No, Amanda, you don’t understand. Straight people get married because they love each other. Gay people only get married so they can have sex.

Something about mandatory passivity too.  Forming a same-sex marriage means standing up for yourself and doing something that’s still pretty unusual.  That whole churchy ‘open to the possibility of new life’ rationale for opposite-sex marriage (and no same-sex marriage) has the same ideology.  Don’t go having notions about what’s right for you.  Bend to the dominant Way It Has Always Been.

I’d like to see someone go through an elementary curriculum and remove all expressions of heterosexuality, just to see what would be left.  But in any case, the whole argument is bizarre:  how, exactly, does learning about homosexuality damage one’s innocence?  Learning that out there, there are even more ways for people to love and be happy is...bad? 

My innocence was fucked up when I learned about hatred and bigotry.  Kids shouldn’t be exposed to religion until at least high school.  At least, not they way it’s practiced by most Americans.

But if that’s what this woman really means, then you have to ask the question: how is a gay marriage teaching kids about the existence of sex when a same sex marriage isn’t?

Coffee fail?

I think you meant “how is a gay marriage teaching kids about the existence of sex when an opposite sex marriage isn’t?”

Otherwise, I don’t think that makes sense…

Anyway, sounds like wingnuts acting like wingnuts… in other news, the sky is blue.

It is kinda funny how much people desperately cling to the notion that sexual orientation is some sort of conscious choice, like deciding which pair of shoes you’ll wear today… and I do get the sense from some fundies that they consider themselves more righteous for for having the “willpower” to make the correct “choice”.

But then again, if one must actually exert any sort of willpower to actually “choose” their heterosexuality, methinks they might need to examine the closet they’re probably keeping themselves in.

I know this is sort of petty and nit-picky, but is there a better term we can use than “opposite-sex marriage”?  I’m not comfortable with the implication that men and women are so different that they can be considered opposites.

My daughter’s kindergarten teacher has a new name this year from last year because she got married over the summer!!!11!!11!

How do I protect my child’s innocence from being destroyed?  This woman gave up her own name simply because she married some schmo!  Here’s my daughter, living in a house with her two parents who have their own surnames despite being married in a High Nuptial Mass, and this kindergarten teacher comes along introducing patriarchal submission and compliance!  To kindergarteners!

And she’s such a great teacher.  My daughter loves her.  How can I teach her that “Mrs. X” is subhuman and not even worthy of her contempt now?

Damn that “Opposite Marriage” anyhow!  Is there some Chancellor I can write to?  Some Professional Moral Authority Scold who can restore my child to innocence?

I guess these parents don’t realize that making something forbidden or keeping it a tight secret actually makes it more tempting to children.  If homosexuality really were a choice, then the best way to “recruit” children would be to do exactly what conservatives want to do.  I also think that keeping sex in general a forbidden secret encourages people to start earlier and be more risky with it.  There was an all-boys Catholic high school in my town, and plenty of the boys I hooked up with admitted that they did it to feel like adults (in addition to all the other reasons that teenagers do it).

Teachers should, by and large, be asexual as far as their kids are concerned. Not only because it’s none of the kid’s business, but because if kids did find out that their teacher liked bumping uglies, it would blow their minds and make classroom management impossible. I went to a pretty progressive highschool, but once word got around that the gym teacher was a lesbian, a whole shit ton of nastiness ensued. Frankly, the less my husband’s kids know about me, the happier we both are.

That said, I don’t mind at all that my husband mentions early on in the year that he’s got a wife. Just like my gay male teacher friend should have every right to say he has a husband, and this woman should have every right to say she’s getting married to her girlfriend.

Because marriage to a kid is a pretty asexual thing: kids tend to get traumatized thinking about their parents doin’ it, some of us flat-out denied it happened past our own conception, and stories of “walking in on mom and dad” is nightmare fuel for just about all of us. And friends parents? Fuggedaboudit.  They have a tangential understanding that marriage involves the Barbie Doll and the Ken Doll laying on top of each other, and that it’s supposed to be dirty and exciting, but thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Hoover having sex is brain-bleach material. Not like the stuff that you’ve seen after 9pm on network TV.

I know this is sort of petty and nit-picky, but is there a better term we can use than “opposite-sex marriage”?  I’m not comfortable with the implication that men and women are so different that they can be considered opposites.

I agree, but it was the only thing that came to mind, since it’s become customary to refer to marriages between two people of the same gender as “same-sex marriages”.

Still, when I hear or say the words aloud, I can’t help but get the image of that homophobic beauty queen twit from California in my mind.

I’m not sure what to call it…

“different-sex marriage”?
“Non-same-sex marriage”?
“XX-XY marriage”?

You’re right in pointing out that referring to it as “opposite-sex marriage” only strengthens patriarchal gender norms, but physiologically speaking, men and women are “different”, if not necessarily “opposite”.

I really don’t know what to call it.  The words “traditional marriage” make me want to puke, because it’s the phrase of choice for the homobigot wingnut assholes trying to block LGBT equality.

Perhaps just “heterosexual marriage”?  That seems pretty value-neutral.

Coffee fail, DTG.  Fixed it.

I love “opposite sex marriage”.  It sounds really awkward and weird, and that alone helps undermine straight privilege.

My daughter’s godparents are my brother and his husband. We had her baptised at a (nontraditional) Catholic church, even. (And the amazing thing is, neither of them is Andrew Sullivan.) I suppose her innocence was trashed at age 5 weeks.  I gotta say it’s kind of a relief not to have to worry about that anymore!

[I]s there a better term we can use than “opposite-sex marriage”?

How about “Different-sexed marriage”?  This has the added advantage of allowing sex, like gender, to be a fluid concept, unlike the term “opposite sex” which implies that sex is a purely binary phenomenon.

I usually say “straight marriage”, but I can see how the entire concept of “straight” can be problematic, by implying that gay people are somehow un-straight or un-normal.  I guess the best term is hetero-marriage.

“XX-XY marriage”?

What have you got against XX-X marriage, XY-X marriage, XXY-XY marriage, X-X marriage, and my personal favorite XYY-XYY?

</snark>

I think there’s a strong possibility of overthinking the terms.  We’re not going to win this battle by phrasing things just so.  Whatever term we use will immediately be overtaken by the connotations people already have about straight and gay.  It’s like the term “feminist”.  Trying to replace it with something that doesn’t have negative connotations isn’t going to work; no one will know what you’re talking about, and when they do, it will get the same connotations “feminist” had.

