.” I know that the Girl Scout Council of New York has just such plans in mind for its career exploration program that will be launching in Bronx middle schools.

2. Sasha and Malia Obama—My eight-year-old daughter was already a passionate follower of the Presidential campaign and the election itself; she and her best friend bet a quarter on the election outcome (my daughter came home with an extra quarter in her pocket on November 5), and she participated in a mock-election at her YMCA camp on election day. Now that she has peers in the White House, I’m willing to bet that national politics will stay on her radar screen, even if our attention is on the possible first pet or how the girls will get to school for now.

3.  The Little House on the Prairie Series—Reading is part of our family routine every evening, and we finished the Little House on the Prairie book series with my daughter about a year ago. I am especially grateful for the hardy, adventurous, strong-willed Laura Ingalls character now that our reading as turned to the offensive My Weird School series, with its sex-stereotyped characters, from the brainy, obnoxious girl to the bored and distracted boys. I’ve used these books as a way to talk about sex-stereotyping, and the ways it hurts girls and boys, but surely we can do better than this!

So GWP readers, do you have any tween books to recommend? Help me out and I’ll add those to my gratitude list too.  And I’m eager to know: What’s on your gratitude list these days?

The first gay marriages in Connecticut were performed yesterday. This and the abortion battlegrounds that came out pro-choice are the good news in the recent so-called culture wars. But extremely disheartening news came out of November 4th as California’s anti-gay-marriage and anti-gay-rights Proposition 8 and a law in Arkansas banning people cohabiting outside of marriage from adopting or acting as foster parents were passed.

As one of my favorites, Dan Savage, writes in the New York Times this week, these anti-gay laws are distinctly anti-family:

That state’s Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart “the gay agenda.” Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Even before the law passed, the state estimated that it had only about a quarter of the foster parents it needed. Beginning on Jan. 1, a grandmother in Arkansas cohabitating with her opposite-sex partner because marrying might reduce their pension benefits is barred from taking in her own grandchild; a gay man living with his male partner cannot adopt his deceased sister’s children.

Activists for gay rights are now organizing protests at Mormon Churches, which provided much of the funding for Proposition 8’s campaign, and are boycotting those businesses and some individuals who financially supported Prop 8. Just recently, Scott Eckern, the artistic director of California Musical Theater, resigned from his position after coming under fire. Marc Shaiman, Tony-award winning composer for Hairspray, was one of those who said he would no longer allow his work to be performed at Eckern’s theater.

Eckern has expressed surprise and claims that he is “deeply saddened that my personal beliefs and convictions have offended others.” But why should he be surprised and why should he paint his convictions as merely “personal”? He contributed money to a political campaign whose aim it was to interfere in the personal lives of his fellow citizens and many colleagues. Why should he be surprised that some of these colleagues themselves took it personally that he helped mandate the ways in which they are, and are not, allowed to recognize their love for their partners?

Image Credit.

These three researchy news items just in, courtesy CCF:

The Television Got Me Pregnant, by Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon, Nov. 4, 2008 — A new study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. They found that, among sexually active teenagers, those who spend the most time watching racy programming like “Sex and the City” are twice as likely to become, or get a partner, pregnant. Researchers interviewed 718 sexually active teens aged 12 to 17 once a year for three years and, based on an analysis of 23 TV shows, estimated the amount of sexual content (including kissing, petting and sex) that they had been exposed to. About 12 percent of those who viewed the least amount of sexual programming became involved in a pregnancy, compared to 25 percent of those who consumed the most. A total of 58 girls got pregnant and 33 boys got a partner pregnant during the study.

Pregnancy Discrimination Complaints Jump, Especially for Women of Color, by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 6, 2008 — Workplace discrimination against pregnant women is on the rise in a stunning way according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The National Partnership for Women and Families found that in 2007 working women filed 65 percent more complaints of pregnancy discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission than they had fifteen years earlier. The report also finds this new wave of discrimination affects women of color at a much higher rate than white women.

