when objectivity is priority

Deborah Tolman's "Object lessons: Romance, Violation, and Female Adolescent Sexual Desire"

This is the dichotomy that she presents about girls and boys in life:
(notice that gender queers are not even mentioned. hmm. )

Girls
passive
More/less willing to respond
Slut or prude
Neither acceptable
love
Sexual “behavior”
Almost always “deviant”
White, middle class- asexual/under sexualized
Lower class- promiscuous/over sexualized
Rape by man to woman seen as
“she must have deserved it”
Carries into life
The oppressed
Always a dichotomy, never in the “right”

Boys
Active
Sex drive to initiate
uncontrollable and victimizing
excusable
sex
Sexual “feeling”
Almost always “good”
White middle class- sexualized
Lower class- oversexualized/asexualized
Rape by man to woman seen as
“he couldn’t help himself”
Carries into life
The oppressor
Many answers, always in the “right”

My problems with the study:

1. i don't know why she chose to interview this person for the bulk of her paper when she interviewed many more. This girl is a 17 year old female, who does support her hypothesis that she objectifies herself, says she doesn't feel pleasure, and wants some man to come wisk her away, however, this girl has never experienced her sexuality. She had one molestation experience, and obviously hasn't yet recovered from it, and you want to study her? Than this is a study on molestation and rape victims, not teenage female sexuality. big difference.

American Academcy of Experts on Tramadic Stress say about recovery from trauma

1. how do we know the questions were honest and not what the author wanted to hear or what the participant though the author wanted to hear
2. how do we know the participant even know what she was being asked- many of her questions showed deflection, is this because she understood and didn't want to talk about it, or because she didn't know what she was answering

Having said that, here are some good points:

1. “despite our constant sense of outrage at this violation (men objectifying us), we have been trained to be the best objects we can be, even at the very moment of violation (you try all the harder to fit their standards)”.This quote is so true and defiantly understated. Our culture is so ingrained that we yearn to meet standards even as we fight them. In an extreme example, my roommates, a female to male trans man we'll call Derek, changed his name and has been on hormones (T) for eight months, actively living as a man. But when his girlfriend's prom came up, he went out and bought a dress because "I never saw myself as a girl, but everyone wanted me to be so bad, and i know i should find myself wanting to wear a suit, but i feel like a princess in a dress and i feel like its just what i was meant to do. " this he told me, as he stood in the living room in a floor length purple princess ball gown, examining the length of his facial hair and discussing how soon before the dance he should shave so that he won't be stubbly while there.
2. "other stories need to be taught, figureheads need to be publicized, fantasies need to be explored for females starting at a very young age where women are not objects, that it is okay to feel desire, that they can initiate, and that it is not their job to control male's "raging hormones"" i agree that education is key, and while sexuality may seem like a taboo topic, it is not that hard to cover. When all the Disney movies show a woman who waits for her man to come rescue her, like she is helpless and incomplete without him, that is a problem! (sleeping beauty and snow white were literally half dead while waiting for their men!)

Connections to other texts

1. Christensen would defiantly argue that the texts we feed our children at a young age matter, and that the hidden scripts in them are much more powerful then we think. There need to be a multitude of scripts that speak gender other, gayness, and fem-powerment, to combat all the other things that will bombard them. Having one of each isn't enough either, because stories are just as dismissible when they are the "exception" to the rule, we need to change the rule. Males should be allowed to feel proud and empowered too, not that they should be put down, but women, gender queers, and lgbts, people of color, people with disabilities, people of different classes, need to be on an equal status level in representation.
2. the videos that we watched on puberty between males and females i think was very telling. the idea of hormones "attacking the girl while she slept" versus the male "fine tuning his newly growing muscles"they speak volumes to the passive vs. active divide that is created.
   
3. this is media literacy all the way. we know that the dominant texts aren't going to change overnight, and all of Disney's movies, and control won't be outdated that fast either, but if we can teach our children, the younger the better, what the scripts say, that other representations exist, and that its good to feel empowered then they can carry this with them for life.
   
   • on that note, we need to not be afraid to talk about sex and sexuality with our children. "the talk" shouldn't be such a taboo topic. Our country has a very publicly promiscuous and privately prudent culture, and that is one of the main reasons why women may learn to feel empowered in other areas, but not relate this back to their sexuality. Help them make the connections! This doesn't have to mean advocating for sex, but knowledge about sex is never a bad thing or a scary thing, and to tell people "just to wait" but never actually talking about it is the worst thing we could possibly do.

Time says "parents have the sex talk too little too late"
Planned Parenthood says "start talking young, and start with teachable moments!"
what to do when a child comes out to you