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Reader Feedback on "The Science of Sex: A Modest Proposal"

Some say there is a connection between all the hormones we pump into cows then pump that milk into our kids.
--bsm
12/05

Dont neuter the kids CHANGE THE SOCITY. (and while your all out there doin just that, I am gonna git me a dictionary and some o' dat fancy grammer)
--THC
08/17

I think this article was a joke. Right? It startedout making very valid points but the conclusion is absolutly INSANE Give them Drugs to slow down puberty and then develop more drugs to make the first drugs safer??? Sounds crazy but hey its a "Brave New World" afterall...
--LSD
08/17

Unfortunately, the basic premises contained in your conclusion sentence, those who provide justification for your proposition are dead wrong. "They simply deserve to enjoy their historical right: to be children — not just to be treated as children — until adulthood calls." 1) "deserve" : to deserve means to have some rights to a value. A value is something that somebody has to WORK for in order to gain and then, in order to maintain. The child did not WORK for his being, thus, the concept of value does not apply. The "intrinsic value" of a child exists only within his parent's consciousness. THEY are the one who worked to obtain the value and to preserve the value. but 2) the nature of children is that they change. 3) there is not such thing as a "right to be a children", and any claim at "history" is nothing but a creative interpretation of "history". In the one million years that man was on the planet, the concept of "play" exists in only a blink of an interval. We must let children be themselves, while putting them to good use of the survival group. Letting children be was a characteristic that gets lost in our present society, you demonstrate it very well in your article. Putting them to good use, for hundred of milleniums, children were assigned easy tasks to help the survival unit. "treated as children" : The problem is not with the kids themselves, but with your (or society's) vision of children. "up until adulthood calls" : if you put them on adulthood-transition inhibiting drugs, it will NOT call... duhhh. This article, while very interesting, is a pernicious psycho-epistemological inversion. It tests the acceptance and paves the way to a "brave new One World"...
--Ubik
06/26

Hi. It is very interesting to learn that my ending teenage years were spent in a stage of flux. Despite the differences in my social role and responsibilites versus my biological state, i had felt no discomfort and see no reason to see social problems being somewhat caused by these factors. Afterall, social problems had existed over centuries, regardless of the earlier or later entrance of puberty. However, to purposely delay a group of teenagers' puberty would herald a new load of problems, as these minorities [the affected teenagers] would be different from the norms of society and how would that position affect them? Would they be happier for it? As they watch their peers appoaching adulthood while they, being in this society, would be mentally matured yet looking far younger than they felt. Teenagehood is a time when one's character-molding process begins. To be accepted , like , belong is what give one self confidence to begin with. Good morals should come from those involved in the everyday life of a teen. The should be the start of solving society's problems. Not by making him/her different from his/her age group.
--s
06/24

Well done, J.W., would be my argumentation - But, what about all Enlightenment done in the past ? Where are the reasonable scientists ? Oh, yeah ... remind me of capitalism ... supplying the world with the ultimate puberty-postponing drug would be more reasonable !!! Wasn't it George Orwell's Brave New World telling us that a longing for civil rights should be eliminated during childhood ? What about world power ? Maybe kinda exaggerated but you should be more afraid of changing the human race. I get more and more terrific ... please get somebody telling me this was a test of social education. Manuel 18, Germany
--M.S.
03/11

Dear Sir, I am a medical student and I read your article "A modest proposal". My question is: what is modest about injecting yet more hormones in an already overloaded system? If it is true that this early puberty is set on because of a manufactured, high-in-fat-and-cholesterol diet we are feeding our offsprings with (and its consequences)then the thing to do is not to give them yet more manufactured stuff but to think more diligently about what we are feeding our children with. Start eating properly, go back to regular, home-cooked food and regular sleep patterns as well as having the kids play outside more, fresh air, sensible socialisation, less TV etc. and I assure you, this new/old way of living will get them back to the healthy state kids were in before that overdose of indulgence hit us. You are not a mad scientist. What you are saying about the causes of crime in adolescents makes much sense. Just re-evaluate your solution. The answer lies in making things easier, as in good food, good sleep, good play. Not in more drugs.
--J.W.
03/09

Normally a fan a LeVay's writing, I read his latest article with a a bemused shake of my head. LeVay's suggestion that we postpone adulthood through chemical injections is as much a symptom of society's unfortunate evolution as, say, twelve-year-olds menstruating. The problem is clearly not chemical--it's social. Teens today may be uncontrollable and erratic, but the more "doctors" like LeVay prescribe fix-it solutions to teens affectations in the form of Ritalin, Prozac, and LeVay's miracle hormone retardents, the less we resolve the true nature of teens' behavior . Perhaps it's not the hormones that drive teens to "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll," as leVay puts it; perhaps it's our social programming, that excess and self-indulgence (as condoned by even our government leaders!) is a forgivable, if not admirable, quality. The more I think about it, the more I realize that teens act like selfish babies, because, well, we all do. Teens are just following our lead; the cure is not a drug, it's a better example.
--M.N.
02/22

