The R Word

My head is full and ready to explode.

Between the racism training last week (ARC), our adolescent development training on Monday, a community meeting on Tuesday and seeing Red Tails last night -- I've got a giant ball of yummy, gummy thoughts and questions. Any answers? Anybody? Bueller?

• Can you really get white people to engage directly with the topic of racism when they can't see that it remains a structural component of our society that benefits them? Terry thinks yes. Most of what I've read says no. Hmmm.
• Why do we (youth serving community) want to avoid this topic so desperately? At the adolescent development training our most dramatic youth story about racism still didn't get folks all riled up about it. They did name it, but very little depth to the conversation. Why?
• When/how do young people of color start to really understand the impact of racism on their life? Is it impacted by development? Experience? What is behind their claims that it is irrelevant to their lives? At our community meeting the young people's perspectives had a HUGE range from articulating exactly how it impact them to completely denying it. Sure, you can't generalize, but ...
• My blogs criticized Red Tails for "white washing" racism. I didn't get it! Failed the test (kidding, mostly.) Probably didn't understand what they meant -- because I did see the movie put it out there -- and put it out there beyond a few bad people. Reflection (and re-reading comments) -- I do a face palm. Point was how the movie made it seem pretty darn easy to overcome racism because, really, at heart white people are good and accepting -- so just do a good job and they'll welcome you to the officer's club or the prison break. Right. Didn't get that at all while watching. My white lenses surely do filter well!

Whaddya think?
What's in your brain?
Anything exciting happen since you got home?

g/

Dry Humping Saves Lives

Greetings to the teen pregnancy prevention community!

Congratulations are in order – the federal government is finally funding comprehensive sex education! I have my fingers crossed for those of you that submitted grants.

I’m writing to you all as a follow up to the communications workshop you attended. As you (hopefully) recall, I’ve been training the teen pregnancy prevention community be more attentive to and intentional with the language we use to talk about what we do. I am delighted that these trainings have been embraced by you all and thrilled to see changes in our framing and messaging, possibly due in some small part to my efforts.

You might have noticed that in using “teen pregnancy prevention” to define our community I’m ignoring the communications advice I’ve been delivering. Whether you heard it in my training or a conference or a lunchroom conversation, as of 2010 we have generally agreed to describe our issue and ourselves in positive, asset-driven terms (Hat tip: Karen Pittman!). More and more we hear “adolescent sexual health” or “adolescent reproductive health” used to replace “teen pregnancy prevention.” More and more, alliances and advocacy/training organizations are re-branding themselves away from the narrow health problem (teen pregnancy or AIDs). More and more, these same organizations are changing how they report on the issue – producing “sexual health reports” rather than “teen pregnancy reports.”

I’m using this old, unproductive language to make a point. I believe that in addition to re-framing the issue, we must address a gaping ethical hole in our approach to supporting the sexual health of youth. To use a very tired metaphor – we’ve started to talk the talk, but don’t seem ready to walk the walk.

I am not referring to the longstanding ethical debates that our advocates participate in at a policy level: abortion, minor’s consent or access to contraception and birth control. With these issues, we are clearly operating from a shared belief that young people have rights (This is, in and of itself seemingly controversial. The US still has not ratified the United Nations Rights of the Child) and policies pertaining to these rights should be shaped by what works in their (adolescents’) developmental context, not by personal perspectives or religious beliefs. Our community embraces a moral obligation to protect and defend these rights.

Rather, I am talking about our unwillingness to see adolescent sexuality as a positive thing in and of itself. When you consider the content of our conferences, the nature of our research inquiry, the priorities we use to make decisions about sex ed programming, the evaluation instruments we use ­– even how we define success, there is something essential is missing. To make this point, I’ve given this post a provocative title: Dry Humping Saves Lives.

I owe this title (and my personal illumination) to the young people at the Cascade AIDs Project. I met them at Oregon’s Adolescent Sexuality Conference. In the conference hall, among the booksellers, health care companies, universities and local tourist goodies, were youth selling their wares – including this button. I bought 10.

 This button uses a very clever marketing technique. Instead of a fairly unappealing product offer

Abstain from sex = Stay alive

it provides an incentive

Dry humping = Stay alive

Despite my appreciation of the button’s effectiveness, I know it will never play in prime time to public audiences (and isn’t intended to). This button is taboo. We don’t talk about dry humping in polite conversation, do we?

I immediately put the button on my bag. During my return trip to Minnesota I am in line at airport security; my bag sits next to a young woman’s backpack that is covered with adorable animal stickers. The security woman remarks “How cute!” while taking a minute to look. Naturally, she then must examine my lone button. She reads it. Blanches. Looks at me. I smile. She does not.

For all our attention to the rights and developmental needs of young people, the idea that sex is pleasurable, good and desirable is noticeably lacking. Do I need to remind you that the World Health Organization includes “pleasure” as an important part of sexual health? If our job is to promote and support the sexual health of young people, why do we ignore their sexual expressions, contexts and pleasure? What message does that send?

In some respects, this may be an ethical failure not entirely of our own creation. Teen pregnancy prevention is a political debate, polarized between “abstinence until marriage (Ab-Ed)” and “comprehensive sex education (CSE).” (Fairness in reporting: I acknowledge my personal affiliation with the latter.) The underlying concerns for each approach are similar (values, science, rights) and each side criticizes the other as having too much or too little focus in these areas. Both sides claim to represent a moderated approach. CSE proponents insist that they lead with abstinence messages. Ab-Ed proponents offer their own scientific evidence of effectiveness. CSE advocates are charged with ignoring the interests and concerns of parents, Ab-Ed advocates are accused of denying young people their human rights.

CSE employs a public health approach; an approach that prioritizes prevention strategies like the use of condoms and contraception. CSE is intended to address a health objective (to prevent teen pregnancy and STI transmission). Ab-Ed programming is also intended to prevent teen pregnancy, but because socially conservative legislators crafted the guidelines, the health approach is modified by a moralistic one. Ab-Ed programs are required to promote “the expected standard of human sexual activity” as “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage.” I’m fairly confident that dry humping does not meet that standard.

