Transformative Sex

Ezra Klein likes this column by David Brooks.  Ezra writes:

[Brook's column is] a perfectly sound meditation on the paradoxical relationship between an increasingly sexual culture and a decreasingly sexual youth that doesn't pivot into insane ravings in the last paragraph.

In the column, Brook says:

As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious.

Brooks then gives a list of stats which show or purport to show declining sexual activity among teenagers.  I had originally intended to dig into the stats, but then I got to the CDC website, saw the huge PDF documents with hundreds of charts, and decided to junk the serious analysis and just go for the easy snark.  As usual. 

What Brooks is after is support for his "innately conservative" thesis about American society; i.e., Americans are basically all Puritans, no matter what we say.   I have no idea if kids today are sexually less active.  My instinct is that there is at least some education that is getting kids to use condoms more regularly, and also a fair bit of lying to people doing research, due to the onerous propaganda put out by the fundies.  In other words, I bet that on one hand, the data doesn't support Brooks thesis (more kids using condoms is not conservative) and on the other hand, the data is wrong. 

Brooks says:

American pop culture may look trashy, but America's social fabric is in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair.

By improvement, Brooks means less sex is being had.  That's really the bottom line for right-wingers: fewer people enjoying themselves is better.  And in fact fewer people may be having sex today, thanks in part to the anti-sex brigade, but even if so, I don't think what's happening is consistent with Brook's thesis that American youth are becoming more conservative about sex.

Kids that I do know - very intelligent, well-educated, if not all well-off - all seem to have a much more knowledgeable, mature attitude to sex that was not common when I was growing up.  I don't know many teenagers, so my sample is skewed.  If they aren't going out and getting sloshed and having random sex as frequently, perhaps that's because they don't feel compelled to get drunk as an excuse for sex.  They're picking their shots because they don't have a better handle on the difference between sex and love, and they like both, just not necessarily from the same people.  Or at the same time.  I think the new maturity young people display, despite the efforts of the anti-sex crowd's, is largely due to the information and conversation available on the web. If you're middle-class and came of age since 1992, there has been no time you have not been able to flirt, make arrangements for sex, discuss sex or look at porn in complete anonymity.  That ability has had nothing but an unalloyed good effect on the lives of young people, as it gave them the tools to find out and figure out what is what much more quickly.

Brooks says:

[I]t's becoming clear that we are seeing the denouement of one of the longest and increasingly boring plays on Broadway, the culture war.  ... [T]oday's young people appear not to have taken a side in this war; they've just left it behind. For them, the personal is not political. Sex isn't a battleground in a clash of moralities.

Put starkly like that, it is clear to me that Brooks is wrong.  He hopes that young people have absorbed some religiously-based personal conservatism, a new prudery.  I don't think so.  But whether he is right or I am, or we're both wrong, it's impossible for people to separate their attitude towards sex from their political views.  If kids are more prudish today, as Brooks says, then that will have an impact on their views of things like women's reproductive rights and sex ed in the schools.   If they are more enlightened, as I believe, they will want to see the knowledge and self-determination that they enjoyed spread to others.  The personal is not always the political, but when it comes to sex, it is. 

Comments

[lemurgrrrl]

I see what you're saying, but I guess that the main point I got from his essay was that just because college students are dressing like whores, doesn't mean they're acting like whores. As a college teacher, I see this paradox in my students all the time. The girls dress very provocatively, but they seem almost oblivious about what their dress communicates to others. It could be dangerous, especially when they are out of the protective bubble of a college campus. But mostly I think it's just incredibly naive.

[Mithras]

The girls dress very provocatively, but they seem almost oblivious about what their dress communicates to others.

Brooks's argument is that things are getting better as he defines it; i.e., personal sexual morality is becoming more conservative. So, the question is, has your students' behavior changed over time? And if so, why?

As an aside, if the woman does not intend to communicate anything other than "this is how I like to dress", then who is at fault if the men take away a different message?

[John]

Uh, I think the main point was that young people are having less sex before marriage. As far as I know, conservatives love sex - I mean I have it all the time with my wife. As a matter of fact, I have more sex than any of my liberal, single, "swinging" friend that think they're so with it. So, they whole straw man bit about conservatives not wanting anyone to have fun is just one more lame liberal lie.

[Mithras]

I think the main point was that young people are having less sex before marriage.

So? Less sex outside marriage is not a good thing in and of itself. Less risky sex is good, but that's not the same thing.

[Mithras]

Ahem:

Extreme liberals are having more sex than extreme conservatives. But the GSS indicates they are both having more sex than political moderates and much more than those who classify themselves as conservative or slightly conservative.

So there.

[lemurgrrrl]

As an aside, if the woman does not intend to communicate anything other than "this is how I like to dress", then who is at fault if the men take away a different message?

I'm not sure it's a matter of "fault," and, because they're part of the same culture, I don't think the guys in our class automatically think the girls are sluts just because they dress this way.

However, I do think that older people, men and women, have different ideas, and that's why I was impressed by what Brooks was saying.

Whether or not the guys in class are distracted by such dress is a different matter, and one I'm struggling with now. I think I may put some sort of dress code into my syllabus for next semester, though our school does not support one.

[Mithras]

I may put some sort of dress code into my syllabus for next semester

That's interesting. What are you going to tell them to wear? The nuns when I was growing up would make the girls kneel, and if their skirts didn't touch the floor, they'd get caned.

[paperwight]

The nuns when I was growing up would make the girls kneel, and if their skirts didn't touch the floor, they'd get caned.

Ah, the explanatory virtue of narrative.