I’m a very literal person, which means that, for the most part, I like to spell things out, and have them spelled out to me.  Certainly that’s been my approach when discussing boys and sex with my daughter.

I haven’t danced around the fact that boys want sex.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s their nature.  Society used to put constraints on that desire, but it doesn’t anymore.  The girl is on her own when it comes to saying “no.” I’ve spelled out to my daughter the tactics that boys will use (guilt, peer pressure, words of love, etc.), and explained that, no matter, the tactic, her answer, for her own physical and emotional well-being, has to be “no.”  Or, if necessary, “NO!!!”  She has to respect herself, and any boy who won’t abide by that self-respect isn’t worthy of her.

I’ve been thinking about the unequivocal message I’ve been spelling out for my daughter because of the school dance she went to this weekend.  It turns out that “freak” dancing has become normative at these dances.  In the car on the way over, I explained very carefully to my daughter and her friend what “freak” dancing is:  a boy you don’t know, or barely know, masturbates himself against your rear.

Both girls shrieked, “Oh, my God!  That’s gross.”  They’re right, too.  The reality of freak dancing is gross.  You can dress it up with cool names like “freak,” and say that “everybody is doing it,” and “there’s nothing wrong with it,” but it’s a disgusting practice that no girl should ever countenance.

My daughter had a great time at the dance.  She danced only with her friends, the way girls do, with all of them standing in a circle.  She didn’t kiss anyone on the dance floor and neither did her friends.  In an atmosphere rife with possibilities for mischief, they had a wholesome, fun time.  (And yes, I have only her word for it, but my instinct on this one is to trust her.)  I’d like to think that, for my daughter at least, part of that wholesome fun came about because I don’t pull my punches with her, but send her out armed with concrete information.

(I do the same with my son, of course, but he’s younger and a boy, so the messages are slightly different.)

To wrap up this post, a Billy Joel song that embodies the persuasive powers of a young man looking for sex:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can also see it here.

We know two pivotal facts about Operation Fast & Furious, aka the Gunwalker scandal:

1. The U.S. Justice Department arranged for thousands of American weapons to cross our Southern border, knowingly placed them in Mexican criminal hands, and sat back and watched while hundreds of Mexicans and some Americans (including border patrol officers) were then killed with those guns.
2. Eric Holder, when asked about Operation Fast & Furious, lied under oath about what he knew and when he knew it.

What we also know is that the Obama White House has put pressure on the MSM to smother the story, and that the media has complied.  Even CBS, which was diligently covering the story thanks to the intrepid Sharyl Attkisson, seems to be clamping down on her to keep the White House happy.  In a normal world, these facts — lies, dishonesty, murder, cover-ups, media manipulation, etc. — would have the media baying for presidential blood, instead of falling into line with the cover-up.  But we don’t live in a normal world.

My first thought upon reading about media passivity in the face of a hot story was, “Well, of course.  Obama’s their guy.  They’re not going to cover it.”  My second thought was, “But they covered the Clinton scandal.”  Which led to my third thought, which was the difference between the two scandals:  SEX.

The MSM cannot resist sex.  Try as it might, the moment there’s a breath of sex spicing up what would otherwise be a dry scandal (especially a dry scandal involving the political party they love), they’re all over it.

The obvious answer is to infuse sex into the Operation Fast and Furious reporting.  You can see that I’ve made a start with the title of this blog post.  Just imagine if Bob Owens, who is offering the absolute best coverage of the Gunwalker (or Operation Fast and Furious) scandal, borrowed a page from the MSM, and lied outright to insert sex into the scandal.  With apologies to Bob, who is the soul of honor, truly, I’ve interlineated my own comments into just the first few paragraphs of one of his substantive reports on what should be a lead story in every media outlet in America:

For months, congressional investigators have battled a recalcitrant White House and Department of Justice over [sex allegations connected to] Operation Fast and Furious [Sex], a [sexual] conspiracy that had the apparent goal of sending thousands of guns [and prostitutes] from American gun stores [and brothels] into Mexico. Recovery of the guns [and prostitutes] could be used as evidence to support the Obama administration’s 90-percent lie — and perhaps even serve a more nefarious goal.

