Protecting Girlhood

[Diggers]

onpoint.wbur.org/2012/01/18/caitlin-flanagan

I am listening to this interview right now, and Caitlin Flanagan, author of Girl Land, is just infuriating me. I admit that I have not read her book, but she seems to be promoting a need to return to an age of over-protection of girls. Apparently, learning how to use a condom in sex ed is causing girls in middle school girls to have sex left, right, and center. I want to reach into the radio and punch her in the nose.

How about raising girls to be confident, responsible citizens who don't conflate self-worth with sexuality? How setting a good example and exposing girls to women who are successful and see men as equals?

This woman is so condescending and infuriating in this interview that I am having trouble making coherent sentences.

Has anybody read this book?

[QAF_Rocks]

I have not, but there's a scathing review here:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/13/girl_uninterrupted

It's weird that there are all these books about protecting girls from their own sexuality. I have never seen a mainstream book about teenage boys that treats them the same way. When boys become sexually active, it doesn't seem to be considered a problem.

[Diggers]

Seriously. Also, why do these people never talk about raising boys to respect girls so that this whole "protecting them for their own good" thing would be unnecessary?

[mnb357]

My parents taught my brothers, my sister and me something very important: No is no, and is not open for debate. And that, folks, is how my parents went about protecting girlhood...my sister's and mine, and that of the girls my brothers dated. Woe betide he (or she) who tried to argue this with my parents. I do believe I'll follow in that tradition.

[finleeport]

Who's Caitlin Flanagan? another Stepford drone?

[Dinorah]

Yawn. This reminds of the Wendy Shalit book. Another "let's turn back the clock and everything will be fine" book.

And yes, a book focussed on boys would be extremely interesting. It's not like they don' have their sure of issues and couldn't do with some "protection" of their own.

ETA I also love how she dismisses the Columbia study as being made by ebul liberal Manhattan college professors, just because it happens not to match her own view of the world.

[The Archivist]

Caitlin Flanagan: known troll.

[Kaylee]

Who's Caitlin Flanagan? another Stepford drone?

Pretty much. I picked up another book of hers a few years ago on one of those $1-3 sale tables at Big Lots. It was the sort of "return to 1950s homemaking" thing that seems to be semi-popular, but with a huge sense of entitlement. She trashed working women (dispite a long career in journalism) but made a big deal about hiring a nanny, how blessed she was to live in an area with a lot of hispanic women to provide cheap domestic help, and how fucking awesome she was for eventually deciding to pay her nanny Social Security taxes and how progressive she was for encouraging her and her friends to strike and demand benefits (but hurt their "relationship" by reminding her she was an employee and refusing pay when she finally did take part in a strike). Of course, she took the obligatory pot-shots at feminists each chance she got, which the reviews on the back cover should have tipped me off to (a few well-known conservatives and anti-feminists).

Seriously, there were a lot of things that just made me think WTF and realize she was living in a totally different world than mine (being a stay-at-home mom is a lot different when you're poor and don't have the money to hire "help" or spend on leisure activities and nice things for yourself and your kid). It also seemed almost over-the-top anti-feminist, moreso than even some of the classic submissive wife type books (keep in mind I used to lead a Fascinating Womanhood book group, and this one hit a lot of nerves that FW didn't).

[debrand]

Flanagan mocks, for example, the suggestion on a Planned Parenthood site that abstinence-only education is linked to the rise of previously exotic forms of sexual activity (read: oral and anal) for teens who want to stay “virgins.†She concedes the existence of a Columbia University study that found that abstinence pledgers were far more likely to have those forms of sex, but sniffs, “I would hardly count Columbia as the go-to source for information on the hearts and minds of evangelical teenagers.†Yes, what do those wine-sniffing Upper West Side liberals know — except that the study, published in a peer-reviewed journal, actually drew on longitudinal data of 12,000 teenagers

Although I was aware that kids in abstinence only programs were more likely to not use protection, I had not heard that they were more likely to have oral or anal sex. That makes sense.

The fact that Flanagan ignored peer reviewed studies shows that her goal is not helping girls but promoting her agenda.