June 4, 2004
YOU DON’T SEND ME FLOWERS ANYMORE
Meanwhile: The casual emptiness of teenage sex (Scot Lehigh, International Herald Tribune, June 4th, 2004)
Benoit Denizet-Lewis's cover story, based on interviews and exchanges with nearly 100 suburban American teenagers, opens a window onto a world of sexual encounters devoid of emotional connection, of casual assignations, arranged via e-mail or cellphone, deliberately divorced from dating or romance.The picture the writer paints is of sexuality shorn of the rituals and romance many of us recall from the days when we were growing toward young adulthood. Flirtation, infatuation, invitation, dating, becoming steadies, progressing, stage by stage, toward sexual intimacy - all that, for many suburban teens, has been replaced by matter-of-fact liaisons that treat sex as though it was little more than a biological urge to be indulged, by appointment, at the mutual convenience of mere acquaintances.
Among the teens Denizet-Lewis surveyed, "hooking up" and "friends with benefits" - that is, friends who have casual sex - offer convenient answers to a high school environment where actual relationships are deemed too demanding or limiting, where oral sex is considered more social skill than intimate act, and where contemporaries who are steady couples are viewed as uncool or, even worse, losers. It's a world often absent any sort of emotional bond between sexual partners. [...]
Against the backdrop of not-so-distant sexual repression enforced by a conservative alliance of church and state, it's hard to think that legal or moral codes that condemn teenage sexuality are a preferred alternative. Sovereignty in sexual matters best rests not with church or state but rather with the individual. That's why modifying people's behavior should be the province of persuasion, not of compulsion.
Yet to read the Times story is to come away fearing that the ideology of sexual freedom has robbed many of today's young people of an important internal check on their own conduct. [...]
That's why it's truly sad to read of a high-school generation too detached to date, too indifferent for romance, too distant for commitment. And why it's hard to believe that the physical and the emotional can truly be compartmentalized, that two teenagers can be friends with benefits but without psychological consequences, that hooking up can reduce sex to a pure physical transaction without scarring psyche or soul.
About the best that one can say for Mr. Lehigh is that he seems to sense the problem is serious and complex enough to spare us trite calls for more “education” or other facile answers. Otherwise he has completely boxed himself in by pronouncing as self-evident that “sovereignty in sexual matters rests with the individual” (for teenagers?). Having apparently bought into time-honoured progressive mantras about individual choice and the wonderfully liberating effects of separating sex from external morality, he now, although thoroughly alarmed, has nothing concrete to say. Thus are aging Boomers reduced to hand-wringing about excess and fussing about lost romance to a generation that is practicing exactly what they have always had preached to them. People like Mr. Lehigh will be dismissed scornfully as hypocritical bores by many young people, and they deserve to be.
Posted by Peter Burnet at June 4, 2004 8:48 AMThe Communitarians really have won. "Here's something that threatens the very fabric of society. Too bad doing anything effective would be mean."
Having said that, it's always dangerous to take one's sociology from the New York Times Magazine.
Posted by: David Cohen at June 4, 2004 9:07 AMThis sounds like a load of absolute nonsense to me. With whatever increased frequency teenagers are having sex and whatever disasters may arise from that, the idea that they are doing so without the full old-fashoned emotional freight of confusion, elation and terror is laughable. This article is written by some old idiot who has chosen a few isolated examples to prove a very spurious theory.
I'm surprised you're falling for this garbage.
The aging Boomers rely on the unprincipled exception to make their mad philosophy work.
Posted by: Paul Cella at June 4, 2004 9:43 AMInteresting. This explosion of casual sex coincides with the lowest fertility rate among teenage girls ever.
Whoda thunk.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at June 4, 2004 12:06 PM>Interesting. This explosion of casual sex
>coincides with the lowest fertility rate among
>teenage girls ever.
Cross-check it with the abortion rate (doubleplusungood -- "Women's Right to Choose") before you start gloating.
Posted by: Ken at June 4, 2004 12:36 PMMe?
This "aging Boomer" was at just the right age to have his attitudes formed under Father Knows Best only to get blindsided at puberty by The Happy Hooker and beyond. I've seen stuff that would make the Marquis de Sade vomit, and proof after proof that "It's Sexual" justifies anything definition ANYTHING.
You know what sex is?
1) Ram one piece of meat into another.
2) Pump away.
3) Repeat.
4) That's IT.
If you want to go further, compare it to smallpox or ebola. Introduce sex to anything -- art, storytelling, interactions -- and sex first takes it over until all that's left is SEX SEX SEX, then destroys it. Just like a virus infecting a cell.
The only dating and romance I have these days is vicarious -- fanzine-pubbed fiction I write, about beautiful non-humans who actually have elaborate courtship and mating rituals BECAUSE they're not human.
Posted by: Ken at June 4, 2004 12:45 PM"I've seen stuff that would make the Marquis de Sade vomit"
That is impossible.
re: Unprincipled Exception--
I like that light grey on white color scheme. Not as impossible to read as cyan on red, but I gave up trying.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at June 4, 2004 1:08 PMSorry about that. I have even darkened it.
Posted by: Paul Cella at June 4, 2004 1:24 PMI like that light grey on white color scheme.
Huh? What are you talking about? Clicking the "unprincipled exceptions" link above takes me to a standard black-on-white page.
Some browsers render the page differently.
Posted by: Paul Cella at June 4, 2004 1:56 PMAmos:
Yup, the kids are all swooning and dreaming and carving initials in trees just like in the good old days. Keep telling yourself that. It makes life simpler.
Jeff:
Checked out the divorce stats and mental health situation recently? I take it you would be perfectly at ease with your daughter having an active, casual sex life as described provided she was on the cutting edge of modern contraceptive practices.
David:
Yes, he is clearly on a roll and doesn't want any ambiguities to clutter up a good alarmist story. It is very hard to know what exactly is going on and what it means, as I found out the other evening. My daughter is graduating from High School, where she is in a highly competitive literary arts programme. The kids all presented readings from their poems and stories. Pretty talented all, but most were into death, bitter lost love, despair and allusions to sex that weren't oblique enough for this dinosaur.I was actually quite depressed until I saw most of them squealing and giggling in all innocence at the intermission and realized that, at least for some, they were simply following the lead of their teachers and mentors. It is hard to what sticks and when they will pay for it.
But whatever the reality and whatever the consequences, we will be told as a matter of course that it is better today than it was in the past. End of story. Social conservatives will wrestle with the ambiguities and contradictions, while the progressives and libertarians will just keep repeating their mantras.
Posted by: Peter B at June 4, 2004 2:18 PMI assume he got all his information about teenage sexual activities by polling teenagers themselves. It's a good thing that teenagers historically tell the absolute truth on surveys and never ever lie about what they are doing, especially about sex.
Posted by: Brandon at June 4, 2004 3:26 PMKen:
Both abortions and pregnancies among are decreasing. The sum of both is emphatic evidence that the fertility rate among teenagers is the lowest ever recorded.
Peter:
It is difficult to reconcile the above with the content of the article. One suspects that if the former is true, the latter is, just possibly, a bit hysterical.
I'm making the assumption that, in general, kids are no more adept at contraception now than, say, 20 years ago.
Finally, my comment was aimed at the plausibility of the article, not the advisability of the behavior it describes. The distinction is significant, and, I would have thought, obvious.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at June 5, 2004 9:02 AMRaoul --
What I do in cases like that is do a "select all".
The result is not pretty but it is readable.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at June 5, 2004 11:20 AM