That deception [about the guns and prostitutes] seems to be collapsing, as the long suspected proof of other gunwalking [and sexual malfeasance] operations was confirmed by Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News:

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF’s Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called “Wide Receiver.” Sources claim ATF allowed guns [and hookers] to “walk” in that operation, much like Fast and Furious [Sex].

“Wide Receiver” joins Operation Fast and Furious [Sex] as the second named gunwalking [and prostitution] operation based in Arizona, but they do not appear to be the only gunwalking [and prostitution] operations that existed.

The White House has so far refused to answer inquires from Senator John Cornyn about two other suspected gunwalking [and prostitution] operations based out of the Houston and Dallas field operations areas. Additional gunwalking operations supplied drug gangs [and brothels] in Honduras from Florida, and supplied Chicago-area gangs [and brothels] from a gunwalking operation in Indiana.

Tawdry and dishonest?  Absolutely.  But I can guarantee you that the media and ordinary Americans would sit up and take notice if Fast and Furious wasn’t just about lying, cheating, and murder — at American Justice Department hands yet — but was, instead, about good old S-E-X.

L’affaire DSK is all the rage in France.

On my recent visit to France, you might say I was somewhat surprised that nobody asked me about the U.S. economy, the Euro’s impending collapse or Obama. Rather, the first question out of their mouths was “what do Americans think about the DSK affair?”. They were, of course, referring to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the recently deposed head of the International Monetary Fund and French President wannabee. DSK had been arrested in New York in somewhat dubious circumstances involving alleged transgressions with a chamber maid (think “Paula Jones”).

The reason that the DSK affair was on peoples’ minds, I think, is because it jolted the French to an awareness that there was something very wrong in their society’s treatment of women in the workplace and elsewhere. It’s about time.

During my visit, I spoke with a woman that had enjoyed a fabulous career in finance and who, as a university student, had been taught by DSK. “He was truly brilliant,” she said, “But…”. Another woman, a retired Air France flight attendent, described how she and her colleagues would beg and bribe their cabin mates in order to be reassigned out of First Class whenever certain French politicians were traveling. But then, on the flip side, I heard a few men talk about how such things should be expected of powerful men, you know, “droit du seigneur” and all. These men were the exceptions, not the rule.

But then, I listened to one man I know, an elderly, world-renown attorney who easily straddles both sides of the Atlantic, tell me how his law firm hires only women attorneys today. “We interview both men and women, but inevitably the women prove to be the better attorneys”. He got it. He was profoundly embarrassed and angry about the DSK affair. In his view, the grandstanding New York City prosecutor did a complete hack job on the case and DSK deserved to be completely discredited and set-up for a civil suit “even if his guilt can’t be proven in court” (for the record, I completely disagree with this premise on the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”).

I can’t say anything about DSK’s innocence or guilt. What I do know is that France is having a major conversation with itself on the proper treatment of women and that this is a good thing. The conversation is moving them in the right direction.

I bring this up this narrative up with regard to the reports of misogyny emanating from our White House. I don’t know if they are true or not, but I suspect this isn’t the last we’ve heard of them. Our MSM press will cover it up, no doubt, just as they did with JFK and LBJ, but eventually the truth will out. We lost a lot of ground during the Clinton Administration (Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Juanita Broderick, etc.) and I would hate to think that workplace misogyny will again become the new norm.

Perhaps we, too, need a national conversation.

As I suspected, things were not as they seemed — or, more importantly, as the women claimed.  Here’s the follow-up for you, if you’re interested.

It turns out that one of San Francisco’s premier sexual harassment attorneys enjoys a little S&M fun on the side.  So much so that he likes to run Craig’s List ads seeking women who like it rough:

His lawyer, Stuart Hanlon, said the women had all come to Hoffman’s Van Ness Avenue apartment to engage in what his ads in Craigslist’s “Men Seeking Women” section billed as dominant-submissive sex.

