Subject
Fw: obsessive desire in the Vladimir Nabokov novel ...
From
Date
Body
EDNOTE. One for the Lolitalogists in the audience
----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy P. Klein
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/8569371.htm
Posted on Sat, May. 01, 2004
Daughters need help as they enter a world dominated by sex
BY S.L. WYKES
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT) - Remember what it was like to be 15? Your hormonal surges had put you on the end of an unpredictable bungee cord.
You wanted your own identity, and not necessarily the one your parents had planned. You wanted to push boundaries, emotional and sexual.
Now those changes and torrents of emotions happen much earlier for girls, starting around age 11 for some, and in an atmosphere that is more sexually charged and harder to control. The pressure on young girls to act out sexually comes from the magazines they see, the music videos they watch, the friends they spend time with.
And it is your relationship with your daughter during her early adolescence that may be the strongest determining factor in whether she ends up as another statistic.
_She could be the one girl in 10 whose first sexual experience is non-voluntary.
_She could be one of the three in five who have had intercourse by 12th grade.
_Or, she could pledge abstinence and then be 30 percent less likely to use contraceptives if she breaks the pledge.
It's easy to stumble in the transition from girl to young woman. The ages of 11 to 15 are a time of budding sexuality that can be overwhelming to the girls and intimidating to their parents.
``The reality is that young girls are confused,'' said Tamara Kreinin, president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. ``They're getting a lot of mixed messages from a lot of different sources, and nobody's sorting it out for them.''
The way to an easier journey, say those who work with teens, is through relationships with adults who are willing to listen and to talk about a topic that many still see as taboo for conversation with children.
Marly Sweeney, a New Orleans-based clinical social worker with 20 years' experience listening to adolescents, has worked through enough cases to believe that the biggest factor in how well children weather adolescence is their parents, or guardians, or other adult figures in their lives. ``We're learning in every possible way,'' Sweeney said, ``that it's those relationships that keep kids safe.''
And, said Kreinin, talking to your child about sex, as appropriate, ``needs to start early and stay late.''
Early can mean as young as 7, or not until 12 or 13, she said. Puberty will take three to six years to complete its course and, ultimately, it's more than biology. Sweeney tells her students at Tulane University, ``It's bio-psycho-social ... all the factors.''
Along with the development of secondary sex characteristics - pubic hair, for instance - come other changes: Thinking takes in a more expansive view of the world, with logic and problem-solving applied to more complex issues. Self-image becomes sharply important. The yearning to be independent, to establish a separate, non-child identity, takes on a keener edge. But good decision-making isn't always there.
``What we've got to realize is that pop culture is, in part, an enemy of our girls,'' said Dr. Lynn Ponton, University of California-San Francisco professor of psychiatry and author of ``The Sex Lives of Teenagers: The Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls.''
Culture now perceives girls in a Lolita-like fashion, Ponton said, referring to the 12-year-old girl who's the object of an older man's obsessive desire in the Vladimir Nabokov novel. And, she added, early puberty is seen as a signal to many men of a girl's sexual willingness.
Magazines are full of ads of girlish models in sexually provocative poses, and young teens are the target of youth magazines that frequently have stories about sexual activity. Music videos played during prime time feature young women with suggestive clothing and moves.
``Girls think that what they see on music videos is the norm, that everyone's having sex, and it's just not true,'' said Lindsey Coonen, a 17-year-old senior at the Urban School in San Francisco.
``There's a lot of `It's the cool thing to do,' '' she said. ``I don't know how we're going to change that, but it's gotta go.''
The pressure to be sexual is strong enough, Sweeney said, that sometimes young teens are having sex because they think that is what everyone else is doing. ``They'll say, `I just did it to get it over with,' '' she said, ``or `It's what I'm supposed to do.' ''
And at home they rebel, demanding more freedom.
