Reviewing Chapters 1-3 of Deborah L. Tolman's "Dilemmas of Desire"

    The first chapter of Dilemmas is "Getting Beyond 'It Just Happened'", which is essentially an introduction to the book. She begins with the story of Inez who is talking about her first sexual experience. She explains that while it was occurring, her body "went limp" and it was as though she was having an out of body experience, almost like she wasn't really there. The importance of this to Deborah's study is that Inez's description of the event was that "it just happened" which is a very common way most adolescent girls define their sex lives, which could mean one of two things. It could mean that she felt victimized or forced to have sex with the guy, or it's a reflection of how society wants women to be sexy and act sexy but not have real desires of their own. The author then goes on to describe how society views sexuality, in that boys are full of raging hormones and it's all right for them to have sex every night with a different girl because they can't help it. On the other hand, if a girl were to even have sex with one guy and someone found out, she would automatically be labelled a slut. And that's completely true, that really is how society views sexuality. It happens all of the time.
    The second chapter, "Voices of Desire" is basically just an explanation of the methods she used to pick the girls to interview, and the interview process itself. In total, she recruited 31 girls, which she chose from urban and suburban areas. All of the girls were between 15 and 18, and she tried to have various ethnicities as well. On page 29, there's a table called "Who the Girls Are" which shows the name, age, whether they're from urban or suburban areas, as well as "race". There is also a section saying whether they've been abused/molested, and their sexual orientation. Both of these she wouldn't know until the girls told her in the interview. What I find very interesting is how many of these girls were actually abused or molested, considering they were just picked at random without any knowledge of their past. Another thing I found very interesting in this chapter was the reaction of some of the parents toward the study itself. The girls under 18 years old had to get written parental consent. However, when some of these girls approached, or when Deborah herself approached, the parents about this, most of them freaked out and scolded her and basically said she was a pervert for asking questions about the sexual desire of their daughters. I can see their point in a way, but to me those parents seem like they are in serious denial about what really goes on in a teenager's life.            
   The third chapter, "Sounds of Silence", was the interviews of Janine, Jenny, Laura and Kim. Janine feels an extreme amount of pressure from her parents and sisters about being a 'good girl' and getting good grades, which has made Janine feel as though she is not allowed to have sexual desires, which in turn makes her feel like they don't exist in her body. The closest she came to having desires of that type was when she was talking to a boy she liked, but that's as far as it went. Jenny tells the story of her first sexual experience and how she wasn't ready to have sex but she just let it happen, and now she regrets it. This could be a reflection of how most girls feel pressured by guys to have sex whether they're ready for it or not. Laura's story was extremely similar to Janine's in that she's she and passive around guys, but during the interview she admits she was molested as a child by someone older than her. She told her mother, who took her to a counsellor once, then never spoke of it ever again because the boy was her mother's friend's son. This makes me so angry because her daughter reached out for help, and she turned the other way. Kim's story was really hard to read because she didn't know what to think herself. She couldn't come up with words to answer the questions with, which she assumed was because she could never speak to her mother about sexuality which has made her feel lost.

"What they did" versus "What they are"

   After watching the youtube video "How To Tell People They Sound Racist", I really got to thinking about the difference between being a racist and saying something that seems racist. It's not something I ever really considered before, but it makes total sense. Telling someone they're a racist is obviously just going to piss them off and could create a very hostile situation. On the other hand, telling them that what they said sounds racist is basically letting them know that they made a mistake and should clarify their statement so people don't take it the wrong way. Even though nobody wants their mistakes to be pointed out, it's a lot better than someone telling you that you are a racist when you know you aren't.
   One thing about the video I didn't agree with though is how the narrator said that telling someone they are a racist makes it easier for them to "derail" you and you're letting them off easy. First of all, it's not that easy to run away from a conversation once someone says "you're a racist", I assume anyway. If anything that would start a huge fight and you'd probably not be friends with them any more or something, but not necessarily all that easy to derail them. The only way I can think of would be to say something like "You're calling me a racist but you're also judging me on face value" kind of thing. Then again, assuming this person isn't your friend and their essentially a stranger, that's what most people call a first impression. If you flip this, though, if someone tells you that something you said sounds racist, as one youtube user commented, the most likely response to this is going to be "well that's not what i meant". If anything, that response derails them even easier than the other situation!
   What I did like about this video though is how he used the comparison of a thief to a racist. He basically said that if someone steals something from you, you're not going to run after them, then sit them down and ask them if they feel like a thief is who they truly are. No, of course not. You, and the legal system, and everyone else, will be judging them on what they did, which is steal from you. It should be the same for someone who says or did something racist. It doesn't mean that their entire personality or identity revolves around being a racist, if anything the comment just slipped out and wasn't meant to be a racist comment in the first place. You need to hold them accountable of what they did, not who you assume them to be.

Plenty Of Syph to go around!

    By nowI'm pretty sure everyones heard of the website Plenty Of Fish, where people sign in and look at the available people do date, or something like that. Personally I've never been on it. Anyway, what most people probably haven't heard of but should know about is plentyofsyph.com. It's basically a fun and interactive way of presenting info about syphilis, and best of all it's Canadian, run out of Alberta.

