Priceless, Jesse. And true to your word, the backlash has begun.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/
2...in3635187.shtml
http://www.eonline.com/gossip/hu...sid=fd-hot2-
txt
Some of the polls have called for the Nickelodeon show to be canceled. They run from 80-90% against the girl.
I knew some of the scene at a well-known Catholic college during the Reagan years. The girls were such good Catholics, they'd never use birth control.
Of course, they'd get stinking drunk every weekend, hook up with anything that moved, and wound up having more abortions than any other college campus in town (of which there were several).
Denial. Not just the river in Egypt.
A schoolteacher friend told me the same thing almost word for word one time. Her students thought that being swept up in the moment was fine but using birth control meant you were a slut. And this was in the state of Louisiana, another one of those places with a high teenage birth rate.
19 year old boyfriend?
Isn't that like statutory or some such?
Depends on the State (or nation) she was in when conception occurred.
I am not an expert on age of consent. You might try:
http://www.ageofconsent.com/
ageo...geofconsent.htm
It'd be too much to ask if there's any backlash against the boyfriend as well. Because we all know that when a girl gets pregnant, it's her fault, and her fault alone.
Oh, this has been seen over and over again. If you think about it, prepare for it, take responsibility, then you are an Evil AntiGod Feminazi.
But getting Swept Away by the Romance and "he says he LUUVES me!" and all that? That's being a "good girl".
Standard schtick, since the 1950s or earlier.
Bah. America. Where stupidity is enshrined.
So let me get this right. A girl who has sex and gets pregnant is 'knocked up' and her family upbringing is questioned. A girl who doesn't get pregnant...nothing happens to her, no names are called, her family isn't called white trash.
I do not like this article, Jesse. I don't like it from the title to the end.
It's what I grew up feeling in the 60s. You do it, you're slammed. You don't do it, your damned. You get pregnant, you're finished. Is the boy's family also white trash?
God, this pisses me off.
Remember those places that used to exist pre-Reagan? They were called free clinics. It's a shame what these red state crazies are doing to themselves and their children.
From deep in the heart of Texas, I see it everyday.
The more conservative the state, the higher incidence of teen pregnancy and divorce. They don't use birth control cause no one ever tells them about it or teaches them anything about sex. Oh, they talk about sex- a lot. But only because it is sinful, it is dirty, it is naughty, it is nasty(remind anyone of a certain Senator talking about Bill Clinton?). And of course in the backdrop of it being the forbidden act that will cause the devil to bite off your head and stick it on his trident for all eternity, it becomes the ultimate in sinful pleasures.
The funny thing about humans is that they are really good at figuring out how to have sex even if there is no one around to tell them how to do it. Those crazy libruls act like it is a natural instinctual drive or something. And sex with no method of protection among very fertile young adults pumps out babies faster than a Texas gusher.
Now the question is why the family decided to have the baby instead of going a couple states over to have an abortion(very very common among the middle and high class religious southern youth).
The prospective daddy wants to marry her. Bet you nine times out of ten, he doesn't get his mitts on the moolah. But rumors abound right now.
The age of consent in Louisiana is 17. So what Casey Aldridge did was technically statutory rape.
See http://www.mtv.com/news/
articles...s_britney.jhtml
and
http://ap.google.com/article/
ALe...Tzh17wD8TLI6HO0
and
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22349906/
Various reports have her wanting to live with him, or that they will marry.
Dear Margot -
First, thank you deeply for speaking so plainly. I'll have more to say about this at the end of my comment.
You spoke plainly, and I'm going to do you the honor of speaking very plainly in return.
You are precisely correct. This is what you grew up with in the sixties, what I grew up with in the seventies, and what my daughters report growing up with now in this century. That is why it is so triggering, so upsetting.
High School in all its raw impossible social strictures remains alive and kicking -- and that cuts straight through to a very deep part of each of our biology (those of us who went to High School; people who did not, will have to translate this article into the appropriate cultural references for themselves.) Teenage girls are still categorized -- by themselves as well as by most of their peers, along with (most of) their less-taught parents and (most of, even if they know it's un-PC to admit it) teachers/administrations -- into categories: Good Girl & Slut. In addition, the Lesbo, Neuter, and Who Gives a Shit (i.e.: fat chicks, retards, and cripples.)
Said differently, for the teenage mind, the world consists of girls whom he fantasizes want to fuck him... and everyone else.
Within moments of meeting a girl, she's either potential prey, or she vanishes almost completely from his working brain and mind.
To the extent a guy has guy friends, a good chunk of what they talk about is precisely why this or that particular girl is a good girl or a slut, or possibly a slutty lez. No one bothers to talk about the neuters or the spazs, although sometimes a neuter will transition up in which case, prey. *smiles sweetly*
On the girl's side, high school is still as bad as it ever was. They live in a world in which the categories of socialare always already there when the girls arrive, in which their primary worth is judged based on highly inaccurate assessments of their fuckability. But should they ever actually fuck, their desirability would be lost in a moment. None of which of course is explained to the girls.
Margot -- none of what I'm describing is fair or good or nice. It is however, a well-grounded, that is, an accurate interpretation of the Framing (context) in which boys and girls found themselves then and still find themselves today. To be technical, it is their thrown way of being.