We spend a lot of time and energy distinguishing between our “camps” by focusing on these differences. Yet we both share the same objective: the prevention of a health or moral risk. Both camps loudly proclaim this goal – our collective shouting amplifies the message that what young people need is protection from disease and health/moral risk. By framing the issue as problem prevention we neglect the context in which young people look at and think about their own sexuality and sexual experiences. We demonstrate a condom or demand a purity pledge. They want to know how to tell when they are in love.

Certainly, both sides attempt to engage in broader notions of sexual health on some level. Almost all sex ed covers the biological changes adolescents experience. CSE programming frequently includes content geared toward relationships, but when time is a commodity (and this is a major concern), our default position is to place contraception and birth control content as the priority. We justify our decision by claiming that communities at high risk (youth of color, youth in poverty, LGBTQ youth) must have this life-saving information. This creates another set of injustices because youth from privileged backgrounds (at lower risk) receive more content on development and relationship issues than do their less well off counterparts. It may never have been our intention, but we’ve made condoms our top priority and ultimate policy objective.

Ab-ed programming is equally problematic, despite its inherent focus on relationships (narrowly defined as they are). Funding requirements have traditionally not permitted the promotion of condoms or contraception, although data that references failure rates is included. The absence of prevention strategies (beyond abstinence) from Ab-Ed programs is another reason the CSE community places such importance on condoms and condom demonstrations; research has shown that it (coupled with abstinence messages) are critical to effectiveness.

Ab-ed programming is also criticized for presenting an exclusionary and judgmental perspective that sex is only appropriate in the context of marriage. That presents a small problem for LGBTQ youth, since marriage is not an option (except for those lucky few in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C). Further, many youth have single parents, thus the “no sex outside of marriage” message is at least conflicting if not entirely fictional. And it’s not just parents who are judged, since many youth who receive Ab-Ed programming have already had sex themselves.

In contrast, sexuality educators from the CSE community work hard not to judge or stigmatize young people (or their parents) for their sexual choices or identity. This virtue, in addition to our unrelenting focus on condoms, has helped feed the accusation that CSE proponents are endorsing adolescent sex and teaching young people how to have sex. We all know that nothing could be further from the truth (despite my suggestion that it should be).

The CSE community goes to great lengths to combat this public perception. Ironically, we have attempted to deflect it by demonstrating the common ground between CSE and Ab-Ed. Our talking points are well established.

1. CSE programming emphasizes abstinence as the only 100% certain way to void pregnancy or STIs. 
2. We don’t think young people should have sex, but since research shows that many do, they need to know how to protect themselves. 

In the process, we’ve created our own echo chamber where both CSE and Ab-Ed advocates declare that sex among young people is wrong and dangerous.

At the heart of our protestations is an uncomfortable truth: we believe sex education is the lesser of two evils. Really, we’d rather not have to show a young person how to use a condom, but it is far preferable to seeing that young person contract HIV.

I understand our compulsion to deflect these accusations. Despite our political win at the federal level, CSE advocates will continue to struggle – one school at a time – to ensure that young people receive sex education. While we might have embraced the lesser evil, many adults have not. Our advocates blame the vocal minority for defeating CSE programs in schools, but at a very basic level the idea of young people having sex (despite its prevalence) is problematic for many adults and most parents. Thus the majority, who likely endorse the “lesser evil,” remain silent.

Although CSE now has a dedicated federal funding stream, we still must contend with American attitudes about sex and sexuality –– including our own. Cognitive linguists have documented how Americans associate sexuality with an object that can easily be lost, stolen, tarnished or soiled, rather than as a core component of personhood. And we, CSE and Ab-Ed proponents alike, reinforce the belief that sex, particularly adolescent sex, is somehow wrong and inappropriate by continuing to make abstinence our lead message. As we’ve discussed in my workshop, the word “abstinence” frames sexuality in terms of restraint and denial; implicitly labeling sex as a sin or evil to be avoided, rather than as a natural, normal part of human development. I’m sure you all recall my recommendation that we “abstain from the word abstinence” in our literature, web sites, surveys, press releases, conference workshops and, most importantly, CSE curriculum.

You may also recall my insistence that we all have a responsibility to talk about sex: at the dinner table, grocery store check-out lane, and holiday party. I’m not asking us to share sexual practices or anything incredibly personal (unless that feels right to you). I am asking us to talk about the role sex plays in our lives, how it impacts our identity, how we view our gender, where it fits in relationships, how it is represented in the media, what we think of policies that pertain to it, how it changes over time, and so on.

In talking about it, we normalize it. By doing this, we counterbalance the sensationalized messages that permeate the media. We send the message that it is not a taboo subject, that it is a normal, integral part of our lives. A change in this social norm will minimize the pain and anxiety parents feel over “the talk,” boost acceptance of CSE (and other policies related to sex) and improve perceptions of young people over all. If these recommendations seemed radical, hold onto your hat. I’m about to up the ante.

I think we need to start talking about dry humping.

I would propose that to fully embrace “adolescent sexual health” as our goal we must re-vision our organizations, programs, policies and communications to that end. We’ve got to go beyond talking about sex by framing sex and sexuality as a positive. We’ve got to include pleasure in the mix. And we’ve got to infuse this orientation into everything we do. (Gulp.)

I’m not saying that the world is ready to discuss how dry humping saves lives. I am suggesting that we (members of the CSE community) must start to discuss and prioritize dry humping. Seeing and acting on the idea that sex is a positive, productive influence in our lives must become our ethical standard. To act virtuously will mean that:

• Our organizations will ensure that staff development of includes a deeper understanding of sex and sexuality. At a minimum we should all experience the Circles of Sexuality activity or participate in an OWL adult training seminar. Our conference will include break out sessions or speakers focused on sexuality and/or sexual pleasure.
• Staff will be hired, promoted, valued and evaluated based on their ability to understand and promote a positive view of sex and sexuality.
•  CSE programming will be restructured to prioritize the contextual content that describes what it means to be sexually healthy. We will go beyond negotiation and refusal skills to talk about relationships, identity, love, pleasure, power, gender, intimacy, development and pleasure. We will develop activities that engage young people with these topics in age-appropriate ways. Our sex educators will feel comfortable talking about hand holding and dry humping.
• When we cannot get our entire curriculum into a school, we will compromise neither the condom demonstration nor the sexual health content. Instead we will be creative about where the content is delivered and create new partnerships with churches, youth programs and the media.
• We will create a new way to evaluate what we do. Our researchers will embrace our new goal and shape measures that suit it. Our survey instruments will include more questions about assets and attitudes than health behaviors.