“Different sex” marriage is a confusing term, I’m afraid, because it obscures the reality of marriages involving transgendered people, many of whom face similar marriage discrimination issues as gay people.

kids tend to get traumatized thinking about their parents doin’ it, some of us flat-out denied it happened past our own conception, and stories of “walking in on mom and dad” is nightmare fuel for just about all of us. And friends parents? Fuggedaboudit.

I don’t know, maybe I’m weird, but the thought of my own parents getting freaky always creeped me out 100 times as much as the thought of my friends’ parents doing it.

I mean, the thought of my adult siblings doing it with anyone also freaks me out in a similar way, even to this day.  Not that I think it’s wrong or gross or that there’s anything weird about it, just that the literal, visualized thought of it… BLECH. (shivers)

I think it’s more internally disturbing when it involves people that you’re actually biologically related to.  Granted, my tremendous internal revulsion to it is probably heavily influenced by traumatic childhood abuse involving an immediate relative.  Or I’m just weird.

they do?:

“but because actual heterosexual married couples sleep together”

i had no idea! i need to tell my wife about this!

I guess the best term is hetero-marriage.

The other thing that recommends “different sex” marriage in my mind is that it puts heterosexual couples and couples involving at least one transsexual partner in the same category.* Now that’s nice and subversive!

* I’m thinking post-gender reassignment transsexuals with genitals and chromosomes that don’t fall into the statistically usual pattern.  Told you sex was a fluid concept ...

“Different sex” marriage is a confusing term, I’m afraid, because it obscures the reality of marriages involving transgendered people, many of whom face similar marriage discrimination issues as gay people. 

Actually, I count that as one of its strengths.  Seize the linguistic high ground and place hetero couples and couples including at least one transexual (urg!  unwieldy phrase there) in the same category.  Let the bigots do the work to parse the category, create a distinction, distance themselves from the couples including at least one transexuals.

I think its worth attempting to take the initiative in setting the terms of this debate.

It really is impossible to overestimate the stupidity and irrationality of these people.

Re the “age-appropriateness” thing - my somewhat conservative devoutly religious parents clued me in to both the existence of hetero sex and the existence of gay people* when I was 6.  Even ignoring the fact that hearing that someone is getting married is not really about sex at all, of course. 

Because, yeah, the bottom line is that homobigots sexualize the very existence of gay people.  That’s the reason that hearing that your teacher is gay is “not age appropriate”.  To them, it’s like hearing that your first grade teacher is into BDSM or has a leather fetish. 

*This is, sadly, because I was being called a dyke at school by my classmates, and came home asking what that meant.  Yeah, yall, I had to learn what homosexuality was BECAUSE OF stupid homobigots and the things they teach their kids.

Seize the linguistic high ground and place hetero couples and couples including at least one transexual (urg!  unwieldy phrase there) in the same category.

But I worry about that confusing people and making them think that transgendered people don’t face discrimination, when they do.

But I worry about that confusing people and making them think that transgendered people don’t face discrimination, when they do.

Admittedly, that is the downside.

do get the sense from some fundies that they consider themselves more righteous for for having the “willpower” to make the correct “choice”.

That’s because those fundies probably are closeted.  About something sexual if not homosexuality specifically. 

I have an extremely religious evangelical friend who is somewhere in the territory “bisexual and more into women right now” or perhaps ex-gay if you want to read his situation really uncharitably.  We’ve talked about his queerness vis a vis his marriage to a woman and his particular choice of religion, and he’s made it pretty clear to me that he sees that part of his life as something he has to hold back.  He’s not self-righteous about it or anything, but he definitely uses that language.

I would like to state, for the record, that I am hetero-married and we totally Do It! With our innocent son in the house, asleep right down the hall! Just for fun, using contraception, sometimes with the lights on!  OH NOES.

Conservatives are such peeping tom pervs, it’s disgusting. They all stopped at age 12 and want us to think down to their level. Grow up, fer chrissakes.

I tend to use “cross-sex” or “cross-gender” (in general, whether we’re talking about “opposite marriage” or gendered violence or whatever), but I’m liking the deliberately awkward terms more and more as people argue for them.

Hey now Amanda, there’s a reason that this is “the married woman’s best friend” in evangelical culture.

@ catgirl, #7: My understanding from science class and the like is that most people become sexually active when their bodies mature sexually.  Period.  There’s no reliable way to prevent this from happening, and there’s no ominous social practice that’s going to make people become interested in consensual sex earlier, either. 

Unless these boys you’re talking about were 8 or 9, it’s pretty unlikely that their enrollment in a conservative educational institution caused them to become sexually active earlier than they normally would have.

Re: loss of innocence

In every one of these cases where some parent freaks out and claims their kid’s childhood has been destroyed and their little mids warped, the actual reporting of the incident makes it pretty clear the kid could care less. In this case, the little girl mentions her teacher is getting married to a woman. No big deal. Probably reported that news in the same sentence with what she planned to have as a snack later and who hogs the swingset during recess. It’s the parent who’s having the hissy fit. Not the child. And if the child is upset, it’s because she’s had to grow up with people who have regularly communicated the message that certain people are less than human.

Hey, Fundie-bigots. Stop using your kids as cover for your own hatred.

Frankly, the less my husband’s kids know about me, the happier we both are.

When I was in 5th grade, I had an unmarried homeroom teacher whose boyfriend happened to be a coworker of my best friend’s dad. 

Oh, the obsession that ensued.  The sort of silliness that only tween girls are capable of.  In hindsight, our obsession with The Romance Of Ms. Nancy And Jon was really one of my last good memories of being middle school aged.  The next year the sexually curious silliness spilled over into Mean Girls territory, and things got really ugly (between us girls, we’d moved on from Ms. Nancy’s class to the 6th grade homeroom of The Dread Ms. Pelletier).

That said, yeah, our knowing this probably made the classroom that much harder to control.

Hey now Amanda, there’s a reason that this is “the married woman’s best friend” in evangelical culture.

That’s every woman’s best friend.  Especially women who have to take medication that dries out one’s mucous membranes.

I’d be creeped out to be given it at a bridal shower, though.  No one there should be thinking about the state of my mucous membranes.

Since this sort of idiocy is learned behavior, I wonder if these pearl-clutchers are the children of the folks who were scandalized by Lucy and Desi sleeping in separate beds but [gasp] in the same bedroom!!11!

“Hey now Amanda, there’s a reason that this is “the married woman’s best friend” in evangelical culture.”

I found that a little offensive.  =[ Some people have to use lube even if they are turned on.

“There’s only one possibility left: Social conservatives don’t believe in sex after marriage.”

