Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Gender is such a malleable concept.  And it can be difficult for people who are entrenched in the general understanding of gender to understand the variances.

I spoke with  my friend Sarah Dopp here some months ago, but I’m not sure I mentioned her website Genderfork, which explores androgyny and gender variance through artistic photography.

I was recently teaching a sex ed class for middle schoolers, and one of the boys was looking at two pictures of an effeminate man from the book Naked New York by Greg Friedler.  In the first picture the man is fully clothed, and the second one he is fully naked.  The boy was grappling with gender and sexual orientation, and confused by the difference between the two.

He said something along these lines: “I can see from this first picture that he is a transsexual, but then I’m confused by this second picture.  He’s clearly gay from the waist up, but then straight from the waist down.  Can you explain this to me?”

Happily, the explanation was much easier to explain than the boy’s erratic guess. (The pictured man was somewhat androgynous, and that we could make no guesses or assumptions about his sexual orientation.)

I have just started a session of my class for parents, and one of the topics that the parents said they wanted to be sure and cover was the difference between transgender and transsexual and how those two topics relate to the gay-straight continuum.

So I’ve been thinking about gender here and there over the past several months.

Then I ran across an article in the New York Times published today called Albanian Custom Fades -  Woman as Family Man.  In extremely patriarchal Albania, if the patriarch of the family died with no male heirs, a virgin woman in the family could take a vow of virginity, give up marriage, sex, and children, and become culturally a man.  Wow!

However, as women have gained rights in Albania, it is no longer problematic for a household to be without a patriarch, and so the custom has died out.  The women quoted in the article seemed basically happy with their lives as men, which they had both sworn to around age 20.  They felt they had more options, more freedom when they were young women living as men, and they had more respect now that they are old women living as men.  One woman said she might not have made the choice she did if women had had more options when she was young.

The article is sure to state that this tradition had nothing to do with being a lesbian.   But I wonder what it has to do with gender.  How much of young, virgin, Albanian women changing genders was based in need of the family, and how much was based in gender identity?  In any event, the Times article is highly interesting and has some great pictures.  It is well worth a read.

(Oh, and we’ll be talking about gender and homosexuality in the third parent class, by the way.)

While I napped this afternoon, the most amazing thing happened…

It takes effect in 30 days.  Read more from the New York Times.  Or, perhaps more fittingly, the Los Angeles Times.

The Body Project is a great book to give you a historical understanding of how American society developed to the point where girls are obsessed with their bodies.

The story begins with how the time-line of reproductive development has changed over many years from the mid-teens to late-childhood.

The Body Project goes on to discuss menstruation, and how it was originally an extremely intimate experience that girls did not talk about. Ideally, however, 150 years ago menstruation was part of an intimate mother-daughter experience and something of a coming-of-age experience in the mid-to-late-teens. Over the years, as diets and lifestyles became healthier and women had fewer children, girls began menstruating earlier and more often (because they were not sick or pregnant as often) and male doctors became involved in the process. As doctors took over, they encouraged girls to use the new, and “cleaner” commercially sold pads rather than the rags their mothers and grandmothers used. Over time, menstruation became something that was talked about comparatively easily in the public square, or at least among girl friends, and is highly commercialized, where the majority of the conversation is about what products girls use - “What brand of pad, tampon, and cramps alever do you use?”

The book goes on to chronicle other body obsessions, including the search for perfect skin and the barbed issues around appropriate public sexuality, lack of sexual activity, and virginity. It’s a great read - and particularly poignant and meaningful for parents of daughters who are about to make the transition into puberty.

(Written by guest blogger Wendy Harlowe.) 

First, again, please feel free to e-mail me privately at wendyharlowe@gmail.com if you don’t want to post comments here. I look forward to hearing from you. I’ve been gratified by the response to my first post, including comments and private e-mail correspondence. (Over the years I’ve worried about being too “in your face” with sexual issues, felt judged for having a lack of boundaries … part of what I think is important is for other survivors to know they can go on to have “normal” healthy sex lives, which I didn’t think possible for many years.)