Of course, these are just my ideas, and I’m merely an ex-advertising executive who remains your biggest fan. You are the experts -- it will take your ideas and your actions to truly support the sexual health of young people. I hope to have at least provoked or inspired you to think about what dry humping saves lives means to us all.

Please tell me what you think! Your comments will make this blog post better. It’s confidential and you don’t even need to register. If you don’t have an immediate reaction to my accusation, rationale or recommendations, I’m curious to know:

• Have you started to talk about sex in social settings? How is it going? What’s working for you?
• Have you had any “sex positive” training or education? What resources can you recommend to others? 
• Have you had any luck introducing broader sexual health content into your programming? Where do you see innovation in this area?

Assignment Notes

Greetings to the teen pregnancy prevention community!

As you will quickly realize by my informal tone, this blog post is specifically written for the teen pregnancy prevention community. I consider myself a part of that community for the past ten years. I’m known for a few trainings that I offer: We’ve Been Framed! Secrets from the world of advertising that build public support for young people and A New Vocabulary for Teen Pregnancy Prevention. I’ve conducted these workshops over 120 times since 2001 in 19 states. While I’ve maintained contact with a lot of individuals and organizations that I met along the way, I’ve never actually communicated with them as a group.  I conceived of this assignment as the beginning of a dialog with the community about a little discussed ethical dilemma.  I would imagine sending them all an email inviting them to read and react to my blog post. With any luck, a conversation would ensue. With this as a goal, I needed to be more provocative and pointed than I would usually be in written correspondence – thus my choice of the first person and my use of (too many) parenthetical comments. Following is a draft of the email:

Greetings from Minnesota!

You are receiving this email because at some point in the last few years, you attended a framing or communications workshop conducted by me – Glynis Shea.

I’ve been thinking a lot about our challenges now that we have more funding and political influence than ever before. In the training I challenged you to think about your language. These days, I’ve been wondering how we can take it to the next level and move beyond language.  

Please visit my blog

 (http://talkingaboutyoungpeople.blogspot.com)

and share your thoughts and ideas with me. As always, let me know how I can help support your marketing and communications efforts. Take care and good luck with your grants!

 g/

gaping ethical hole

Our community can be very righteous in our moral stance towards sex ed. We characterize a lot of our work as being about young people’s “rights” despite the fact that they aren’t very well defined. I thought this assignment would be a good chance for me to explore the ethics of the community claiming to be advocates for the rights of young people while denying some of those rights because they make us uncomfortable or are not politically expedient.

Both sides claim to represent a moderated approach.

When I was describing how the two “camps” are polarized, criticize each other and defend their own positions, I realized that Aristotle’s mean offered some insight. Neither camp would see them selves as either excessive or deficient, but our conflict forces us to the extremes. When we persist in making these contrasting points (us vs. them) we reinforce that position to the public.

	Excess	Mean	Deficient
Values	Ab-Ed	?	CSE
Science	CSE	?	Ab-Ed
Youth Rights	CSE	?	Ab-Ed
Parents Rights	Ab-Ed	?	CSE

…modified by a moralistic one.

The discussion about the “religious right’s” ownership of morality when it comes to adolescent sexuality (perhaps all sexuality?) is well trod ground and I chose not to stomp through it again. It bears mentioning that some of the more classic virtues (purity, chastity) are shared by both the CSE and Ab-Ed communities, but legislated and narrowly defined by the Ab-Ed advocates. I will likely never include either purity or chastity on my own personal ethic list!

They want to know how to tell when they are in love.

I’m not sure Aristotle would be as immediately relevant to the young people in sex ed classes, but surely Gilligan’s discussion of caring would contribute a lot to their discussions about positive relationships.

And we’ve got to infuse this orientation into everything we do.

While I was consistently frustrated by my struggle to read Aristotle, I did appreciate his emphasis on the practical and observable. Part of my job is to take research and theory and apply it to the work of the youth-serving community. I wanted to be clear, in this blog post, about ways we could actually practice the virtue I propose.

Week 10, Sadness at Twilight

I’m a big vampire fan. So the popular culture question of the week  -- Why are vampires so popular – is one that I've frequently asked myself. For this assignment, we were to search out and read five articles about vampire prevalence in popular culture.  My reading list included:

The Politics of Wizards and Vampires

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, originally published at Write.Live.Repeat

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/12/11/the-politics-of-wizards-and-vampires/

Former journalist, now writer. 2005, Time dubbed her "The Godmother of Chica Lit"

After Twilight, Gothic Sex Takes a Bigger Bite

Susie Bright

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susie-bright/after-twilight-gothic-sex_b_276491.html

Sexuality advocate, spokesperson, writer, artist, etc.

Vampires: Why Here, Why Now?

Tom Alderman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-alderman/vampires---why-here-why-n_b_282099.html

Media, Presentation and Speech trainer, speech writer and founder of MediaPrep

Rough Sex With Vampires: What Does "True Blood" Tell Us About Women and Sexuality?

James Brady Ryan, Nerve.com.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/141317/rough_sex_with_vampires:_what_does_%22true_blood%22_tell_us_about_women_and_sexuality

(Entertainment blogger)

Vampires, Werewolves, and "Scary" Female Sexuality: the Sexist World of Twilight

Carmen D. Siering, Ms. Magazine

http://www.alternet.org/sex/140132/vampires,_werewolves,_and_%22scary%22_female_sexuality:_the_sexist_world_of_twilight/

Carmen D. Siering is an assistant professor of English and women’s studies at BallStateUniversity in Muncie, Ind. One of her research areas is popular culture and its influence in the lives of girls and women.

LDS Sparkledammerung IS HERE!

Stoney321 – some random guy on livejournal

http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html

Bite Me! (Or Don't)

Christine Seifert

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/bite-me-or-dont

Assistant professor of communication at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. She teaches classes in professional writing and rhetoric.