The Economics of Single Motherhood, by Kat Bergeron, Biloxi, Miss., Sun Herald, Nov. 6, 2008 — No other state has a higher rate of children born to single mothers than Mississippi, at 53.7 percent. That compares with the lowest state, Utah, at about 18 percent. Last year 46,456 Mississippi children were born, 24,939 to single mothers, and the numbers are rising. About 15 percent of those births are to teens aged 15 to 19. That is a slight drop from a decade ago but the trend is again upward, as are the rest of the unwed-mother statistics. Pete Walley, an economic analyst who studies and reports trends to state leaders, says that if Mississippi doesn’t change the numbers, it will permanently become No. 50 in income, health, education, economy, even in per capita traffic deaths.

Now this here’s one gap we’re NOT so proud of closing.  According to a NYTimes article last week by Tara Parker-Pope, “Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity”, a handful of new studies suggest that, yes, women–young women included–appear to be closing the adultery gap.

Apparently, younger women are now cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.  The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago.

The stats:

• In any given year, about 10 percent of married people – 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women – say they have had sex outside their marriage.
• While University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991, for women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.
• Researchers also see big changes in relatively new marriages: About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively.

So much for the moral superiority of women, huh.  Ok boys and girls, let’s everyone just try to keep it in our pants.

(Thanks to CCF for the heads up.)

I am all nail-bitey today as we enter the final stretch. As my co-penner extraordinaire Kristen said to me this morning, we have the audacity to hope.

To get your mind off–or ok, on–everything, here are a few links that came our way via the WMC. Enjoy, and Happy Hallowe’en!

Rachel Maddow has something to say about Sarah Palin

Lynn Sherr writes on why she thinks non-voters should have their toenails removed (ouch!)

Prize-winning historian Mary Hershberger asks why the media won’t examine the McCain war record

Nida Khan brings up the other campaign, the one with two women candidates: Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente of the Green Party.

Robin Morgan tackles “faux feminists.”

Lorelei Kelly tells us why women must take charge

Ellen Bravo, who advocates for paid sick leave, sympathizes with Barack Obama’s break from the trail to see his ailing grandmother

Joanne Cronrath Bamberger writes about one congresswoman who went a few steps too far.

Peg Simpson focuses on possible wins for women in Congress.

Rebekah Traistor writes on the effects of the election on Katie Couric, Campbell Brown and Rachel Maddow: “Ladies of the Nightly News”.

And the current issue of Ms. Magazine has GWP blogger Veronica Arreloa’s review of the anthology edited by amazing duo Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape and also a piece by Latoya Peterson, who edits Racialicious.com.

Now this is just the kind of blog action/activism that makes our hearts sing over here.

Join bloggers around the country and around the world tomorrow to blog in support of marriage equality for same-sex couples and against California’s Proposition 8! It’s Write to Marry Day.

The event will give bloggers a chance to voice their opposition to Prop 8 and highlight what they may have already done, online or off, to stop the measure. The campaign will also educate California voters of the need to “go all the way” down the ballot to vote on the proposition.

We’ve got some posts of our own in store, but if any GWP readers are interested in sharing their ink with us tomorrow, please feel free to submit your wares!

Thanks to our own Gwen B for the heads up, and to Mombian for organizing.

Interesting convo going on over at Broadsheet about this poster, which the ladies at the Bust blog love and the Broadsheeters, not so much. Where do GWPenners weigh in, I wonder?

From Sarah Palin’s wardrobe to sex on college campuses…Hmm, not sure how to make the transition here, so I won’t try. But I’ve been wanting to share this list of some of the latest on the college kids and the sex. A couple of my brilliant colleagues at the Council on Contemporary Families recently pooled suggestions of books on a related subject and came up with the following list, some of which I’d heard of, some of which I hadn’t:

Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses, by Donna Freita
Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, by Kathleen Bogle
What Women Want–What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently, by John Marshall Townsend
Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, by Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner

And on the guy side of things of course:

Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, by Michael Kimmel
Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, by CJ Pascoe

Are we missing anything?