Regards biology, know that I am not an academician on this topic (or any other topic, for that matter), but as the years go by I’ve thought about it more and more. There are two academic fields that cover this topic: sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. My interest is in human sexual behavior that can be explained through biology and evolution (the belief that animals act in ways to maximize the spread of their genes). And my thoughts are somewhat disjointed and inarticulated. I’ve never had an outlet for real discussion on this topic, and am very interested in your thoughts.

Some facts are obvious: the bodies of girls/women are best ready to have children in their mid-teens through their 20s. Our American/western culture has evolved to discourage childbearing until at least the age of 18/19, and encourages waiting longer than that. Women’s entry into the commercial workforce is hampered by childbearing and childrearing. This childbearing capacity is one of the factors for the disparity between the financial income of men and women.

Although sweeping generalities can always cause problems, the testosterone factor means that men are more hardwired for sex with multiple partners, and women are more hardwired to need protection (of course, I’m running into trouble right here, because the social structures have so much to do with this … if the village truly raised children, women wouldn’t need the individual protector that comes with monogamy).

Men are hardwired to be attracted to young women because they are more capable of healthy reproduction. There is no limit to the number of children one man can sire, but women are limited, physically. Men want monogamy because its the only way to ensure their progeny. Women have accepted monogamy because of the “protector” benefits it delivers. (I don’t believe that most people operate in this way because of conscious belief … I think the marriage/monogamy factor was consciously developed many, many years ago to ensure men’s lineage, linked with the development of Christianity and political power … I think today many people live very happily in monogamous marriages; I don’t think its wrong, I just don’t think its necessary for happiness and moral/ethical living.)

I do believe our human species is evolving. One hundred and fifty years ago, it was completely acceptable to own another human being. Slavery still exists today, but it is illegal and universally condemned. Although women still don’t have basic human freedoms in many parts of the world, human rights campaigns are seen as necessary, even while there is such a huge amount of work for them to do. (another digression … many people believe that pre-Christian nature religions created a far better world, less war, no patriarchy … I think that might be true in some times and in some places … I don’t think it is a given, but my jury is still out on that topic)

Because of this evolution, I do believe our species might be able to progress to the point of acting “above and beyond” those hard-wired biological “needs,” and there is a lot of evidence to signify this: women’s increased sexual assertiveness; faithful and monogamous men who stay with their partners far beyond said partner’s reproductive years; the trend among educated, more affluent couples to have fewer children … also the fact that the nerd/geek population is now more sexually attractive to women, rather than simply excellent physical specimens of the male gender, because success in our world is oftentimes so much more mental than physical.

But here’s what has gotten me thinking about more in recent years: I’ve played a small part in the child protective system, and seen what is so easy to judge … people having children with no thought to their ability to raise them … again and again … having children taken from them by the courts, and continuing on to bear more children. There is a horror to this, and yet … at some basic, instinctual level, we humans are breeders … and accepting that fact in some ways makes it easier to see, makes it more understandable, even if not forgivable. (well, I doubt in the big picture that there is anything unforgiveable, but I digress far too often in this meandering post …)

I suppose, also, that one’s spiritual / religious beliefs come into play here. Although I see Darwinism in human sexual behavior, I also believe in a Divine Spirit, a unifying oneness to us all. Wierdly, I fall into the intelligent design faction, although I certainly don’t want to be lumped in with those who oppose teaching evolution in the schools. Its just all interesting to me … could be seen as so anti-feminist, but over the years this instinctual male and female behavior does make sense at the instinctual level. I think as I have learned more about Buddhism, also, it becomes easier to observe and not be so emotionally attached to judgment.

What do you think? It’s clear to me that I’m not clear in my thinking, but I have been inspired by Chris Smithers’ ditty (” The whole thing works like clockwork over time”):

Origin of Species, by Chris Smithers (you can find him singing this on YouTube, wonderful melody)

Eve told Adam, snakes! I’ve had ‘em!
Let’s get outta here
We’ll raise our family someplace outta town
They left the garden just in time
With the landlord cussin’, right behind
They headed East and finally settled down
One thing led to another …
A bunch of sons, one killed his brother
They kicked him out with nothin’ but his clothes
But the human race survives
‘Cause the brothers all found wives
Where they came from ain’t nobody knows

Then came the Flood, go figure,
Just like New Orleans, only bigger
No one who couldn’t swim would make it through
The lucky ones were on a boat,
Think circus, then make it float
And hope nobody pulls the plug on you
How they fed that crowd is a mystery
It ain’t down in the history
It’s a cinch they didn’t live on cakes and jam
But lions don’t eat cabbage,
And in spite of that old adage
I’ve never seen one lie down with a lamb.