Feminism and the vampire novel

Caitlin Brown

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2009/09/feminism_and_th

Caitlin Brown is a recent graduate currently trying to stave off the pain of real life with a never-ending stream of fantasy novels

Seems to me like vampires have been popular for some time now – and have shifted from a fringe-group following to the mainstream. Susie Bright talks about fantasy writers doubling as porn writers – and never being sure which was more disreputable. Alderman’s article reminds me of the Count on Sesame Street and Count Chokula cereal (which I distinctly recall desiring!)

For me, and I suggest that this is true for others as well -- vampire popularity is all mixed up with sex and sexuality. The appeal and intrigue; the danger and taboo.

Vampires came up at my training last week in Oklahoma. The training is about adolescent development and the participants, while dramatizing a point, referenced the teen girls swooning over dreamy Edward.

I’m thrilled that they are getting the point, but cringe at the reference. I’m terribly sad that Edward and the Twilight series are the vampires de jour. Seifert notes that they’ve stolen Harry Potter’s status as “prince of young adult genre.” What a shame!

The feminists are furious about Twilight. Seifert calls it “Abstinence porn.”

In reality, the abstinence message—wrapped in the genre of abstinence porn—objectifies Bella in the same ways that “real” porn might. The Twilight books conflate Bella losing her virginity with the loss of other things, including her sense of self and her very life. Such a high-stakes treatment of abstinence reinforces the idea that Bella is powerless, an object, a fact that is highlighted when we get to the sex scenes in Breaking Dawn.

Of course the paradox is that the more Meyer sexualizes abstinence, the more we want Bella and Edward to actually have sex. This paradox becomes extra-convoluted when we find out, in a moment that for some is titillating, for others creepy, that sex could literally equal death for Bella.

I must agree. Deciding not to have sex is well and good. But equating sex to death and inflating the state of virginity so extremely is troubling. Is our intention to teach our young people that “good” sexuality is that which you never actually have, just desire?

What my colleagues and I are working so hard to get adults to understand is that adolescent sexuality is natural, needed and unavoidable. Resisting one’s own sexual development is a disaster. Not being able to cope with, explore, understand and embrace in a healthy way is a disaster. But we, as adults, simply can’t get past the huge gasp that is the topic of young people and sex.

Even the term, abstinence is laden with meaning and values. As part of my communications trainings, I encourage the youth serving community (largely teen pregnancy prevention and adolescent sexual health) to abstain from using the term “abstinence.” According to cognitive linguists working to “re-frame” sexuality education (Real Reason research for the ACLU) the term reinforces our perception that sexuality is inherently bad (dirty feelings, impure thoughts) and our opponent in a struggle (fighting off those feelings). That by talking about abstinence we are framing what is a normal, healthy part of our being as something to be resisted and repressed.

This concept is echoed by Valdes-Rodriguez:

In the character of Harry Potter, and in the characters of his friends, teachers and associates, Rowling has created an essentially progressive “green” (and possibly agnostic) universe where people and wizards are good and kind by nature. Here, compassion and goodness are the norm, and students are taught to be ever-watchful for those few among them who make the unusual and shocking choice to be bad.  …

By contrast, the lead male character in the Twilight series is Edward, a “vegetarian” vampire. Edward is heroic not because he is good by nature, but rather because he makes the choice to be good, against all his “natural” instincts. In this way, Twilight is the ideological polar opposite of Potter.

And all of this heavy doctrinal crap gets tied to adolescent sexuality. Bottom line: Girls, all this sex stuff – it’s a bad, bad thing and you’ve got to resist it to be the kind of girl that  your Edward is gonna love. After all, Edward does it.  And Edward is, Edward is … God?

So I had read a lot of this anti-Twilight analysis at the feminist and race blogs. But recently I stumbled across and joking reference to S. Meyer’s (Twilight author) Mormonism. I recalled that it had come up, but I had only assumed it was tied to the abstinence message.

LDS Sparkledammerung IS HERE!

The Secrets of the Sparkle a.k.a. TWILIGHT: STONIFIED (Image heavy)

ETA Due To Heavy Traffic This was written to amuse my buds and me. I am not claiming to be the Mormon Vampire Authority, even though let's face it: I am the leading Mormon Vampire Authority. (Nutshell: laugh, or turn back now. This was meant for joking and is filled with dirty words they can't use on TV.)

Here one is treated to a long, sometimes funny rendering of the Twilight movie using screen grabs and a running commentary that highlights all the ties to the Mormon faith. I learn that “sparkle” is Mormon thing that I’ve never heard of and that our humorous story teller has some sharp points to make.

… Every time SMeyers would write about Edward, I would just boggle. She was drawing from everything we Mormons were taught about Good Ol' Joe - he was handsome, shockingly so, he could draw you in with just his presence, let alone when he spoke, down to his freaking nose and hair color. HI THERE CREEPY AUTHOR WANTING TO BONE YOUR PROPHET. (I have no problem with bible slash, etc. Just... I don't think she knows she's doing it.)

Referring of course to Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith. Ouch. Bible slash? From the Urban Dictionary:

slash fanfiction

fanfiction depicting a sexual and/or romantic relationship or situation between two characters of the same gender.

may involve real people or imaginary (sometimes copyrighted) characters.

often referred to as slash

eg. harry/draco, hermione/ginny femmeslash, orlando/viggo

Mixing it up with God. Which serves as a reminder -- girls, you are powerless in this equation. Another depressing aspect of Twilight. According to Brown:

At the crux of sexism within the vampire novel is the paradigm of male vamp/female human, a framework which an overwhelming majority of vampire novels are based around. The consequence of this is to represent the male as virtually unassailable in terms of power, and generally intellectually superior due to the centuries of wisdom he has accumulated.

Do we really want to perpetuate this message to our girls? That woman are weak, needing guidance and protection from the more powerful man is an ideal. That we are only “good” in our virginal, untouched state. That our sexuality is dangerous, evil and to be resisted, subjugated to our purity and wholesome self-sacrifice.

I see Twilight as a missed opportunity. Where found the Harry Potter series to be wonderfully subversive in how it promotes difference, I feel oppressed by how Twilight promotes this tired old sexist vision of female sexuality.

