It's a Bratz country

Hmmm, you quote "Dr. [John] Douglas [director of the CDC's STD prevention unit] said the "extraordinary" racial disparity can be attributed mainly to lagging health insurance coverage in the black community. That leads to poor access to health care and difficulty in stopping the spread of diseases, he said."

And then you editorialize:

"Bull***t. Of course he says that, because it's uncontroversial and doesn't involve a value judgment."

without a modicum of proof of your "Bull***t" charge, but heaps of value judgmentalism.

Let's see, you or the director of the Center for Disease Control? Whom should I trust about "stopping the spread of diseases"??? SUCH a puzzlement.

Before I decide, perhaps you could tell us WHY I should believe you over this doctor.

Then, insted of preaching, maybe you could tell us WHY you think this doctor's thoughts on "the cause of this "extraordinary" racial disparity and the distinct "lagging health insurance coverage in the black community" that just might "lead to poor access to health care and difficulty in "stopping the spread of diseases" are just so much "Bull***t".

Your medical expertise would be ... ?

Women have a sexual climax potential that goes way, way, way beyond that of a man. So why have men been the sexual initiators and predators in our society? Because the women didn't know their potential. Now they do. Sexual liberation has come in a big way, and its changing everything.

Lesbianism is going to become a huge trend (if it isn't already.) Promiscuity is exploding, and its resulting mental obsession will shake our society to it's core. The genie is out of the bottle, and no one can put it back in.

Outrageous comments, or the new truth?

The Newsweek issue from a few weeks ago had a brief article on aggressive, controversial public-education ads. One of them (not the pictured one) had a young girl's face super-imposed on a sexy woman's body, with a caption which essentially said: "If this is how you see girls, you've got issues." The ad is disturbing, but the reality it sought to address is even more disturbing: in the area where the ad appeared (inner city Detroit, if memory serves) ~70% of all teenage pregnancies were the result of statutory rape.

If this is true in the places where there are lots of sexually transmitted diseases and incidences of sex among the very young, perhaps the problem is not so much that we're not teaching our children proper morals and thus accelerating their pace of sexual experimentation as it is that we are not protecting them from sexual predators. Further, we are not addressing the reasons there are so many sexual predators. Our society has far too much sexualization of young people (with which Rod clearly agrees), which leads to 12-18 yr old girls being seen as sexual objects by older men. I'm not convinced, however, of the inherent evil of young people exploring their sexuality among each other with guidance and at their own pace.

One presumes that for every girl out there who has an STD, there is a boy (or older man) who has it too. I'm waiting for the report on how 1 in 4 males between 14 and 25 has an STD. Which, as far as I can tell from a quick romp around the internet, appears to be the case.

Condoms apparently stop or at least help stem the spread of all of these diseases. It would seem so logical that encouraging teenage boys to use condoms would be a good idea. But that would involve practical measures with some chance of working, rather than running in circles gibbering in horror at the sight of a Bratz doll.

In addition, it is well established by survey research that the younger a girl is when she begins to have sex, the more likely her first partner is to be significantly older than she is. What we don't have here is legions of girls, rabidly ensluttified by contact with the Evil Doll, who rush out and ravish virginal junior high school boys. What we do have here is older boys/men pressuring younger girls for sex, and not wearing condoms when they do it.

There are some true sentences in this post. Here are three: The thing is, "sex education" is never only about genital contact. It has to do with educating for self-respect, respecting others, self-discipline and respecting God. It's all part of a package. That is absolutely right on. Bear in mind, however, that it is not possible to teach a girl self-respect without also teaching her that she is free, independent, and equal, and that her worth has nothing to do with pleasing or deferring to men. This may be one reason why the project has been found difficult. Often the attempt is made to make a girl deferential and eager to please in every situation, but to make her say "no" if, and only if, she's being pressured for extra-marital sex. That doesn't work.

