March 4th, 2010 by Mollie
Jessica Grose at Slate.com pens an interesting piece on the shame cycle women feel after pursuing a life of casual sex. Feminist authors Julie Klausner and Hephzibah Anderson are among her several examples.
“When you cry about things not working out,” Grose quotes Klausner in a new collection of essays, “you’re crying not only because a guy you slept with now doesn’t seem to care you’re alive, but also because you’re ashamed of yourself for crying.”
Grose also quotes Anderson’s confession (in a book to be released this summer) at having such deep regrets about casual sex that she gave up “penetrative sex” for a year:
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February 2nd, 2010 by Mollie
“Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work” has been repeated so often that it’s become holy writ. Now comes a little good news for the much maligned program.
A two-year National Institute of Mental Health-funded “randomized trial of several interventions, including abstinence-only” showed “a “statistically significant benefit” for the abstinence approach: it was more effective in delaying sexual initiation.
John Gever, senior editor of MedpageToday, summarizes:
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January 27th, 2010 by Mollie
ABC News previewed a short clip of Oral Sex is the New Goodnight Kiss a while back. The documentary captures pre-teen and teen-age girls discussing oral sex – and prostitution – as casually as the weather. Ordinary girls from middle- and upper-middle class families who see no harm in offering their bodies for money, homework, or a new handbag.
“Five minutes and I got $100. If I’m going to sleep with them anyway because they’re good-looking, might as well get paid for it, right?”
“This is the bitter fruit of forty years of feminist domination in the United States,” writes Pamela Geller, who argues that the public schools, the culture, and the children in them have been poisoned by the left’s attitude toward sex.
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January 27th, 2010 by Mollie
The Week had a thoughtful article recently on love in the time of hooking up (full article posted here and here).
“In the dating era, students would go on a date, which might lead to something sexual,” says Kathleen Bogle, a sociologist at Philadephia’s La Salle University. “In the hookup era, students hook up, which might lead to dating.”
Is hooking up harmful? Depends on whether you ask peers or professionals.
Many college kids scoff at that very question. They say they’re just having fun, and that as long as both people understand the terms, it’s win-win. But some health professionals have raised alarms about the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and warn that many young adults are paying a price for learning to divorce sex from feelings and attachments.
“They don’t learn to build that emotional intimacy before they get physically intimate,” says adolescent gynecologist Melissa Holmes. “They may grow up not knowing how to connect with a partner on an intimate level.”
James Cox, director of the counseling center at the University of Pittsburg, says more than a quarter of his clients come in with anxiety, depression, and other emotional problems because their relationships feel superficial and confusing.
“Hooking up is like any other kind of peer pressure,” he says. “We need to encourage students to make independent, healthy choices.” That may be especially true for women.
Why especially for women?
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January 27th, 2010 by Mollie
Carolyn Moynihan at Mercatornet previews of a feminist’s new book.
A British feminist is sounding the alarm about the effects on teenagers of easy access to pornography, saying that a skewed view of sex is becoming the norm in society and the idea of intimacy is dying.
Natasha Walter tackles this subject in a book, Living Dolls, due to be published early in February, which looks at the resurgence of sexism in contemporary culture.
Could a feminist be regretting the sexual revolution? Not a chance. Walter only regrets that the women who tried to emulate the wanton behavior of bad boys during the last few decades haven’t achieved ‘equality’. She thinks children’s ‘voyeuristic’ view of sex is bad for women because:
“This means that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure. No wonder we have seen the rise of the idea that erotic experience will necessarily involve, for women, a performance in which they will be judged visually.”
Moynihan takes issue with Walter’s new twist on the old feminist whine:
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Tags: feminist, Intimacy
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January 15th, 2010 by Mollie
Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut, author of Notes from the Cracked Ceiling, moderated a panel discussion recently on the evolving nature of feminism. Kornblut opened the discussion with How often have we heard that feminism is dead? Is it?
Syndicated newspaper columnist Kathleen Parker suggested the movement that demanded a certain way of thinking — one requiring every woman to sign on to a specific platform — is dead. Once there was no longer any space for women who disagreed with that platform, the old feminism had run its course. But feminism is far from dead; it’s reincarnating in a different way.
Former McCain-Palin advisor Nicolle Wallace said there is no shared form of reference for what feminism means anymore. Wallace discussed Sarah Palin’s responses to different questions that drew distinctions between ‘equality’ feminism and ‘reproductive rights/abortion’ feminism.
