relationships

Reflections on the Other Kind of Meltdown: A Metaphor Returns Unbidden and Unwelcome to Life

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2011-03-12 07:43

By very odd coincidence I was in Harrisburg, PA not once but twice the day their Three Mile Island lost coolant and nearly melted down.  The first time was around six in the morning about two hours after the incident, and before anyone had bothered to mention it to the general public.  I was hitch hiking up from Tennessee to Scranton, PA, where my motorcycle had broken down the year before. To see if it was fixed!  (Didn't we love the days before email, or cell phones, or deregulated long-distance phone calls?)  

The next time was about eight hours later as I hitch hiked back home (the motorcycle hadn't been ready.)  That time traffic through Harrisburg was a lot more creepy as word had gotten out.

There was quite a bit more traffic leaving Harrisburg than going into it.  And quite a bit more turmoil on local radio (which back before consolidation and monopolization by the likes of Clear Channel were actually local.)

Funny propaganda-related anecdote: When I got back to my hometown, which is close to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the lead article in the very conservative local paper massively downplayed the event.  The lead photo showed people walking and drinking coffee with the reactor towers in the background.  The caption said "It was business as usual for unconcerned residents."  Which hadn't been my even peripheral experience. 

The dateline on the photo was around 8:00 in the morning.  At which point virtually no local residents had yet been notified that the nuclear power plant in their back yard was malfunctioning catastrophically and in serious danger of a core meltdown.  So yeah, nothing makes one less concerned and more inclined to go about one's business than not being told to run away.

One more reason to be happy about the internet and global connectivity.  The letter I wrote to the paper's editor objecting to the deception was never published.  As there were no alternative outlets in the area that was the end of story.  Now only Fox News would try that kind of bullshit, and even they'd get called on it by everyone else.

Anyway, now an even worse disaster, and a more critical meltdown, seems to have befallen Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Without reflecting further on the wisdom of continuing to operate really old-technology nuclear power plants in high-seismic areas, and since, after all, this is a sex, gender, and relationship blog, I'll just say that...

To the best of my knowledge one rarely spoke of "having a meltdown," in one's relationship or one's life, before approximately March 28, 1979.  By April 26, 1986, when the Chernobyl reactor really did blow out, the metaphor had become pretty common.

I think it's now been in common parlance long enough to have become basically a dead metaphor for most -- like "boilerplate" or "iron clad," a colorful term not closely associated with its original meaning.  For instance, till yesterday anyway, one might say their three-year-old needed a nap and was "melting down."  Or that one's cellphone was broken and one was melting down.  Or that one saw their partner had changed their Facebook status to "it's complicated," and knew their relationship was melting down.

Turns out it's a great metaphor, I think, because it's so evocative of the emotional and physical slump we witness or experience in emotional crisis, including the reddened cheeks, teary eyes, and runny noses that accompany it. 

While it's ordinarily refreshing to see a dead metaphor returned to life -- as when we look on a boiler and see an actual plate with raised text cast into it -- because it snaps the image of boilerplate text back into place and at least briefly reconnects us with history and sometimes heritage.

This time not so much.  I would far prefer that the image that came to our minds at mention of the word "meltdown" was a pile of soggy Kleenex, chocolate wrappers, and crumpled notes of apology or indignation.

My thoughts have been with the residents of Japan since Thursday evening when I first got word of the earthquake and tsunamis. And now this.

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Momentum Conference: Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism, and Relationships Through New Media

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2010-08-09 13:53

Via AlwaysArousedGirl there’s a new conference on the way, MOMENTUM: Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism and Relationships Through New Media. The principle organizers are Tess of Urban Gypsy and Diva of Debauched Domestic Diva.

Here’s Tess

It was a beautiful evening in June when we walked NYC’s High Line with Figleaf of Real Adult Sex [Blush —fl] discussing our ideas for a new sexuality conference.  Diva and I had been mulling it  over ourselves for a while, motivated and inspired by Amber Rhea’s Sex 2.0 and the Sex in America panel at NYC’s Open Center.  We knew we were close but had not quite nailed down what our concept would be and how to combine these two amazing events.  When Figleaf suggested what was missing was relationships, all the pieces came together.  After all sexuality and feminism don’t exist in a vacuum but amid a myriad of relationships.  And so, Tied Up Events is now happy to announce MOMENTUM: Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism and Relationships Through New Media, a conference taking place on April 1st to April 3rd, 2011 in Washington, DC.