Rod:

Thanks for posting this; very powerful commentary. We don't always see eye to eye on where to draw lines regarding the place of sex and sexuality in culture, but I for one am grateful for your passion on the related issues and questions.

At the same time, I have to say that protecting children from this toxic pop culture has never seemed particularly grueling to my wife and I as parents. Our boys are now 16, 13 and 9, so we've been at this for a bit. And once we made a small number of crucial, difficult decisions everything else became pretty smooth.

1: We got married and decided to stay married. Obviously a big one!

2: We decided that we would choose our location because of primarily lifestyle needs rather than professional needs. So we've only lived in places like Amherst, MA and Santa Fe, NM even though it has meant financial challenges (because of reduced opportunities and higher cost of living) and haven't had to deal with the more aggressive physical manifestations of toxic culture - billboards, endless expanses of souless yuppie slums and malls, litter and derelict neighborhoods. It meant uprooting ourselves from our childhood surroundings in New Jersey, which touches on the geographical dimensions of being a crunchy con we've discussed on other threads, but as adventurous children of divorced families, neither my wife nor I had a problem with it.

3: We decided that my wife would be a full-time homemaker. She's had to find other professional-caliber outlets, like animal training and creative writing and dancing, to keep herself sane, and it's not an easy choice, but choosing this route (or choosing to have the husband stay home) all by itself is an exponential counterweight to Bratz culture.

4: We decided to homeschool. And in doing so, became the sole gatekeepers of what company our children keep and what ideas they are exposed to, a stewardship that we try to honor but not being extreme in either what we allow or what we ban.

5: We decided to not have any kind of broadcast TV. (We're avid Netflix and video game fans.) It's amazing the difference this makes, more obvious to me because we've gone about 5 years without it after 5 years with it. Our boys don't even ask for toys anymore, for the most part, because they don't even know what toys are for sale except from the occasional trip to the toy section of Target, where nothing really connects. (So we end up spending the toy budget on Legos and bikes instead of, say, the latest anime-driven craze.) They don't know about reality TV; about ugly and scanty kids fashions; about any of the adult-level sensationalized dreck that Peggy Noonan quotes. I know about it from the Internet and the occasional TV watching at a hotel or restaurant. But it simply doesn't show up on our household radar screen.

That's it. Marriage; a well-chosen hometown; a stay-at-home parent; homeschooling; no TV.

Once these decisions are made, you don't have to keep remaking them. In our experience, it gets a family to cruising altitude and then you just coast along. That's probably why a lot of Rod's daily doom-and-gloom rhetoric bothers me; because in my life, thank God, on a day-to-day basis childrearing and running a household during an age of a hyper-sexualized and salacious popular culture isn't that hard, so I don't see what all the fuss is about.

I'll gladly continue to suffer the downsides of our popular culture, as long as it continues to provide so many amazing benefits: the ready availability of books and bookstores; of quality natural foods; of organized niche social/physical activities from dojos to planetarium shows to art fairs to riding clubs; and of the Internet and the rest of the new media that make a buffet table lifestyle like ours possible.

Christ Bless,
Doug

reddopto: "Women have a sexual climax potential that goes way, way, way beyond that of a man. So why have men been the sexual initiators and predators in our society? Because the women didn't know their potential. Now they do. Sexual liberation has come in a big way, and its changing everything."

Rod: "Anyway, I can't believe that you don't believe our commercial culture is making a lot of money turning little girls into sex objects, and calling it "empowerment." Somebody's being empowered by this, all right, and it's not girls."

I think it's crucial to juxtapose these two comments, and am very grateful to reddopto for raising this angle. I'm not sure how explicit we should get in this discussion, but Red's comment is another answer to Rod's question about who is being empowered.

It's not only commercial interests that benefit from an increasingly sexualized culture. Yes, concerns about the exploitation of youth are crucial and thank God Rod raises them.

