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No such thing as “safe sex”

August 11, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

I like Dr. Miriam Grossman. I’ve heard her speak and she’s quite no-nonsense, unemotional and smart. She’s the author of Unprotected which highlights the many myriad ways women (girls) are suffering on campus the result of the hook-up culture. She has a new pamphlet coming out called Sense and Sexuality. “It’s not a guide to ‘safer sex'”–she says, which is good, since “safe sex” doesn’t really exist and said “guides” exist by the hundreds already and yet are failing our women on campus right, left and centre. I don’t know what the complete pamphlet will say–here’s a link to a teaser.

I’m aware that saying there is no such thing as “safe sex” will be controversial to many. What are you saying, Andrea–that sex is dangerous in and of itself? Pretty much–I believe it to be emotionally risky even where made physically safe. The only sex that is made something close to safe occurs in marriage, I think, where the risk or fear of betrayal and abandonment goes down–you can be sure your partner knows your name, is unlikely to mix you up with someone else, and will be there in the morning, and the following evening, even…

More to the point, even in serial monogamy, it is very, very hard to make sex physically safe. This makes all these agencies working toward “safe sex” into something of a charade. And given that women react differently to casual sex than men, generally more negatively, once again, women are harmed by these groups that pretend to help.

Dr. Grossman takes steps to eradicate some of the misinformation. And thank God–or Mother Earth or whoever–she does so, especially because she’s not a radical, right-wing Christian. (Those people are very, very scary.)

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Andrea updates: Oh dear, oh dear. That last line was sarcastic. I don’t find right-wing Christians scary. I write everyday, and some days one can have more success, other days less, in conveying tone. Given the comments I have already received, I’ll assume today is a day for less success in conveying sarcasm. Radical right-wingers of the Christian persuasion, your views are welcome here! (I thought that to be quite obvious. What might be less obvious is that radical left-wingers who are pro-life–or want to be– are equally welcome here.)

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Rebecca adds: This reminds me of something I read a few years ago, the title and author of which, of course, elude me. The point was that by permitting and even encouraging teens and young adults to have serious relationships that involve sex, varying levels of less-than-marital commitment, and even cohabitation, we are creating adults who have been through the collapse of a major relationship several times by their late 20s. The scars of breaking up with a high school lover, a university boyfriend or girlfriend with whom you set up housekeeping, or a partner you dated for years to no particular end may not be as bad as the scars caused by divorce, but they’re still damaging. The net effect of this is a legion of men and women in their late 20s or 30s who very much want to make a marriage, but must contend with the emotional and spiritual damage of a series of failed relationships of their own, and of their potential partners.

 

Building a solid marriage is a task of Herculean difficulty under the best of circumstances. Saddling a budding relationship that might be headed for marriage with baggage of past pseudomarriages doesn’t make a happy, lifelong union more likely.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Dr. Miriam Grossman, safe sex, Sense and Sexuality

Just doing what they were told

July 30, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

This little report talks about how kids today take the big step of having sex without a condom to show how committed they are. It’s like an engagement!  

 

Here we witness the power of lust to take two strangers having sex to the level of two strangers committed to the joys of enduring an STD together, til death do they part. Cuz

a ring is very temporary. You can sort of just take that ring off whereas if you don’t use condoms and get an STD then it is sort of a much less temporary result of your engagement than a tan line on your finger.

 Planned Parenthood must be quite distraught. Was it the curriculum? Were we boring? Did we not say you could have sex anytime, any place so long as it was safe? And there’s the rub: These kids are doing exactly what they were told. After all, before they move to condomless sex, they get tested. Now that’s romance.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Condom-free sex, National Public Radio, safe sex, sexually transmitted disease, STD

Beijing prostitutes–one, Sex in the City characters–zero

May 30, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Last night I flipped back and forth on television between two things. One, a CBC documentary on the rise of prostitution in Communist China. It’s something Communist nations typically have a stranglehold over—being totalitarian and all–but the Communist regime there is turning a blind eye because of the rising numbers of single men. CBC did not mention this is because of sex selection abortion and the one-child policy.  

 

The program went on to say that these young girls are lured from the rural countryside into the cities, and they know nothing about “safe sex.”

 

The other program I watched was a “documentary” on how Sex in the City came to be a program. Lots of men talking about how they realized that there had never been a show about women’s attitudes toward sex. And wouldn’t that be so interesting. To have men decide what women’s attitudes on sex are. And how avant-garde it all was, and how they weren’t even sure if they could call it Sex in the City…And could they convince Kim Cattrall? The tension was enormous, as you can imagine.

 

And I was left thinking two things. One, the women on Sex in the City don’t know anything about safe sex either. But still, the girls in China are one up on them. For at least they are getting paid. The characters in Sex in the City give it all up, over and over—sex, dignity, you name it—for free. Very avant-garde, indeed.

 

(cross-posted to The Shotgun)

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Véronique adds: An excellent column by Fr. Raymond de Souza on that topic.

 

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Andrea updates: I wrote this blog post before I read this Globe and Mail review–which, ironically gave the movie a whopping zero stars. Apparently you don’t have to be a priest to have higher standards than Sex in the City offers. My favourite line in the review:

 

That means the iconic foursome with their adjectival personalities – bouncy Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), horny Samantha (Kim Cattrall), judicious Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), preppy Charlotte (Kristin Davis) – don’t perform so much as parade, fixed in their roles as semi-animated clothes hangers on a cinematic runway.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Beijing, Communism, safe sex, SEx in the City

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