Tonight -- Thursday night (last night as you're most likely to be reading this; actually, last night I guess for me too, but I'm still up) -- when I picked up my daughter from work, we were talking in the car and I told her about this article (but not your comment, as I'd not yet read it.)
My seventeen year-old daughter said, "Yeah, that's precisely it, Dad. Slut or Good Girl. And you can't get out of the game." She pointed out the basic distinction is only Slut or Good Girl. You can be considered a Lez in addition to being a Slut. In general, anything which explains to the boy why you're not worshiping at the alter of his almighty penis.
Kyle and I agreed boys are really fucking stupid. *cracks up*
What is different now than in the 60s and 70s however, is that at least among young progressives, such as my Kyle and Chelsea, and even my oldest, Avian (although not as much; she was much more... sorry, still is, although not as much as in High School, now that she's out working... caught up in the Catch-22ness of it all) daughter whom I made most of big mistakes as a dad on -- these young progressive smart beautiful women: all three are clear that Good Girl v Slut is a FRAME, not the TRUTH.
We didn't know that when I was growing up. Kyle and her friends who are girls, do. And while they are still automatically thrown inside the frame, including their own girl and boyfriends, Kyle and her best friends -- sometimes with a little help from Dad during our nightly chat when she sits at the foot of my bed and we talk about what kind of day has it been -- Kyle is able to routinely break herself free of the framing and help her best friends to do the same, mostly. Sometimes she'll even send them in to speak with me, if they're really a tough case.
The point of the article, Margot, is that Jamie Lynn, can not see the frame. For her, there is no frame. Life is simply happening. She is automatically trapped in, her entire existence given by, who she is invented and lived by, the context of Good Girl v Slut.
Frames have consequences. The consequence of this particular frame is, she's knocked up. As for the boy... he doesn't even count in the frame.
In the progressive frame you and I would want for our children, of course he matters. But inside of Jamie Lynn's world, it only matters if he offers to marry her... and he is obligated to offer, although she doesn't have to accept.
k...
Thank you again Margot, for your heartfelt comments. They show the article is working as I had hoped. I'm exceedingly grateful for your trust in me and in the safe space we have at GNB that you'd speak so candidly.
Happy holidays,
Jesse is very right. But it continues beyond high school.
When women are given no other roles to aspire to except wife/mother, it apparently doesn't matter if they are also rich media stars. Britney was desperate to get married; that's what the Vegas annulment was all about, and once she got a marriage that stuck more than 24 hours, she was desperate to have babies. She had two back-to-back.
Because that's all that matters, don't you know... women can do other things, obviously, but it just means they will be richer wife/mommies.
Thanks for the cash, Britney, but you know, it's not really important.
So she made the classic, childish mistake... thinking that doing adult things would make her an adult.
When it's the other way around.
Thank you for your comment, Jesse.
I think I get what you were saying, and if I didn't it wasn't for lack of trying on your part.
As was illustrated by the last 2 comments, the pendulum swings wide in both directions. The 'only sluts do it' is the flip side of the evolved modern day woman's inability to accept the fact that nothing's changed. Believe me, nothing makes me sadder than to see this in evidence. But my feelings do not have the power to change said reality. It's better for women to understand that this is the reality, deal with it and plan her agenda accordingly. Birth control is top on the list of planning one's agenda. Helping young girls into this awareness along with helping them to mold their behavior in accordance with the status quo, will, in fact, empower them.
Women focus too much on trying to change the male mentality. It's a losing strategy. You can only control yourself. Just because you're young, you don't have to be stupid and give into to the kind of peer pressure that will have you behaving in ways that will surely come back to haunt you.
My husband insists that Americans really hate sex. As time goes on, I'm inclined to agree with him. Adults at peace with their sexual nature don't have these problems.
My daughter, also 17 and sexually active, has somehow carved out a different place for herself within her uptight whitebread blazer-and-kilt prep school.
She's the Activist. The one who's been giving the administration shit for three straight years about why there's no comprehensive sex education in the schools. She's drawn up plans and proposals and budgets, found sample curricula and even the teachers qualified to teach it, made presentations to the board -- nada.
She's the one who keeps half a dozen good books on sex in her locker (to check out to kids who need that information NOW); and a fistful of condoms in her backpack (also for peers who need them NOW). In an environment where no good info is available, she is a one-woman underground resource for the teenaged, confused, and scared.
She almost never talks about her own love life (one boyfriend off at college, whom she's been with almost two years now), which is nobody's business but her own. But she counsels friends, constantly. Some of the guys have tried to make her out to be a slut (mostly due to that common confusion that "sex positive" equals "sexually available") but it doesn't stick, because it doesn't fit her. It's what mimi says: You can only control yourself. And she's so much in control that the other kids don't mess with her.
I set it up for her to meet Shelby Knox last year. They've stayed in touch. My kid is applying to film school for next fall -- but her first choice college also has a sexual psychology department, and she's talking double degree.
I think I've created a beautiful violet-eyed monster. But this is the crusade she's chosen -- and also her own personal piece of her mother's karma to carry forward.
Think on this:
Several years ago, we were invited to a niece's HS graduation party. She and a few friends threw it at her mom's house. All six graduates were there- with their kids, and no husbands or even fiances, and only one boyfriend/father. One was working big time on her second. Evidently their environment has written shame, and therefor slut out of their vocabulary.
I'm no prude, but this really warped my world.
JLS is a little trampy slut.
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