But while Twilight is a bummer, other vampire stories offer different messages. And Brown acknowledges it:

All of this is not to say that the vampire novel is inherently anti-feminist. The power dynamic of male vamp/female human is in fact uniquely set up for the possibilities of subversion and exploration of the nature of power in any male/female relationship. It is a preconfigured metaphor for the dominance of men within society and the varied responses to this power imbalance available open to women.

Enter the Anne Rice vampire novels. The majority of her sexy vampire action is man on man.  And a climax where the ancient vampire matriarch attempts to exterminate all the men on the planet? This is not a standard sexist plot line. I started reading Anne Rice when I moved to San Francisco in the late ‘80s – when the gay community had peaked in terms of it’s celebration and was moving into the dark AIDs era. Thus, I was fascinated to read Susie Bright’s comment:

The real turn in "vampire porn" happened in the course of the AIDS crisis. Every great public terror and prejudice expresses itself in an erotic catharsis, and "blood-sharing" was no different. In the earliest days of the HIV pandemic, when no one knew where to turn, vampire stories, and all intimate tales of blood-sharing, filled my slush pile to the brim.

The Anne Rice novels appealed to me because these were different vampires – vampires that enjoyed their lives and our human world. Vampires that offered new perspectives on history. Vampires that questioned their existence – their own status as good or evil. Rice offers a sharp contrast to the clarity about good and evil presented in Twilight. Existential vampires. And sexy, don’t forget sexy.

I haven’t read Anne Rice in awhile. Her continuation of the series became more and more focused on the existential and less and less on the sexual. My interest waned. I held on for awhile because she is good at making history come alive in her stories.

In the last few years, my dalliance with vampires has shifted to Charlene Harris’ Southern Vampire Series and the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series.

Charlene Harris’ series is the inspiration for the HBO series True Blood. HBO takes many liberties with it – including, in my opinion—the overall tone and texture. The opening montage is dark and gross with imagery of death and religion and nature and fervor. I always thought the stories had a bit of a sunny, optimistic cast to them – probably reflecting the upbeat disposition of the main character – Sookie Stackhouse. She’s a psychic, gets involved with vampires, loses her virginity to one, works for their governing bodies and is the “hot” asset.

Sookie might not have the physical strength of her vampire friends, but she has her own “power” that they all must respect (because they need it, to some degree). She is swept off her feet by a vamp, falling into Brown’s traditional sexist vampire pattern, but she is intentional with her decision to have sex with the vampire and ultimately ditches him and moves on.

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake is the anti-Belle. I didn’t watch Buffy much, but I’d imagine that the Anita Blake books are an adult, X-rated version. Sex, lots and lots of it, figures prominently. Sadly, too much sex, not enough action – because Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and paranormal detective – she can raise zombies! (Zombies and vampires? There are also werewolves and a variety of different animal/human transformation types. And zombies.) Anita kicks ass – literally. She is forever discussing how well armed she is (knives and guns, of course) and struggles with the fact that she is a cold-blooded killer of super-natural bad guys. Interestingly, she too starts off as a virgin and a vampire-bigot, considers herself religious. In fact her faith is part of the strength she brings to killing the bad guys.

As with the Sookie Stackhouse novels, the Anita Blake series presents a world where vampires are “out” and part of American society. For me, this altered world makes the reading all the more fun, and offers even deeper investigation of power dynamics. In Sookie’s world vampires are alternately feared and exotic-ized. A powerful religious cult group works to exterminate them all; legislation is proposed to better control them. They are the “new” minority to be oppressed – and feared. Similarly, Anita Blake’s world is one where she, as a vampire hunter, is rightly entitled to kill a vampire – no judge or jury needed.

I’m fascinated in these stories by the parallels to our historical and current views on and  treatment of minorities – particularly sexual minorities. I’m also drawn to how these authors imagine the “mainstreaming” of vampire life into American culture. The HBO series is titled “TrueBlood” – the name of the synthetic blood created in Japan -- a discovery that prompted the vampires to “come out” of the closet as vampires – since they now had a viable alternative to drinking human blood. You see advertisements for it through out the show.

For me, all of this serves to re-define the “otherness” we as Americans feel the need to assign to each other based on sex and sexuality. As if the more variations we keep adding to the mix finally creates a rainbow of otherness, essentially challenging that there is a single dominant way of looking at sexuality. By presenting this infinite array of diversity it becomes harder and harder to accept the narrow, imbalanced gender perspectives of the past:

The female heroine is often represented as yearning for the vampire to exercise his sexual power over her, yet in the best contemporary vampire novels the writer uses this desire to explore the nature of fantasy and equality within relationships. Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse and Cassandra Palmer each become increasingly assertive in achieving the fulfilment of their sexual desires, as at times several of the books in these series become less about the bloodlust, and more about the lust to bang anything without a pulse. But crucially, the misadventures of these female heroines do not compromise their independence or their integrity. The fantasy of submission to the vamp lover is fulfilled, but this is not the end of the story; the balance of power can change, and this desire in itself need not lead to a fundamentally unequal power dynamic between men and women in the novel.

 (Brown)

This is why Twilight makes me sad. The new vampire narratives could – like Harry Potter did – offer a whole new way of thinking about adolescent sexuality. Instead it reinforces the same old same old and does nothing to move the conversation forward.

At the training I mentioned before, the one where Twilight was brought up, I wanted to continue the learning by asking – what kind of conversation can we have with our young people about Twilight? I didn’t have an answer then. Carmen D. Siering suggests:

As influential adults, mothers (and, by extension, teachers and librarians) have an obligation to start a conversation concerning the darker themes and anti-feminist rhetoric in these tales. There is plenty to work with, from the dangers of losing yourself in an obsessive relationship to the realities of owning one's sexuality.

Twilight does offer adults a great opportunity to talk about relationships and power and autonomy. Developmentally, young people need a chance to explore these topics and if we, as adults don’t do it, Bella and Edward have the last word.

Week 9 -- Saggy Pants

Young people and clothes

For this week’s assignment we reflected on the “cultural meaning” of clothing and fashion. We read another entry from the People’s History (note to self: not so great quality – content spotty, bad grammar, misspellings, etc.) and watched a mashup video made from a JC Penney’s catalog. YouTube, always so helpful, suggested another video of a Montgomery Wards catalog that I watched as well. This one has great disco music and far less editorializing that the other – it also shows a broader range of 1970s clothing. In all, I had a better experience with this video since it wasn’t entirely mocking what was actually a period of time I experienced. And of course, wore all those bad clothes.