Bingo!

Although, I’d guess that they really believe in “no sex after marriage WITH YOUR SPOUSE”. All other sex appears to be okee dokee.

“Hey now Amanda, there’s a reason that this is “the married woman’s best friend” in evangelical culture.”

I found that a little offensive.  =[ Some people have to use lube even if they are turned on.

I’m assuming the evangelical implication is that your being turned on or not has nothing to do with owing your husband sex. Either that, or they’re way more into anal than previously thought.

My understanding from science class and the like is that most people become sexually active when their bodies mature sexually.  Period.

My understanding from talking to actual people, however, suggests that actually, there’s a fair bit of lag time. Mostly due to a lack of opportunity, but still…

I can assure you that I did not become sexually active at NINE, when my body decided TA DA, you’re a woman now!

I found that a little offensive.  =[ Some people have to use lube even if they are

I think we can all understand here that It’s Not Always About Us.  And I say this as someone who loves her lube as much as the next girl.  I’m also guessing that the “wife’s best friend” b.s. is an attempt to pay lip service to the idea that the “virginal” bride has been kept fully innocent of sex up to this point, not so much an implicit agreement that the wife need not ever be aroused.

But, ugh, if this is the customary fundie bridal shower gift, I am REALLY REALLY never having one, and if forced to, I’m vetting the guest list for possible fundies ("Mom, now what church does Aunt Sue go to again?").

Opoponax, I am absolutely sure that you are not disregarding the giant difference between extremely early sexual debut (before age 14 or 15, in the medical literature) and sexual debut in late adolescence, as far as measurable adolescent health outcomes. There are huge predictive factors for what age someone first initiates in consensual sexual contact, most of which are socioeconomic. If you’re curious, a quick Google Scholar search of “sexual debut predictive factors” will set you up with articles. Middle-class kids from families with a high degree of formal education tend to wait longer, in general. Unitarian kids tend to wait forever, because they’ve already seen that on a slideshow, thank you kindly.

As to the original post: wingnutteria thinks gayness, in particular, is just one long orgasm with occasional high-fiving and trips to buy adorable matching outfits. For serious, they think it must be awesome and that no one would choose having to have sex with an icky lady / man if they weren’t made to by Jesus. This is what comes of thinking that the other gender is pretty much an entirely different species with which you can have almost nothing in common: from time to time, the thought of having sex with someone who’s remotely from the same planet must get pretty tempting.

My favorite part about lube is that KY is considered the “decent woman’s lube” whereas Astroglide is for the sluts.

That’s every woman’s best friend.

Every human being with an active sex life’s best friend. And even if ‘active’ means ‘solo’.

I prefer the silicone-based stuff myself, because it lasts longer. And if there’s one time you don’t want your lube to fail, it’s while your gf is pegging you.

My kindergarten teacher got married the year she taught my class. How horrible!* By the next year, she was even pregnant! The horrors! I was warped for life. **

* Because I had a major crush on her and knew in the limited way of a 6 year old that she couldn’t marry both of us.

** In the “not warped at all” way, of course. I hadn’t thought of her in 30 years and, other than running into her at a store of some sort during my 1st grade year, I wouldn’t have known that she was pregnant. And at 7 years old I totally didn’t make the connection between marriage and sex. Why? Because there *isn’t* any connection! Except in the proscriptions of Fundy land.

I can assure you that I did not become sexually active at NINE, when my body decided TA DA, you’re a woman now!

By “sexual maturity”, I don’t mean “the day you start your period”. 

I mean that in general people don’t become interested in sex until they are biologically ready to.  I started my period at 10 and was encouraged to shave my legs and wear a bra at 12, but was pretty much repulsed by the very idea of physically having sex until I was 13 or 14.  Which is about the age I started to experiment with sexual activity. 

My point is simply that growing up in a repressive household or being sent to a conservative school isn’t going to “make” young people have sex before they’re physically ready to.  They might have sex before they’re emotionally ready to, but then teenagers all over the planet have been doing that at least since society got complex enough to have a division between “physically ready” and “emotionally ready”.  And growing up in a progressive environment doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

Opoponax, I am absolutely sure that you are not disregarding the giant difference between extremely early sexual debut (before age 14 or 15, in the medical literature) and sexual debut in late adolescence, as far as measurable adolescent health outcomes. There are huge predictive factors for what age someone first initiates in consensual sexual contact, most of which are socioeconomic.

Of course.

But the bottom line is that people start having sex when their bodies mature*, and sending your kid to a parochial school isn’t going to change that.  While socioeconomic issues have a lot of impact on when people first have sex, the political values of one’s family or the presence of religion in your school curriculum probably don’t have much impact at all. 

I mean, I hate fundies as much as the next liberal, but srsly, sending your kid to Catholic school is not going to turn them into a depraved boy-nympho at age 8.  Insert priestly pedophilia joke here.

* My main issue with “The Literature” is that it tends to regard “first sexual activity” as “first hetero PIV sex”.  I think we can all admit if we’re honest with ourselves, regardless of socioeconomic class, that other things came first, and we did not wait till we were 18 to try them.  I’m an upper middle class doctor’s kid, and while I waited till I was 17 to actually let a dude put his penis inside me, I was doing plenty of other stuff with both guys and girls a lot younger than that.  And as a teenager I felt that I was behind the curve in terms of sexual experience.

I always tell myself that when my husband and I have sex with contraception I’m still open to the possibility of children because contraception isn’t perfect. But I have to confess that my husband and I have sex even when I’m already pregnant. Absolutely no chance of creating new life right now when I’ve already got a bundle of cells in my uterus. Yet, deviants that we are, sometimes we engage in the sex. Like emjaybee, even though our innocent son is just down the hall.

Of course, I was always under the impression that it’s good for kids to know their parents love each other. We hug and kiss in front of him, which probably scars him terribly.

Opoponax, on page 159 of this peer-reviewed study you can see a nice chart of predictive factors for age at first intercourse that includes religiosity. Your anecdote is perfectly valid as personal experience, but the epidemiology on this subject (and it’s a very popular subject) shows that there are clear cultural and economic predictors that don’t seem likely to correspond with psychological or physiological maturity.

Oh, posted before I saw your response, and yes, agreed that there are many age-appropriate levels of sexual experimentation that happen before initiation of coitus. In fact, I wonder if one of the reasons why religiosity is sometimes a predictor for higher levels of intercourse at certain ages is the impact of religion on how you feel about intercourse versus Other Stuff being all right with Jesus, but here I’m only guessing, and it seems like that data would have shifted radically in the last ten years even if anyone’s collecting it.