But part of what's happening is that teenagers are dealing with the social impact of, with collateral exposure to, an incredible amount of new cultural exchanges that are primarily about adult sexuality.

And who benefits from this? Well, a lot of women do, that's for sure. I'm rather up-to-date on this because of my wife's interest in exploring, for lack of a better phrase, the nature of a fulfilled female sex life. And it seems to me that the "quiet majority" around this topic are the legions of everyday women, most either married or in a long-term stable relationship, who are leading vastly happier and more vital lives on the whole in comparison to previous generations because of the supportive, inspirational and educational resources that now exist to promote better sex.

The impact of our cultural attitude about sex on youth is vastly important, and worth discussing. At the same, so is the impact on adults.

Think about the statistics we reference. It's not uncommon for those of us with interests in cultural issues to talk about why our society is worse off because of numbers of single parents, or numbers of STD's, or numbers of abortions.

But let's not ignore that there are other numbers worth discussing as well. For example, the number of female orgasms. Adjusting for population increase, are there more female orgasms in America now than 40 years ago? And if so, is this good news? Discuss.

And then there’s Terry Mattingly’s famous question, one of his “three keys” to understanding any religious news story in America: “Do you believe sex outside of marriage is a sin?”

Bless,
Doug

Doug Cramer, love your post! Those are some fascinating topics for discussion!

sig,

Anyone who can't find common ground with Lileks isn't anyone whose opinion is worth considering. The man is a national treasure.

I'm really beginning to think that our culture, especially in regards to how we treat sex, is, rather than making us more advanced and enlightened, actually making us more primitive. The way children grow older faster, exposed to most of the adult world and engaging in many adult behaviors by their teen years (in Britain, there have been girls as young as eleven years old using hard drugs and getting pregnant) is a striking and tragic example of this. In pre-literate societies, children were fully exposed to the adult world from the time they were born, including its darkest, most tragic aspects. I'm beginning to realize just how important and worth protection childhood is. Having a time in which children are protected from much of the knowledge of the adult world and shaped over time into maturity-and moral and emotional maturity, not just physical, until they are ready to enter it, by their parents as by the community and the culture, is, I think, one of the marks of a civilization at its height. That childhood is now being eroded is as sure a sign as any of a civilization in decline, and it is a terrible failure to our children and to future generations.

This also reminds me of a study from Cornell university that came out a while back (which didn't receive nearly as much attention as it deserved) about why teens engage in risky behaviors. Turns out it is not because they are unaware of the consequences and ways they can protect themselves (well, protect themselves from physical consequences anyway)-they actually overestimate the risk, taking longer than adults to think about it. Ultimately, they decide the short-term benefits outweight the risks.

You know, it seems we always chalk up problems and failures like this to the lingering effects of the the society we tried to destroy-we're still too puritanical, too patriarchal, we need more change, we'll say. I used to think this myself, but now I'm beginning to realize that, not only is this not true, as our collective mindset is thoroughly late-modern, but the sublimation of our impulses to higher, and downright beautiful, things like the recognition of the worth and dignity of all people, the complementary nature of the sexes and sex as a profound and mysterious union between them through which they become one, the profundity of bringing forth new life, fidelity, chivalry, and courtship (and not to mention frugality, humility, and generosity) through the means of self-restraint, self-sacrifice and love, is exactly what we need. Of course, these things are good in and of themselves, but as a matter of pragmatism, while attacking these things hasn't had too many consequences (material, anyway) for the people at the top, for people already vulnerable-including people who are poor and people with poor impulse control or poor decision making skills-it has been absolutely devastating materially, and very bad spiritually, materially, and emotionally for all of us. Without them we will continue to become not more advanced, but more primitive.

