If She’s Not Having Fun You Have To Stop

This is about the nuts-and-bolts of how the work gets done. This is about parenting the next generation.

A boy and a girl run around on the grass at the park. The boy tackles the girl. The girl laughs. She gets up and runs away. She loves to run. He chases, she turns and they grab eachother, tumble and land in a pile, giggling. After a few minutes, he tackles her again and she lands a bit hard. She is bigger and physical, but he more than holds his own in roughhousing. She pauses for a second. Then she laughs again; she’s still having fun.

Dad gets his attention, and says, “If she’s not having fun, you have to stop.”

Bracing For The Rape Apology

Sadly, this is probably only the first of several posts about the story of a fifteen year old who was gang-raped outside a school dance in Northern California.

I think we all know that an avalance of apologism, victim-blaming and concern trolling is coming. The only way to head that off would be to change the culture.

Since it will be practically impossible for the defendants and their defenders to deny that anything happened, I expect the most openly nasty response to be along the lines of the Haidl defense: straight-out slut baiting. (The defense said she wanted to be a porn star and therefore consented to get passed out drunk and repeatedly violated on video — some history here.) If we can’t even keep people from doing that to Polanski’s victim, who was 13, we are almost guaranteed to see it used against a fifteen year old.

Alternate Universe

In 1977, Roman Polanski, noted film director and husband of murdered actress Sharon Tate, raped a 13-year-old girl. He jumped out from behind a hedge, pulled her into an alley, and punched her in the face until she stopped resisting, then put his penis inside her. Following a plea agreement but before sentencing he fled to Europe, where he openly and notoriously had sex with a fifteen year old girl.

The art and science of pole dance

This is amazing. I never acquired the pole skill displayed here because I always had too many bruises on my thighs from trying. I did master the art of undulation, however, and maybe one day I will post a video of that here. But anyone who can watch this and deny that these women have amazing strength and athletic ability, not to mention pure artistic talent, is in denial. Amazing.

Better They Learn It From Their Friends …

This is a parenting rant; this is more conceptual than particular, and directed to more than one person.

“But she doesn’t know about that yet” is not an answer. That’s when she needs to know it: before she needs to know it. If she already knew it, she wouldn’t need you to tell her. So tell her now, when she doesn’t need to know it.

The time to tell her is when it’s a strange rumor about someone’s friend’s cousin at another school. She’s fishing for information. If you dodge the question, she’ll let you. And she’ll know not to ask again. “You can talk to me about anything” is a platitude. She’s not stupid; she knows it’s a platitude. She knows it’s a platitude because she sees that you don’t want to deal with the questions when she raises them. When you dodge, she knows she can’t talk to you about anything; only things you’re ready to talk about. That’s why you shouldn’t dodge it.

Even in what passes for comprehensive sex ed, they won’t cover it. Popular culture won’t teach her, they just pitch jokes that assume knowledge. So that leaves her friends, who are all 14. I didn’t have much access to accurate information then and neither did you. Do you think they are much better?

If you wait long enough, you can avoid the conversation entirely. She’ll get inaccurate half-assed information from somewhere else. This is not the best outcome, though it may be the least embarrassing.

Nobody will do your job for you. If you don’t do your job, it won’t get done. Not the way it ought to be, anyway.

Abstinence Counselor Rapes Girl

I’m sure the irony escapes him.

In my YMY essay, Towards A Performance Model of Sex, I said that pro-abstinence moralism and patriarchal objectification are simply two sides of the same coin, both proceeding from the notion that a woman’s sexuality is a commodity. I think this rapist is that belief system made manifest. What he’s done is in a sense hypocrisy, but there is a core consistency. He’s urging young women to say no. He’ll keep telling them to say no, while he sexually molests them. He may even see nothing wrong with his behavior (commodity model thinking, though, is that he’s committed basically a property crime by taking something — not her autonomy or human rights, but her “virtue” — and in the most patriarchal incarnations, taken something from her father or future husband — pardon my while I scrub my brain); and he is probably very upset by any woman’s display of actual sexual agency.

Say no; get raped. As long as women have no voice in how their bodies are sexual, he’s happy.

h/t Abyss2hope in comments here.

Sexting Again, and Sometimes I Miss Things

My fellow contributor Cara, over at her usual blog The Curvature, pointed out that I flubbed a significant issue here in the “Common Sense on Sexting” post by failing to point out that there is a huge difference between teens taking pictures of themselves and their partners and folks forwarding the pictures without consent. She’s absolutely right. I was so happy to see anyone in the mainstream media move away from the crazily punitive notion of charging teen girls with a crime for taking photos of themselves, that I didn’t stop to point out the major difference, which is something I’ve thought about before.

Common Sense on Sexting

The mainstream has started to pay attention to the abuse of child porn charges that Harper Jean Tobin and, more recently, I have been on about. This article is not perfect, but it makes two really good points: First, that this is wildly and willfully excessive.

Should Phillip be punished? Yes. Should the six teens in Pennsylvania face consequences? Yes. But let’s kick them off cheerleading squads and sports teams. Make them do community service and take classes on sex crimes. Educate other teens on the dangers of sexting. Pay a price, yes, but these young people shouldn’t pay for this for the rest of their lives.

Second, that this ought to be a wake-up call that teen sexuality will develop, and that parents have a responsibility to shape it, which they cannot do by ignoring it:

The bottom line: We need to educate, not incarcerate, our teens and it has to start with parents.

Don’t let the culture indoctrinate your little boy or girl about sex before their time. So strike first as a parent.

As parents, if we want to do right by our kids, we have to communicate both our values and information. I’ve been saying it. It starts with telling toddlers about their bodies, so that we have the foundation to tell teens about all the other stuff — not just sexting and STIs and pregnancy, but the big thing: how to go from being a kid to being a sexual adult; how they learn to make their own decisions. It’s not a bunch of separate topics. It’s a unified whole.

Wipe Your Shame-Cave, Honey

My daughter hasn’t got the hang of the potty yet, but she’s learning. And after she urinates, she wipes her vulva. Because that’s what it’s called.

Over at Feministe, Jill posted an Onion piece that is laugh-out-loud funny about the shame and embarassment people display over female genitals.

Proposed Statutory Exemption

Yesterday, I crossposted the Destroy The Town To Save It post at Feministing Community, where the editors graciously front-paged it and discussion ensued. In the course of working through the issues, I scratched out a proposed statutory exemption to the federal child porn statute (18 U.S.C. 2252) that would prevent the travesty of a minor being charged with exploiting herself by possessing or circulating her own image. Harper Tobin at Polymorphous Perversity liked it, and put it up at her place.

Here’s the language:

(d) Notwithstanding the foregoing, no person shall have committed a criminal act within the meaning of this section solely by reason of having possessed, transported, shipped, or received a visual depiction wherein the person himself or herself is the only minor depicted.

This is not a complete solution, as Harper notes in her thread, in part because a similar exemption would have to exist for a whole lot of state statutes. But it would be a big move in the right direction.