Go to Loosely Speaking
- Add a comment
- Go to Kooka offers his congratulations on the Palin role-model
A Great write Ciel
Thank you for the warm welcome. I am not exactly new to Blogit. I wrote under
Whirlwindaffair last year. Fell really ill so I stopped writing for a while. Feeling much better now and am writing under Shobana. Thank you once again for the welcome.
posted by
shobana
on March 28, 2009 at 11:35 PM
| link to this | reply
A Great write Ciel
posted by
shobana
on March 28, 2009 at 11:31 PM
| link to this | reply
Very well said, Ciel...
... and you make excellent points, to which I will expand on only one...the relative absence of consequences, as compared to when
we were young.
I believe that is a huge factor in the promiscuity among today's youth.
We have become so focused on ensuring that our children are happy with every breath they take, that we're unaware of what a false sense of security we instill in them...hence the results!
And if they screw-up, we'll bear...or, at least share, the consequences, instead of them.
posted by
metalrat
on March 26, 2009 at 9:06 PM
| link to this | reply
Myrrhage, seems to me this is partly true--
but since the sexual revolution allowed by The Pill, I think there has been a lot more pre-marital experimentation, especially as all those pre-1960s media versions of the proper roles and codes of behavior for men and women, boys and girls, wore off, and our cultural programming changed drastically.
I agree, though, with your overall statement, that there was a lot more sex going on before the papers were signed and ceremonies held.
The period before Victoria's reign, I understand, was quite lively...
posted by
Ciel
on March 24, 2009 at 11:04 AM
| link to this | reply
Jan, I have had some contention with the later notion, too--
believing that sex should never be a duty! As ever, it seems to me, the truth of the matter lies in the middle somewhere, and once again, that love mitigates both the dread and the duty.
When it is about duty, it becomes akin to prostitution.
Even so, I agree with the former entirely: a church service and a piece of paper can't entirely dispell the aura of dread and naughtiness.
Some years ago at a parent/teacher meeting about the upcoming sex education for 5th graders, I tried to make that point: we should not belabor the kids with nothing but how sex leads to terrible things!
posted by
Ciel
on March 24, 2009 at 10:50 AM
| link to this | reply
Troosha, thanks for adding this really valuable perspective!
It is hard, but not impossible to change early programming, and I wish your daughter success in bringing in her new understandings.
Sexual energies--psychological, physical, spiritual--are potent, and it seems to me that love is the great buffer that keeps that horse from running away with you!
As you say, the positions (so to speak) of sexual contact and development of the relationship have reversed in recent generations, much to the amazement and alarm of those of us who believe in sexual intimacy as the culmination, not the introduction.
posted by
Ciel
on March 24, 2009 at 10:42 AM
| link to this | reply
Corbin, the point is to deliver the message w/out turning off the listener.
I did not tell my kids to practice safe sex, I told them about what safe sex is and isn't, and why safe sex is a better idea than unsafe sex. That all sex has a risk. That sex without love is rather pathetic, in my opinion. I introduced them to their doctor, who could guide them further without recourse to me, if they wished. With this trust and freedom, all my kids have made their own choices, and are doing well--and still include me in their lives.
Urging is not totalitarian control. Imposition of will by any means, however, is totalitarian control, and this includes intimidation, threats of shame and dispossession, of condemnation if one steps over a line drawn by authority... judgements of absolute right and wrong... In my opinion, it includes indoctrination with menaces, subtle or blatant, of children in any absolute code of behavior, morality or spiritual truth. These areas are our classroom for learning how to make choices, and this, I believe, is why we are here.
My parents did not interfere with my spiritual learning, knowing, wisely, that they were not wise enough to set my path in those matters, and left it to me to follow the Light I saw. They never told me what Light to look for, knowing and trusting that as a human being, I had the proper senses for seeing it. For this I am ever appreciative.
However, in other matters they were totalitarian, raised me with the feeling that I lived in the enemy camp, that they did not trust me at all to exercise self-discipline or self-control, nor to value what they thought I should value, and they punished me for it daily with suspicion, derision and condemnation, and the vague sense that if I overstepped their lines too far, they could and would kill me. To this day, I don't know if they value or valued my love. I have alway felt excluded from the world of things they approved of and enjoyed. Only towards the end of my father's life did that change at all.
The result of their totalitarian regime was that I loved and feared and kept far away from them for over 30 years while I lived my own life, raised my kids, and ached from the damage they had done.
posted by
Ciel
on March 24, 2009 at 10:15 AM
| link to this | reply
Ciel,
Excellent post! Spoken from a realistic, understanding and responsible viewpoint.
Seems to me (and has for a long time) that there has not been an increase in teenage sex over the last 100 years. There has simply been less teen marriage. I believe the average age for consensual marriage "back in the day" would have been somewhere between 15-17. That's if the girl wasn't first skewered by a relative, in which case she had "sinned" and must therefore be married off immediately.
posted by
myrrhage
on March 23, 2009 at 2:23 PM
| link to this | reply
Perhaps one of the problems with total abstinence is that suddenly, after an hour in a church and a wedding certificate, something which has been sold as scary and dangerous and wrong and evil, become a duty! Difficult to cope with that sudden change.
posted by
Rockingrector_retd
on March 23, 2009 at 2:17 PM
| link to this | reply
Now you’ve got me going because my daughter, now in her mid 20’s, is having some difficulty shifting her thinking. Whereas during her teens when promiscuity was almost synonymous with sexual heroics or a means of “keeping a guy”, now find herself re-examining the entire meaning of sex and considering the enormity of the human exchange that it is. I’m watching her struggle somewhat with this mental shift and through her own admission it’s not easy to do. The very idea of developing a relationship prior to engaging in any sexual contact is almost foreign to her as her teen environment taught her the reverse. So we as parents can teach, teach, guide, and inform but the teen world out there has a skewed and flawed value system which a parent cannot penetrate. Yes, we can instill values but some of the value fly right out the window in the interest of not necessarily being popular – simply being accepted. In a school system that is highly charged with bullying – through actions or ostracizing – sexual submission or promiscuity becomes almost a mode of survival. It’s sad… and I’ll stop there.
posted by
Troosha
on March 23, 2009 at 11:39 AM
| link to this | reply
Ciel
I agree with you assertion that we should stop trying to tell our kids what to do, what not to do. It is far better to lay out their choices and allow them make decisions (assuming, of course, they are old enough to do so and that’s another debate altogether). They must also be taught that their value, their sense of self-worth is should not be measured by how many sexual conquests or encounters they’ve had. This is the tough one given the peer pressure they are exposed to; popularity ranked by how accommodating a female might be and how aggressive a male might be. Popularity and acceptance is such a driving force during the teen years that it’s difficult to shift the grid on which these measurements are made by their peers.
posted by
Troosha
on March 23, 2009 at 10:49 AM
| link to this | reply
"we can stop trying to tell our kids what to do, what not to do," Do you choose tell them to use condoms, practice safe sex, avoid STDs? The only difference is the topics in the methodology......
Where is there totalitarian control with urging abstinence? The control suggested by supporters of abstinence is self-control, hardly anything to be considered totalitarian.
posted by
Corbin_Dallas
on March 23, 2009 at 5:38 AM
| link to this | reply
interesting post
posted by
drohan254
on March 23, 2009 at 4:19 AM
| link to this | reply
Good write, a nice reading for me...
posted by
Kayzzaman
on March 22, 2009 at 1:31 AM
| link to this | reply