Charlie Darwin looked so far
Into the way things are
He caught aglimpse of God’s unfolding plan
God said “I’ll make some DNA,
They’ll use it any way they want
From paramecium right up to man
They’ll have sex, and mix up sections
Of their code; they’ll have mutations
The whole thing works like clockwork over time
I’ll just sit back in the shade
While everyone gets laid
That’s what I call intelligent design.”

Yes, you and your cat named Felix
Are both wrapped up in that double helix
It’s what we call intelligent design.

*********

But, let me make clear, I don’t believe in Adam and Eve! The whole snake bit in the bible is a thinly-veiled attack on women and feminine spirituality … the asp/snake was a sacred animal and image in the Goddess-worshiping cultures of pre-Christianity. But, I do enjoy the song. Gawd sitting back in the shade, while everyone gets laid. Who can doubt that?!?

One of the places I went on vacation was Venice. It was truly amazing. The history was immense and fascinating. Venice survived as a city state for more than a thousand years. Sometimes Venice managed this through its location (great for trade, extremely difficult to attack), sometimes through it’s extreme wealth and penchant for gaudy shows of power, and sometimes Venice managed to stay independent and powerful through ruthless political and wartime acts.

Among the many museums in Venice was my favorite, the Doge’s Palace (or the Duke’s Palace, the ruler of the city). There was much to see and learn about Venetian history inside the palace, including where and how laws were made, how dissidents were routed out, and what kind of conditions prisoners were kept in through the 1930s (they were not good).

The one room (or series of rooms) that was in each museum, but that I did not expect, was the armory rooms. I guess I was just naive - I think of culture, art, and Carnival when I think of Venice. But, of course, all of that thrived because of the rather ruthless army.

And I must say, the armory rooms in the Doge’s Palace were pretty ruthless. They even had a little corner of one room with torture implements in it. Which brings me (in a long-winded manner) to today’s topic: chastity belts.

Now, I’ve written about chastity belts before. But I didn’t see, in person, people’s visceral reaction to what I wrote. In the Doge’s Palace I saw people’s visceral reaction to what was clearly a chastity belt. Here’s what it looked like from a few steps away:

And so, from across the room, people didn’t have much of a reaction. It was when they got close, and really visually centered in on the relevant parts of the belt that the reactions came.

I watched people from all different countries, with many different languages center in on this piece of torture. But they all made essentially the same horrified grunt as they realized what they were seeing.

I wonder whether the grunts from the men and women were coming from different places? Were they imagining life on the two different sides of the belt?

I wonder how many of them were surprised to see that some chastity belts protected against anal as well as vaginal intercourse?

I am also particularly interested that the belt was included in the torture items. Was it really considered a torture item at the time it was used? Or is that a cultural bias that the museum curators have? Does anyone know?

I am delighted to be back home and back at work in this New Year.

Thank you so much to Just Another Teen - I hope everyone enjoyed reading your posts as much as I did!

Later in the week, there are several topics I want to cover from my experiences on vacation (chastity belts in Italy and condom ads in Germany are top on the list!), but for today I want to turn everyone’s attention to a thoughtful Op-ed piece in the New York Times from yesterday.

Caitlin Flanagan wrote a piece called Sex and the Teenage Girl. It begins by discussing Juno and Jamie Lynn Spears, and then segues in this:

Pregnancy robs a teenager of her girlhood. This stark fact is one reason girls used to be so carefully guarded and protected — in a system that at once limited their horizons and safeguarded them from devastating consequences. The feminist historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg has written that “however prudish and ‘uptight’ the Victorians were, our ancestors had a deep commitment to girls.”

