maturity

After one month of handling constant urgent-but-not-important (usually) crises, such as "Can I have quarters?" "The printer's jammed." "Why do we have to do zumba?" "I've got bug bites," I am extraordinarily glad to have my life back. While I worked with fabulous people and had a lot of fun, being responsible for 100 kids is simply exhausting. It beat my body like the Congo (that one's for you, J). In short, I finally have the time, energy and privacy to write comfortably about sex and feminism again (yay)!

There are huge differences between high school girls and college age women (I'm talkin' fucking huge). First that I noticed was the fact that the interns and RDs simply looked like women. Even the girls who were more developed still had a childlike lack of hips. I once heard a 23-year-old stripper bemoan her age and that she no longer had her 18-year-old body, and with my voluptuous hips, I'm beginning to understand her meaning. Their delicate bodies made me even more angry at the men who catcalled or checked them out downtown. It was hard to fight the urge to run after their cars, screaming that they were children and to back the fuck off (but I refrained, as that would not be actin' right, and would set a pretty shitty example).

But even more potent of a difference was their complete moral certainty about sexual things. An intern with a class about women's health reported to me (and I heard myself through conversations with a handful of girls who brought this up on their own) that, according to some of the girls, when a woman wears revealing clothing, she is not only asking for attention but also for sex and is responsible for whatever happens to her.

The Sheriff did not like hearing this, but I tried not to push my very liberal ideas on the girls. I let them say what they thought, and added only that "clothing is NOT consent!" But I don't know that they understood my point. I know black and white thoughts about morality and sex, which are tragically tied together in our moral milieu, are easier to deal with at that age than developing a nuanced view of sex and sexuality. It's so much easier and it's encouraged by the media, parents, friends, everything to put all women somewhere on the virgin-whore dichotomy. There's no allowance for ambiguity, or God forbid, a morality for women that isn't based on sex and false ideas of purity (I say false ideas because there is no medical definition for virginity. None. This state of purity and innocence does not exist. Take that, virgin-whore complex!).

And again, I can hardly blame these girls for their immature views on sex. Consider this recent case, in which a judge determined that a woman gave consent for Girls Gone Wild to sexually assault her simply because she was dancing in a bar. Not dancing naked or for money (though that does NOT entitle someone with the right to touch you anyway!). Just dancing. Good to know my body is public property, and if I'm enough of a whore to go out and dance in a bar, clearly I'm askin' for it.

...

It makes me so deeply sad and intensely angry and fearful that these are the messages these girls are being bombarded with. These are smart, gifted girls. And even they're still susceptible to these backward ideas about our bodies and our right to inhabit them fully and simply exist unmolested. But my hope is that as they grow older and begin to encounter sex and situations that fall into the grey area of the black and white virgin-whore dichotomy, they'll develop an ideal of morality for themselves and other women that has nothing to do with their sexual activity, but everything to do with their character. Ya know, like the same criteria men are judged on?

Much love,
The Sheriff