See, and as another example to SA of how it’s possible to reach two different conclusions from a single set of data (thus necessitating cites), this makes perfect sense to me. The logic, for me, is that the conservative model (no need to retread; we all have a sense of it I think) ultimately romanticizes sex, mythologizes it, by making it seem taboo, and mysterious, and larger than life. Precisely at the moment in a teenager’s life when they’re looking for ways to rebel, you show them a box and say, “whatever you do, DON’T LOOK IN THE BOX!” This strikes me as a strategy that’s bound to fail, just by human nature.
With the liberal model, however, you’ve made sex normal, mundane even; teenage rebellion can spend itself in other ways. Sex is boring.
And this works better with human nature, it seems to me, by making one of the most normal and universal aspects of human behavior normal and universal, rather than mythic and mysterious; a magnet for teenage rebellion.
Do you understand that this is not how it works? That this proves once again that what you assert cannot be supported by evidence, simply because of your “methods”? THis is a serious question. Is the problem as basic as your misunderstanding of the “scientific method”?
In your view what is the proper method. Also, please tell me why you are more qualified to make that assessment rather than a group of scientists in the field who submitted their work to peer review?
Look, if you don’t want to believe that abstinence only education prevents pregnancy worse than teaching kids about birth control despite the evidence, I can’t force you.
Can you provide a peer reviewed cite that abstinence only education prevents pregnancy better than comprehensive sex education?
Also, if you insist on deciding by fiat that my cite is worthless, do you care to address the cite Superfluous Parentheses provided?
Starving Artist, just a question, but you keep talking about the fifties. What about prior to that? Because even if what you say IS true, the times prior to that weren’t nearly so golden, not by a long shot.
I reccomend two books: The Good Old Days–They Were Terrible! by Otto Bettmann and Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet.
And while it may be more of a book for an adolescent girl, anyone who has read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn can tell that life in the slums of Brooklyn prior to the first WW wasn’t so grand either.
Also, look up Evelyn Nesbit.
(And I don’t know about anyone else here, but I would argue that the first big wave of “anything goes” in the 20th century occurred in the 1920s, not the '60s)
Starving Artist, is there anything that could convince you that you’re wrong? Any set of statistics, cites, world experts, peer-reviewed and strictly controlled studies, that would convince you that you’re wrong, that liberal permisiveness didn’t cause a lot of the ills of modern society?
I suppose Bricker would say that we can have this discussion sans SA, but if that’s true, and (as I suspect) SA’s mind absolutely cannot be changed, shouldn’t everyone stop addressing SA?
No, there isn’t. And this thread is a good illustration why. I’d wager that I could stop twenty five people on the street and engage them in a discussion of teen pregnancy nowadays vs. the fifties and every single one of them would instinctively know that I was talking about young, single unwed girls, most of whom are in junior high and high school, with the underlying problem being premature sexual activity.
But not around here. No, instead we find all sorts of parsing going on to try to find some way to make it seem the other way around. We throw eighteen and nineteen year old women into the mix; we throw married people into the mix; we throw people who got pregnant and then got married into the mix; we throw people who got pregnant and got married and who didn’t want to get married into the mix; we throw people who got abortions into the mix; etc., etc., etc.
Then we have the problem that no one seems to know what my position is. People ask what it is or they say something that shows that they don’t understand what it is, and when I explain I get accused of moving the goalposts.
And on and on until some way is found that will allow liberalism’s defenders around here to let themselves off the hook.
There is no question that we live in a much more permissive society. Criminals are let out of prison prematurely over and over and over again; STDs are rampant; drugs are rampant; single-parent homes are rampant; quality of education is in the dumper compared with the fifties, and so on. In regard to sex, images and references to it are pervasive in music, movies, television and magazines. It’s taught in schools, and the message from adult society is largely: “If you’re gonna do it, use protection,” this despite the fact that premature sex is harmful for kids to begin with and the fact that kids that age aren’t mature enough to avail themselves of the protection that would keep them from getting pregnant anyway.
There is no question that this is a much more permissive society than the one that existed in the fifties, and there is no question that liberalism is the reason. There is also no question that the problems I just mentioned exist, and there is no question that they have become exponentially worse since the counter-culture revolution. Yet somehow – if one is to believe what he reads around here – none of it is the fault of liberalism or the permissiveness that liberalism has created.