Memory

The Monkey Wards video is from 1976, which was a very memorable year for me as I spent the summer in NY where my father was working at the Democratic Convention. I was 12 years old.  It was the Bicentennial, we were celebrating the country’s 200^th birthday. Everything was red, white and blue. The leisure suit was everywhere, as were loud plaid pants on men. Pop-ish, modern styles with a commercial edge were in.

I remember all of those clothes, all of those styles. I was raised on those high waist-ed pants and struggle with today’s much, much lower waist-ed fashions. You can see the past – conservative and traditional, fighting with the present – dancing away from the hippy as counter-cultural fashion icon, to the very imminent future of full blown disco. Three’s Company, Dallas, the Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch. It all seems so mild now, but it was a huge shift from the mainstream 60s styles -- highly fitted, conservative, conventional (except for the pop, mod stuff).

Relevance

Besides the trip down memory lane, this week’s investigation cues up an issue near and dear to my heart: how adults’ perceptions of young people are so quickly triggered by clothes and fashion. 

One of my standard training “take home points” is that adults misinterpret young people’s appearance (largely clothing and fashion choices) as disrespectful, when instead they are simply doing what they are supposed to be doing – figuring out who they are, who they want to be and what they think is good, appropriate and right for themselves. Who am I? The search for identity.

But for adults, it becomes yet another instance of moral panic. Bra straps that show! Bare mid-riffs! Piercings! Sagging pats!

A PR nightmare – coming from my background, this is my primary concern. And so the scope of my work (and that of my colleagues) is to educate others about adolescent development, encourage the viewing of young people through a developmental lens. But we consistently run into this challenge and it goes well beyond negative stereotypes, tsk-tsks and eye rolls.

Adults continue to legislate appropriate adolescent dress and behavior in ways that directly interferes with adolescent development. But we do it for the best of reasons! Right?

Back in the day

It was about long hair on boys. Certainly our history celebrates many men with long hair – from our distant past. But the hippies pushed it, the production of Hair celebrated and the gay community sustains it. These days, were more likely to see young men with extremely short hair or no hair. Fear of long hair on boys isn’t dead though – as evidenced in this news story from just last year about a young man – great student – who is threatened with suspension and termination of after school activities – if he doesn’t cut his hair. The rationale: it’s in the dress code. And the rationale for the dress code? Long hair inhibits learning? Disruption of social norms? Interference with the goal of conformity? I was touched to read a single comment about this article, and the lone perspective of (usually the chief villain) a parent:

Posted by simpleman | 10 months ago

i have the same issue with my 10 year old son. the wills point school has continued to punish him with detentions and ridicule for having hair so long as 2inches in the back. as his father i am against long hair (i shave mine), however he wants his to be what i call scruffy just like the teen role models the we see on tv and in music bands. he is a staight "A" student and one awsome kid. when the school told hime they would punish him for not looking like what THEY wanted him to look like i gave him the choice to either stand up for what he believed in or do what they wanted him to. he decided to stand up for himself with my total support. treating someone different because of the way they look is discrimination. research martin luther king and you'll figure it out. none us us have any right to tell anyone you have to look a certain way and punish them if they don't. that's criminal.

this wills point school has even went so far as to have my son write about this as part of his punishment and complied to the point when they told him he had to write a written apology for looking the way he does and he DID NOT comply to that order. he said"im not saying im sorry for my hair".

who does anyone in the world think they are to say YOU CAN'T LOOK LIKE THAT?

i am now looking for a way to fight for my sons right to freedom. i thought my father, uncles and grandfather had already fought this fight for me.

Saggy Pants

From the inordinate amount of attention it warrants, one would think that the real threat to student achievement is the wearing of saggy pants by young men. This is a fashion choice largely made by young African-american men (but far from exclusively) which means that race enters the discussion in a big way. Adding to already suspect attitudes toward young people are the always present notes of racism – making this a volatile debate.

This topic is in the news a lot, and recently some coworkers were discussing the ways our local schools are coping (which I gathered wasn’t very well). My cursory investigation for this assignment pointed me towards Florida, where lawmakers are, once again, trying to legislate solutions to adolescent development.

Saggy Pants and School Suspension

The bill currently circulating in the Florida State Senate would make the wearing of baggy pants, worn at a level that reveals underwear, forbidden in public schools or while students are on any part of school property, this would include buildings and playgrounds.

Elsewhere, laws are considered that go beyond the school yard – making it illegal to wear baggy pants anywhere!

American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, News Release

February 8, 2005

Legislation Dictating Clothing Style Goes Too Far

Bill banning baggy pants interferes with personal liberties, targets hip-hop culture

The ACLU of Virginia is asking state senators to vote down a bill banning pants worn too low. The bill, introduced by Delegate Algie Howell imposes a $50.00 fine on anyone who “intentionally wears and displays his below-waist undergarments, intended to cover a person's intimate parts, in a lewd or indecent manner.” It passed the House of Delegates earlier this week by a vote of 60-34.

Sure, this is an older article, but Google can point to lots of these stories all the way to today. Interestingly, both the ACLU and the NAACP have entered this fight. Common cause, as it were.

Siplin's Low-Riding Pants Bill Gets Beat-Up

posted by John Kennedy on Mar 21, 2008 4:35:19 PM

The Florida NAACP and allied organizations Friday opposed Orlando Sen. Gary Siplin's bill to ban schoolkids from wearing their pants too low, saying it could lead to more legal trouble for black male students.

"In essence, it will criminalize the wearing of saggy pants and thereby provide a new avenue of interaction between young people and the criminal justice system," Nweze said.

Siplin's bill (SB302) was approved 28-11 last week by the Florida Senate. Although it calls for no criminal sanctions, it would prohibit students from wearing pants low so that they expose undergarments that, in turn, expose sexual organs -- covered or uncovered.

Violators would receive a warning for a first offense and suspensions from school for each subsequent infraction, under the legislation…

But the NAACP, ACLU and Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C., social advocacy organization, said the proposal is directed primarily and black males and could lead to arrests. Jim Freeman, an attorney with the Advancement Project…called the legislation "a huge overreach," and is part of a growing number of harsh disciplinary penalties aimed at youngsters for generally minor offenses.

