I read this and weep
Marjorie Campbell's article "The New Sexual Predator" rings all too true to me. I have five boys and I almost despair when I see girls just 5 or 6 years older than my oldest who is 8. I never had to deal with this shit. Sluts used to be marginalized; now they are getting to be mainstream. Excerpt:
I first noticed this alarming social dynamic in our parochial middle school here in San Francisco. Our son, encouraged by a romantic interest in one of his classmates, secretly placed a white, long-stemmed rose in the young girl's desk. When the object of his affection opened her desk, she coughed loudly to get the class's full attention, stared at my son, and ripped the flower to shreds, slowly dropping the destroyed petals to the floor.
"Well, yes," I was later told by a teacher. "Girls can be a bit mean at this age. They are experimenting and testing boundaries that, for them, tend to be social. They experiment with attracting and rejecting boys' attention."
"Experiment?" I wondered at the time, marveling at this vacuous defense. My son's school, like every Catholic middle and high school, has firm, well-enforced boundaries to control boys' bullying each other and in any way harassing girls. No boy would dare similarly humiliate a girl -- much less touch, push, or harass a female peer -- without fully anticipating swift, certain, and painful consequences, including expulsion. Nevertheless, I have watched girls throw themselves against boys, shove and trip them, rumple their hair and tug their clothing, whisper derogatory, stinging insults -- all with no consequence, no correction. Experiment? How about "bullying without compassion or correction"?
Yeah, guys get hardons a lot, but we also have hearts. Also:
Second, in California, the radical feminist agenda has pushed for a host of laws that allow girls to obtain confidential "reproductive health" care. Internet sites like www.teensource.org and Planned Parenthood's "Teen Talk," aimed at teenage girls, explicitly and enthusiastically encourage girls to engage in aggressive sexual activity by "taking control" and viewing sex as yet another hobby, not an emotionally defining interaction between feeling persons. This is but one consequence of the Pill, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.
I'm telling you, this stuff is scary.
Along those lines, and at the risk of publicizing trash, take a gander at this trailer that the Mrs. & I saw last Friday night at the theater. Hyper-sexual? Check. Portrayal of believers as hypocrites? Check. Sluts are people too? Check. Hollywood gives it the green light, to be sure.
ReplyDeleteOur culture is sick.
P.S. The truest thing I've read on the Internets in a very long time is Pauli's "Yeah, guys get hardons a lot, but we also have hearts." This is exactly right on so many levels.
Yeah, we're macho conquerors, but in our true nature we revere women. You can see it throughout literature. It comes out when least expected (Chris Rock, as a parent, talking about how his daughter is not going to wear "stripper clothes".) The thuggingest ballplayers saying "Hi Mom!" into the camera. And on and on.
But the current culture ignores this, especially in its attitude toward women, and what it thinks women's roles ought to be (and thus what it thinks guys roles ought to be). Women, help us revere you -- we want to.
P.P.S. What movie did we see? "The Expendables", of course. It doesn't insult our faith or our country, the enemies are not White Christian Corporate Businessmen, it validly makes a larger point without preaching, you care about the characters, and it entertains. Formulaic without being cliched. Oh yeah, things blow up, there's a car chase, and lots of fightin'. I give it a thumbs up -- find a theater that doesn't smell like puke and enjoy it if you dig this sort of thing.
Yeah, it's almost as if the logic goes like this:
ReplyDeletePremise: Guys are heartless.
Premise: Girls need to be like guys.
Conclusion: Therefore, teach girls how to be heartless.
Both premises are false.
I think there were always evil girls who did mean things, and they were never really marginalized. whereas sluts were loose girls who were sort of pathetic, right?
ReplyDeleteKathleen, yes, you are right. It seems like at one time you had the stuck-up girls who weren't slutty at all and were maybe a little bit mean, then you had a few girls we called "teases" who dressed sort of hot and flirty but were virgins. Then the sluts who were easy and usually weren't mean at all, just kind of stupid and like you said, pathetic, although often really nice. Then, of course, there were good girls who weren't loose or arrogant, the kind I think are still around, and I know a few....
ReplyDeleteBut it seems like now some girls I see are striking a slutty pose, doing this freak dancing, wearing the booty shorts with words across the cheeks, tight t-shirts with stuff like "I'm kind of a big deal" across the chest AND they're being downright mean--not just stuck-up which is forgivable--to boys their own age like in this article. I think they're really insecure and doing this because they're being brainwashed to not get emotionally involved with ANYONE EVER in order too remain empowered. That's the feeling I get anyway. I had a dad recently tell me that his teenage daughter is really mean. It was really sad to me; I knew he wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true.
Girls can be deceptive to parents, in that they can have a very civilized and charming exterior while being mean as snakes. I would think clued-in parents can get control of this in most cases. But most parents just aren't that engaged anymore...
ReplyDeleteTrue that. We used to have a babysitter who was half decent but got worse and worse with the kids to where we had to drop her. She was at our house for a party recently and was wearing a tank top and a tight skirt. I was thinking "Man, at least put a sweater over those." But her mom--for whom I have great respect--seemed clueless.
ReplyDeleteLater as they were leaving I looked down the road where they'd parked and the girl was wearing a sweater. Her mom informed me nonchalantly "yeah, she's always cold." There were a lot of men at that party and I got the feeling that she was taking her "late model" out on a test drive.
The new slutty-mean girls of course harms the girls themselves and their families, etc., but also harm the boys in their world by pushing them into prolonged adolescence.
ReplyDeleteCheck out a modern day college campus these days (if you dare, Pauli). Our daughter graduated last spring. For lots of reasons, including the mean-girl reason, the guys are clueless (when sober) and remarkably un-serious about anything. It is as though they are still fourteen years old.
Yeah, we were a bit that way ourselves, but we knew that reality was about to hit at the end of our time there and we eventually dealt with it. These days, five and six year degree "plans" are the norm for college guys (it is the girls who graduate on time).
Our culture is sick. We parents of my era did not do a good job for our kids.
We parents of my era did not do a good job for our kids.
ReplyDeleteI'm sort of glad you said that, pik. I try really hard not to feel/think that way because it can be unproductive. However it can also be instructive.
Just one example: television. My mother let me watch about 2-3 hours of television every day when I came home from school between 1st and 4th grade. In our house now the television is rarely used by the kids or us, and only for DVDs for the kids. This is partially due to the quantitative aspect, not just the qualitative. I don't think it's just that I'm so much smarter than my parents, I think we've all had an enormous wake up call about the stupidity factor.
As for me, I never watch the news or TV cable shows because it makes me want to kill people which I still can't quite square with my beliefs.
I wish I was joking about this, but my uncle whose mind is still stuck in the 70's and never had kids still thinks that the best way to teach young kids basic language skills is to plop them in front of Sesame Street. I'm not exaggerating when I say I've heard him say this 7 times in as many years and I see him twice a year at the most. Why does he believe this? "They got all these education experts together and designed the entire show from the bottom up, even the cartoons."
Scary indeed. Early education is key. We've got to remember that..."adult" debates on fiscal issues, and even social issues, will amount to nothing as long as children are brainwashed into this anti-academic, hyper-sexual, mindless way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteSlutty girls...don't get me started. I knew some of these kids when they were cute little innocent babies. Their transformation--in an amazingly short time--into hardened ho's is extremely disturbing.
ReplyDelete