Talking to #carefreeblackgirls and also talking about Karyn Washington, both on Buzzfeed:
I hadn’t heard of Karyn before then, but I quickly wished I had. She was the founder of For Brown Girls and, later, the #DarkSkinRedLip Project, online movements for black women that fought against colorism — discrimination based on how dark the particular shade of one’s skin is. For Brown Girls had accompanying social media channels and a Tumblr, continuous scrolls of photographs featuring black women of all ages, shades, and sizes. Here were Jet magazine covers circa the ’90s, India Arie, Serena Williams, mothers and daughters pulling wide-tooth combs through one another’s hair, Chimamande Adichie, women holding signs as reminders that “Black Lives Matter,” and so on. “Brown Girls, Receive Love!” read the command on my Chrome tab.
Let us finish our read of Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State together next Tuesday, Sept. 2nd, MY BIRTHDAY. Be there.
SO INTO THIS (the piece, not garbage excuses for humans):
After a “Question Time” appearance in the Midlands, in which Beard argued that recent immigrants were not a burden on the local economy, she was repeatedly vilified on an Internet message board. One user described her as “a vile, spiteful excuse for a woman, who eats too much cabbage and has cheese straws for teeth.” (British comments sections can seem to be haunted by the ghost of Roald Dahl.) Less creatively, another commenter posted a doctored photograph in which an image of a woman’s genitals was superimposed over Beard’s face.
OH ONE MORE BLOCKQUOTE
Colleagues at Cambridge say that she was supportive in a very practical manner. Helen Morales, a classicist who now teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says that while she was a junior colleague at Cambridge she spent a period as a de-facto single parent. “The men’s response was sympathy—some of them had the mommy-track idea,” she says. “Mary did things like go to the supermarket and buy ready meals and stick them in the fridge and give me a gin-and-tonic.” Beard was marked by a reflexive egalitarianism, according to Clare Pettitt, a professor of English literature at King’s College London who was formerly at Newnham. She and Beard worked on a Victorian-studies research project at Cambridge. “In one of our first meetings, we were talking about the Victorians and what they thought,” Pettitt says. “And Mary said, ‘Well, the cleaners didn’t think that.’ ”
there is nothing wrong with this and you can tell people whatever you want:
Q. Pet Euthanasia and Can I Lie About It: I have a 6-year-old dog that has mental problems. (Yes, really.) We have tried everything our vet has recommended over the past few years: training, OTC meds, prescriptions, and treatment by a well-respected certified behavioralist. Unfortunately, she is not getting better. My own health is declining and I love her, but the subject of euthanizing her has come up at home and briefly in the vet’s office. Is this wrong? And if we decide to go down this path, am I obligated to be honest about why she was put down when relatives and friends ask?
There was a SUPER LONG deleted comment I was gonna share with you but to avoid burdening you with a curiously irrelevant defense of Zwarte Piet, let’s just go with the inspiring sign-off: “Don’t be victim – be yourself! And remember, men are a minority….. 🙂 – John.”
the actual reason people are having fewer children is the need to explain backdoor sluts 9 to them:
“Real sex is so much better than that,” I told him. “I enjoy watching the Red Sox, too, but I’d much rather play the game myself. It’s way more enjoyable, and nothing compares to the real thing. Make sense?”
Oscar nodded quickly, almost frantically, then added, “Can we stop talking about this now?”
“Sure, we can stop. Are you embarrassed?” I asked.
“A little,” he said, “But mostly I don’t want to hear how much you like sex.”
Life is a rich tapestry:
By the time I reached Lima and asked what she thought was the key to her success (I still don’t know — she stopped returning my email), I had trolled the spectrum of toy unboxings and found what felt like an interesting clue: Unequivocally, the most popular toy unboxings featured totally insignificant junk. The DisneyCollector video mentioned earlier, the one watched more than 90 million times, is nothing more than the slow denuding of six surprise eggs, the sticker price of $1.99 still visible on one of the plastic shells.
A really interesting piece on an attempt to charge scientists in the wake of an Italian earthquake:
Conventional wisdom tells us that people are terrible with numbers. But as Kent realized back in the 1950s, we are even worse with words. In one study that Fischhoff co-authored, people had trouble understanding a 30-percent chance of rain. It wasn’t the probability that tripped them up, but the word:rain. Are we talking drizzle or downpour? All day or just part of the day? And over what area, exactly? (Communicating forecasts in Italian is extra challenging. In English, we can use forecast instead of prediction to convey uncertainty. In Italian, there is only previsione, which has a strong deterministic connotation.)