BTW I’ve also known plenty of “rich girls” who got pregnant at 15 or 16. 

The real socioeconomic difference seems to me to be that the wealthier girls’ parents and/or boyfriends can finagle them an abortion, while the poorer girls are less likely to have access to that either for financial reasons or because the poorer girls’ families are more likely to actually put their money where their mouths are in terms of religious beliefs about it being a sin. 

As a teenager I knew more lower-middle-class/working class girls who’d had babies, and I knew more wealthy girls who’d had abortions (or who didn’t get pregnant because their mom got them the pill).  That was really the only difference.

I’m assuming the evangelical implication is that your being turned on or not has nothing to do with owing your husband sex. Either that, or they’re way more into anal than previously thought.

Little bit of Column A, little bit of Column B.

Opoponax, I think we’re arguing on the same side, because rates of teen pregnancy, teen birth rates, access to contraception, etc. are clearly correspondent with socioeconomic factors and, again, this is reflected in the literature. And again, there’s a huge difference between making out in the movie theater at age 13 and having intercourse at age 13. I am not going to say that, anecdotally, there aren’t very happy healthy thirteen-year-olds doing it, but broadly, it seems to be predictive of poor reproductive outcomes. A large percentage of people are having sex by sixteen, and a lot of them seem to be prepared to engage in responsible contraceptive use. I really think my data has no beef with your data.

My anecdata is that a full medical understanding of the mechanics of sex, as well as having parents that thought it was Just Fine and Full and Open Communication about How Fun It Is To Grow Up, has a substantial preventative effect on age of full intercourse, namely, that it often delays age of first intercourse until you no longer live with parents that want to talk about how lovely it is that you’re spending some alone time with your boyfriend and then stuff some condoms in your backpack when your back is turned. Perhaps our anecdotes can be friends.

Full and Open Communication about How Fun It Is To Grow Up Is Lovely, rather.

I’m also not AT ALL talking about child sexual abuse and nonconsensual sex, because obviously that has nothing to do with the choice to become sexually active.  One can be raped at 11 and then decide to have sex at 14.  “The Literature” would probably peg that person as having “initiated sexual activity” at 11, not 14.  I’m guessing that this correlates heavily with class status and repressive religious upbringing.

I’m also guessing that there are severe limitations of accuracy on these sorts of studies because people are self-reporting.  A girl from a well-off mainline protestant family is probably not going to want to talk about how she used to masturbate with her best girlfriend at slumber parties in 9th grade (and is probably not going to consider that “sex”, anyway).  A girl from a trailer park who had her first baby at 15 is not going to be able to fudge the numbers as well.

Opopo, absolutely. When I did medical translation it was often up to the nurse gathering the data whether she interpreted “age at first intercourse” as someone’s first boyfriend, or that thing that happened to them in middle school. But I am not 100% sure that a twelve-year-old is capable of giving full consent to intercourse with someone, say, four years older anyway - legally she sure isn’t - and that makes the data really really murky.

And again, there’s a huge difference between making out in the movie theater at age 13 and having intercourse at age 13. I am not going to say that, anecdotally, there aren’t very happy healthy thirteen-year-olds doing it, but broadly, it seems to be predictive of poor reproductive outcomes.

Two things.

1.  There is A LOT, sexually, that falls between ‘making out’ and ‘intercourse’.  A major problem with The Literature on how old people are when they become sexually active is the fact that these studies, and society at large, tend to only see ‘sexual activity’ as intercourse. 

2.  I’m not by any means saying that it’s a good thing for young teenagers to become sexually active, or for people to start having sex as soon as they’re sexually mature.  Simply that this is what happens.  Short of a chastity belt or an iron lung, you can’t make a teenager not have sex.

The data on how to count consensual sexual initiation, mind. Not the data on whether that situation is morally okay, which I’m pretty stern about. I sure had hormones when I was twelve, and part of my strong response to your initial question was the difference between what I was curious about and thought might be fun someday and what it was appropriate, retrospectively, for me to be doing at that age. Especially since at age 12 I was five foot seven and could pass for a college freshman if I was wearing makeup - I’m just really, really glad that I was both informed and pretty damn sheltered.

I mean, I hate fundies as much as the next liberal, but srsly, sending your kid to Catholic school is not going to turn them into a depraved boy-nympho at age 8.

Nobody ever suggested that this was the case!  You’ve really built up a straw-man of my point there.

I think fundies give lube as a gift to wives because that assume that no women ever like sex, ever.

FWIW, early-onset sexual maturity can refer to more than just menstruation. But I guess that’s just, you know, from The Literature, ergo Wrong.

I guess I missed that whole decade of not-really-sex-sex. Pretty much went from zero to 60 at age 22. Some of us are ugly and unpopular for a looooooooong time.

But I am not 100% sure that a twelve-year-old is capable of giving full consent to intercourse with someone, say, four years older anyway - legally she sure isn’t - and that makes the data really really murky.

I don’t think so, either.  I’m also not really much talking about “statistical data”, mainly because so many variables make it so fucking murky. 

All I said was that, as much as I think fundie psychology is fucked up and growing up in a religious family and attending parochial schools can warp a person, the bottom line is people have sex when they become sexually mature.  It’s pretty much how our biology works.  Sending your kid to parochial school is probably not going to cause your child to become sexually active before they are sexually mature, unless you are sending your kid to a school that systematically rapes young children*.  And I think it would be cruel to put a situation like that in the same category as “my son knocked up some girl at age 15”. 

*Which happens, sure.  But it’s not really what any of us in this thread are talking about.

Opoponax, I didn’t say it wasn’t extremely handsy making out. But the origin of this argument was your assertion that religiosity in upbringing has no predictive value for early sexual activity. I concede that I have seen no data about whether it influences sexual activity other than PIV intercourse. I assert that it absolutely has a predictive value for age at first self-reported instance of PIV intercourse. I think we’ve pointed out the flaws in those measurements pretty thoroughly. I am declaring a data truce on my end, because my lunch break is officially way over.

p.s. as usual, nice arguing with you

FWIW, early-onset sexual maturity can refer to more than just menstruation. But I guess that’s just, you know, from The Literature, ergo Wrong.

Well, what, when you mentioned the age of 9, menstruation is what I thought you were referring to. 

Because in the vast majority of cases 9 year old girls are not fully sexually mature.  Even though quite a lot of 9 year old girls have their periods nowadays.

And if you were fully sexually mature at 9, sure, it’s biologically possible that you might have sought out sexual experiences.