Those distinctions are important. Equality unites women. Abortion divides them, and it does so in extreme and unexpected ways.
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January 14th, 2010 by Mollie
Though he doesn’t heed his own advice, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has no hesitation forcing others to live by it.
Emboldened by successful drives to reduce smoking, obesity and the use of trans fats in New York city, mayor Michael Bloomberg today opened a new front in healthy living for New Yorkers by launching a campaign to reduce consumption of salt.
If a politician can grab this kind of power from a non-health care political office, imagine the kind of power he’d wield if he were appointed to a seat on some future nationalized Health Care Panel charged with making policy decisions about who gets what kind of medical care.
‘Personal responsibility’ and ‘disease prevention’ loom large in the current national health care reform debate. But what if ‘personal responsibility’ became a condition for obtaining medical care? A history of good behavior gave someone a pass to the head of the medical treatment line, while bad behavior relegated one to the end of the line or out of the queue altogether?
Who would define ‘good’ and ‘bad’? Politicians, of course. And that should terrify everyone regardless of his or her political persuasion.
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Tags: behavior, health care, Mayor Bloomberg, personal responsibility, reform, STDs
Posted in STDs | 1 Comment »
December 8th, 2009 by Ashley
Although much has been said already about Edward Cullen and his gentility, I wanted to post my own thoughts:
From young girls to middle-aged mothers, women across the country line up hours beforehand on opening night to watch a movie sequel about vampires and true love. Why? Because interwoven into this highly fantasized tale fraught with teen angst and dialogue that occasionally sounds wooden, lies a message of sacrifice and self-control for the sake of something greater. Edward becomes every woman’s hero, not only because of his dashing good looks and strange intriguing powers, but because he can say no to his inclinations in order to protect and preserve his beloved.
Elizabeth Morowitz, author of “Bitten by Twilight,” muses that the popularity of the movies hinges on its message of love and relationships:
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December 2nd, 2009 by Alyssa
I came across this article today from AskMen.com instructing men to “Be More Like Edward,” referring to the character Edward Cullen from the Twilight series. Even though I do like Twilight, I’m not exactly obsessive and when I saw the title of this article I thought it would be sappy and silly. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how astute the gentleman at AskMen.com are when it comes to interpreting why ladies drool over a fictional vampire. In addition to breaking down the reasons, the article also provides quite good advice for men in emulating Edward’s swoon-worthy qualities. My favorite tip in the article is this one:
“Always do the basic chivalrous things your dad taught you: open her doors, help her with her jacket, pull out her chair, walk closest to the street, etc. And don’t do this only for her, but for all women. Show respect not just to your girl, but to the important people in your life and hers.”
You can read the entire article here.
Now, I’m sure if I dug around AskMen.com I would probably find at least one article less gentlemanly than this one, however the fact that they even have this article at all is very telling of desired relationship dynamics between the average man and woman, something feminists simply refuse to acknowledge.
When compared with the cover of, say, a Cosmopolitan magazine, the AskMen.com article makes it impossible to ignore just how degrading these “women’s” magazines are. Instead of talking about finding a man with Edward-like qualities and being the type of lady who would attract that kind ofguy, Cosmo covers have tips on “Bad Girl Sex: These 12 Moves Will Show Him Your Really Naughty Side,” and “Little Mouth Moves that Make Sex Hotter.” Classy. Check out this mock-up of a compilation of Cosmo headlines (click the image to read an excellent article on how feminism has ruined women’s lives):
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Posted in Sexuality | 5 Comments »
December 1st, 2009 by Alyssa
Today is World AIDS day; an entire day devoted to educating people about the transmission and treatment of AIDS. But the (presumably) leftists that push this “awareness” are short-changing people around the world because their PC message glosses over serious facts that people should know when it comes to the transmission of HIV. The US Department of Health and Human Services only has this to say about the extra-risky behaviors associated with the contraction of AIDS:
“There is evidence to show that some sexual behaviors are riskier than others. All sexual practices can be made ‘safer’ (meaning less risk of transmitting/contracting STDs and HIV), but some activities are regarded as much safer than others.”
What it should say, as we discuss in our Sense and Sexuality pamphlet, is:
“The risk for HIV transmission during anal intercourse is at least 20 times higher than with vaginal intercourse.”
The official World AIDS day website does not appear to have this statistic either.
It seems the US government and the World AIDS day people are more concerned with protecting people’s feelings than their lives.
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