Thanks, darth!
Here is a pro-tip for you. I have a very, very dear friend who is one of the most generous, loyal, ride-or-die people you will ever meet, and is also extremely Russian (Russian-Jewish, to be exact) and she does literally the most terrifying thing in the world when someone has wronged her (or, more likely, one of her friends) in a way she deems past all forgiveness.
She smiles serenely, lifts her chin slightly, and says, coolly: “I wish him joy.”
And I have spent MONTHS trying to parse why this is so chilling, and final, and have not yet mastered its workings, but I can only say that it is the truest thing there is in this world. It is like being cast into the Outer Darkness. The next time you see a person who has been wished joy by my friend, you honestly expect to see a shadowy figure with a scythe following them around.
Give it a shot, maybe! And it doesn’t work NEARLY as well if the person to be wished joy has jacked YOU up, it is at its most pure when directed at a person who has wounded your loved one.
Figures that the Russian equivalent of “Bless her heart” is pure death.
A friend of mine is Russian, and her stories of her childhood confirm most of the stereotypes, previously considered unfair, I had regarding the country. Especially entertaining (and harrowing) are her tales of Russian dentistry.
I grew up hearing the response, “Nu, radujsya,” to news considered underwhelming or self-important or delivered by an enemy. “I got the job your son applied for!” “Well, rejoice.” Delivered with a raised eyebrow and faint smile, it is the Cut Direct.
“Congratulations, how wonderful.”
How do you pronounce that? I feel like it would fill a void in my vocabulary, literal and emotional.
I do love Eastern European expressions – my favorite is the Polish “Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” – “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
Probably the best thing is to get a GoogleTranslate reader to say it (ETA: it’s Russian); I’ve provided the phrase more or less phonetically, but the “j means add a soft i to the end of the preceding vowel” is easier to hear than explain. But the important thing is that the “nu” should be on a rising tone, rather than the standard Yiddish falling one; it’s higher than the second word, if that makes sense. The appropriate affect is “supremely unimpressed.”
How can we talk about that Prudie column without talking about the grown woman who is spoon-fed by her mother and her father sees nothing wrong with that!??!?! And the husband is all “Hmm, maybe counselling?”
pleasebefakepleasebefakepleasebefake
I think (hope) that letter was inspired by the “Bitty!” skits from Little Britain.
You know that when Prudie responds to a letter with “Aaaah! Aahhh! No!!!” that even she is hoping it’s fake. This is a woman who remains articulate in the face of twincest.
So, I complained on the Useless BBC Complaints website about how the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme summarised Ferguson in its headlines: “Rioters have thrown fire bombs at riot police in Ferguson”. In my complaint I said they were biased in the way they summed it up (ie focusing on violent protestors instead of you know, the murder of a young man by a police officer) and this is part of the reply I got:
“The headlines, by their nature, need to be brief. The fuller story is then given in much more context and depth immediately afterwards. We realise you feel the wrong angle or emphasis was selected for the headline which mentioned that rioters had thrown firebombs at police. This was still factually accurate and was put in more context with the subsequent reports.”
So, super patronising tone (oh shit! Is that what a headline is? Is that how it works? Is that what happens? Well! Blow me down.) and also the “still factually accurate” line is just so irritating.
But was it factually accurate, though? I know the police claimed at one point that protestors were throwing Molotov cocktails, but I never saw any independent confirmation (that is, a report that conveyed the reporter’s own perception of Molotov cocktails thrown by the protestors rather than just uncritically passing on the police claims).
I’ve seen mainstream media write about these Molotov cocktails as well (NY Times or WaPo, I think) but would really love to know if anyone actually has any pictures of it.
ALSO: on twitter there’s also plenty of pictures of Ferguson residents cleaning up their town post-protest, and creating human walls to deter looting, but did we see much of that? noooooooo
It is useless. I complained once when a TV programme (some weekend breakfast thing my partner’s parents were watching) had several presenters refer to Chelsea Manning as “Bradley” and use male pronouns. The response was to tell me that they had used her previous name when initially reporting her announcement (regarding her gender and her name) so as not to confuse people, and used “Chelsea” after that. Well, yes, BBC, I get that, but that’s not anything to do with what I’m complaining about.
“How do you tell a 9-year-old that there really isn’t an appropriate age to role-play as a drug dealer who shoots prostitutes in the face?”