Pretty much went from zero to 60 at age 22. Some of us are ugly and unpopular for a looooooooong time.

So you’re saying here that as of age 9, you sought out and craved sex, but due to mere opportunity you didn’t do anything until you were 22?

Opoponax:

There are many, many factors involved in when someone becomes sexually active.  There isn’t just some switch where they turn “sexually mature” and then become sexually active immediately.  Sure, there are always problems with self-reported data, but ages of first sexual activity certainly do vary among groups and individuals.  There are plenty of people who are “sexually mature” who still haven’t had sexual activity.  There are many, many reasons for this.  There are also plenty of people who are “sexually mature” (a term you’ve defined as so ambiguous that it’s practically useless), but still have sexual activity at a younger age than they would have otherwise if certain factors weren’t involved.  I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to understand that.

So you’re saying here that as of age 9, you sought out and craved sex, but due to mere opportunity you didn’t do anything until you were 22?

That is exactly what I’m saying.

(it was a really shitty, not-fun-at-all 13 years. Not that the ensuing eight have been a blast either.)

But the origin of this argument was your assertion that religiosity in upbringing has no predictive value for early sexual activity.

I don’t think we were really arguing, just talking/discussing. 

Also, I didn’t “assert” that religiosity in upbringing has absolutely no predictive value for early sexual activity.  Just that it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, because the bottom line is that once our bodies become sexually mature biologically, we start wanting to have sex. 

I also think there’s a lot of cultural noise that affects the realities of people’s lives, and it’s not as simple as “raise your kid an atheist and he won’t have sex till he’s 20 like a good boy”. 

One thing that I think is significant is that poorer people are less likely to have access to health care and education.  This means that early sexual activity for them is likely to be a tightrope walk without a net, whereas for a teenager with a lot of resources at their disposal, it’s more like a walk on a slippery sidewalk with a big crack in it.  Which doesn’t speak to biology so much as the reality of the social/cultural world we live in.

Oh, I meant academic arguing, not combative arguing. But people do raise kids Unitarian because of the sex ed curriculum, so I’m coming from a weird place on religious predictors. And I absolutely agree that access to medical care is the primary difference in why age at first intercourse matters.

Okay, I really do have to stop looking at jstor and go file things and possibly staple them.

That is exactly what I’m saying.

Then we’re having two very different conversations. 

I nowhere and nohow said that all sexually mature people would immediately find a sexual partner who satisfied them and get down to business.  There’s a lot of opportunity and circumstance that gets in the way, too.

Which, btw, is probably another side to my anecdata about the rich girls being just as likely to get pregnant as the poor girls—the only girls who weren’t likely to get pregnant were the girls who couldn’t get a partner capable of impregnating them.  I waited to have PIV sex because I was unpopular and bi and it was a lot easier to find a girl to fool around with early on.  It was only when I transferred to a school where everyone was a nerd that I had any heterosexual opportunities at all.

My understanding from science class and the like is that most people become sexually active when their bodies mature sexually.  Period.

My understanding from talking to actual people, however, suggests that actually, there’s a fair bit of lag time. Mostly due to a lack of opportunity, but still…

Depends on how Opo was defining sexual activity… I know that I, and most boys I knew, became sexually active with ourselves (masturbation) pretty much the moment we were capable of ejaculatory orgasm, though all of us denied the hell out of it at the time.  I don’t know if that’s the case with girls, however, as female orgasm isn’t tied to the onset of puberty.

Yes, I think I was reading Opo’s definition of “sexual activity” as “pursuit of sex/sexy-type activities with a partner” --since this is the admittedly-limited definition generally used in those surveys which monitor trends by age, AND the definition used by the anecdote with which she initially disagreed. (The one about Catholic school kids hooking up earlier than they really were interested in, b/c of the forbidden fruit aspect.)

If she merely regards high sexual interest and possibly masturbation as sexual activity, then it is a different concept. BUT, that’s irrelevant to the original anecdote--it was about *partnered* sexual activity that preceded a strong sexual interest (as reported).

Not to trivialize it, but it’s kind of like how a junior high student might hate coffee, but drink it anyway to seem “grown up.” Eventually he or she might start to LOOOOOVE coffee, but those first cups were more about culture and aping grown-ups than any internal desire.

The one about Catholic school kids hooking up earlier than they really were interested in, b/c of the forbidden fruit aspect.

Yeah, this is the thing - the Catholic school kids aren’t hooking up earlier than they’re interested in.  They’ve simply been raised to think that sexual thoughts are sinful and you should deny having them as long as possible.

Well there’s just no arguing with a perfect circle. They can’t be telling the truth because they’re lying because I said so because they’re Catholics.

I’ma get on my vespa and ride away now. Ciaoooooo.

I wonder if one of the reasons why religiosity is sometimes a predictor for higher levels of intercourse at certain ages is the impact of religion on how you feel about intercourse versus Other Stuff being all right with Jesus, but here I’m only guessing, and it seems like that data would have shifted radically in the last ten years even if anyone’s collecting it.

There is a whole weird “you can do anal and still keep your virginity” trend among a lot of kids in the fundie purity movement.  Which is kind of amusing, because I imagine that their wingnut parents would be mortified to realize that by extolling the virtues of remaining technically virginal in terms of PIV sex that it would result in a whole bunch of their fundie kids having teh butt secks instead.

The bigots of the 18th Century denounced Enlightenment because its votaries were thought to be libertines. I think they had a point. Reason and pleasure have an intimate connection because a society where everybody had rights and disputes are dealt with by conversation instead of violence is one in which the men and the women find each others company rewarding, c.f. David Hume’s remarks on the civilizing effects of the amiability of women. I might not go as far as Wilhelm Reich, but the notion that sexual repression is at the root of fascistic politics seems a tad less far fetched after a bunch of frustrated young men flew planes into skyscrapers in hope of virgins.

There are many, many factors involved in when someone becomes sexually active.  There isn’t just some switch where they turn “sexually mature” and then become sexually active immediately.

This, 100%.

Being the victim of sexual trauma at a young age vey often impacts the onset of sexual activity, often in one of two polar opposite directions… it will typically either lead one to become extremely promiscuous fairly young, or sexually anorectic fairly young.

I was a late bloomer physiologically, and also extremely shy and geeky, and very sexually self-conscious due to childhood trauma.  And I was raised in a very sexually repressive Catholic household.  Oh, and I lived with my abuser until I was nine, when he graduated from high school and went away.  Curiosity and desire existed from a very early age - I became fascinated with porn at the age of seven.  Had an experience initiated by a female neighbor when I was 10, but was totally freaked out because she was 13 and I still hadn’t hit puberty and was deathly afraid my mother would walk in on us.  After that, shyness and social awkwardness kept me from even making out with a girl until I was 17, and I didn’t actually lose my virginity until I was 19 and in college.