“His ad clearly said he was seeking dominant sex with submissive women,” Hanlon said. “It talked about getting controlled, getting hit and getting their hair pulled.”

Fine.  Each to his own taste, as long as it involves consenting adults.  The problem for attorney Robert Michael Hoffman is that some of the women who responded to the ads seeking abusive sex and who, in fact, participated in the abusive sex, are now crying rape:

A San Francisco employment lawyer who specializes in sexual harassment cases has been charged with rape and other crimes for allegedly attacking three women who came to his apartment in response to his Craigslist ad for rough sex.

[snip]

In at least two cases, the women had sex with Hoffman voluntarily before the incidents in which they accused him of sexual assault, Hanlon said.

The lawyer is now being held in jail, with bail having been set at $3 million.

Perhaps I’m simply too naive to understand the nuances of a situation in which women show up at a stranger’s apartment in response to an advertisement promising them violent sex, but it seems to me that they run the risk of having sex with a man who sees their protests as part of the agreed-upon game.  In other words, is Hoffman guilty of rape if the women, by showing up in response to his ad, tacitly or explicitly agreed to violent, abusive sex.  If they’re screaming “No,” how in the world was he supposed to understand that they meant it, when they’d already agreed that he was going to hurt them and enjoy their suffering.  And presumably, they in turn, would get pleasure out of that pain.

It all reminds me of a terrible old joke:

The sadist and the masochist get together.  The masochist grovels on the floor:  “I want to suffer.  Make me miserable.  Hit me!  Hit me!  Hit me!”

The sadist sneers down at him:  “No.”

Too tired to expand on the above post caption, but if you read Zombie’s essay, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

By the way, this is what wholesome used to look like in America:

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is a pregnancy epidemic right now at the high school where I used to run a girls’ group. All the time I am shocked and saddened to see another young girl with a growing belly or another with babe in arms.

There is no stigma at all. Whatever happened to shame or pressuring boys to “do the right thing”? Gone are the rumors, the marginalization, the “slut” comments, the judgment of others, the pressure of peers that encourage waiting and responsibility. There simply is no stigma. In fact, the boys strut like proud roosters with their girl. The girl basks in the attention of her friends as they swarm around the mommy to be and kiss her belly.

And thanks to enforced ‘tolerance” and a determination not to marginalize girls who get pregnant in high-school, there is no longer any shame in it at all. That stinks because I believe shame is a very important emotion and shaper of our behavior.

The boys need to feel ashamed of themselves for using girls like objects, impregnating them, and then thinking their role as father is to drop in and buy pampers once in a while. The girls should be ashamed for casually bringing life into the world for their own selfish reasons (someone to love me, etc) instead of waiting until they could create an environment for the child that could provide stability and proper care.

I am angry with the school for not enforcing its own dress code. The low cut tops. The short shorts. The spaghetti straps. These are against the rules, but no one says anything. No one insists the girls cover up with an old hideous shirt from the lost and found, or old gym shorts. But they should.

Where are the staff to stop the fondling and making out on steps in full view of everyone on campus? Boys and girls. Girls and girls. No boundaries. No values.

So sad.

One exercise I did with my girls’ group a month or so ago was designed to have them explore their values versus their behavior. I wrote on the board these words:

Marriage
Sex
Relationship
Love
Dating
Living together
Baby

I asked the girls to make two lists. One was to put the words in the order in which they thought they should take place according to their values, and the other was to put the words in the order that they saw people actually following. They were allowed to leave words off if necessary.

Without fail, and to my surprise, all the girls wrote that the order things should take place in was this:

Dating, love, relationship, marriage, sex, living together, baby.

This is a very traditional view and I hadn’t expected it.

The list of what was actually happening was less sunny:

“Dating”, sex, relationship (all admitted this stage sometimes did not occur), baby.