Why is global warming (rightly) seen by "progressives" as a problem, but *not* the epidemic spread of sexually-transmitted disease? Both are environmental issues related to a self-indulgent lifestyle running up against the physical parameters that limit its sustainability. Just as much of our economic life is based on levels of oil-based transportation of people and goods that we may not be able to sustain, so too is much of our social life based on levels of promiscuous, recreational sex that *physiologically* we may not be able to sustain, even with all the sex-education in the world. Both of these are "inconvenient truths" -- neither of which are payed much heed by those for whom they cause the inconvenience.

Sig: Oh gee, "Whaddya want, egg in your beer?" I haven't heard that in years! My grandmother used to say it all the time when I was a kid. Thanks for sparking a very happy flashback.

Bless,
Doug

When I say in my post above that "progressives" don't see the spread of sexually-transmitted disease as a problem, what I mean is that they don't see it as a problem whose solution may require fundamental changes in our way of life. The "progressive" call for sex-education as in-and-of-itself the solution to the problem is analogous (in this sense) to the "conservative" call for development of new technologies as in-and-of-itself the solution to the problem of global warming -- again, a solution that would not require fundamental changes to our way of life.

recovering ex-Pentecostal,

I hadn't seen your post when I put up my addendum. What I'm trying to get at here is that "progressive" don't see sexual health in the same terms of environmental stewardship in which they *do* see other ecological concerns. They tend to see "conservatives" as ecologically-irresponsible for driving SUV's and whatnot, but they *don't* tend to see fellow "progressives" as ecologically-irresponsible when they put themselves and other people at risk of STDs through promiscuous, recreational sex.

Think of the George H. W. Bush's notorious statement that "The American way of life is not negotiable."

I think that sort of mindset applies to "progressives" for whom promiscuous, recreational sex is intrinsic at least to their own American lives -- regardless of its ecological and physiological effect.

In both the "conservative" and the "progressive" iterations of Bush's point of view, there's an unwillingness even to consider the possibility that one's current style of life may in fact be unsustainable -- no matter how emotively one rails against the inconvenient truth.

"Condoms apparently stop or at least help stem the spread of all of these diseases."

Alas, this is NOT true. According to the latest research of which I am aware, condoms lower the risk of HIV and gonorrhea in MEN, and that's it. Many STD's can be spread by skin-to-skin contact, including HPV and herpes. All of them can be spread by oral-genital contact. Furthermore, teen women's bodies are quite simply less resistant to STD's than those of older women.

Condoms are not the answer.

Teens are actually using condoms at a higher rate than a decade ago, and this accounts in large part for such decrease in the teen pregnancy rate as we have experienced. But STD's have risen dramatically in the same time frame.

Repeat: condoms are not the answer.

For the kind of education that a church can provide, look at www.respectlifeeducation.com (RC Archdiocese of Boston). Go to the parent information section for the seventh grade chastity program. Watch the video, some of which is designed for parents to share with kids ("That's Where I Live") and some of which the kids get in class ("The Rules Have Changed" and Jason Evert clips).

My daughter went through public school sex ed and was completely unaware that STD's can be spread through oral sex. The focus was only on HIV and on pregnancy prevention.

And if you think Gardasil's the answer, then you think 2/3 of a cure for cancer is good enough. Is it better than nothing? -- yeah. But that's about it.

We are giving our kids the message that they can screw around without consequences, and it's just not true.

Would anyone here have have sex with someone who said, "I have an STD call [fill in the blank], but don't worry, here's a condom. It'll be fine."?

Sigilaris,

Return to sender. Your previous post was clearly intended for some straw-man or other, rather than me.

Scott Lahti: Re: the "Nordic track" (LOL) countries. I have some friends in Scandinavia, and have asked them about this radical difference. This is a paraphrase of what one friend said.

Basically, sex ed starts at age 8 or 9. It includes condom and other b.c. information, but the sex ed is *heavily* focused on relationships, on ethics, on not being promiscuous. However, this approach is NOT coupled with propagandizing for marriage. They do not say to kids, wait till marriage. They say to kids, wait until you are in a loving, committed relationship, and then don't act like a jerk. Both boys and girls get the same speeches, as they are in classes together.