It’s utterly ludicrous to think that permissiveness of any kind is not going to result in more of a given activity than occurred before that permissiveness took effect, and it’s equally ludicrous for posters around here to claim otherwise. And yet that’s exactly what they do. It would be better and more honest (or less naive and ignorant, as the case may be) to admit this but to try to argue that things are still better in a big picture sense, although maybe the fact that this wouldn’t hold water either is why so many people simply deny it in the first place.
But at any rate, I’ve become rather put off by the entire nature of debate around this place. I had hopes when this thread was begun that an honest discussion of the issue would ensue. I should have known better.
You’re a little late. lissener already tried this in the thread that spawned this one. And people will continue to address me because I make persuasive points and they want to make sure those points don’t see the light of day, so I get buried in pile-ons consisting of angry denials and hair-splitting and misdirection.
But that’s okay because I’m still getting the message out, and I’m confident that people of honest intent and without an emotional investment in defending liberalism right or wrong will begin to look at some of these issues from a different perspective, and to question whether the liberal way of going about things is the right one.
I see. So, if we were to remove the legal sanctions regarding human/armadillo sex, we may expect a great deal more armadillo buggery to ensue, along with the attendant hilarity?
And as a matter of fact, one of the areas where liberalism and I are in agreement is with regard to animal sex and buggery. I think liberals should be able to pork all the animals in the ass that they want, provided the animal isn’t drunk and is old enough to give informed consent.
You know exactly what I meant: your objection was based on the misconception that that was its only meaning. The second meaning was relevant to the discussion; you objected as if the first was the only meaning.
Starv, you said “any”, you wanted an asterisk there, you should have put it there.
And I’m only half in jest, the point being that there is a rough center of normal, what most people are most likely to to do. It hardly matters if we forbid something people won’t do, because they won’t anyway. But what you’re on about is forbidding people to do what they want to do, because some dreadful result is sure to follow.
As I mentioned before, I’ve seen liberal hell, I hung with the hippies. What did they do? For the most part, just what everbody else does, they hooked up with somebody they groove with, coupled, and went on from there. With the one extra added advantage of already knowing that they were compatible, sack-wise. And thats not as simple as it sounds, a lot of people find themselves in a condition of total love and respect for another person that they don’t particularly like to fuck. And it just doesn’t work, except amongst those people who don’t have a big thing about sex to begin with, which isn’t many, monkeys being, well, monkeys.
You don’t want people having sex until (in your estimation) they are mature enough, emotionally, to deal with it. How do they get “mature”? How do they learn what emotional things sex will confront them with if they don’t have sex? What if you don’t really like sex, but don’t know it till you marry someone who does? Ann Landers famously answered the question “What do women complain about regarding sex?”, she answered that complaints come in two main categories: not enough, and too much.
How do you know that you can’t hit the curve ball if you don’t go to bat?
Your premise of forbidding offers ignorance as a positive, and that is almost never, ever true.
Ok, just so we’re all straight here. SA would like to talk about “teen pregnancy today vs teen pregnancy in the 1950s” as it relates to:
Those aged between 13 and 17
Those who were unmarried that the time of conception
Those who did not get married during their pregnancy
Those who did not have abortions
Those who were not the victims of rape or incest
Are we all clear? Obviously “teen pregnancy” means live births to unwed, underage girls who shoud be told to keep their knickers on because they have to live with the consequences.
I’m so glad we cleared that up. SA Your definition of “teen pregnancy”, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to require rather more “parsing” than the definition of " a pregnancy occurring in a teenager (i.e. a female aged between 13years and 19years and 364 days)".
Like I said, people on the street would automatically know what was being spoken of by the problem of unwed teen pregnancy. It’s only here that people seem to have trouble defining it, and Irishgirl has just posted a perfect example.
I don’t really believe that rape and incest figure much into the societal problems that unwed teen pregnancy creates, and by the time abortion or marriage or whatever occurs, the problem has already arisen.
So that leaves 13 to 17 year old girls who get pregnant outside of marriage. Is that really so difficult to get a handle on?
And thanks for your post, luci. It was conversational! It explained your POV in the way that people do when they’re talking face-to-face, and was completely free of snark, name-calling and insults. I hardly know how to respond.
But I have to leave now; the liquor store down the street is about to close. More later.
Not unless yours is the last post, and I see that SA has posted following you.
It’s like a bull fight. You don’t get awarded the ears and the tail when the bull is still able to walk around. The thread must be killed in order for you to get the win.