``They really push for much more than they think they can get,'' Sweeney said. ``The rebellion is really about, `I don't know who I am and I'm in the beginning stages of figuring it out, and I have to be in opposition to you to figure it out.' ''
That's when parents shouldn't give up, said Kreinin. ``Help them find legitimate opportunities to say no, so they'll be able to take care of themselves ... to protect themselves.''
Lindsey thinks that better information is also part of the answer. She's part of a youth steering committee that organized a Young Women's Health Conference last month. Co-sponsored by California state Sen. Jackie Speier and the University of California-San Francisco National Center of Excellence in Women's Health, the conference is attended by hundreds of girls who talk about everything from dating violence to suicide and, of course, sex.
That kind of supportive setting, Kreinin said, is another essential piece of putting sex in perspective for young girls and to give them other sources of information.
And one thing Lindsey has learned, as a volunteer at the Women's Community Health Clinic in San Francisco, ``is that teens who know services are out there use them.''
In her own development, she said, her mother's attitude made her much more willing to be open about asking questions. ``She didn't ask why I was asking,'' she said. And her mother bought her a book, ``Changing Bodies, Changing Lives'' (Ruth Bell, 432 pages, $24). Her mother didn't push her to read it, ``but I knew it was there,'' Lindsey said.
That calm, straightforward approach is what Mary Bravewoman took with her daughter, Bernadette Laurence, now 17. Not only was Bravewoman open about her sexuality - she is a lesbian - but her history also directed what she taught her daughter. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and she wanted her child to be aware of sexuality ``because it could be imposed upon her in inappropriate ways,'' she said.
Bernadette, from the perspective of an older teen, agrees. Girls ``should know from a young age what sex is,'' she said. ``Not details, but to know their bodies are changing every day. ... You can't just tell them when they're 10 and think it's fine, and six years later say, `We talked.' You have to keep reminding them.''
Bravewoman has also added another element to the messages she gives her daughter: ``When you cross the line, you lose part of your childhood you're not going to get back. ... You're not a kid anymore.''
When her daughter finally does make that choice, ``I'm not going to kid myself that it won't be a difficult transition. I just hope she'll be making it in a more informed and coherent way than I did.''
---
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee╝ Security.
----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy P. Klein
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/8569371.htm
Posted on Sat, May. 01, 2004
Daughters need help as they enter a world dominated by sex
BY S.L. WYKES
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT) - Remember what it was like to be 15? Your hormonal surges had put you on the end of an unpredictable bungee cord.
You wanted your own identity, and not necessarily the one your parents had planned. You wanted to push boundaries, emotional and sexual.
Now those changes and torrents of emotions happen much earlier for girls, starting around age 11 for some, and in an atmosphere that is more sexually charged and harder to control. The pressure on young girls to act out sexually comes from the magazines they see, the music videos they watch, the friends they spend time with.
And it is your relationship with your daughter during her early adolescence that may be the strongest determining factor in whether she ends up as another statistic.
_She could be the one girl in 10 whose first sexual experience is non-voluntary.
_She could be one of the three in five who have had intercourse by 12th grade.
_Or, she could pledge abstinence and then be 30 percent less likely to use contraceptives if she breaks the pledge.
It's easy to stumble in the transition from girl to young woman. The ages of 11 to 15 are a time of budding sexuality that can be overwhelming to the girls and intimidating to their parents.
``The reality is that young girls are confused,'' said Tamara Kreinin, president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. ``They're getting a lot of mixed messages from a lot of different sources, and nobody's sorting it out for them.''
The way to an easier journey, say those who work with teens, is through relationships with adults who are willing to listen and to talk about a topic that many still see as taboo for conversation with children.
Marly Sweeney, a New Orleans-based clinical social worker with 20 years' experience listening to adolescents, has worked through enough cases to believe that the biggest factor in how well children weather adolescence is their parents, or guardians, or other adult figures in their lives. ``We're learning in every possible way,'' Sweeney said, ``that it's those relationships that keep kids safe.''
And, said Kreinin, talking to your child about sex, as appropriate, ``needs to start early and stay late.''