They have low rates of teen pregnancy because they use their b.c. effectively. The age of consent is 14 or 15, but many girls don't have sex till late high school or college. Their abortion rates are lower than ours, too, which makes sense if the girls are sexually active later.

The marriage rate among young Scandinavians is not that high. Many have several children b/f they get married. My one friend is from a conservative part of her country (yes, there are conservative Scandinavians!) and insisted on marriage before children.

Most out of wedlock pregnancy in the Nordic countries is still within a committed (but non-marital) relationship. Even so, the women who do get pregnant and then are single parents are *not* impoverished as they are in the US. They are often educated women who work fulltime (for them, 30-35 hours/wk) and have state-subsidized medical and child care. that's probably another reason the abortion rate is lower. If a woman is single, often her whole family raises her child.

On the whole, Swedish women for instance have their babies younger than the average college=educated white woman in the US. This is because having a child is NOT seen as the big financial disaster it is in the US. Makes sense, given national health care, good public transit, safe cities, good schools overall, etc.

However, I don't think we would adopt Scandinavian attitudes here. They are very casual and open about sex, nudity, etc. (again, this varies depending on the region, i.e. big city vs. country.) They don't see sex outside of marriage as a problem - as long as it is committed and responsible.

Oh my, where to begin?

I have two daughters, 8 and 7. Trying to keep the "whore culture" out of our house is amazingly difficult. (For the commenter who mentioned ditching the TV, it's been discussed. I never watch the thing anyway. And we're leaning toward homeschool.)

What happened? Two things, IMHO: radical feminism and the rise of the urban gutter culture.

Feminism demands total liberation from the "patriarchy". Therefore, men are unneeded. Therefore, real womyn use each other to satisfy themselves. Bisexuality and lesbianism has been preached to these girls, and they have bought it. Utterly dumbfounding.

Urban gutter culture is a reaction to the silliness of feminism. Women are "hos" specifically because they're acting like it. Why respect them? They don't respect themselves, obviously. Look at what they're doing over there in the corner!! The old order is overturned.

It's a nightmare time to be a parent.

Herr M.: I hope it works out for you; it definitely sounds harder to raise girls than only boys as I have. I'm the "ditch the TV" poster you mention. I don't mean to pry, but I'm thinking of your comments in light of what I said earlier. I wonder exactly why/how it is "amazingly difficult" to keep the "whore culture" out of your house. What is that brings it in? In our case, the kids are only friends with kids that we're OK with, mostly from church and karate. They have no idea what Bratz or whatever else tangible conveys the "whore culture". As for "Look at what they're doing over there in the corner!" I can't think of anyplace they go, or we go, where there are any such corners.

I realize it can be harder depending on where you live, which is why I mentioned choice of hometown as one of the five key decisions we had to make. But what I find fascinating is taking, ironically, an epidemiological perspective on "whore culture." If we treat it like a disease, in other words, what are the disease vectors? What conduits exist to get the "whore culture" disease in to our kids or our homes? Then all we need to do is eliminate or minimize the vectors, like killing mosquitoes in order to combat malaria.

So what are the vectors bringing "whore culture" in to the home/kids? Other kids, which can be addressed through homeschooling and an involved stay-at-home parent overseeing social interactions; the physical neighborhood and public encounters with "whore culture", which can be addressed through choice of home and town and choice of locations for shopping/socializing; and the vector of media, which can be addressed through managing kids exposure to media, primarily through eliminating broadcast TV.

While this isn't going to eliminate "whore culture" in the society as a whole, what it will do is protect those of us who want to be protected, and allow our kids to grow up to be role models and examples of the quality of life possible if you don't catch the disease of "whore culture" when you're young.

Bless,
Doug

Condoms do help in terms of human papillovirus. Heck, 95% of us are infected with HPV. It produces most of the little skin tags we get. HPV is only a problem in the uterus, being associated with uterine cancer many years after infection. Condoms would be useful in preventing uterine infection (or so it would seem.)