MOMENTUM explores how the phenomenal growth of online communication has given rise to an amazing amount of sharing, learning and experimenting with different expressions of sexuality, relationships and feminism. MOMENTUM provides a safe place to listen, discuss and learn about the ways the web has impacted our sexuality without the fear of reprisal or shaming. It is a space for acceptance and appreciation of diversity, including for those in the LGBTQ, sex-work, BDSM and non-monogamous communities.

During MOMENTUM we will discuss ways to bridge the baffling dichotomies our culture creates around sexuality. While on one hand we have unprecedented sexual freedom, on the other we continue to police sexuality with a frightening vigor. Abortion laws, restrictions on gay marriage, abstinence programs, medicalization of sex, fear of pornography and prosecutions for teenage sexting are examples of one side of the spectrum. The discomfort that strives to make us keep our sexuality hidden conflicts with the use of sex — especially the female body — to sell everything from food to cars to “performance enhancing” products.

Each participant will leave the conference with new perspectives, new connections, and a plan to carry the MOMENTUM forward into 2011 and beyond.

We’re now calling for presenters to submit their ideas for sessions at MOMENTUM.  Please explore the official site, MomentumCon.com, where you’ll find all you need to know, including how to submit a proposal for a session, how to register to attend, and how to take advantage of early bird pricing.

Fascinations has generously agreed to be the primary corporate sponsor of MOMENTUM and we want to thank them very much for their support of this event.

If you think the site absolutely rocks as much as we do, that’s only because of the help, guidance and technical know-how of Dangerous Lilly and the website design skills of AAG.  We’re indebted to you both.*

She said it here.

Personally I can’t say how happy I am to see a conference that includes relationships. If you’ve read my blog long enough you’ve probably noticed I tend to use very expansive definitions of common words. Sex, for instance. Feminism too. So it shouldn’t surprise you that I have a very expansive definition of relationships as well.

Despite whole aisles of bookstore shelves devoted to relationships assumptions about conventional long-term relationships, such as the (incorrect) notion that single people have sex less often than coupled people do or that passion inevitably fades with infatuation. But consider, for instance, the complex but utterly overlooked obligations implied in allegedly casual “no-strings attached” relationships. And why do we tend to assume a relationship that’s not lifelong is time wasted on a failed relationship? And then there’s the peculiarity that some extremely short-term encounters in BDSM circles may involve more express negotiation and checking in than all too many “old fashioned” traditional married couples may have in an entire lifetime together. None of this is to slight or belittle long-term relationships at all! I’m not even suggesting that our familiarity with the triumphs, traumas, and tropes of long-term relationships has bred contempt. Again not at all.

I also can’t say how happy I am to hear that includes relationships in the context of sexuality and feminism/gender-studies. One of the tenets of classic radical feminism (as opposed to contemporary separatist “radfem” feminism) is that the ultimate oppression, the template for all social oppression, ultimately derives from the (non-kink) economic, familial, and physical domination of one relationship partner over the other in the privacy of their own home. 40 years after that early construction we’ve learn, of course, that such domination is not and has never been confined to heterosexuals. But the point remains that what happens in the bedroom does not always stay in the bedroom. And of course a huge component of feminist and gender studies is the part where what does not happen in the bedroom highly influences what does. And as for romance in the feminist era, if she wanted to present I’d love to hear Sadie Doyle talk about her take on Cristina Nehring’s A Vindication of Love:.

The list of misunderstandings about sex workers and relationships could fill a book. Beginning with the misconception that commercial relationships exclude any other form of relationship. Another book might be filled with insights sex workers could bring about their customer’s relationships.

I’d love to spend a little time talking about how much we all “know” about sex and relationships comes from what we remember as developing teenagers… and then fail to reconsider when we become real adults.

Sigh! I could go on for days about why I’m looking forward to this particular dimension of the conference. And while relationships happen to be the big reason I’m interested it’s still just one of the dimensions.

MOMENTUM: Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism and Relationships Through New Media, a conference taking place on April 1st to April 3rd, 2011 in Washington, DC.