Anyway, I was way behind the curve compared to virtually all of my peers, and was tremendously self-conscious about it, even for a few years after I lost my virginity.  And I think a huge part of my path to sexual activity was shaped by my childhood trauma.

My favorite part about lube is that KY is considered the “decent woman’s lube” whereas Astroglide is for the sluts.

Oh my head...WHY?

Our first-grader astonished her father at the end of the past school year as he dropped her off at our local Washington DC public school, Horace Mann Elementary, where he had attended school in the early 60s.

Wow. That’s one old dad right there.
Sorta makes me wonder if the concerned mother is a trophy wife of some sort.
Yikes.

I’ve always been amazed at how the simple pleasure of genital friction (which I have enjoyed in a deliberate way since months before my first ejaculation) can cause so much anxiety and cultural unease. It would be nice if some day it could be honestly discussed without people getting weird and squicky about it.

I grew up in a fairly repressive household. Fortunately, in the privacy of my bedroom, and always through headphones, I could hear the NYC Pacifica radio station, WBAI, in the days before it got sanitized and corporatized in the late 80s. I learned that every fantasy I’d ever had that I thought made me a total freak and pervert was actually fairly tame or even boring. I learned that sexuality defied easy categorization or control. That arousal was neither fearsome nor unmanageable. That I hadn’t actually just invented all the acts I was feeling ashamed for wanting to try some day. All this from LGBT advocacy programming and late-night free-form hippie or punk deejay ramblings (That I learned how to be comfortable in my heterosexuality from gays is a delicious irony). I just wish that the education I got by accident as a lonely radiophilic teenager could somehow become universal policy.

My favorite part about lube is that KY is considered the “decent woman’s lube” whereas Astroglide is for the sluts.

Hmm...isn’t Astroglide available in much larger tubes than KY?  Maybe that’s part of it.

But really, who knows.  It’s a mistake to try to make sense of wingnut hangups.

The real socioeconomic difference seems to me to be that the wealthier girls’ parents and/or boyfriends can finagle them an abortion, while the poorer girls are less likely to have access to that either for financial reasons or because the poorer girls’ families are more likely to actually put their money where their mouths are in terms of religious beliefs about it being a sin.

I’d say the real socioeconomic difference is that rich girls have the ability to go to college and have careers before they settle down and have a family.  Most poor girls don’t, so they just go ahead and have the baby at 15.

@DTG in STL,

I’m sorry you felt insecure about it, but losing your virginity at 19 isn’t that far behind the curve.

what department in the DC Government we can appeal to for the restoration of our child’s sense of innocence
If they do find that department, I’d like my childhood sense of innocence back, too, please. Also my childhood senses of optimism, fair play, and wonder, and my belief in the Tooth Fairy. thnx

Is there something just more sexual about two people of the same sex being together?

Yes. If you’re gay. So I continue to scratch my head.

I love “opposite sex marriage”.  It sounds really awkward and weird, and that alone helps undermine straight privilege.

I like that. Let’s find a way to shorten that sentiment a little so it can fit on a t-shirt.

I haven’t read the entire thread yet (only go to the Astroglide is for sluts part) so maybe someone already covered this but I would go one step further (farther? shit I get those mixed up) than Amanda. Not only are they using the bullshit about their child’s “innocence” to cover up their own bigotry, they are genuinely pissed that the girl got to see how nice and normal her teacher is before they were able to indoctrinate her with the “Teh Gay is Scary and Out to Get You” bullshit they teach their kids.

Now when they try to teach her that shit the little girl will always have the picture of her perfectly nice kindergarten teacher (aren’t they all nice? isn’t that a job requirement?) in the back of her mind to set off her internal bullshit alarm. They know this and it pisses them off. I think this came up with the whole Obama talking to our kids OHNOES!! crap.

Also, I didn’t “assert” that religiosity in upbringing has absolutely no predictive value for early sexual activity.  Just that it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, because the bottom line is that once our bodies become sexually mature biologically, we start wanting to have sex.

I thought the whole debate was about possible chronological differences between when a kid starts wanting to have sex and when they actually do have sex? It’s silly to argue that growing up Catholic would influence biological maturity at all (however you define it) unless there’s some sort of growth hormones in that wine. But more importantly there *do* seem to be differences in when and why kids actually have sex (and what forms that takes) that are related to religion, yes? It’s not like religious girls sprout breasts and boy’s voices break earlier than non-religious kids’—and frankly, I don’t see how you can define “sexual maturity” in any quantifiable way as anything *but* this sort of biological stuff, otherwise you start defining “sexual maturity” as “when they start to fool around” and that isn’t a helpful definition for our purposes (because we are trying to *compare* these two things.)

So, in short, I totally disagree with your “bottom line” but perhaps more importantly I think it’s irrelevant to the discussion. This isn’t about when kids “start wanting to have sex” so much as the disconnect between that point of “wanting” and when they start actually having it.

Most school districts code of conduct has no coverage for marriage.  Specifically because it isn’t an issue.  This sort of thing is an attack at the very basis of progressive beliefs, they’re trying to give their children education and yet put a bigoted stranglehold on the teacher’s authority.  When straight teachers need to take off their wedding bands/rings when they enter the classroom I’ll call the investigation fair.

I for one will be very curious to see what the school’s response to the parents is.  Hopefully some sort of politely worded “Grow up, for gosh sake” note.

I find this report a tad convenient, given that local marriages are not yet legal in DC (though well on their way, woo-hoo!). This supposedly took place over a year ago, before out-of-state marriages were recognized in DC. Apparently, Ms. Teacher was headed to Iowa or Massachusetts or somewhere for the wedding.

Part of me wonders if this didn’t either happen some time ago, to be reported now as an attempt to scuttle the DC marriage bill - NOM and the local carpetbagging clergy have threatened a Congressional override of the new law - or is just made up. The rest of the diatribe sure sounds rehearsed.

Also, “wanting” is not a particularly useful term either, I guess. As a kid I certainly enjoyed the sensations and whatnot at a nice early age but I wasn’t interested in trying it with anyone I knew. Then later I wasn’t particularly interested physically but I *did* want to fool around with a person I knew ‘cause I liked seeing what they enjoyed. Later I remained uninterested physically and turned down someone I would have otherwise wanted to fool around with if I *were* physically interested. After that I was both physically interested and interested in a particular person but that person had moved on to someone else. Then I graduated high school, and started the whole dance up with another crowd. (This was a while ago.)

