Around St Blog's: June 2006 Archives

Dawn Eden posts a somewhat confusing story about a teenager who becomes pregnant in high school, and cannot play basketball, but wants to return to basketball, and at first the school won't let her, but then they do...the story is a bit long.
I commented. My comments, along with a few others were picked up by Jill of Feministe as heartless condemnation against teen mothers or people who have sex something like that.

I commented because I had a lot of experience with knowing pregnant teens as a teen and young adult. My high school had one policy to not stigmatize, my husband's high school had a different policy. Frankly I am not sure what is better, and a study on the issue would be interesting. However, I feel kind of strongly that getting pregnant is a choice, and not a great choice as a teen. I have known girls who have had abortions, many who had their children. Of the ones who had their children, I have known two groups ones whose parents let them struggle a bit with the consequences, and ones whose parents pretty much became a parent to their grandchildren to allow their children to continue on the same path. Many are still in the same relationship ruts many years later. (By the way, I realize I am out of the realm of the story of the girl and basketball and her scholarship. Each scenario is different. These are some thoughts on the issue in general.)

I started to blog about an example someone in our family, but decided against it. I was not sure how to do so without sounding incredibly frustrated and well, "judgemental".

More and more, the American opinion about sex is becoming that sex is simply fun like playing Monopoly. Those of us who equate sex with things like reproduction, love and bonding,respect for ourselves or others, or sexually transmitted diseases are out of it, judgemental, cold, or a number of other things that means out-of-touch with reality. I find this so baffling because regardless of your morals, nature is still nature. If you are holding a ball and let go, it will fall to the floor. If you have sex, you have a chance of getting pregnant, that is not old fashioned stigma. If you have a child, that child will change things in your life. That child will need care, food, clothing, love and nurturing. That is what is, not outdated opinion. That is just why people have parents. It seems like there is a notion that if you keep yelling enough times that these facts are not true, and you insult the people enough who believe in these facts, you can alter reality. I suppose it works a bit. It seemed to me there was a time when mothers would rather die than see harm come to her child, now 1,300,000 mothers a year pay to have their children killed. Still trying to change terms of nature is an injustice.

It is not a favor to teenage girls to keep saying "sex is ok as long as you have a condom" over and over again (although it might be to some teenage boys who want sex without commitment). It is not about hating girls, being unrealistic, or having some desire to point fingers and throw stones. It is about working for a fulfilling, happy life,loving relationships, and giving your offspring as stable environments as possible. Being used by a boy is not fun, and I repeatedly get frustrated for all the sex ed that is out there, no one talks about the emotional side, and the reason for the emotional side is to keep married couples together and bonded. Having children too young regardless if you decide to keep the child, abort, or put that child up for adoption is hard. And STDs can make people very sick, with perhaps permanent side effects and even kill.

Since we have dissassociated sex with reproduction, it is then that girls who turn up pregnant are kind of like "I didn't see that coming", not girls who are used to seeing traditional marriage=families, marriage=families over and over again. (Of course again, the myth is that traditional family roles means that we never teach our children anything about sex and tell them babies come from storks. Whatever.)Why has this become such a common place taboo? Morals aside, I am baffled by the logic (or lack thereof) of it. I am so tired of seeing girls in dreadful, depressing dramas with their "baby daddies". I am tired of seeing children without fathers. I am so sad that this has become the norm, and this is just what people do. I know I am preaching to the choir, but I am so tired and frustrated. I know so many people I would like to see better for.

Dawn Eden recently posted an excerpt from her new book The Thrill of the Chaste. She also linked to some of the responses to her book. Many of the comments range from outrage to outrageous. (I actually can only link to Dawn's site, and anyone can feel free to follow the links. This is PG blog).

I am both baffled and even scared. I am baffled because Amazon sells like over ten thousand books or something. I am sure that nine thousand books of those books are books that hold no interest for me or even of subject matter I completely agree with. You probably will not see me buying a book on a person's first hand account of how Kabbalah gave them peace and happiness, nor will you see me dishing it here. I could care less. But let's say I did decide to blog about it-you will not see 700 hundred comments (yeah right, like I get that much traffic to begin with so maybe I should say "if Mark Shea reviewed it...") with nasty comments about the writer's name and very personal practices. You will just see like 20 comments like "yawn, that's silly" or "that's why I'm Catholic".

I am scared a bit, because I get glimpses here and there of how crazy the world is. But for the most part, I try to surround myself with like-minded people and keep myself sheltered. It's protectttive because who wants their choices dished all the time? Family does enough of that. I often forget that people simply don't think the way I do. I mean I know they don't, but I always thought deep down inside they did, but are often blindsided by things like adolescence or other American delbilitating illnesses. So to me, if I were not Catholic, when a woman writes a book about saving yourself for a man to commit himself to you seems to me a book about a person making an extraordinary effort for something they truly want, not something to be met with obscenities.

But you know,I think what I find disturbing is just that. I was raised that you simply don't disagree with obscenities or below the belt remarks. If you disgree, you do so with a point: "Oh but I really do think avocados taste good, and would love some with dinner,"
not: "You jerk, you don't like avocados because you're just stupid because you have no taste buds! By the way, your name sounds silly on top of that!"

How, oh how am I going to raise children in this culture? I ask that of myself so much, maybe I should rename my blog that.