VAXherd wrote:
Now that you mention it, I have heard Karen Straughan / Girl Writes What say something like "feminism tells us what we thought we already knew."
About the article: Is it possible to have a recursive fractal headache?
There are several things I think are good points:
- People start having sexual interests much earlier
than we want to remember that we did thantheyusedto. Ten years old; fifth, sixth grade.
- I've seen things about pornography invading the general culture in other places too. It was always obvious to me that porn was "for entertainment purposes only," not relationship advice. Maybe Dan Savage knows what's up but I don't.
- It's very refreshing that in the study being cited "Steiner-Adair doesn’t see these boys as predators. Rather, she says, their emotional needs have been neglected." But the first correlation I would check for is fatherlessness. Perhaps the study did, but it's not mentioned.
There is, however, an elephant in the room. I see scarcely a word about why the girls are participating. Plenty about how awful the boys' behavior is, but nothing about the girls' motivation. They are depicted as devoid of agency. If that issue was left out of the original study that's an appalling oversight, and for Walsh to offer advice without understanding the full problem is doubtful.
What really stands out in my memories of a teen was not just all the gossip about it, but the competitive aspect more than anything else. I can not claim to understand the motivation for why the girls participated but they did. There were rules though within each group, which seemed to vary somewhat depending on the group.
I also do seem to recall that at that age the influence of your peer group was a lot stronger than any other, including parental. Both the boys and the girls are competing with each other.
Nowadays it does appear indeed that for some reason "porn" behaviour has been normalized within some groups at least within that cohort (with varving limits I do not doubt) that probably vary by geographic, socioeconomic and sub-culture.
VAXherd wrote:
You remember that recursive headache? Walsh writes this salcious thing about wild teen nookie, and excuses it by saying how unpleasant it all is. With girls who are participating in unseemly ribaldry, and excusing it by saying how unpleasant it all is.
I got the recursive "Ewwwwww" from her but the rest of the Manosphere has been trying to rub her nose in this type of thing for some time.
I will explain that Susan Walsh has been trying to help young women navigate the hook up scene in college for some time with the apparent implicit assumption that the men in the picture are are mainly to "blame".
However, she has acknowledged from time to time the role that the young women play, and even lectures young women about it. However at heart she appears to be unable to completely accept it, and that a good many of the female participants are pretty "feral" themselves.
Hence the recursive "unpleasant" business. She can not bring herself to explicitly state the obvious at times.
If you accept that women are the gatekeepers for sex, then by allowing this behaviour from men and women, and accepting it as normative, and not slut shaming the women who do, they are effectively perpetuating it.
I do not know why she can not make that step all the time because she quite often does.
But then she recently turned off all comments, and recently started allowing them again under different rules so it looks as if she is determined to shape "reality" in some way.
VAXherd wrote:
A few more items:
The girl described the conversation as “a stupid, disgusting exchange,†adding that it was “typical for the boys at our school.†Still, the girl became intrigued when the boy revealed in a subsequent note that he liked her.
Exchange?
Subsequent note?
Normative behaviour? Boys will be boys?
VAXherd wrote:
[A]pparently whipping out one’s johnson (figuratively and literally) is the new “Come here often?â€
That was filthy
and I don't believe it.
I am not so sure that I do not. I doubt that it is common though. I can recall being pretty bold myself but not to that level.
VAXherd wrote:
Kristy shared a story about a different kind of coercion. She had been making out with a guy at his house, not sure how far she wanted to go, when he stood up and told her, “Get down on your knees.â€
Sounds like someone's been reading grandma's romance novels.
It sounded plausible to me actually. While I admit that I was startled at first when I first encountered the notion that a blowjob was not really sex, I also suspect that if she had said "no" that would have been about as far as it went. I currently live out in the sticks, and among some of the young people here that sort of behaviour would not be considered shocking at all.
VAXherd wrote:
I have never in my life watched a man pull out his own penis…
How old is this Susan Walsh? If she's out of college that's sad.
Long out of college is my impression.
VAXherd wrote:
When a man grabs your hand and places it on his penis without your consent, he is committing sexual assault by compelling you to touch him. Full stop. […] Consent need not be verbal, by the way.
Ye gods! Misunderstanding mine field dead ahead! You might as well declare the whole planet a prison.
No kidding!
VAXherd wrote:
The only way men will learn that this behavior is inappropriate and illegal is if women demonstrate that this is not “goofing around†or “flirting,†much less courting.
Or if their fathers explain it to them when told "There's this girl I like, but I don't know how to talk to her."
Or something. I would say that most people are perfectly capable of figuring this out on their own. But apparently not.