I ask myself this question every day.
Also, Nicole I love you for the reference to the best South Park episode of all time!
Sorry about this, but I can’t wait til friday.
Come play Fallen London with me, delicious friends! http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/
I’m Caitlin Brede Blanchard on there, if you want to add me as a contact.
Also, I am an overgrown child and I breed imaginary wolves on Wajas.
I used to play Fallen London and then stopped for reasons I cannot recall… I just might take it up again 😀
come back to the foooold
I’m Inpiun. Unfortunately, we meet too late: I would have loved to invite you to my Extravagant Wedding beneath the great dome of St. Fiacre’s.
Fallen London! I became so shadowy and then I … stopped. Today seems like an excellent day to start again.
Yeah, I started again recently. I really enjoy it, and it;s a great way to kill some time.
It’s a damned shame my laptop is broken. As soon as I have a functioning one again this seems like it could be right up my alley.
It’s pretty great. It’s turn based browser game with heavy steampunk, lovecraftian and horror influences. It’s funny, sad and creepy, and I think it’s great. And you can do almost anything in it.
Currently, I am hunting down a famous creature, becoming a famous writer and playing both sides of the spys against each other.
I have a functioning laptop, but non-reliable internet. Together we have one set of equipment!
What a team!
I really want to check that out, partly out of interest in building things with StoryNexus, but…the page won’t looaaaadddddd.
*refreshes*
*weeps*
It seems to be slightly ill today! Normally it is not like that!
It’s good now! I signed up with twitter and now am messing about on my lunch break as Rosencrantz.
Toastie party on Fallen London? I am there. (As jen.e, to better suit my Individual of Mysterious and Undetermined Gender persona.)
YES how do we make this happen.
Let us be delicious friends! I am Avis Webb. This information will be more useful once the site is feeling a little better ;A;
I’m going to try to find all the toasties that share their user name, but a direct link seems to be easier! I am Rosencrantz over there now.
I’m Sally Lost, and I tend to play frantically for a while and then stop for a long while and then start again. It’s strangely compelling!
Oh, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen three days out from the semester starting! I am Nebula Ersatz on there, and I would LOVE to know Toasties in-game, but I am trying to be good right now! Sadness.
EDIT: Who am I even kidding? Nebula Ersatz
I stopped for no good reason and now am back as Madge Howlet.
I’m playing as daisicles (because why stop when you’ve got a theme going, right?).
Yay contacts! I’ve been trying and failing miserably at getting people to play, even the people I know would love it.
This sounds fantastic. Just started a game as Charlotte Corday
I’m Absotively there as well. I’m another person who tends to play Fallen London in spurts.
I added all you lovely people, and will send as many of you letters as I can.
Ooh, I also used to play it and stopped. I may have to return if there’s a Toast contingent! (I’m Amndw2 over there, though I may restart because I’ve forgotten like 95% of my character’s story.)
Mary Beard rocks and I make a point of watching anything she is presenting on TV.
She is my new hero. I hadn’t heard of her before today, but now, I have to read her blog; I have to print out the New Yorker article and hang it on my wall; I must finally do the ancient studies that I woefully neglected in college; my life will be Mary Beard for the near future. All things Mary Beard, all the time.
And, for the future generations of my family, I will write down my life’s arcane, so that they know how life was lived in this moment.
I came here to say exactly that. Yay!
There are people out there who hate Mary Beard?! Let’s skip over “why” entirely and try to understand HOW one can feel negative emotions about Mary Beard. How is it physically possible to keep one’s mouth from turning up in an admiring smile when one thinks about Mary Beard? I once spent over an hour in a used bookstore because just as I was about to leave, the owner switched the radio over to a station on which Mary Beard was discussing Sophocles, and leaving was no longer an option.
I had never heard of Mary Beard before now. She sounds fanbloodytastic. I wanna be her when I grow up.
Same here. How much more succinct and clear can one be than “It’s not what you say that prompts [backlash]—it’s the fact that you are saying it”?
Also, her house sounds amazing. Gardens, tea, full of books, can I move in?
That unboxing thing is bananas. Ninety million views?!?!? I will freely admit I don’t understand haul videos either, but unboxing strikes me as even stranger than that. Whenever I’ve ventured into haul video territory, it seems to be populated solely by perky 17-year-old girls who live in Southern California in perfectly-furnished-and-decorated bedrooms with seasonal motifs, who love Starbucks and their iphones and the “just girly things” tumblr and seem to live in this candy-coloured movie of a world. It’s so alien to me it might as well be on Mars. My own high school years were fine, not horrible, but kids in high school today live in a totally different world online.