Early can mean as young as 7, or not until 12 or 13, she said. Puberty will take three to six years to complete its course and, ultimately, it's more than biology. Sweeney tells her students at Tulane University, ``It's bio-psycho-social ... all the factors.''
Along with the development of secondary sex characteristics - pubic hair, for instance - come other changes: Thinking takes in a more expansive view of the world, with logic and problem-solving applied to more complex issues. Self-image becomes sharply important. The yearning to be independent, to establish a separate, non-child identity, takes on a keener edge. But good decision-making isn't always there.
``What we've got to realize is that pop culture is, in part, an enemy of our girls,'' said Dr. Lynn Ponton, University of California-San Francisco professor of psychiatry and author of ``The Sex Lives of Teenagers: The Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls.''
Culture now perceives girls in a Lolita-like fashion, Ponton said, referring to the 12-year-old girl who's the object of an older man's obsessive desire in the Vladimir Nabokov novel. And, she added, early puberty is seen as a signal to many men of a girl's sexual willingness.
Magazines are full of ads of girlish models in sexually provocative poses, and young teens are the target of youth magazines that frequently have stories about sexual activity. Music videos played during prime time feature young women with suggestive clothing and moves.
``Girls think that what they see on music videos is the norm, that everyone's having sex, and it's just not true,'' said Lindsey Coonen, a 17-year-old senior at the Urban School in San Francisco.
``There's a lot of `It's the cool thing to do,' '' she said. ``I don't know how we're going to change that, but it's gotta go.''
The pressure to be sexual is strong enough, Sweeney said, that sometimes young teens are having sex because they think that is what everyone else is doing. ``They'll say, `I just did it to get it over with,' '' she said, ``or `It's what I'm supposed to do.' ''
And at home they rebel, demanding more freedom.
``They really push for much more than they think they can get,'' Sweeney said. ``The rebellion is really about, `I don't know who I am and I'm in the beginning stages of figuring it out, and I have to be in opposition to you to figure it out.' ''
That's when parents shouldn't give up, said Kreinin. ``Help them find legitimate opportunities to say no, so they'll be able to take care of themselves ... to protect themselves.''
Lindsey thinks that better information is also part of the answer. She's part of a youth steering committee that organized a Young Women's Health Conference last month. Co-sponsored by California state Sen. Jackie Speier and the University of California-San Francisco National Center of Excellence in Women's Health, the conference is attended by hundreds of girls who talk about everything from dating violence to suicide and, of course, sex.
That kind of supportive setting, Kreinin said, is another essential piece of putting sex in perspective for young girls and to give them other sources of information.
And one thing Lindsey has learned, as a volunteer at the Women's Community Health Clinic in San Francisco, ``is that teens who know services are out there use them.''
In her own development, she said, her mother's attitude made her much more willing to be open about asking questions. ``She didn't ask why I was asking,'' she said. And her mother bought her a book, ``Changing Bodies, Changing Lives'' (Ruth Bell, 432 pages, $24). Her mother didn't push her to read it, ``but I knew it was there,'' Lindsey said.
That calm, straightforward approach is what Mary Bravewoman took with her daughter, Bernadette Laurence, now 17. Not only was Bravewoman open about her sexuality - she is a lesbian - but her history also directed what she taught her daughter. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and she wanted her child to be aware of sexuality ``because it could be imposed upon her in inappropriate ways,'' she said.
Bernadette, from the perspective of an older teen, agrees. Girls ``should know from a young age what sex is,'' she said. ``Not details, but to know their bodies are changing every day. ... You can't just tell them when they're 10 and think it's fine, and six years later say, `We talked.' You have to keep reminding them.''
Bravewoman has also added another element to the messages she gives her daughter: ``When you cross the line, you lose part of your childhood you're not going to get back. ... You're not a kid anymore.''
When her daughter finally does make that choice, ``I'm not going to kid myself that it won't be a difficult transition. I just hope she'll be making it in a more informed and coherent way than I did.''
---
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee╝ Security.