So it’s not a really hard line between “wanting” and “not wanting” or “sexually mature” and “not sexually mature” ... at various times I have been various combinations of biologically able, mentally able, emotionally willing, and willing-to-be-convinced (and often my own ability/willingness has not translated into sex) but which combination would you consider “sexually mature” or “wanting”?

And, to bring it back on point a little more, these combinations would have been influenced by a strong religious upbringing, if I’d had one. Maybe I would have had to be morally willing as well, yanno? Or just particularly pissed off at my parents, and trying to rebel. It would be another factor in my decision-making process, and, I imagine, another factor in my level of desire at any particular moment—making my “wanting” a complicated mix of physical, emotional and social/religious influences that might have very little resemblance to my “actual” (magically free of influence) interest.

I think a numerical labeling system could make things a lot less confusing and eliminate the problems of “same-sex” and “opposite-sex.”

1. Cis-man and cis-woman
2. Cis-woman and cis-woman
3. Cis-man and cis-man
4. Trans-man and cis woman
5. Cis-man and trans-woman
6. Trans-woman and cis-woman…

So we can just say that right now, the government acknowledges only #1 marriages, but many states are fighting to acknowledge #2-9 marriages as well. And fundie parents can tell their kids that #2-9 relationships are abominations to God and then spend their time worrying about these eight other groups with their respective eight agendas that are trying to recruit their precious, innocent children.

Is there something just more sexual about two people of the same sex being together?

Not in our house . . .

I like “mixed-sex marriage”.

But there’ll be an element of “oh, you know what I MEAN” to any phrase one uses for it.

You know, I think gay marriage would actually be a great *boon* to parents who don’t want to explain gayness to their kids because they don’t want to talk about sex.

Kid: “Mommy, what does gay mean?”
Mommy: “It means when two grownup boys get married to each other.”
Kid: “Oh. Can I have a cookie?”

As opposed to the conversation we have now, where we have to say that two grownup boys or two grownup girls love each other the way a mommy and a daddy love each other, and damn, but that’s so much more awkward than just being able to say they marry each other! You can’t explain sexual attraction to a child, but kids know what it means to be married, so just use that.

“Most parents would not consider a Q&A;session with first-graders about homosexual marriage as an “age-appropriate” discussion.”

Meh. I work with foster kids, and a few of them have gay foster parents that are in the process of adopting them. I’m pretty sure all of them are under age 7. If a first grader can have gay parents, then they can certainly talk about gay people.

The obvious “age-appropriate” explanation is a whole lot like the one for heterosexual marriage - as far as a kindergarten kid is concerned, two adults are “friends” unless they get married, at which point they are “married.”

If there is particular reason (like a long-term couple with kids) to go into more detail about an unmarried couple, you just add “special” in front, as in “special friends.”

The problem lies for these people in their need to condemn right along with explaining. They aren’t looking for age-appropriate explanations (they’re easy) but age-appropriate condemnations.

Ms. Teacher is getting married. What snack do you want? But if you have to explain why her getting married is wrong, then you have to figure out how to explain what she’s doing and why she’s different, because otherwise, you have to deal with a kid asking “But what’s wrong with getting married?”

What’s so sad is that I can remember all sorts of things that came up in our Catholic household, like why some kids got to eat meat on Friday, and why some kids got Bar Mitzvahs or didn’t celebrate the same holidays. Mom was able to tell us “that’s not the way we do things in our house” or “They aren’t Catholic, so they have different traditions” without having to condemn them, while at the same time, making it clear that we didn’t (or couldn’t) do things that way.

I don’t see why that isn’t the obvious answer for these bigots. Aside from the bigot part, of course.

Wow. That’s one old dad right there.
Sorta makes me wonder if the concerned mother is a trophy wife of some sort.
Yikes.

Eh, not necessarily… if he went there in the early 1960s, that means that he’s now in his early-to-mid 50s, which means he might have had his daughter in his mid-to-late 40s.

My dad was 41 when I was born, and my mom was 37 - both were born in the 1930s, early in FDR’s presidency.  They actually remember Pearl Harbor, as both of my grandfathers were WWII vets.  My oldest brother is only a couple years younger than President Obama.  I had one childhood friend whose parents were almost a decade older than mine - his dad fought in WWII, as a conscripted Austrian soldier in Hitler’s army.  His mom was 42 when he was born.

OK, yeah, I guess her dad is kinda old.  Sorry, I was in grade school in the 1980s, and don’t want to think about my looming birthday next week.

@DTG in STL,

I’m sorry you felt insecure about it, but losing your virginity at 19 isn’t that far behind the curve.

In my neighborhood it was… my parents were educated professionals with Master’s Degrees, but we grew up lower middle-class in a blue collar Busch Beer drinkin’ urban neighborhood, thanks to Ronnie Reagan’s recession and the unemployment it caused my parents for a few years in the mid-1980s.

Lots of hand-me-downs from my brothers who grew up in the 1970s - in hindsight, my childhood wardrobe would have been pretty freaking sweet in a different era, but not so much in the 1980s, when bell bottoms and big collars weren’t very fashionable.  I was dressed like one of the Jackson 5 on my first day of kindergarten, and never, ever, ever lived it down.  Probably why I was stuck being a virgin until I was 19.

I don’t think it’s so much that this woman’s admitting that social conservatives don’t believe that heterosexual married couples have sex. I read it as an admission that sex in socially conservative households is boring. I believe that social conservatives are very intrigued by gay sex, and deep-down they consider it far more interesting than what goes on in their own lives.

When a kid hears someone is getting married, they don’t think “sex” like these adults seem to. My family had gay friends when I was young, and their partners were always introduced to me as their husband or wife. When I met two men and thought they were married I didn’t think “but how do they have sex?”. I just thought they were married. I don’t ever remember asking my parents any questions about gay sex at all, ever. I didn’t even know gay marriage wasn’t legal until I was a teenager. I was pretty shocked when I found out, it seemed so sexist.

(aren’t they all nice? isn’t that a job requirement?)

Hell, no. Mine was horrible. She was really mean. My mother got me transferred to the first/second grade classroom because she was so awful and I couldn’t stand dealing with her.

”And as a teenager I felt that I was behind the curve in terms of sexual experience.”

And

”Anyway, I was way behind the curve compared to virtually all of my peers, and was tremendously self-conscious about it”

Don’t almost all teenagers believe that they are “behind the curve” whether they actually are or not?