Well, that was a tangent.
I kind of think of it as a subset of ASMR videos. She did a great job of explaining the appeal—there’s something really fun about watching people do things meticulously. I’m guessing that the incredible, almost universal popularity of the Food Network and DIY/HGTV is the result of that same need. It is soothing to see something done well, especially (I think) as our culture continues to move from making things and doing things to buying things and typing things.
Also, ASMR is the only reason I get any sleep at all, so gods bless the people who take HD video of banal activities.
yeah, I haven’t read the article yet (and have never actually watched an unboxing video) but I was thinking… this sounds a heck of a lot like ASMR. which, OK, it’s pretty “weird”, but it does wonders for calming a racing mind before bed. no judgment here.
Yeah, I’ve never watched an unboxing, but I’ve watched a lot of ASMR videos and the occasional haul video and this sounds like the overlap of the two. I could also see it being helpful for certain products where you want to know what cords or whatever they include, or what the extent of the assembly required is. I say this as someone who watched a 20 minute video about my sound system hoping the dude would explain how he mounted his satellite speakers. He did not, but he did spend actual minutes filming a magazine and reading its review of said system.
That’s what I was thinking too, Unboxing videos hold no appeal for me, but I certainly couldn’t explain why I have to fall asleep every night to a random woman quietly telling me about how she’s going to brush her hair or whatever. So, I’m guessing there are plenty of people who have no idea why they like these; they just do.
The videos described in that story remind me a lot of RRcherrypie‘s videos of toy food and DIY candy-that’s-shaped-like-other-stuff kits, which are mesmerizing. So quiet. So meticulous.
that dad article :””””C
I’m going to text my dad now.
I was not aware ‘unboxing’ was a thing. Somehow, I feel unsettled now.
I found out recently that there are videos upon videos of Kinder Surprise prize-reveals, where a person (hands only) opens the yellow egg center and takes out the toy. A two year old I know can watch these for hours.
Wow.
Well, as an adult, I can spend hours watching a cat jump in and out of a box, so who am I to talk. Haha
“Did he need to know the seedy underbelly of the porn industry, the one that has former starlets telling horrible stories of being lied to or even forced on camera? Did he need to know how many billions of dollars the men behind the cameras generate while leaving those same women broke and alone, ostracized by a society that demands the product but shames them for participating?”
YES. In an age-appropriate way, but YES he needs to know. Glossing over it by saying porn is “olympic-level sex” is doing his son a disservice. I actually really liked the way Adam Savage handled this conversation with his sons: http://ripr.org/post/moth-adam-savage-being-dad-a…
Granted, I think his sons were 13 rather than 9 when this conversation came up, but at the very least you need to say something like “porn is not real sex, and in fact it’s part of an industry that doesn’t respect women.”
yeah, i wasn’t totally impressed with how that conversation was handled, BUT i am not even close to being a parent and i can’t even imagine what i would say.
I talked to my daughter about the emotions surrounding sex, and about how she would know that she is too young for sex. Because, after you have sex, you are aware of your body in a new way; you have feelings about the person you had sex with; you can also, for instance, get pregnant. Sex is about relationships, and sex is better with someone you love and respect. (Unless of course, you make the decision to get tipsy and have sex with a random guy, because this happens too, but that was for the advanced sex 301 course). This is a lot to process, even for an adult. Also, sex can be a lot of fun, it can be joyful, don’t take it so god-damned seriously all the time, again, advanced course.
I told her that, in spite of telling her that she was too young to have sex, she’d probably have sex anyway just to see. And then we would talk again, so I could answer any questions she had. I told her that if she was going to ask the guy she was sleeping with if “he thought she was a slut”, that was a not … don’t ask guys for permission and validation it’s a mind-fuck. I told her we would not talk about sex once, but many times. I told her to educate herself about sex (books to read), I talked about masturbation (and vibrators). I told her that sex would be a part of her life, and I was hoping she’d have a healthy attitude about it. Later talks included info about sexual assault, issues with boys and men, slut-shaming. Other things I can’t remember. I made sure I wasn’t nervous when I talked to her; I made sure I was calm. I hoped to sound like sex was a normal thing. I told her things that I wished someone, a calm, rational adult had told me, without crap about remain a virgin until marriage, wait until marriage, if you have sex you’re a fallen woman and other things. I think I mentioned male entitlement at some point. Also talked about American society’s unhelpful attitudes about women and sex, media representations that pissed me off, lots of things that pissed me off. (Oh, I also talked about homosexuality at a later date.)