The new inoculation that helps prevent it is only given to girls, because HPV is harmless everwhere but in the uterus.

So, it's possible the figures are a bit overly alarmist, but the trend is alarming nonetheless.

Sigilaris,

Again, return to sender. When you address someone who believes that "progressives" *approve* of giving other people STD's, you are addressing a straw-man, not me. My claim is that "progressives" aren't serious about doing what it may take to solve the problem of STD's -- with seriousness defined as a willingness at least to *entertain* the possibility that nature imposes limits on the fulfillment of human desire with which humans may *possibly* have to comply.

I'll let you have the last word if you want it, and I'll call it a day. I don't think you and I can have a fruitful conversation on this particular subject.

Doug - "disease vector," great analogy! Yes, the kids visit their relatives and return home loaded down with this stuff and tales of what's on tv and all the ads... Family thinks they're "punished" socially by not having access to it all. They mean well. And yes, I've spoken to ext. fam. many times. They just don't understand counter culture.

The other "minefield" has been backpacks of friends - these are hauled to community "lessons" (dance, martial arts, etc.) and to church for "fellowship" time - you'd be amazed at the amount of questionable cultural icons that can be hauled in them... along with ipods and DS's ad nauseum.

I appreciated your post greatly because I had lived the same sort of lifestyle with my kids that you describe... the ex wasn't totally supportive culture-wise, but went along... until he left a couple years ago for other reasons. Now, in school myself and single parenting, I fight the culture wars with 2 commuting to college, 1 in a public HS, and 2 in a Christian middle school. But even before, if one is active in one's community in any way, culture is unavoidable.

I'm about 45 min north of Amherst now (came from an island before that) and yes, I focus on sound decision making these days, and lots of prayer. And truthfully, if Pussycat Dolls are the worst I need to come down on, rather than drug addictions or STD's, then I'll feel I did my job. A rabbi once related that if you deal with the small problems, you never have to worry about the big ones.

Danielle

Let me clarify. . . I do think sex before marriage can be and often is extremely harmful, especially for girls. However, I don't see the impulse to have sex at the upper age limit of the study (18-19), or even the intercourse itself, as necessarily reflecting any sort of 'pathology' - aside from the pathology of being human, that is.

Mr. 'Morning Wood' ???

I think you may be talking about something else, Sigaliris. I was only pointing out the inescapable truth in what Francois says. Through smallpox, through tuberculosis, through polio, "nature imposes limits on the fulfillment of human desire with which humans may *possibly* have to comply".

Your examples are poorly chosen, Baz. We've eradicated smallpox and almost eradicated polio. So how, exactly, are these things placing limits on the fulfillment of human desire? I thought Francois was talking about STDs--as was I.

Yes.

Yes, Jeannette, I have heard of the Vagina Monologues. I've also heard them mocked and scorned right here on this blog. And I've also heard about the whole ridiculous "vajayjay" controversy, in which the executive producer of "Grey's Anatomy" was forbidden to use the word "vagina" in a medical context on the show, and thus had to adopt the childish euphemism instead. As a parent, I've watched other parents struggle with not wanting to give their kids the right name for certain parts. "Pee pee," "wee wee," "your thing" and "down there" are all very popular even among modern parents. Doubtless, things have improved in the last 40 years, but some progress still remains to be made. You're right that (some) men have little respect for women. But I don't see that as an innovation. Such has been the case for a very long time. I have two beautiful daughters and five nieces, and I fear for them just as you do for yours. They are courageous, strong and bright, but I know very well that this may not be enough to protect them from men who mean them harm.

Sig: Yes, Jeannette, I have heard of the Vagina Monologues. I've also heard them mocked and scorned right here on this blog

You sure have, and why? Because it's silly agitprop. Have you actually read the play, Sig? I have. It's PC to believe that we should stand reverent before bad art simply because we approve of the stance it takes on a particular theme or issue.