I am glad someone finally addressed this. Not many people realize the cultural shift our nation has gone through in the last century. We have created this problem ourselves when the adolescent culture emerged as a true reckoning force in the 1950's. Also, I never noticed the dietary/weight correlation to peuberty acceleration. To me, peuberty was my definition of hell ... as well as junior high school. If only they had that drug when I was 13.
--sws
02/15

Actually, now that I give it a little more thought, it occurs to me that perhaps this was *not* the whacked, extremist proposal I initially took it for and responded to so strongly...but (*smacks forehead*) instead just a bit of satire after Swift. The most amusing part, though, has to be all the horrified and/or outraged feedback it has illicited. To be honest, I didn't catch the smallest whiff of satire within...it was the title (Doh!) that, upon reflection, clued me in (and made me feel the fool, having posted some of that horrified feedback).
--clm
02/14

firstly this article working under the assumption that teenagers were better behaved back in good ol' 1850 when the natural menstral cycle started at the age of 16-17. they weren't, it was just a different time with less people on the earth and less documentation of crimes and less exposer to the amount of information we have now on tv, the internet, and the media in general. no society that i know of has ever matured itself by pushing itself backwards. now you propose that a shot be administered to hold the effects on puberty.. the reasons you give seem to be generally socially beneficial (and that is the area i will discuss). you say that you believe it will put a dent in teenager caused crimes.. i can not dispute that fact, for i can not predict such a thing. what i can dispute is the effect that will have on the nations concept of itself. you are basically saying to americans: don't watch your diets and eat less fatty foods, don't go out of your way to talk to your kids about drugs and alchohol and be a part of their lives, and its okay to rely on the government to take care of all inconviniences rather than take a part in the betterment of the community yourself (all things that would also significantly affect the teenage crime rate). i just think the version of a cure you suggest is to quick and uncertain. from this "take a pill, have a shot" treatment, society learns nothing about itself. lastly i ask the question: what happens when the treatment stops?.. the article says that it will be expensive and what happens when we go to war and financial importance is placed high on the self defense budget and low on the keeping the proper puberty level budget. we, as a nation, will have a drug dependency.. and addiction of a whole new sort. americans still will not know how to deal with this early onset of puberty. they will still be consumming the tons of fatty foods a year and will still have a disfunctional home in which they can not learn lifes leasons in a caring enviroment. if the shots were taken away for what ever reason (budget cut, new policies, adverse side effects, etc.)we would not be back to square one, we would be back to square -1. so i propose a slower treatment of the ailments caused by early puberty. i say we become a diet conscience society. i say parents take, genuine interest and time in their kids lives. i say we dare to put forth effort in this concern of our youth rather than just a pay a tax. mostly i say that we make our youth a part of our lives rather than an inconvenience. maybe i am asking to much of my fellow americans, but if that is so then they don't deserve a "shot given" cure to a situation easily remedied by living life better.
--jhaj
02/14

There are so many problems with this article I don't think it even warrents being discussed. However, since I have pointed out I think there are problems, I feel it only fair to give examples a few examples. (1.) If you are tying to end a form of oppression (i.e. what was mentioned in the article "by attempting to restrict their sexual behavior")wouldn't it be better to find a way to liberate and not decide (or restricting) someone else's path into sexual maturity? (2.) Here's a question that I believe shows a thought provoking paradox: Hasn't it been proven that you can't cure everything with a pill?
--JpR
02/12

Good lord ...! that's like a glass of fresh water after three days in the desert! Agree. P.S. I just watched "Ally McBeal". Last episode, thank God.
--D.I.
02/12

I'm too stoned right now to give you decent feedback (with a lot of words I mean) But yeah, I do think you're a mad scientist. Why manipulate everything? Our idiot race still doesn't understand mother nature is nothing to fuck with. Rob, 21, Amsterdam
--RWK
02/11

Dear god. Maybe a more practical proposal would be to start treating young adults like young adults, say, as soon as they become adults physically and emotionally, rather than at some socially- or legally-predetermined age like 16 or 18 or 21. Many teenagers are much more responsible than they are given credit for being (irresponsibility is more about personality than age), and I honestly feel that raising the legal ages on this or that "adult" privelege sends a very clear message to "kids" - Guess what, now you don't HAVE to act like an adult for X number MORE years - all it does is cultivate that irresponsiblity that teens are stereotyped as having naturally. I can understand wanting to give them more time to be children; I want my children to enjoy their childhood to the max. And I agree, it's alarming the way the onset of puberty is coming at ever younger and younger ages. But it's a natural process called EVOLUTION, baby, and it would seem that it might very well be disastrous to stand in its way.
--clm
02/10