This is my diatribe, and I’m writing it here, on this comment board, and stuff.
I was pretty underwhelmed with the father in that story. How about telling your 9 year old son that he was too young to deal with porn and sex, on an emotional level, as it can be overwhelming and confusing and it’s a lot to process, but dad is there to help … . Also, dad doesn’t want 9-year-old son to believe that women undress at the drop of a hat and have sex with random men and it’s to be expected that women do this and you feel entitled in the sense of women are there to please men. Paraphilias. Attitudes about women that are not realistic. Introduce stuff, to be talked about later. I mean, I wouldn’t want my son to be a future Steubenville. I mean, I don’t think we talk to young boys about sex, I think we expect them to learn from Playboy and talk to other young boys and then … it turns into weirdness. I’ve talked to a lot of guys about sex, and it’s always weird. They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to make their wives and girlfriends interested in sex, because women aren’t interested in sex. What is this, pre-birth control America?
Wow, I wish I had a mom like you when I needed to have The Talk. My mom took me to a bed-and-breakfast and made me read James Dobson books with her.
It was an hour car ride. Poor thing.
Thanks for posting the Adam Savage story. My son is still a baby, but the other day I realized our house is full of devices (phones, iPad, computer) with which every sexual act imaginable can be viewed within seconds, for free. And I have no idea how to handle that when he’s old enough to be curious about that stuff.
I wasn’t totally impressed but I also have to admit that I have NO idea if I could have done it any better. Being in that situation with a child so much younger than one would expect.. I think that even a clumsy start to the conversation is better than never addressing it, which is what happened with me when my grandmother discovered I had found my grandfather’s Playboy magazines. They just vanished and it was never spoken of.
Two quick things about Mary Beard:
1) I am halfway through “Religions of Rome,” her earlyish study of cults and public religion, and it is bomb-ass awesome. Pretty accessible, and the second volume is a sourcebook that gets into the meat of texts she otherwise only has time to reference. Recommended.
2) From the London Review of Books’ Twitter: “When the @LRBbookshop opened, Mary Beard wrote in the guest-book: ‘Nice feel. Rather understocked with the works of M. Beard.'”
I have met Mary Beard! I was hypoglycemic, so I barely remember anything about it (one of those occasions on which one expects food at an academic event but is denied), but she was very nice!
STL Toasties!
I’m delurking to say that speaking of Roxane Gay, she’ll be reading and signing at Left Bank Books in the Central West End at 7 pm on Friday. You should come! It promises to be a fantastic evening.
Can I just say my mother explained sex to me when I was 9 and it was not the right age, at least for me. I thought I already knew what it was (a man shoots some kind of bullet into your belly button that turns into a baby!) and so A. I thought she was woefully misinformed and B. she told me about it in the car and said an erection is when a man’s penis gets hard “like this gearshift!” and she patted the gearshift and I was horrified and for a few years thought when a man got an erection, his penis literally turned into a gearshift.
Is that better or worse than your mom not explaining sex to you at all? One day in 5th grade we had a special “health” class (here is a diagram of your reproductive organs! don’t eat greasy foods or you’ll get acne!) and I came home with some pamphlets about menstruation. My mom noticed them and said, “So… you know about this.” I said “Yeah, I know” because I wasn’t about to admit ignorance on any topic, but I really had no clue what she or the pamphlets were talking about. And that is all the sex talk I ever got from my parents. I learned a lot more from sneaking glances at anatomy books at the library and reading Harry Potter fanfiction (mostly the fanfiction tbh).
Ha I’m not sure! In 7th grade, we had an actual honest to got sex ed class that actually talked about, you know. SEX. But with all the stuff about condoms in the literature marked out with a black marker (??) but still, that was more helpful than the gearshift thing. I just think gauging the AGE your kids are and how mature they are is probably the best bet. Maybe wait till your kid no longer thinks she can turn into a Pegasus if she tries hard enough? But if I had to pick between too young or not at all, I think I’d still pick too young because then at least you have some knowledge base. Otherwise, you end up like people at my high school who would confidently inform me that jumping up and down or DOUCHING WITH BLEACH prevent pregnancy.