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Why Kelly Diels Blogs (Subversively) About Sex

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2010-01-04 10:06

For some reason I’m suddenly discovering all these cool bloggers who’ve been well known for years. To everyone except, seemingly, to me. Oh well, I’ve alway been a slow learner. For instance…

Kelly Diels of Cleavage recently wrote so passionately about why she blogs about sex that it made me wish it was why I did.

The first time I had sex, I said, Let’s do that AGAIN!

Read the quote in context here.

She talks about how unflappably happy she was in her newfound discovery of herself, of her partner… of what can be done, of her transformation.

Slings and arrows and fashion digs aside, I glowed all day. I wondered if it was obvious I was glowing. I glowed about glowing.

And all these flowing, glowing paragraphs of giddiness she writes of has a lovely, polemical, political purpose… to confront how uncomfortable societies can be with such newfound ecstasy.

Virginity, she says, can not be lost because there is no loss, there is only gain.

Feeling uncomfortable yet? I have to admit little winces here and caveats there — oooh, it’s not so wonderful for everyone. Oooh, he could get a disease. Ooh, she could get a reputation. Ooooh, they could be exploiting each other. Oooh, the first time isn’t so great for lots of people. You know what I mean, right? You read something as obliviously joyous as that and you find yourself thinking “that’s wonderful, hon, and sure it’s like that for some people but…”

And as if in anticipation, and maybe to illustrate on of her main points, she writes

This, of course, is why there are so many rules about sex. Sexuality is a basis for power and agency and awe. Stepping over the divine line into the miracles of body and self makes you wonder: what else is possible? What could possibly be impossible?

This is why cults encourage celibacy or polygamy. Dyads are dangerous to cult authority. They give you an ally. Directing your passion towards the cult with celibacy or fracturing your affection across multiple relationships is a great way to ensure that your first loyalty is your guru. Religions, too, encourage celibacy or monogamy or rigidly circumscribed polygamy. How would the Vatican get rich if priests had families? Families tend to accrete resources rather than direct them to the Church. In any case, in any system, the first order of business is to regulate sexuality.

Which gets to what motivated me to blog about sex: if you pay attention you begin to notice, as Diels does, that pretty much all the negative consequences of sex derive from our negative attitudes about sex. Even religious ones. Even feminist ones. Even irresponsible, over-the-top exploitative ones. Even 70’s-style mafia-tainted pornographer ones. Even mine. Even yours.

STIs? Unwanted, unplanned pregnancy? Exploitation? Yep. “Love-em-and-leave-em?” Yep. Sexual assault and rape? Yep. The extraordinarily banal way that sex as selling is smeared across magazine cover after billboard after police procedural after liquor bottle? Yep, yep, and yep. (I’ve skipped the details but if provoked I can bloviate about them for… longer than you probably care to read about it.)

Even things claimed by “natural law” conservatives like that whole homophobia business are frowned on for exactly the same reason contraception and abortion are: it short-circuits sexual scarcity, without which… um… well, trust them when they say the end of sexual scarcity would be a Really Bad Thing. And, really, if you didn’t trust them there wouldn’t be anything bad about sex at all.

All of which makes Diels’ orthodoxy anathema even to people who grin grimly and assure us they’re “sex positive:”

Sex is a language. Kisses and touch and connection are the vocabulary of personal, heartfelt, libidinous expression.

Despite what our culture tells us – that chick flicks and chick lit and pursuit of romance and love are frothy and frivolous – relationships can provide a grammar for growth.

And that’s why I write about sex. I write about sex as an antidote to the titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn, again-and-again pornification of our world. I write about sex because sex is a school and love is an ashram. They are sacred sites for learning, laughing, growing, stretching, unfurling.

It’s ok if such unbridled exuberance makes you a little nervous. But if it does please take a little time to ask yourself why. Especially if you think it’s obvious why.

—-

Along similar lines see: Amanda Marcotte’s “The ‘Sex Addiction’ model isn’t harmless“ or Heather Corinna’s “With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body“

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Domestic Experience and Taking *Yourself* For Granted

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2009-12-09 18:30

Just following up on my earlier post, Domestic Experience and Being Taken for Granted: It’s Not a Gender Thing, It’s Situational, the other, obvious thing is that it’s all my side of the story.*

Because if I would say the floor is not a closet my partner would say the dining room table (where I work) is not a recycling bin. And if I groused out loud to my children about them not liking the lunches I make them to take to school, my children would suggest they’d make lunches for themselves if I didn’t crab so much about the mess. And so on. And my children and partner would all probably say that when I’m not cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing their homework and/or computer time, or snuggling them at bedtime I’m nose-deep in a book, or laptop, or a musical instrument.