Rombald,
You are looking at this in extremes. The whole "Christianity and virgins vs. whores" is a bit over the top. There's a happy medium where we realize that healthy relationships are based on mutual respect and commitment. That children deserve to be raised in a family with a mother and a father. And casual sex or sex before marriage make the latter much more unlikely to occur. Yes, you can have those things without waiting for marriage, it's just not as likely.

"Sex is dirty! Save it for the one you love!" - sig, caricaturing

Recalling a woman I worked with a quarter-century ago, opening a can of soda:

"Oooh, this is awful - here, you want it?"

Three observations.

One: Rod's right, sex education and two bucks will get you a nice cup of coffee. A study I've read recently (and can't find again, irritatingly): teenagers actually estimate the risks of dangerous behaviour, particularly dangerous sexual behaviour, more accurately than adults do. In fact they overestimate them; anecdotally, I know a good many teenagers are under the impression that the risk of pregnancy from unprotected sex is virtually 1:1, when really it's something like 1:10. They know intellectually that their behaviour is risky, but their sex drive overrides their drive to self-preservation. The illicit sex that goes on in countries where illict sex gets you stoned to death seems to support this hypothesis. Human nature 1, sweet reason 0.

Two: People's behaviour - at any age - has much less to do with what they believe is right or reasonable in theory, than to do with what they believe is normal. We learn more from imitation than from instruction, as any parent can tell you. For a thoughtful discussion of this, see here:

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/06/david-brooks-when-preaching-flops.html

However, it's hard for the man or woman on the street to work out what's 'normal' for behaviour that goes on in private. Heaven help the first-timer who has got their notions of normal sexual behaviour from either pornography or romance novels! I've seen 'moral education' succeed by attempting to make clear what the norm really is - publicising the information that, say, college students vastly over-estimate how much their peers drink, and that really the average student is relatively temperate. I've heard varying estimates of the normal number of lifetime sexual partners - and men always give larger numbers than women, impossibly - but it's always been in the low single digits. Perhaps this is news that needs to get around? Sex education that talks a lot about anatomy and not at all about human interaction will get nowhere.

I wonder if part of the appeal of group sex to the wayward youth described above was a chance to observe what it is that other people really do ... but as in any group behaviour, such observation changes the thing observed.

Three: a possibly useful bit of observation. Teenagers who go on group dates are more chaste than those who date individually, and as a special bonus, less likely to be involved in abusive relationships. Perhaps this is a practice we should encourage?

Jeannette, I'm not a fan of The Vagina Monologues, which I saw recently for the first time (don't ask), but actually, it doesn't celebrate child rape, it condemns it.

Bravo - great post! I'm a liberal (don't hold this against me until you hear what else I have to say!) but couldn't agree with you more. Thank you for bringing this incredibly important issue to people's attention. It's a sad, sad day when we're trying to raise intelligent, safe, moralistic and modest children in this kind of world.

Bratz are the main reason I do not keep a supply of bricks around the house, because everytime the commercials come on I wish to pitch something kiln-fired through the screen so hard it beans the toy exec who greenlighted these hootchie toys.

Well, one practical action would be to not watch TV. or at any rate, TV on which those commercials would air.

Just sayin'. People act like this is a force of nature, but many times it's not.

Re. the comments from Holmegn:

Why haven't I thought of that before? All I and my family have to do to avoid the cultural pollution we swim in is just quit watching TV! That seems reasonable! Never mind that broadcasters use the public airwaves and should be providing a public service, and not a public nuisance. How unreasonable of us to expect not to be confronted with near-R rated material in the promos for "adult" programs in the middle of a baseball game.

Thank you for being so candid and for using proper resources to make your point.

This is no rant. This is fact.

From a mom without any Bratz of Phat in her daughter's closet.

you suck