Our high school sex ed consisted of once-a-year sessions with a nurse (who always started by telling us that she had 5 children “so I know what I’m talking about!”) and was useless (I went to an all-girls Catholic school). Here is a sample of what I “learned”:
– you can get HIV from kissing
– condoms don’t protect you from STIs because most STIs are smaller than the pores in condoms so they can pass through
– if you have an abortion you will be permanently emotionally damaged
– no matter how much your boyfriend loves you he will inevitably lose respect for you if you sleep with him before you’re at least engaged
HIV from kissing? WOW. Just…wow.
This was her reasoning:
If the person with HIV flosses their teeth, then they might have microscopic cuts all over their gums.
If you also floss, then you might also have microscopic cuts all over your gums.
If you and this person with HIV kiss, the virus can exit the cuts in their gums and enter the cuts in yours and BAM! You’re going to die of AIDS.
So if you never floss, you’re good?
Good.
I am eternally grateful that I escaped my Catholic school and its sex ed after sixth grade- before we were indoctrinated about abortion, but after (unfortunately) I absorbed the lesson that touching yourself is wrong. Thanks for fucking up preteen me that much more, Catholics!
“so i know what I’m talking about!” is the quintessential “cool counselor” intro and although the advice is … not ideal … my heart was warmed a smidge.
….I got more accurate sex ed from a Catholic priest in religious ed classes – ie, condoms work, this is how, and then an explanation of the church’s view on them and why. It was nice to have someone basically lay it all out and basically say “now you are all old enough to understand this issue and make the right decision,” even if there is only one “right” decision in his view.
….my parish priest may have been slightly more liberal than I thought, looking back…
My mom also never took it upon herself to explain sex to me. She did once snap “I’m not going to take care of your problem so don’t even think about it!” to me. I think that was about sex and unwanted pregnancy? Does that count?
I also think sometimes that suddenly learning about after years of not knowing about it can be startling for kids? I think my parents first talked to me about it when I was like 5 (I think I asked where babies come from or something) and it worked really well because it came up organically and most importantly I was young enough that no one had taught me that it was anything less than a normal natural thing to chat about. It was sort of treated in the same way that my parents were like this is why plants are green isn’t that neat (I think a scientifically accurate popup book may have been involved)? And that sort of jump started a series of conversations had throughout childhood up to high school that evolved based on my age, and that were easy to have because I already knew what was up from that first conversation and didn’t feel weird about it. I also had high quality comprehensive sex beginning in 5th grade through 10th grade and already knowing what was happening made those classes interesting and informative rather than scary or confusing.
I’ve found that of the people I know who had sex treated like a normal part of life had a much better experience than people who had a Talk out of nowhere after 10 years of having no idea (or just enough of an idea to feel weird) about sex. Kids definitely learn that sex is supposed to be weird and uncomfortable from their environment and their peers so even if it’s not coming from home it gets learned. I think of it as….would I want my 12 year old to drive a car? No absolutely not. But if my kid first found out that cars even exist at age 10 as part of a serious talk it would probably be a really freaky thing for him/her.
Even if your kid doesn’t ask questions it’s easy to use a relative getting pregnant or a friend having a baby as a jumpstart for a conversation that’s handled like any other part of science or biology or the fascinating mechanics of the world we live in (which I think is the best tone for young children) and it can slowly get more comprehensive and more serious as the kid gets older. At least that’s what worked for me (and I admit growing up in a culture that didn’t have the damaging attitudes about sex that the US does probably also helped a ton and probably made it easier for my parents to have this conversation with me).
Ahhh wow didn’t realize I was going to write so much! I just have a lot of feelings and opinions about sex ed. Particularly because in the past few years I’ve managed to meet a lot of lovely ladies who are smart and intelligent and feminist and consider themselves educated about sex but who still have/had big gaps in their sex ed/anatomy knowledge including about their own bodies. And those are the lucky one’s, I recently had to explain to an (adult! this wasn’t a younger cousin or something) friend that she did have a clitoris and what that meant and what it does.
So I feel very strongly about sex ed being a public health issue (especially with the teen pregnancy rates in the US) and important for women and important for kids. But I also recognize that if you grow up with poor sex ed it can be hard to talk about it with your kids which can make it hard for them to talk about it with their kids and it’s just an unfortunate cycle. I feel really lucky that for me it was just treated as a natural part of life and I really feel like that benefited me as an adult and as a woman.