While each candidate in Wednesday night’s debate gave his stump speech on Roe v. Wade, only Obama mentioned the need for better sex education in the school system, and that was quickly skedaddled by a change in topic. Put another way, as politicians are such fans of doing, the two candidates spent more time discussing whether Obama did or did not launch his campaign in Bill Ayers’ living room than discussing how they plan to battle rising teen pregnancy and STD rates. As Amy Schalet pointed out in a Washington Post article last week, “High teen pregnancy rates result in part from our inability to talk honestly and wisely about teen sexuality.” So where are we left if our two presidential candidates are never asked to talk about it at all?

Of course, part of the problem is that very few people besides the Religious Right, NARAL Pro-Choicers, and well, those who read this blog, are asking these questions. Sure, there are other things on our mind: the economy, Iraq, etc. But our general populace’s inability to ask basic, rational questions about the way their children are taught about sex in schools, and therefore their ceding of these decisions to a minority base, speaks to larger problems in our culture: an inability to approach sex in an individualized and normalized way.

Dagmar Herzog talks in Sex in Crisis about the anxiety with which America adults in the twenty-first century approach sex. In the nineties, most Americans seemed relatively satisfied with their sex lives. Sure it wasn’t always the best sex ever; sometimes there was boredom, or lack or desire, or lack of orgasm, or any of the other minor dissatisfactions that are normal in a human sexuality that can only be as perfect as the person experiencing it. Sometimes there were fears about love and emotional connection. But of course, again, why wouldn’t there be? Now, with articles and drug campaigns asking you whether you are experiencing a tepid orgasm, erectile dysfunction, porn addiction, you name it, American adults are constantly told to compare their sexuality to others and ask themselves, “Is there something wrong with my sex life?” As Herzog writes:

What is going on is an ideological assault on something pretty fundamental: the most intimate and personal aspects of sex. It worms its way into the core of the psyche by playing on the imperfections and emotional confusion that so often accompany sex. Rather than helping people get comfortable with the unruliness of desire, the current trendy idea is to freak people out.

Now, if adults are experiencing this level of anxiety about their own sexual lives, imagine how such over-scrutiny and neuroticism is translated to a population who has long been subject to excessive sexual observation in America. If sex can is psychologically and emotionally damaging for adults, given the especial “unruliness” of the teenage sex drive and a whole life during which this psychological damage can manifest itself, it must be doubly so for teens.

But what if we began to treat not only adult sexuality, but teenage sexuality, as normal? In a qualitative study comparing conceptions of teenage sexuality in the Netherlands and the United States, Amy Schalet documents how American adults dramatize teenage sexuality as hormone-raging, out-of-control, and irrational. (Part of the study is published as “Must We Fear Adolescent Sexuality? at Medscape General Medicine.) Dutch parents, on the other hand, recognize teenage relationships as legitimate and work to normalize sexuality.

Guess which country has the lower teenager pregnancy and STD rates.

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Three Things:

1. Barack Obama appeared as ever very cool, very collected, very smart. McCain appeared, just like his campaign, rather erratic, all-over-the-place, and definitely a stream-of-consciousness man.

2. Both gave their stock answers on the Roe v. Wade question; though it is worthwhile to take a close look at McCain’s answer:

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone — even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

That’s my bolding, call it the bolding of shock. McCain directly contradicts himself within two sentences. Deciding whether a candidate is qualified for the bench by looking at whether he/she supported Roe v. Wade is a litmus test.

3. Sex Ed, anyone?

It got a brief mention by Obama:

But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, “We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.”

And… that was it. I’ll have more to say on this tomorrow. Sex and Sensibility is, per usual, running a bit late but will be up tomorrow.