The point here is that we all have visions of how our lives are supposed to be, and part of that vision includes the roles we take on, the tasks we see as needed, and our understanding of how people around us to perceive what we do.**

In other words we don’t just stereotype other people we stereotype ourselves.

There’s nothing specifically wrong with stereotyping, by the way — our brains would slow to a crawl if we had to look at every instance of every thing as completely unique and previously unencountered. What is wrong, though, or at least unproductive, is to mistake our stereotypes for reality and either forget to examine and update them when reality conflicts with them… or, worse, to ask reality to adjust to our stereotypes. Including, our stereotypes of ourselves.

* By the way, no, I wasn’t prompted to mention this. :-)
** The Two Rules of Desire and the whole no-sex class thing work this way. Our expectations of how the world works condition us to miss cues that are given, and see cues that are not. Hilarity rarely ensues.

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Canonical Age Ratios Will Apply Even After Gender Equalization

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2009-09-07 19:02

Wombat of Kiss & Blog on the new-to-him “cougar” designation.

Cougars are interesting at the very least because it’s one case where women behave in exactly the same way as men. Older guys chasing (much) younger women is passé. We don’t call such men ‘lions’ or ‘striped siberian tigers’. They’re just icky old dudes. When women do the same thing, they get a title, websites and college sporting teams named after them.

But let’s not focus entirely on Cougars. Let’s make this week’s topic about age differences between men and women in relationships.

Does half the man’s age plus seven years work for women too?

He said it here.

I’d like to say I’m all for it, mostly because at least in the statistical/demographic sense it’s evidence of gender balancing. It seems to me that older women pairing with younger men has been less obvious in modern western society mostly because until fairly recently ordinary, non-celebrity, non-wealthy women were rarely in a social, economic, or marital position to make their own partner choices in the first place, let alone either to choose, or be desirable to, younger men. In other words most of the eyebrow-raising has far more to do with its novelty rather than with impropriety.

On the other hand I can’t say I’m all for it because age differences in relationships between older men and younger women, older men and younger men, and older women and younger women can be problematic not because of gender but because age differences are often accompanied by experience, economic, and power differences. The potential for problems between older women and younger men is therefore no different.

But to the extent “cougars” (a term, by the way, I suspect will go away once the novelty wears off) finally balance set of gendered age differences we can begin to look at the issues with less passion but also with greater scrutiny of distribution of power within relationships in general. Because that’s likely to persist even after we move past the artificial and induced traditions of gender imbalance.

Oh, and short answer to Wombat’s direct question? I think half the older partner’s age plus seven is a good ratio to begin introspection on the party’s parts and scrutiny by onlookers regardless of gender mix.

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Love 'Em and Hate 'Em: The "Ex-Hole" Paradox

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-09-01 21:29

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon on one of the paradoxes of relationships.

To call someone a “bitch” for dumping you is to imply that she was wrong and mean-spirited to do so, but the fact that you wield the word “bitch” to describe women who believe they own their own selves is evidence that she was actually a wise woman for getting rid of your sorry ass.

Read the quote in context here.

Amanda links the specific sentiment (referencing the intro to the movie (500) Days of Summer, which I haven’t seen) to misogyny but similar iterations of the paradox can be found at the end of quite a few relationships regardless of the erstwhile participants’ gender, orientation, or outlook on life.

An indication of the insincerity of the sentiment often derives from the point that the angered or scorned individual often genuinely wishes their relationship with the accused was still intact.

Complicating (but not, I think, diluting) Amanda’s point, I’d add that proprietary attitudes towards partners isn’t limited to men toward women partners. In English at least, even after a relationship ends we refer to each other as “my ex.” Or (relating this back to the more general version of Amanda’s point) “my ex-hole.” Which is what an old friend used to call hers.

Related: Regina Lynn on how to sever your online connections in How to Delete Your Ex.

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Quote of the Day: "Does a moron need 'facts' to bolster his grandstanding? No - but he'll use them."

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-09-01 15:16

Sadie of Jezebel comes up with my nomination for quote of the day in her reflections on misinterpretations of Natalie Angier’s Science Times article on serial monogamy in women… which evidently meshes extremely well with a recent meme about so-called “mate-poaching” women.