I agree. I don’t remember getting “the talk” from my parents, because I’m pretty sure it occurred when I was very young since even in my earliest memories of it I knew the basics. My elementary school was also an “alternative” public school where sex ed started in kindergarten, so it was never a scary, mysterious thing.
Yeah I mean think about what happens when you’re in a relationship and someone says they need to talk about something with you. I don’t know about you but I’d freak out and think it was something bad. I feel like if you keep a major, healthy, thing that’s a large part of life for most of the population a secret and then unleash it on a 12 year old that’s going to be a little overwhelming? And kids are smart, they know if they haven’t been told something there’s a reason, why would you hide something or avoid answering a question unless the answer was bad? Just to clarify I’m casting absolutely zero judgement on parents who do this, I understand if you’ve been raised with limited sex ed or raised to be uncomfortable about sex it’s hard to treat it like a natural thing and it’s even harder not to make that discomfort clear to your kid.
But I do feel like there are absolutely age appropriate ways to talk about sex with a young kid (treat it like science! anatomy is fun!) that can be built off to be more comprehensive and serious as they get older, and that it’s often way way easier to talk about it with very young children because they haven’t had time to absorb negative cultural messages about sex in the way an 8 year old might (even if it’s only unconscious).
This is a tiny thing but you said “I also had high quality comprehensive sex beginning in 5th grade” and I was like, huh, until I realized you probably meant “sex ed.”
Yeah, my parents never gave us a Talk, it was just something that I don’t really remember ever being not aware of. We had books explaining sex, for various ages (Babette Cole’s “Mummy Laid an Egg” is good for small children), and it was never particularly taboo. I think that worked well.
Oh my god. I just had a flashback to learning about sex. They had a very awkward sex ed/health class back in elementary school. I did not understand erections at all, and came home absolutely horrified and confused.
My mom thought it was hilarious. (She explained everything eventually, but I think she had too much fun listening to me fret about the mysteries and terrors of male anatomy)
It was really a terrifying thought before you understand anything about anatomy! Like what, it is some kind of Transformer or Animorph???
It does explain though why I like to watch attractive people drive stickshift cars though….
We had a series of lessons on private parts and bad touches and such in kindergarten (I think), and either the anatomical diagram or the teacher was very vague, so it left me with the belief that “testicles” were spots about in the middle of a boy’s thighs.
The main effect of this is that I was baffled by it being acceptable for boys to wear shorts.
Here is the entirety of my sex talk (after about the age of 6): At the age of 16, in the year 2000, my mom said to me in the car “you know, condoms are the birth control of the 90’s”. Which, WTF does THAT mean? That they are over? Or more relevant than I will ever know? That was the total of the whole sex talk. That was it.
It meant, btw, that I should not rely on only the pill as was done in the 60 and 70s when my mom was bonin’ around.
My mom is a DOCTOR who specializes in obstetrical care and now specializes in addiction and pregnancy and is by all accounts great at it. Some of her clients go out to turn a quick trick if there’s a wait at the clinic and my mom does not bat an eye. She diagnoses oral syphilis on the reg. I have absolutely no idea what happened to her during our adolescence, but it made her the worst communicator alive.
Everyone should get their sex education from a children’s book written by the author of “A Year in Provence”.
Is your friend Red from OitNB and you’re holding out on us!?
OH good I finally have an excuse to share the mindblowing information I learned yesterday, which is that Kate Mulgrew (aka Red) voices Flemeth from Bioware’s Dragon Age series.
I may be late to that knowledge party but I got so excited!
“I wish him joy” in a Flemeth voice = also terrifying
I also did not know that until after the first season of OitNB came out, and I died.
So if I just have girls, I won’t have to deal with bimbos.com so much as just BDSM fanfic involving improbably athletic gay sex, right? RIGHT? (Is that … better? Maybe?)
Also, who else cringed in recognition when the dad started the conversation in his car? Parents. Always cornering you in the car.
who else cringed in recognition when the dad started the conversation in his car?
*raises hand*
Only mine was last year when he told me that if I ever wanted to find my way back to Jesus, he would love to talk with me about that.
Yeah, I’m childless, but I write explicit fanfic (although I strive to keep in anatomically probable, which means sometimes my husband is subjected to “honey, come help me figure this out”), and sometimes it hits me that TEEN GIRLS READ THIS. I have no clue how to react to this information.