(sorry if this is a double post, my machine froze while blaspheming)

“Short of a chastity belt or an iron lung, you can’t make a teenager not have sex. “
Sure you can. Not being able to convince someone to have sex with you (let alone find someone who genuinely WANTS to. With you, that is) kind of makes you not have sex…

I just don’t get why conservatives think that acknowledging the existence of gay people automatically means handing out the full-color, pop-up edition of the Gay Kama Sutra to kindergartners.  “Sometimes boys marry girls, sometimes boys marry boys, and sometimes girls marry girls” is all a little kid wants to know.

I mean, you don’t give salacious details when your little kid asks where babies come from, and that conversation is specifically about sex.  Why would you think you needed to give salacious details about what a married couple does in bed, just because said married couple happens to be two women?  Why would anyone think the teacher was giving those kinds of details to her class?

I’m interested in what questions the class actually asked.  My guess would be questions about the wedding based on what they’ve seen in movies—did you wear a dress, did you ride in a carriage with horses—and kids who thought girls could only marry boys, asking how she could marry a girl.  (I suspect the answer was something like “We love each other, and grownups who love each other sometimes decide to get married, even if they’re both girls.")

I have a very specific memory of being a small child, talking about a fantasy land I called [my name]-land.  Among other things, like candy for breakfast and being able to fly and so forth, I said “and in [snowmentality]-land, boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls.” I had no conception of gay people then, and certainly no conception that what I was saying had anything to do with sex.  I just knew boys were supposed to marry girls and girls were supposed to marry boys, so among the other “world turned upside down” aspects of my imagined land, I decided to change that too.  If someone had said “You know, boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls in real life,” I would have said “Oh, okay” and moved on to imagining people being able to turn into trees or something.  You know?  Not a big deal.  Not a threat to my childhood innocence.

Well that’s just it, snowmentality.  They really do believe that being aware that same-sex couplings (to say nothing of transgender folks) exist is a shameful sexual deviance that is not appropriate for mundane discussion in polite circles.

Because of course, in polite circles, everyone is straight and cisgendered.

DTG (4):

But then again, if one must actually exert any sort of willpower to actually “choose” their heterosexuality, methinks they might need to examine the closet they’re probably keeping themselves in.

I think it’s possible that a lot of people believe their sexual orientation was a choice because they were told it was. Sure, they don’t remember making a choice, but that’s because they’ve been heterosexual for so long it just seems normal to them now.

It’s also not logically inconsistant to say that homosexuality is a choice but heterosexuality is not.

I’m sure some people, especially those sufficiently virulent to have risen to leadership positions (and for obvious reasons, even more especally “ex-gay” leaders) actually experience heterosexuality as an act of will for the reason you mentioned. But most people are willing to believe it’s willful merely on the basis of being told it is, particularly since it gets them unearned praise.

catgirl (5):

I know this is sort of petty and nit-picky, but is there a better term we can use than “opposite-sex marriage”?  I’m not comfortable with the implication that men and women are so different that they can be considered opposites.

“Heterogamous marriage”?

But I see Cavity Lee’s point at #90

Mighty Ponygirl (8):

That said, I don’t mind at all that my husband mentions early on in the year that he’s got a wife. Just like my gay male teacher friend should have every right to say he has a husband, and this woman should have every right to say she’s getting married to her girlfriend.

I agree with you, but I’m not sure why the need to mention it arose. How much of their teachers’ personal lives do kids need to know? Unless te teacher is marrying during the school year and taking time off to do it, why bring it up?

Amanda (15):

We’re not going to win this battle by phrasing things just so.

The organization Freedom to Marry insists on “equal marriage” rather than “same-sex marriage.” I feel the same way about that: it’s not like someone who opposes “same-sex marriage” is going to be okay with “equal marriage”. It’s also not really the goal—pretty much any woman can already marry pretty much any man she wants, so that is equal—and means something else besides: the opposite of “equal marriage,” to me, is one with a marked power imbalance, such as the fundamentalist model of a heterogamous marriage in which the husband runs the house and gives orders and his wife obeys.

Av0gadro (44):

Absolutely no chance of creating new life right now when I’ve already got a bundle of cells in my uterus. Yet, deviants that we are, sometimes we engage in the sex. Like emjaybee, even though our innocent son is just down the hall.

“Down the hall”, huh? That’s the strangest euphemism I’ve ever heard.

Oh,you meant ... ah. Never mind.

Xeranar (85):

Most school districts code of conduct ha[ve] no coverage for marriage.

Well, not nowadays

Devonian (100):

“Short of a chastity belt or an iron lung, you can’t make a teenager not have sex. “
Sure you can. Not being able to convince someone to have sex with you (let alone find someone who genuinely WANTS to. With you, that is) kind of makes you not have sex…

That’s not something your parents really have any control over, though

Devonian (100):

“Short of a chastity belt or an iron lung, you can’t make a teenager not have sex. “
Sure you can. Not being able to convince someone to have sex with you (let alone find someone who genuinely WANTS to. With you, that is) kind of makes you not have sex…

That’s not something your parents really have any control over, though
Comment #103: Hershele Ostropoler on 12/17 at 12:26 AM

You’ve apparently forgotten what it’s like to have your mom buy your clothes.

DTG in STL I’m not sure what to call it…

“different-sex marriage”?
“Non-same-sex marriage”?
“XX-XY marriage”?

How about “total war”?

In San Francisco, we call it a mixed marriage.

Is it common for parents to deliberately buy their kids clothes that will make them look ugly?

Is it common for parents to deliberately buy their kids clothes that will make them look ugly?

I wouldn’t say deliberately, I’ll just say that for the first few years of my life the only haircut my mom knew how to do was a bowlcut…

Is it common for parents to deliberately buy their kids clothes that will make them look ugly?
Comment #107: Hershele Ostropoler on 12/18 at 10:46 AM

What you think is ugly isn’t the same as what your mom thinks is ugly.

Furthermore, if your parents are interested in your keeping your virginity, they may dress you in a way they think is demure and respectable.  Prairie dresses for example.  This is typically not something designed to gain the approval of your peers. 

Not that kids aren’t inventive.  “You’re not leaving the house dressed that way” often leads to removal of bra and hiking-up of skirt on the way to school.

Are a lot of parents that obsessively determined to protect their children from the Lust Demon? I mean, appearance seems like a pretty blunt instrument to wield against such a, to me, minor foe.

For that matter, how important are clothes and haircut? Well, maybe to teenagers.