   While I obviously agree with the idea of spreading the word and providing options for those who have, or are at the risk of having, any sexually transmitted infections or diseases, the way this website is set up is kind of confusing. And I don't mean navigating around the website itself, but the way it's presented as a dating site can really throw you off guard. A friend of mine who is also in our Sociology of Youth class was working on her blog about Plenty Of Syph at her boyfriend's house, and he thought it was an actual dating website where people with syphilis could go browse other people with the disease. That's kind of a problem in my opinion that some people really aren't grasping the irony or how they're mocking dating websites. I'm pretty sure she eventually got through to him about what the website is about but still..
   What I do like about the website is that it's really informative and can be really useful for people who are at risk or who think they might have symptoms of syphilis. Upon entering the website, you enter your age, gender (or sex, i can't remember.. probably gender), and who you're interested in, then it sends you to a page to 'browse the singles' that you were matched up with. If you click on any of the people, their 'profile' comes up and it shows you what stage of the disease they are supposedly at and their infectibility, or how easily it would be for you to get infected if you were to have intercourse with them. Then it provides information about each stage and yada yada yada.
   Now, I say profile in quotations and supposedly because if you read the disclaimer at the bottom, all of these people they show are actually models and their profiles are made up for informational use only. I heard somewhere that if you're a model you have to sign some kind of contract that allows your picture to be used in the public domain, they even have a website: publicdomainpictures.net. Anyway, personally if I was a model I wouldn't be too happy to know that my picture is being used on a website that depicts me having syphilis but then again I'm not a model.
   Another thing about this website is that their usernames, though made up, are mostly related to sex which I find interesting. It's almost saying that everyone on a dating website is in it for the sex or they are sluts. But most of them are actually kind of funny, so I think that's more what they were going for anyway. Either way, it's an interesting approach to an otherwise very serious topic.

The silence surrounding rape

     Rape is a topic that we as a society, tread lightly around, and there are many reasons for this. One might be that we do not wish to offend anyone by saying something offensive, or maybe that we don't want to mention it around children. In my opinion, the real reason people don't talk about the issue of rape often enough is that it's treated as such a hush-hush topic, as if the mention of that word will end the world as we know it. No, people. It's a fact of life that people get sexually assaulted. That being said, just because it does happen doesn't mean it should happen.

A jewellery advertisement portraying
 the model as the victim of date rape

     When we think of rape, we often think of the victim, which is usually a female, and the offender, usually a man, and maybe the fear the woman might feel and the suffering she would go through after the traumatic event was over. Yes, all of these variables are involved in sexual assault, but what we don't often think about is how rape or rape culture has and continues to affect our society as a whole. The fact that I, a twenty year old petite woman who is relatively defenceless in the face of danger, feels threatened to even walk down the street, brightly lit or not, at night by myself in the middle of downtown Moncton is a very bad thing.
     Most of us probably view the reduction of sexual assault cases to be in the hands of the police or lawmakers, but in reality it's everyone's job to help reduce the occurrence of rape and violence against women. Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) is a national organization based in Washington, DC who work toward stopping rape through public awareness and educational programs in schools, as well as providing training to various companies and community institutions. As stated on their website, http://www.mencanstoprape.org/, their mission is to "to mobilize men to use their strength for creating cultures free from violence, especially men's violence against women". What I like most about this is that they mentioned using their strength to stop rape instead of using strength to abuse women, which is generally the case in rape situations.
     Not only does rape itself need to be stopped, which it most certainly does, but also our society's obsession with rape culture. Most people would not normally look at certain rap songs as rape culture or promoting violence toward women in general, but if you really listen to the words, it can be kind of an eye opener. Here is just a small sample of the extreme violence in Bad Meets Evil's song The Reunion: "Bitch flew out of the car / I laughed like, she deserved it / She didn't think I'd act like that in person." ...Umm... excuse me? I know that's not about rape but it is certainly about violence toward women. Even little miss Britney Spears, singing Hit Me Baby One More Time, or from her song Toxic, "There's no escape, I can't wait, I need a hit, baby gimme it, you're dangerous, I'm lovin' it"... thank you Britney for subconsciously telling girls that being hit, being trapped with no escape and being surrounded by danger is a good, healthy relationship.
   Ashley Judd recently bashed hiphop music for promoting rape culture, which makes sense because she apparently was abused as a child. What really amazes me is that she later apologized for her comment about rap music being too violent. What is with people these days?

Is ten too young to consent?

   Most people know by now that the models featured in fashion magazines and walking down runways are young, but what age should be considered "too young" to be modelling in adult photo shoots? This web article at jezebel.com examines this very question.
   First of all, I'd like to touch on the concept of consent, and whether a ten year old girl is truly able to consent to posing in the nude, or almost nude, depending on how you want to look at it. In the article, it says that because models are essentially their own company or boss, they are not subject to certain very serious areas of the law, such as the legal age to work and issues concerning sexual harassment. Am I the only one who finds this completely horrifying? What this basically means is that if this 10 year old was working on a photo shoot and got molested, that's all right because she's a model? I understand there are work-related hazards but no ones life or at least sexual safety should ever be in danger. One could argue that a sex worker puts herself or himself in these dangerous situations every day. Well, for one thing, the majority of those jobs are criminalized and therefore the probability of them reporting sexual harassment is no doubt slim, but more importantly they (the ones whose jobs are legal) must be 18 or over. That's a almost twice the age of little Thylane.

   I personally don't blame Thylane for her employment choice, or even the slightly disturbing photos that she is in. Nor do I blame Vogue, really. What really confuses me is how this girl's parents would allow their child to pose completely topless or nearly bottomless. Oh wait, I forgot; her father's a famous soccer player and her mother is a talk show host/clothing designer. Not to be too judgemental, but people in the entertainment industry and celebrities just don't seem to have a real grasp on reality, for the most part anyway. While Thylane's mother acknowledged that the public hasn't taken well to these racy photographs of her baby on her Facebook page (quoted here), she even says "she's so young...", she really shows no sign of regret. I am glad, however, that she wants to protect her daughter from these bad rumours and the issues surrounding her nearly nude photographs. Maybe she should have thought about protecting her before the pictures were actually taken...? Just a thought.