We, too, have a deep commitment to girls, and ours centers not on protecting their chastity, but on supporting their ability to compete with boys, to be free — perhaps for the first time in history — from the restraints that kept women from achieving on the same level. Now we have to ask ourselves this question: Does the full enfranchisement of girls depend on their being sexually liberated? And if it does, can we somehow change or diminish among the very young the trauma of pregnancy, the occasional result of even safe sex?

Now, I am not so willing to gloss over the restrictive trends of yesteryear as either Brumberg or Flanagan appear to be in that short statement. (And nor do I think either of them are when the statement is taken in greater context.) But it is interesting to contextualize the historical tendency towards prudish, restrictive morals as caretaking. This suggests that our increasing sexual enfranchisement of girls is hurtful to them because it does not provide them with appropriate protection or care. (I don’t think this is true, but it is critical to remember that simple sexual enfranchisement is not our goal, because it distinctly lacks the guidance and decision-making support that teenagers need.)

So on to Flanagan’s questions: Does the full enfranchisement of girls depend on their being sexually liberated?

And my answer: No. The full enfranchisement of girls depends on them being treated sexually the same as boys. It is the double standard that is the primary issue at hand, with the mixed messages that girls receive as a strong second.

Boys are taught that, well, boys will be boys. They are taught that they are not at fault in their response if a girls is dressed a certain way or acts a certain way. The media, social morals, and religion are all relatively clear about this. (There are, of course, good messages about healthy sexuality out there for boys, but this distinctly unhealthy one is the loudest.)

Girls are taught that they should be sexually attractive (through the media), but that they must be the reigns on boys’ unharnessed sexual drives (through social pressures), or they will suffer horrible consequences (through religion, social pressures, and the media all rolled up in one terrifying message).

These uneven and highly mixed messages can wreak havoc on girls’ sexual choices, perceptions of herself and her body, and relationships with boys.

And to Flanagan’s second question: Can we somehow change or diminish among the very young the trauma of pregnancy, the occasional result of even safe sex?

I say: Of course. But we will have to change the media, social morals and pressures, and religion in order to effectively do so. I’m working on changing the media and social morals myself, and leaving religion to someone more inclined in that direction than myself.

So what do you think? What are your answers to Flanagan’s questions? And how do you think is the best way to go about addressing the problem? (Because I do think that everyone agrees that there is a problem.)

RH Reality Check had a really great post on abortion yesterday. While I highly recommend you read the whole thing, here are several of the points that stood out to me:

“There were many disturbing moments during the Republican presidential debates last week . . . But what had to be one of the more defining moments of the strange night occurred when the question turned to abortion. The graying, gray or bald white men all seemed to nod in agreement on a breathtaking (though unstated) policy initiative for women: the DIY abortion.

The question posed by the “young lady,” as homey Fred Thompson called the gal, was: If abortion is outlawed then who is the criminal: woman, doctor, or both? This has always been the sticky question for the anti-abortion side. Do they intend to start locking up women for murder? Stunningly, Fred Thompson, National Right to Life’s endorsed candidate, said no. He suggested that some people will be able to perform abortions with no fear of prosecution: women on themselves. Thompson explained his (and one figures, National Right to Life’s) bold new plan that would kick in once Roe is overturned. Said Thompson, “The question is who gets penalized and what should be the penalty. I think it should be fashioned along the same lines it is now. Most states have abortion laws that outlaw abortion after viability and [the criminal penalty] goes to the doctor performing the abortion not the girl, the young girl, her parents, or whoever it might be. I think that same pattern needs to be followed.” Under this plan, apparently a woman is free to perform an abortion on herself, possibly with the help of her parents or “whoever it might be” as long as a physician or a health care provider actually skilled to provide safe abortion care isn’t involved.

The last time the United States banned abortion — pre-Roe — doctors faced only minimal penalties for providing safe care. Apparently Thompson, and every GOP candidate except Rudy Giuliani agree, that policy was a mistake. This time around the crime of abortion, if (and apparently only if) performed by a doctor, will be murder and extreme penalties will apply. It seems clear that the environment post-Roe will be harsher than pre-Roe.