"The penalties for normal adolescent behavior have been ratcheted up," Freeman said.

Before reading this article, I had not even considered the “profiling” possibilities created by laws like this. But I’ve run into the equivalent. One of the communities my organization worked with passed law that made it a crime for more than four teenagers to gather together in a public place – to address gang activity, you know. In actuality the youth serving and social justice folks recognized that it was simply a way for police to target largely adolescent Latino boys. As a result, the community made it illegal for kids to play at a playground or play a game of soccer. "Penalties for normal adolescent behavior" indeed.

There are reasons to consider laws differently for youth and adults. They do need greater protections in many cases. But the double standards in this area are shocking. Again, a point my coworkers are fond of making. When asked: why are girls so violent? They would answer:  Why are adults so violent? Why are we at war? Why do we have a death penalty? Isn’t is a sociological fact that we apply different standards to “others” than we do for ourselves? 

A commenter from the NAACP article make the case humorously:

If you can get arrested for sagging pants, does that mean that tourists can get arrested for going around in their skimpy shorts, no shirts, etc? Can people get arrested for being on the beaches in skimpy bathing bikinis?? Where would this stop?

Posted by: winsurTsa | September 29, 2008 at 11:27 PM

Even President Obama (as candidate Obama) had (more reasoned thoughts) on the issue:

Nov 3 2008 1:45 PM EST

Barack Obama Weighs In On Sagging-Pants Ordinances: 'Brothers Should Pull Up Their Pants'

By Chris Harris, with reporting by Sway Calloway

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama may not necessarily support lifestyle legislation — including state bans on low-slung, sagging trousers — but that doesn't mean he thinks dudes should be showing off their skivvies.

What a tight-rope he must walk! But I appreciate the reporter’s (MTV!) phrase “lifestyle legislation” – I wonder what else belongs in that category. Interestingly, this quote was from a interview MTV conducted with then candidate Obama as part of their own youth action/advocacy campaign: Think MTV

But interestingly, even Mr. Obama perceives the baggy pants style as disrespectful:

There are some issues that we face that you don't have to pass a law [against], but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people. And, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear — I'm one of them.

Debate it

Frankly, I don’t want to see people’s underpants either. I’m even more horrified by seeing a young girl’s thong peeking out of her low-rise jeans.

But I don’t mind the pink bra strap sitting next to the tank top strap sitting next to another tank top strap. And those male models with the pants sitting just a little too low with just a hint of underwear? Who am I to object?

Yes, I consider it a distraction at times. And I’ve had to instruct young people on what was and wasn’t appropriate “professional” attire, what was expected of them in a given situation, etc. And maybe it was because of my own struggles with “conformity” I was always careful to frame my comments in terms of other people’s perceptions. That while how they dressed was their choice, they frequently had no control of how other people would perceive them based on those choices. So – being aware of those perceptions and being intentional with how one dealt with them – was a key ingredient for success (and survival).

Ultimately, this is the debate I wish we were having – how best to support young people’s development. There are challenging things they’ll be exploring which require us to restrain our own moralistic judgment – instead using a developmental standard to guide our actions. It’s not that I think young people should be encouraged to dress in ways that could ultimately harm or limit their success. I think that as adults, we need to appreciate that it is their right to do it – to defy our standards with their own -- and their responsibility to work out – successfully – a place for themselves in the world. In the process of finding that place they’ll learn and experience – with our help and because of our not always kind judgment -- what it takes to fit and succeed in the world: the standards, dress codes and expected behaviors of their community. At the same time, their ideas, perceptions, fashion choices, will slowly re-shape and evolve the community they join.

What world are we offering them? What does the “world” or “community” look like to them? Do they see possibility? Potential? Hope? Every time we think to judge their early identity-related decisions (like how to dress) I want us to see it as a reflection of the options we make available to them. We own that part of the puzzle, so what are we doing to change it?

Week 8, Barbie™ Beauty

This week’s assignment focuses on toys and their cultural meaning.

We were provided with a brief history of toys – at the people’s history web site. Great site/resource and now a new bookmark in my brower’s “tools” folder.

Quite the trip down memory lane! Frightened by the fact that many of the toys I remember enjoying as a kid came from the 30s, 40s and 50s was a bit of a shock. Sure, I’d believe Monopoly was that old, but Clue? The history dates it to the 40s!

And that I was born the year GI Joe was introduced! Confession: I did rent the terrible GI Joe movie. Sad. Chalk one up to the power of branding and efficacy of cross merchandising. The readings, and most of the criticism focuses on how marketers use the powerful relationship between kids and toys to sell stuff. But how about using that same relationship to target the “grown up” kids like myself. Nostalgia marketing. I’m a sucker for it. Note to self: look into the connection between GI Joe and the Vietnam war.

Interesting coincidence that the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street has been all over the media the last few weeks. This cultural icon came up in another class once, where I read about just how they considered and tested every single thing they did. Made big contributions to communications research, etc. Did it ever bridge into mainstream education, I wonder? One of the points the creators discussed was that they never allowed any of their characters to be used in merchandising commercial products to kids. But isn’t Big Bird in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade? Sure, he’s not selling Big Macs, but …

The other provocative reading for this week was 10 of “the most racist toys ever made.” Just when you think you’ve seen the worst, you come across something like the examples shown here. The comments were possibly more horrifying. What happened to our “post-racial” society? The list reminded me of the Halloween costume conversations on the feminist blog about how offensive it is to dress up like people of a different race. Not to mention the high level of sexualization in costumes for young girls.

A week later there is Jon Stewart doing a segment on “black face” where his “Senior Black Correspondent” reports that there is absolutely no circumstance where black face is appropriate (unless you “have a black face”), until confronted with images from America’s Next Top Model where Tyra’s model contestants were challenged to represent bi-racial women.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Is Blackface Ever OK?
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From black face to blue eyes

It makes a good subhead, but it is also where the question of the week leads me.

I liked dolls. Lots of girls do. I owned several Barbie™ Dolls, Skipper and Ken. My brother’s GI Joe was frequently appropriated for double dating. I coveted the Barbie townhouse (but alternately was appalled when we discovered one, still in active use, in the closet of a seventh grade girl friend).

