I
would not change the ways sex is presented so much as
expand them. For instance, ask the girls' magazines to photograph
some middle-sized and heavy models, instead of only skinny ones;
get rid of abstinence-only "sex education" and address the issues
of kids' real lives, including their sexuality and their
relationships.
But salient as representation is -- and easy as it is to blame
for every problem -- it's not what endangers kids most in this
country, or even what endangers them sexually. What harms children
is not sex per se, but the lousy circumstances under which they
may have sex. And the kids most vulnerable to sexual troubles are
also most likely to be suffering the other miseries of modern
life.
Teen motherhood does not cause poverty; many studies have
shown that it's the other way around. Poverty, poor education, and a
perception of an optionless future are the biggest predictors of
teen pregnancy and motherhood. Children in families with annual
incomes of less than $15,000 are eighteen times more likely to be
sexually abused than those with incomes over $30,000; they are twenty
times more likely to be killed by their parents than the children
of the middle class. If we want to prevent sexual horribles, the best
prophylactic might be decent jobs for kids' parents.
Class and race intersect in all ways, so it is not
surprising that of the 20,000 new HIV infections a year among
people under twenty-five (largely a result of negligent safe-sex education
for the first ten years of the epidemic), an astonishing 63% are
black. And let's not forget sexism and the homophobia that
keeps gay kids in the closet, where sex is by definition furtive, which
usually means unsafe too. While HIV infection rates have fallen
dramatically among adult men who have sex with men, it is estimated that 20% to 30%
of gay youth will be infected by their thirtieth birthday.
The lopsided economic expansion, which has lifted some ships
and sunk many others, along with two decades of government
decimation of tax-funded communal supports for parents and
children (from welfare to housing to the public schools), makes
the world a dangerous place indeed for American children at the
turn of the second millennium. But the solution is not to
withdraw back into the privacy of family life -- for kids don't
only live in their families. Adults' child-protective
responsibility lies not only in good parenting, but in supporting
public institutions, such as affordable daycare and health care,
widespread comprehensive sex education, and access for young
people to contraception, condoms and safe abortions. As well, we
need to promote values of egalitarianism, tolerance, negotiation
and, yes, pleasure. Then kids can say yes to sex, and be safe too.
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Question 1
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Naomi Wolf
Question 2
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Naomi Wolf
Question 3
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Sally Mann
Question 4
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
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