Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Formula for disaster
Why do many doctors take a neutral or even pro-formula stance with their patients--despite evidence of the serious potential hazards of bottle-feeding?
By Katie Allison Granju
[07/20/99]

Son of hope
In a video aimed at turning young thugs into Christians, serial killer David Berkowitz confesses, "I was a real jerk."
By Cintra Wilson
[07/16/99]

Hot Flash
Nazi family values
Chewing the fat with a white-supremacist mom and her 6-year-old daughter at an Idaho barbecue.
By Amy Benfer
[07/15/99]

Time For One Thing
Silence
Quality time may be overrated -- unless it's with yourself.
By Karen Grigsby Bates
[07/13/99]

Stay-home economics
One mom crunches the numbers on the assumption that quitting work is cheaper than paying for life as a working parent.
By Phaedra Hise
[07/13/99]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Wendy Shalit: For the past 30 years we've said to women, "You have to be more like men." Since we value male promiscuity and not female promiscuity, the solution has been to value female promiscuity and then there will be parity!

Instead of competition about how vulgar we can be, I'd like to see a competition of how kind and civilized we can be. We should say to women, "You're right to be sensitive, you're right to have emotions when you have sex. It's pathological not to." We need to tell men to value modesty too. It wasn't this way 100 years ago. The reason Don Juan was such a big deal was because he was not the norm, he was an aberration. Back then, being a real man meant sticking by one woman. We need to revive that notion of honor.

How do you propose we instill "honor" in men?

Shalit: Sexual harassment legislation has not been successful. That's why codes of conduct are so important.

Leora Tanenbaum: I want to address the idea that girls are raised to be as promiscuous as boys. I think girls are getting mixed, contradictory sexual messages -- on the one hand, as you say, that they should be sexually active, sexually curious. At the same time they are told that they shouldn't have sexual desire, that it is slutty. Those messages are coming from the same places.

Shalit: The options are so narrow for women. You are expected to be a slut, or you're expected to have no desire at all. What I like about modesty is that it's the opposite of prudery. Prudery implies you can't be moved by anything. Promiscuity is the flip side of that -- another kind of denial of feelings. But modesty suggests that you have sexual feelings and emotional feelings, and you have hope. Modesty ensures that you're with the right person before you expose something vulnerable.

You shouldn't have to prove you have desire by having early sexual relationships. All studies show that girls who do that have low self-esteem. Not being sexual doesn't mean you don't have desire; it means you set and respect your own boundaries.

Tanenbaum: That is a message girls and boys should be getting -- that sexual desire is a natural part of adolescence and if you choose to act on your desires, you're best off waiting to harness that within a loving relationship.

Shalit: Now that we agree on the message, where do you think that message should come from? Parents, sex educators?

Tanenbaum: Both. Reading your account of having sex education in fourth grade made me angry -- not because you were having sex ed in fourth grade, but because it wasn't age-appropriate.

Shalit: Well, I'm challenging the whole basis of sex ed because of the discomfort it causes. We're taught by the culture that discomfort about sex is something we have to get over. I think the discomfort kids feel is instinctive and it protects them. And in the absence of sex ed, they will figure it out. Our parents didn't have sex education and they were perfectly capable of having us. I figured it out on my own -- the stork brings you!

Tanenbaum: But historically, women were not experienced in sexual pleasure and weren't having orgasms. That's not something you necessarily learn on your own.

Shalit: I don't think you need to learn about orgasms in fourth grade.

Tanenbaum: You shouldn't necessarily be learning about "69," but I don't have a problem with fourth-graders learning about masturbation.

Shalit: But pleasure is a different issue from sexual brutality and protecting children's innocence. If sex is not a sacred thing, if it's something you can talk about and not have any hang-ups about, I think you're going to have a very difficult time civilizing boys. Part of what civilizes them is the sense of mystery, of reverence and respect. When you give them these words at such an early age, the teasing is going to be of a much more ferocious nature.

Girls are then more vulnerable because they don't have this embarrassment to protect them. If they're not sleeping with somebody, they are told they have a problem, they're not comfortable with their bodies. This makes them more vulnerable to sexual brutality and date rape because boys are taught that any reticence is incomprehensible. A course about honor and respect and what not to talk about would be better than having them yell, "Penis! Penis! Vagina! Vagina!" as they do.

Next page | Do parents who don't talk about sex have kids who have sex?