In college, one of the few non-“old dead white guy” course in the English Literature major was “Women in Literature” and our professor assigned Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (published 1970, I read it in ’83?). Blew my mind. It so richly, horribly and beautifully depicts the insidious ways racism is perpetuated by our culture, celebrated in our icons and artifacts. In the book, the protagonist Pecola Breedlove wants more than anything to have blue eyes. They will make her beautiful because only the blue eyes of white girls are beautiful – that’s what the world tells her and that’s what she believes. And she’ll never have blue eyes, she’ll never be beautiful and she’ll always despise herself. I remember thinking how bizarre it was that these girls only had white dolls to play with, white movie stars to admire or white girls as role models of beauty.

But it’s only a toy

Pecola’s experience is not unique. In fact, the link to critical real-world, life-changing events is a direct one.

Brown vs. the Board of Education is one of the most significant pieces of legislation intended to address the problem of racism – or perhaps, intended to address our country’s legacy of slavery, or perhaps intended to address the human instinct to create the “other.” It failed in the state, but the Supreme Court agreed that “separate but equal” wasn’t really possible, in the context of our constitutionally dictated “right to equal protection under the law.”

Key to their case was research (go academics!) by education psychologists conducted with – you guessed it – dolls. They presented African American children with a white baby doll and a black baby doll, asking which they liked better, which was “good,” “bad,” and most like them. Suffice to say, the kids reflected popular cultural attitudes – preferring the white babies, describing black babies as bad -- and the court believed that segregation was contributing to this harmful and limiting self perception. These African American children were not receiving equal treatment. Thus de-segregation.

A few years ago, I ran into a video by 17-year-old film student Kiri Davis. Through her after school video program, she produced a short documentary film that explored African-American attitudes toward their skin color. She also reproduced the “doll test” from 1954.

Her results were consistent. And her documentary captures on film the painful conflict etched on the eyes of these children who believe that babies who like them are “bad.” 

The documentary is personal, her bios and news articles described her own struggles with her “color,” dominant attitudes about beauty, her parents’ struggles to find positive representations of girls of color – where are the black princesses? The adolescent girls she interviews talk about “good hair” that naturally looks like white hair, the importance and advantage of being “light skinned.”

Barbie™, 2009

I’d like to blame Barbie™, but for me, she’s more of a symptom than a cause. I’m confident that the toy makers at Mattel™ are aware that Barbie™ has had a PR problem and a visit to their web site confirmed that they are making some effort to broaden their presentation of beauty and femininity; their definition of the role of girls and women. That’s the nice way to say it. It’s probably equally important that they have actual markets for non-blonde, more than a princess Barbie™.

I must respect the Barbie™ brand though. I go to the site and wait for their fancy graphics to load and instead of a boring “loading” bar, I get a tube of Barbie Pink lipstick slowly reveal to track my download. Never mind all the sexual connotations, I’m a perverted adult. It was cute! And gross. Gotta have some lipstick to be a girl, you know.

I can’t help but notice that Barbie™ is a Musketeer. Yes, it appears that she always aspired to be one, then ran into three other gals (one of whom appears to be a girl of color, although I find no specific labeling as such) who share her dream. Actual copy from the video:

Can this dare to dream team use their girl power to save the prince?

OK, they still look like princesses. They still have 14” waists. I’m sure there’s much tittering and giggling. But this is a pretty substantial fairy tale role reversal!

Another line that made me laugh was, “Don’t mess with the dress!” – which later I realize is actually promoting a feature – the hem of her long dress is detachable and converts into a cape. “Includes a matching sword accessory.” I’m only a little deflated that Barbie’s bold retreat from gender stereotypes ends up featuring violence.

I also check out the “I can be” Barbie™ line. Girls can chose to be a Pre School Teacher, New Born Baby Doctor Babysitter, SeaWorld ® Trainer (cross merchandising!), Dentist, Pet Vet, Bride, Gymnastics coach, Kid Doctor, Race car driver, Rockstar, Ballerina. I don’t think these examples come close to balancing out the 23 “fashion doll products”  or 40 “Disney Princess doll products.”

In this line, the New Born Baby Doctor (love how they keep the occupation titles age-appropriate) is offered as a White and an African American doll. A few other lines included African American and White doll options. I found no “Latina” or “Asian” dolls.

There is an entire section (with it’s own navigational call-out) of African American Barbie Dolls – the “So In Style™” line. Of these some are a character and her little sister (and there is a white equivalent). Three of the “SIS” dolls are featured as being about hair styling – and apparently have a special type of “style-able” hair. Of course, none of them have natural African American hair. None of them are particularly dark, but there are a few different skin tones. 

I didn’t have to work too hard to find these examples. That said the Barbie web site’s home page is pure pink, blonde and white. There is no escaping what image “Barbie” conjures up. It will never change entirely, although it may evolve. Barbie beauty is forever blond, blue-eyed and light skinned.

Mattress Ticking

I was raised by caring, generous, enlightened and creative parents. They made me all sorts of amazing toys, including a hand-made “doll house” where the dolls were tiny animal couples, all dressed up. It had a very impressive ballroom with a wall of mirrors and a grand piano. And I wanted a Barbie townhouse?

My mother also made hand sewn dolls and stuffed animals. One still sits in my bedroom – ok, the closet – I am 45 years old and must show some restraint. 

This doll came with a number of dresses, again, all hand sewn. I remember loving changing her dresses. I still have two of them.

The unusual thing about this doll was that her main fabric is mattress-ticking – a rugged, light canvas texture, eggshell-ish color with denim blue stripes running through it.

I can remember as a kid being kinda conflicted about her “skin.” It didn’t look like me, or like anyone. Was she “pretty?”

Like most girls, I struggled with comparing myself to the Barbie™. But as I explored this topic, I can't help but wonder if  my love of her – and her unusual looks – diminished the impact of Barbie™ defined-beauty? Or more importantly, the role my parents played -- making this doll, modeling a different beauty standard, encouraging me in sports, learning, expressing my opinions.

Sadly, girls like Pecola -- and so many others -- may never have those powerfully counter-balancing influences and supports. So Barbie™ wins, again.