Last time around, a clandestine network of safe abortion services sprung up. This time, if the anti-abortion candidates have their way, the risk for physicians would be too great. And so women who can’t reach safe care will be much more likely to take matters into their own hands, which the Republicans apparently don’t mind.”

I won’t include the rest of the post, but it is really worth your read.

For me, reproductive rights are one of the few (maybe the only?) absolute issues in an election decision. The RH Reality Check post goes on to discuss how anti-abortionists are hoping to expand the concept of abortion to include birth control. This slippery slope is simply an untenable situation. It would put women back a hundred years.

I will start posting more information about candidates and their perspectives on things like sex education, reproductive rights, general educational policy, and other issues that affect teenagers and their sexuality as we get closer to the primaries and the election. (Well, I’ll be posting more about the front runners anyway…there’s far too many of them to talk about them all!)

Chew on this today: someone has apparently patented what they call a “security underwear device for sexual organs” (i.e., a chastity belt). Is it as horrible as it sounds? I think so. Is it real? It appears to be. How sure am I of that? Not completely, so I wrote to snopes.com (my go-to-site for Internet scams). Since they did not have anything listed on security underwear devices, I e-mailed them and asked what they thought. If they have anything to say on the topic, I’ll be sure and let you know.

So what do you think? Is this for real?

Thanks to Joan Price for the heads-up on this little outrage.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the day two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one more into fields in Pennsylvania.

The young people who were teenagers in 2001 were, as a group, dramatically affected by the attacks. Adolescence is a time when there is a deeper opening of the soul, so the tragic and the painful and the beautiful and the gentle tend to enter and pierce more deeply than they do for the younger child or for the adult. These young people were marked more deeply by the tragedy than most others.

Because adolescence covers such a short time span, most of the those who were teenagers in 2001 are now young adults. 9/11 to the current cohort of teenagers is something from their childhood. It is probably remembered starkly, but more because of the reactions of the adults around them than because of the act itself.

I had a newborn baby on 9/11. She slept and nursed and gurgled the morning through attached to me in our sling. Without a TV, we spent most of the morning listening to NPR, leaning against the open front door, watching the cars and people go by. Eventually I walked across the street to a neighbor’s house, to be with someone. I saw the image of the burning towers for the first time there.

Where were you six years ago? Where was your teenager or child? Take some time today to ask for their memories of the day - don’t assume that just because you were together that you have the same memories. And don’t feel compelled to use the time as a teaching moment - just listen and learn about how your teenager or young adult internalized such an incredibly painful moment in our shared history.

Dating is a social trend that apparently started around 1920. That is, dating as defined by two young people going out to do something (often dancing or movies) together, alone. Several sources on the subject point to the accepted dating trend of “rating and dating” and “petting and paying.”

The first of these all-too-cute phrases, rating and dating, refers to competitive dating, or young men with more money and material goods were more able to date more, and more attractive young women. It seems to me that this had actually been going on for some time, but with marriage in mind. In the 1920’s it probably changed to a less-committed and younger crowd.

The second phrase, petting and paying, refers to young men who would pay the young women’s way on the date, and at the end of the date they would sit in the young man’s car and “pet.” Petting could include just about every sexual act short of sexual intercourse, although probably not as much oral sex as is seen in teenage crowds these days. But really anything that would not get a young girl pregnant was fair game.

Now, I’m not sure how your teenage dating lives went, but mine were pretty different than what is described here. Not, that is, the rating and dating system. That was firmly and uncontroversially in place. The primary difference was that I tended to pay my own way in order to avoid the feeling of obligation to make-out, or pet. Occasionally, on a particularly romantic evening, a young man who was a long-standing boyfriend would pay my way. But I was always slightly uncomfortable with that arrangement, I was somehow aware of this history of sexual obligation (perhaps my mother had connected those particular dots for me?) and sought to buck the trend.

So what are the dating trends that are affecting you or your son or daughter? What are the subtle obligations and expectations about sex and money that unfold during a date? How did you/are you handling them?

(The pictures at the top of the post are, of course, Mary Astor and John Barrymore, who dated from 1924 - 1925, with thanks to www.whosdatedwho.com.)