If we need proof, keep in mind that the “husband-snatcher!” furor is still going strong. A rather cavalier piece in the Houston Chronicle sports the same sort of reductive headline that’s been snaring views since the rather more complicated Journal of Experimental Social Psychology results came out. In short, she reports that “mate poaching” is real, and that it says a lot of bad stuff about women. Then readers, who also haven’t read the research and are drawing their own conclusions based on this rather sketchy pop-summary, say things like, “fellas if your wife has hot looking girlfriends, leave the house, cause those b—-h’s are cheating to. ladies, if your husband has hot looking friends, chances are they are cheating with your hot looking girlfriends.” And “THE ALPHA MALE, just like the lion of the jungle his role is to get as many lioness’s pregnant.” Does a moron need “facts” to bolster his grandstanding? No – but he’ll use them.

Read the quote in context here.

Angier’s story, incidentally, mainly says we’re wrong if we think serial monogamy is mainly a “harem-building” strategy that benefits only men. How this translates into husband-poaching women is best left to those who think the two-sphere model of gender (where if men are believed to seek new partners women must be believed never to.) In fact, Angier refers to a Tanzanian sub-culture where it appears to be as common, as advantageous, and as admirable for women to change husbands as it is for Americans to change jobs or houses.

Just as one swallow does not a summer make, one culture where women regardes ad the most industrious, virtuous frequently change husbands (and, incidentally, where husbands with multiple marriages are seen as losers) is not a template for other societies. But it does offer yet another reason to continue questioning what we “know” is innately true about gender in relationships. We might also want to examine whether multiple marriages for women are necessarily as detrimental as they’re made out to be. And since, like it or not, marriage-for-life models are no longer the majority model we might want to use the point as a stepping-off point for a discussion on policy initiatives that attempt to moderate rather than disrupt marriage transitions. And we’d probably also want to take a moment to reassure insecure PUA types that letting women (instead of just men) hop from relationship to relationship will benefit only opportunistic “high-status” women.

The last three or four sentences of the previous paragraph bring me back to the real point of this post. Really I just wanted to call attention to Sadie’s great sentence… even if or when it might apply to the way I pick up on some ideas: “Does a moron need “facts” to bolster his grandstanding? No – but he’ll use them.”

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Gendered Objectification Based on Gendered Childhood Games?

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2009-08-21 18:01

Holly of The Pervocracy tackles “relationship advice” from a recent issue of Glamour magazine

“How to tell him to get better clothes: ...You lie next to your peacefully sleeping boyfriend. After making sure he’s down for the count, you sneak over to his dresser, shove a couple of particularly awful items in a bag and hurry out the door.”

NO. Do not do this. Do not fucking destroy someone else’s property because it offends your aesthetics. It’s not cute, it’s not mischievous, it’s not funny, and it’s not something you fucking do. Maybe he hates some of the things you own, you know that? Would you like your stuff to just disappear with a tee-hee and a “now we can get you things I like”? I don’t fucking think so.

She said it here.

She brings up more of the same this time from Cosmopolitan

“Why you should check his E-mail: Never read his e-mail, but a glance at his in-box can give you some insight into the kind of person he is.”

No. No no no no no. The inbox is up there with the medicine cabinet and the diary on the list of places you are just not invited. You creep. And “oh, of course reading is wrong but it’s okay to just skim” ...really? Come on.

Source

To be extravagantly gender-aware for once boyfriends are no more dolls to be dressed and scripted than girlfriends are scores or trophies of games.

The other day in comments Sungold asked, roughly, whether I thought women are brought up first to sacrifice themselves for their men or for their children. And while I can’t answer that well I can say that the way we have always raised girls might make it as difficult for them to relate to their male partners as the way we raise boys to relate to theirs.

We are in fact all human beings, men, women, and children. Not pieces, not property, not “ours” or “his” or “hers” or “theirs.” And so to want “a baby” or to want “a girlfriend” or to want “a husband” and especially to sacrifice to get those things is to lose track of what an honor it is to be with another person, to get to be with their being while they’re with us whether it’s by choice or chance or necessity. It’s also to miss the extraordinary pleasure of being with someone instead of something.