I pointed out to them that there was a huge discrepancy between their values and their behavior. I asked them why they thought that was. Some looked so sad as they described the pressures to perform sexually or to end up alone. (Of course, they were alone anyway as these “relationships” did not last).

Will these kids ever be able to have a healthy relationship? A sex life with a caring and loving partner? What about their children who will grow up in a world of single moms, with children from multiple dads, all with different last names?

I can’t help but look at this and want to scream at the faculty, at the entire educational institution, for failing these children so egregiously, for failing to teach any moral standards at all. These kids are steeped in political correctness. Lord knows, they’ve had tons of diversity education, safe sex talks, say no to drugs, global warming awareness, and Identity politics. But at home and at school, no one seems to be willing to provide moral standards. No one is willing to upset the darlings by reminding them that having a baby too young is grossly irresponsible and even tragic. Shouldn’t society put some peer pressure on them to remember that a baby is a human being and not a doll? It’s not a Paris Hilton Chihuahua status symbol to dress nicely and neglect. A baby is a human that requires immense amounts of time and energy to raise.

They forget that a baby doesn’t stay a baby for long. Soon it will become a child that will require discipline, education, supervision, guidance, a future. What kind of environment is best for raising this child? Would it be a fifteen year old girl, no longer with the baby’s father, leaving the bulk of child rearing to her own resentful mother, and bitter because she can’t do fun teenage activities any more, or a stable, committed, financially secure, adult couple?

No one has told them how a baby interferes with fun and parties. Young mommies either have to stay home and care for the baby or drag it along- but it hasn’t occurred to them that their friends won’t want a baby along screaming in McDonald’s or an arcade. Babies are demanding, not logical, and if young mommies or daddies scream and ht them will only cry more. Once a teen has a baby, life will never be the same again. Finishing school and achieving life goals are do-able mainly for those girls who have parents willing to care for the baby for them.

Maybe if pregnant girls were once again shuffled off campus to a pregnant girl school it would be less glamorous and rewarding. Maybe the dads could be instantly shuffled into family court to be forced to take responsibility. Maybe along with sex ed the kids could get some values. Maybe the church should rise to the challenge and let young men know that impregnating girls is not a sign of manhood. Having sperm is no great accomplishment. Waiting to make a baby until you are mature and self-sufficient, and creating a whole and intact family, however, is a sign of manhood and maturity. We need to return societal pressure and judgment. Kids are falling apart from a lack of boundaries and moral standards. And they will take society with them.

I have yet to meet parents who say they wish their daughter became pregnant in high school (or even middle school), or that their son became an absentee father.

A final thought. In the past, and not so very long ago, girls were expected to marry as virgins. OK, many didn’t make it, but many did. Fear of pregnancy, social stigma, and wanting to be a “good” rather than a “fast” girl had a lot to do with it. But beyond that, by withholding sex and making the guys work for it- earn it, really- by getting a job and by marriage, the girls were forcing the guys to become civilized. Sex is a huge human drive and guys will work very hard to get it, and if becoming a responsible man and provider is the way to get it, by golly, guys will do it.

Now there is no incentive to be civilized. All the sex a guy can get without even buying her a soda, getting girls pregnant is a notch on a guy’s studly belt (so to speak), and he really has no parenting or financial obligations. Hey, it’s optional. And everyone is degraded. The babies suffer because they are born to a child and a shadow.

Has this generation degenerated to the human equivalent of dogs humping?

So very very sad.

I will keep you posted. I, for one, plan to react and bring in a series of speakers, former teen moms, their moms, and so on, to bring the kids a taste of reality. How will they know, if no one teaches them?

Another short, but telling, link.

Several friends sent me links to a story about a “sex ed” class at Northwestern University.  I was all set to write a post about the decline of Western standards, and the travesty that sees parents paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to send their kids to schools that do this kind of thing on the parents’ dime.  Then I saw that Ace beat me too it.  So, read Ace and then, if you like, pretend that I wrote something that good.

