Dillards 28: A Walk Down Memory Lane

[bal maiden]

7 hours ago, Four is Enough said:

With all due respect, bal maiden, do you have a daughter? I do. Mine was in a "controlled" sexual relationship when she was not yet 15, with a boy just a bit older, who really did a number on her head. She and I had many long talks about sex afterwards, its meaning and place in relationships, casual and otherwise. We also talked about how sex changes relationships. We are DEFINITELY not "celebrating" her sexuality until she is able to support herself and whatever consequences of her sexual behavior  happen to occur. There is no way I will be inviting anyone over to explore my daughter OR my sons. Our stance, whether or not you agree to it,is that Sex is For Committed Relationships, and Does Not Belong In Our Basement.

While others are more relaxed about it, I do not apologize for this stand. My daughter was sexually active at a young age, and it hurt her, and I wouldn't have actually put her in a convent to protect her from that, but I would have tried to protect her from that, rather than being the mother of the male of the pair, who allowed them access to his bedroom so that she "knew where he was and what he was doing."

 

I don't think of protecting her as "patriarchal", but as "parental." And you can see that by protecting her, I was not prohibiting her from having sex, but trying to inform her and give her information to make a really solid choice.

With all due respect (usually code for none  ), yes, I do. I am sorry for your daughter's bad experience. That said, my comment was coming from the POV of a sociologist rather than a parent in this instance, and I do totally get the instinct to want to protect your kids from any kind of harm, particularly when we live in a society in which females are so much more vulnerable to this kind of mistreatment than males - due to patriarchy, rape culture, whatever you want to call it. The thought of anyone mistreating my daughter, sexually or otherwise, makes me feel so sick to my stomach that it's hard to bear, so I can see why you find my abstractions in my post hard to swallow after the situation your daughter was in. 

 

editing to clarify my point (was posting pre-caffeine): I totally get protecting your kids, and I also totally get that in the US (even normal, non-predatory) sex is often seen as something you want to protect your teens *from*, which is clearly your approach as stated above. This is often different in other cultures, fwiw. Anyway, it's the comments and the way they're phrased that skeeves me out, more than anything. You don't often hear parents threatening to put their sons in a cloister, for example, in the same way we joke about putting our daughters in a nunnery. 

[choralcrusader8613]

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