Cosmo and Glamour for women, like Details and Esquire for men, aren’t entirly to blame for this by the way. They only encourage patterns we begin in childhood but for whatever reason (including continuing encouragement from magazines and their sponsors) hang on to when we’re grown.

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Regina Lynn on the Best Type of Lover

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2009-07-27 12:29

Regina Lynn, writing at Sexier Sex, says here’s how to pick the best kind of lover:

This one’s easy. Find a geek.

Here are 5 reasons geeks make the best lovers…

She said it here.

I’m just going to list her five bullet points. You can follow the link to see if you agree with the reasons she gives.

  • Geeks build it so you will come
  • Geeks interact
  • Geeks don’t shock easily
  • Geeks know kinky people
  • Geeks understand multidimensional relationships

I actually don’t think geeks are automatically the best type of lover, anymore than plumbers, poets, actuaries, stay-at-home parents, gardeners, or nuns** are. But her points about the way life online can enhance rather than detract from someone’s real-life interpersonal skills is actually pretty interesting.

[** Just testing: if you’re a geek that last item wouldn’t easily shock you. :-) —fl]

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Distinguishing Casual Flings from Casual Sex

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-07-21 09:53

Karen Rayne of Adolescent Sexuality, who teaches both sex education to early adolescents and sex-ed instruction to education majors has an interesting take on summer/vacation flings for teenagers.

Vacation flings can range from more emotional connection and no physical connection to an exclusively sexual experience.  They can last a weekend, or a week, or several weeks.  Some of them are remembered and some are forgotten.

But what’s the point of these little affairs?  Are they essentially good or harmful for teenagers?  Should parents encourage them or discourage them?

As I have mentioned before, teenagers are in a place where they are discovering who they are, who they want to be, and how much choice they really have in the matter.  To go through this process, most teenagers need to experience themselves in a variety of situations and acting in a variety of ways.  It’s a healthy thing for them to date around and learn what kind of a partner they want to have.

Vacations often offer a safe place to experiment.  The relationship is generally, by circumstance, limited in length. If the match is not a beneficial one, the parents (and the teenager) can take solace in it ending shortly. The teenager can experience a different side, a different personality, a different kind of relationship, with a firm expiration date attached. If the teenager likes this new sense of self, it can be brought back home, but if the teenager does not like the new sense of self, it can be discarded and left behind. Very convenient, no?

She said it here.

As my blog name suggests I’m not enthusiastic about sex and young people. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they shouldn’t be sexual. I hope it’s obvious that I support sex education (I believe age-appropriate sex education should begin very early.) It’s just that since adulthood actually lasts a really long time, and that a healthy, non-pressured, non-sexualized adolescence lays a great foundation for… well… real adult sex I don’t think one “misses out” by waiting till you’re already a adult instead of imagining it’s sex that actually makes you a man or woman.

Where I part company with the abstinence/chastity crowd, of course, is that don’t see adolescence as a rearguard attempt to hold off on relationship formation till one finds their “one true love.” So I agree wholeheartedly with Rayne that casual or transitory relationships are important precursors to serious and long-term ones.

See also: Debby at My Sexy Professor has a post about How to Make Casual Flings Work. The four main headings: know thyself, come prepared, safety first, and have realistic expectations nicely illustrates the difference between adolescent and adult relationships and further illustrates how learn to crawl before you walk and learn to walk before you run extends to learn to navigate relationships before you have sex.

It takes time to “know thyself.” “Come prepared” tends to assume you already know what to prepare for. “Safety first” sounds self-evident, and to be honest in our hyper-vigilant culture of parenting it’s the rare child who hasn’t been stuffed brim-full with it from birth. But the transition to “independently assessing potential partners and opportunities” is a pretty big step up from “don’t put your fingers in the fan.”

Which takes me to Debby’s last point about having realistic expectations: Good expectations need to include the point that at least half of all college freshmen are still virgins! Even though something like 85% of freshmen believe only 15% are… and that, naturally, they’re part of that 15%... and that, naturally, that makes them losers. Which evidently, even in college, in turn makes it harder for them to get a serious grip on know thyself, come prepared, and safety first.

Which in turn goes back to the message Karen Rayne, and Deb Haffner, and Heather Corinna and countless other professional sex educators come back to again and again: the point of real, comprehensive sex education isn’t just to get us ready for sex (a big concern of “traditional values” types that Rayne beautifully refutes here) but to help us get ready to get ready to have sex as well.

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