A lot of people look at laws that are hard to enforce and say, “let’s get rid of those laws.”  The three major recipients of this line of reasoning are drugs, prostitution and illegal immigration.  People ask, “Why criminalize these inevitable behaviors, especially since criminalizing them draws into the law enforcement net people who seem more like victims than bad actors?”

I happen to think that some behavior needs to be criminalized, because a society has to draw lines defining what its values are.  I won’t touch the drug question in this post, since I think it was well hashed out here in Don Quixote’s earlier post.  However, I would like to talk about prostitution and illegal immigration.  The first issue — whether we’re right to make prostitution illegal — seems to me to reflect two core values.  The first is respect for women.  We as a society refuse to allow women to be treated as pure sexual commodities.

Of course, in reality that principle teeters on the edge of a very slippery slope.  We allow pornography and Vogue Magazine, and sleazy TV shows and sex in movies, all of which arguably fall into the same category of female exploitation.  It’s hard to draw bright lines, because the relationship between men and women is always going to be sexualized.  More than that, women tend to do a lot of parading for each other, not in a sexual way, but in a boastful way.

As a perfect example of this last point, I urge you, if you can, to watch Chris Rock’s Good Hair, which examines the obsession so many black women have with avoiding the genetic legacy of “nappy” hair, opting instead to try to replicate straight, long, Anglo hair.  The link I included above advertises the video as “funny” and, in a way, it is.  Mostly, though, it’s tragic.  It turns out that black women who want Anglo hair have two choices:  dangerous chemicals or staggeringly expensive human hair weaves.  The irony with this Hobson’s choice is that the women’s real audience isn’t men or white people, it’s other black women.  I doubt white people notice black hair much.  (The last time I noticed was in the early 70s, when ‘fros were a political, not a fashion, statement.)  Even worse, the black men to whom Rock spoke hated the weaves:  they hated the time and money spent, and they hated the fact that weaves mean that black women will not allow anyone to touch their hair, nor will they engage in any activities that mess that precious hair.

My point about the black women’s hair is that, as is true with so many sexualized activities, those activities are actually aimed at women.  (Think:  fashion magazines.)  Prostitution, however, creates a direct dynamic between male and female that we, as a moral, Judeo-Christian culture, wish to avoid.  That we are frequently unsuccessful in that effort doesn’t mean we should give up trying.  This is a line — a moral, ethical and social line — that we draw to define who we are and what we value.  It sends a message to the people within our culture.  Those who argue that legalizing prostitution actually protects the prostitutes miss the point:  the whole institution is corrupt.  Legalizing it is a band-aid over a festering wound.  Certainly the British Muslims who turn British women into their sex slaves understand the real dynamic at work.  (Porn, by the way, isn’t much better.)

I can make much the same argument for doing away with the laws governing illegal immigration, all of which focus on the ills resulting from the immigration laws themselves:  (1) Mexicans are nice people; (2) children are the innocent victims of their parents’ illegal acts; (3) we need the labor and its wrong to turn workers into criminals; etc.  Those are all the details.  The bigger principle, however, is that a nation needs to protect its sovereignty, and that includes making decisions about who crosses its borders.  Defending borders is a use-it-or-lose it proposition.  Either you are a nation, or you are a patch of land over which people fight.  I’d prefer the former, as opposed to the anarchy of the latter.  With that overarching principle in mind, I’m willing to accept the challenges of enforcement, and the tragedy of divided families (a tragedy that wouldn’t happen, of course, if the parents hadn’t decided to gamble with their children’s lives).

I’m sorry if this is a bit of a wondering post, but my chaotic day has meant that I’ve been writing these six paragraphs over the last six hours.  I admit that I’m weaving in some random thoughts as they come along, but I’m hoping that y’all get my point — one with which you can agree or disagree.  I just feel relieved that I finally was able to sit down and wrap this thing up!