Haha, sounds like you write GOOD fanfic, so it’s probably a public service. I am a little too old to have been introduced to explicit fanfic as a teen, but I’m kind of not kidding about it being better than porn. Most of the good writers out there are really clear about consent and think about gender roles and generally are progressive about all sorts of things. I am probably going to find myself in 12 years trying to explain the controversy over whether slash fiction is appropriative to a 13-year-old, but oh well.
I definitely write about consent, and communication, and awkwardness, and emotional vulnerability. So yeah, I’m trying!
The appropriation thing is complicated. I get where it’s coming from, but there’s also this twitchy “telling women what they get to find erotic” aspect to it, which gay men aren’t allowed to do either, and…anyway, I write what I write, and I’m not ashamed of it. 🙂
Oh yeah, I feel the way you do about it. Men rarely have their desires policed as women do, and I am not for shaming women for failing to live up to someone else’s expectations of some sort of pure sexuality. I just threw that out there because it’s funny/interesting to think about the issues fanfic will bring up in talking to teens about sex versus what my parents had to consider. It’s a different world!
RIGHT?? I swear, more horrifically awkward conversations took place in the car. There were times when I seriously wondered if I’d survive diving out of the moving vehicle.
They do that 1) so you can’t leave and 2) so they don’t have to look you in the eye. It’s diabolical.
My mother SPECIFICALLY told me she loved the car for conversations because her kids couldn’t escape. Which just meant I spent my sullen years trying to forcibly meld with the passenger-side door. GET ME OUTTTTTT.
My 11-yo daughter is really into online comics, especially the fantasy-based ones like Ava’s Demon, Nimona, etc. I am fine with these (in fact, more than fine as they have really interesting, strong, complicated girls as heroines), but I worry about others, especially because she’s also into anime/manga-style drawing and those can get very weird and very sexual. Maybe it’s time for me to do some research of my own in this area, to map out the territory.
And they always start the conversation when you’re cruising at least over 40 mph, never in the neighborhood or the grocery store parking lot, so you can’t open the door and escape.
Nicole, I am ever-trusting of your judgement, but I confess I really want to read the irrelevant defense of Zwarte Piet in full. HOW am I a delusional “victim” in my understanding of a racist mythological Dutch figure, how, how??
Okay, that “unboxing” post has now officially made me an even older Old. If I knew this was a Real Thing, I would have asked my friend’s iPad & YouTube video obsessed 9 year old about it just for pure curiousity’s sake.
My suspicion is that “I wish him joy” is chilling because it implies that is the last thing that will ever be said about that person. See also the English/American “I don’t know you” accompanied by a brief cold stare and followed by turning the head away from said person, used when forced to speak to someone you have cut out of your life.
I came across this in the Mary Beard article: “Beard speculating about the logistics of an impressively preserved communal toilet in the port city of Ostia. She sits atop a two-thousand-year-old latrine, swinging her legs and merrily invoking a scene of “everyone shitting together, tunics up, togas up, trousers down, chatting as they went.”
Knowing what I know about people “shitting”, there are magazines and books involved. I think, instead of people chatting on the ancient latrine, a storyteller was present to be the ancient version of a magazine/book, and s/he talked about fishing, bread making, make-up, fashion or told wild stories about the gods. I *think* this, in my imagination only, because I don’t know if the ancients had versions of magazines or books or scrolls. A storyteller being present tickles pink my imagination.
Good links this morning! That Mary Beard in particular article was super. Man she is amazing.
The one about the L’Aquila earthquake and the resulting litigation was really fascinating as well. Intersection of discussions of the way people understand the language of probability, and the craziness of the Italian judicial system. Partially of interest to me, though, because I very nearly closely affected by the L’Aquila earthquake: I lived there for a summer in 2006 (there’s a big science laboratory north of the city), in a small nearby town which was the actual epicenter of the earthquake. Even more scarily, my husband lived there for several years, right near the city center, and only left about a year before the quake. I’m pretty sure we saw the ruins of his apartment on the news.
Also, Playboy (wut) apparently published a guide to when you should catcall women. It’s…not what you expect.
Very excited for the Untamed State book club – I have some issues with the ending and I want to see what everyone else says. For the next bookclub, can we talk about Adam by Ariel Schrag? I just finished it and it’s so problematic, and I started to google around for reviews and opinions, but I want a smart and like-minded community to help me parse it out.
I am currently looking for a trans writer to review it for us!
oh great! I look forward to reading that
I added all you lovely people, and will send as many of you letters as I can.
The Buzzfeed article on Karyn Washington just left me weepy and silent in the office, so thank you for sharing it.