Well, its fascinating. it is true that children (Western ones anyway) are hitting puberty earlier and earlier, and that the artificially extended period of childhood in Western society adds to this to create significant problems. And something should be done. The problem, however, is not with the children. Messing with genetically programmed processes is dangerous at best, deforming and lethal at worst. A better solution, than trying to prevent this accelerated onset of puberty (which is, Mr. LeVay suggests, due to higher fat levels which signal to the pituitary (along a number of axes) that its 'safe'(biologically) to begin puberty), is to address the artificial social constructs that make this such a problem. As Mr. LeVay points out, teenagers and twentysomethings are generally expected to act like children, despite the reality which is that they are not. Treating a natural condition which happens to be inconvenient due to artificial constraints with an artificial hormone (or anti-hormone) is not a healthy solution; it harkens to the use of Ritalin on three-year-olds because they're more active than their parents would like, meaning that they are three, not hyperactive (if you, reader, do not like the example take a look at the percentage of children in wealthy suburbs on Ritalin....and compare to reliable figures on the incidence of hypoattentional/hyperactivity disorders). The solution is that we need to move forward, as a society, to remove or alter the artificial restrictions creating this problem in the first place. If, as a society, we cannot adapt to a changing world in a sustainable, healthy way, then we are doomed to fail.
--MW
02/10

This is a TERRIBLE idea. As someone who has had lupron injections for medical reasons, I wouldn't wish the side effects on someone else my own age (mid-twenties) nevermind a child. Especially considering who KNOWS what the long-term effects are. Perhaps you should do a LITTLE more research before making such a HEINOUS suggestion.
--KP
02/10

I don't know about dealaying puberty on children, but maybe the answer, considerably easier one is to do to the fast food industry what they've done to the tobacco one & haul RMcD into the courthouse for pushing noxious fatty-flavored-enhanced food stuffs into such a captive audience, also, it seems like P.E. classes in primary/secondary schools has come to pass, where now kids hang out in poorly ventilated classrooms, developing greater weight problems & asthma. If fatty foods are indeed the problem, then it's time to bring the industry in line, as consumers, we have the power.
--ds
02/10

If fatty foods are the driving factor in "premature puberty," why not encourage a healthy diet and exercise? I seem to recall my more athletic classmates having later periods.
--Viva
02/09

"We must search for a solution that acknowledges our changed circumstances, and one that respects the rights of parents and children alike." Yeah, so why not change societal attitudes about what freedoms we allow adolescents instead of screwing with their hormones? Really, that's like blaming the victim in a way. I seriously hope this article was a joke.
--AF
02/09

The proposal to postpone puberty makes a lot of sense on paper. However I see two trends that would immediately come out of this. One would be parents, who cannot accept their offspring's sexuality, postponing sexual development indefinitely. On the other side, teenagers on this delayed plan somehow evading the medicine. Developing an adult body before your peers is a burden, but so is being the last one to wear a "real bra".
--CCM
02/09

A strange argument. Essentially, kids are hitting puberty at the age of eight because they visit McDonalds, so therefore, we should give them a drug that artificially constrains puberty until the age of fifteen? First, it's news to me that 17 and 18 were ever a natural age for puberty. . .it's something I'd have to look up, but I'm suspicious of those numbers representing a healthy society. Secondly, because our society does not equate reproductive development with ages of maturity (and indeed, puberty does not end with the first public hair) The idea of slowing it down to match ages of maturity seems counter-productive: We give "kids" time to get used to their "new" bodies before thrusting them on the demands of adulthood. You are reccomending eliminating that buffer period and forcing kids to deal with a changing body at the same time that they are dealing with increased responsibilities. Thirdly, left to themselves, kids are sexual whether pubescent, or not. We do not condone their sexual behavior because we tend to try to protect them from adult responsibilities they may not be prepared to handle. Fourth, What's really wrong with the present system? kids have been dealing with much harder problems for all of human history. Life is hard. That's not a bad thing, it just is. Making it easier is not always the long-term solution you think it is. Let things go as they are. The kids will do fine. . .we did.
--spr
02/09

this is a joke, right? please let this be a joke.
--cc
02/07

Very well written, and thought provoking as well. In fact, contrary to a prior response, society *is* blamed. Rather than adjust to fit the natural developmental cycle, society has moved in the exact opposite way, thus creating the problems. It's damn difficult to be in college or beyond living one's own life and still be treated as a child by a parent. There is the problem. LeVay, you've come up with a great solution, but it's too bad that you and I are some of the few people that would be willing to consider it in this closet Victorian society that we live in.
--MM
02/07

errrrr?
--DS
02/06

So here we are discussing the artistic and natural expression that sex and our bodies have to offer the world, and then alas, an essay that happens to be well-written but poorly thoughtout. Do we blame society for our country's adolescent problem? Of course not, it must be the hormones. Therefor by submitting to science and slapping nature in the face we have allowed ourselves to be fooled; our logic seemingly convoluted. In short: You are an ass.
--HC
02/06

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