Human sexuality | Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

Why 12- and 13-year-old girls Lose their Virginity by Jennifer Moses

11 05 2015

What teenage girl doesn’t want to be attractive, sought-after and popular? And what mom doesn’t want to help that cause?

In the pale-turquoise ladies’ room, they congregate in front of the mirror, re-applying mascara and lip gloss, brushing their hair, straightening panty hose and gossiping: This one is “skanky,” that one is “really cute,” and so forth. Dressed in minidresses, perilously high heels, and glittery, dangling earrings, their eyes heavily shadowed in black-pearl and jade, they look like a flock of tropical birds. A few minutes later, they return to the dance floor, where they shake everything they’ve got under the party lights.

But for the most part, there isn’t all that much to shake. This particular group of party-goers consists of 12- and 13-year-old girls. Along with their male counterparts, they are celebrating the bat mitzvah of a classmate in a cushy East Coast suburb.

Today’s teen and preteen girls are bombarded with images and products that tout the benefits of sexual attraction. But must we as parents, give in to their desire to “dress like everyone else?” asks author Jennifer Moses. She talks with WSJ’s Kelsey Hubbard.

In a few years, their attention will turn to the annual ritual of shopping for a prom dress, and by then their fashion tastes will have advanced still more. Having done this now for two years with my own daughter, I continue to be amazed by the plunging necklines, built-in push-up bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos. And try finding a pair of sufficiently “prommish” shoes designed with less than a 2-inch heel.

All of which brings me to a question: Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we’re being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards?

I posed this question to a friend whose teenage daughter goes to an all-girls private school in New York. “It isn’t that different from when we were kids,” she said. “The girls in the sexy clothes are the fast girls. They’ll have Facebook pictures of themselves opening a bottle of Champagne, like Paris Hilton. And sometimes the moms and dads are out there contributing to it, shopping with them, throwing them parties at clubs. It’s almost like they’re saying, ‘Look how hot my daughter is.'” But why? “I think it’s a bonding thing,” she said. “It starts with the mommy-daughter manicure and goes on from there.”

I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?”

We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn’t have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that’s certainly the norm among my peers.

So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn’t), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don’t know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We’re embarrassed, and we don’t want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.

Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don’t know one of them who doesn’t have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I’ve ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she’d “experimented” more.

As for the girls themselves, if you ask them why they dress the way they do, they’ll say (roughly) the same things I said to my mother: “What’s the big deal?” “But it’s the style.” “Could you be any more out of it?” What teenage girl doesn’t want to be attractive, sought-after and popular?

And what mom doesn’t want to help that cause? In my own case, when I see my daughter in drop-dead gorgeous mode, I experience something akin to a thrill—especially since I myself am somewhat past the age to turn heads.

In recent years, of course, promiscuity has hit new heights (it always does!), with “sexting” among preteens, “hooking up” among teens and college students, and a constant stream of semi-pornography from just about every media outlet. Varied sexual experiences—the more the better—are the current social norm.

I wouldn’t want us to return to the age of the corset or even of the double standard, because a double standard that lets the promiscuous male off the hook while condemning his female counterpart is both stupid and destructive. If you’re the campus mattress, chances are that you need therapy more than you need condemnation.

But it’s easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn’t dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: “Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven’s sake, get laid!” But that’s essentially what we’re saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they’re still living under our own roofs.

—Jennifer Moses is the author of “Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou” and “Food and Whine: Confessions of a New Millennium Mom.”

Our Time Calls for Heroism: Be Prepared! by Melissa Moschella

31 08 2014

If we hope to protect the unborn, promote sexual integrity, preserve the truth about marriage, and defend the freedom of religious conscience in our country, we cannot simply live good lives—we must live heroic ones.

Perhaps there are times and places in the history of the world in which it is possible to go through life as just an ordinary, good person—a faithful spouse, a loving parent, a concerned citizen, a regular church-goer, an honest and industrious professional—leading a normal, quiet life, not making waves or standing out in any way. Perhaps. But the United States of America in the year 2014 is not one of those times and places. Rather, in our contemporary society, the only way to be good is to be heroic. Failing to act with heroism inevitably makes us complicit in grave evils.

Human life has been seriously devalued in our society. Millions of innocents are cruelly killed before they ever see the light of day. Other children are conceived in ways that reduce them to commodities, in which only the strongest and fittest are given a chance while those passed over are stored in freezers or used for research and killed in the process. There has been a denigration of the great gift of human sexuality into an instrument for hedonistic self-satisfaction.

These trends have brought devastation and tragedy in their wake: deep psychological wounds and physical illness wrought by the hook-up culture; a drastic rise in poverty among single mothers and their children caused by permissive divorce laws and the attitude that sex and babies are completely unrelated; and finally, profound and pervasive harms to children who are the voiceless victims of family breakdown.

In the face of such carnage, too often it is tempting to think that the solution is to retreat from the broader culture, which is sick and dying from a highly contagious moral confusion. For some, the instinct is to try to isolate and save oneself and one’s family from the contagion in a kind of self-imposed quarantine. But, aside from the fact that we have an obligation to help those suffering from this epidemic, retreat simply will not work. The new orthodoxy regarding same-sex marriage will brook no opposition and has already infiltrated public schools and child protection services agencies.

Unless we stay engaged in the broader culture and keep up the fight for the truth about marriage, our future generations may not be allowed to teach their children the truth about marriage—they may find their children taken away from them if they refuse to teach them that there is nothing wrong with a homosexual or otherwise sexually permissive lifestyle. It may sound far-fetched, but it has already happened in states like Massachusetts. Even ten years ago, the prospect of legal recognition of same-sex marriage throughout the country sounded far-fetched as well.

In these circumstances, just being “good” is impossible. We inevitably will be faced with situations in which we must either give in or stand up for our convictions even at great personal cost. There is no “middle way.” Our times call for heroism, and we must be prepared to respond to that call. Many people have done so already.

Modern-Day Heroes

Think, for instance, of Julea Ward. Julea, a devout Christian, was studying at Eastern Michigan University to be a high school counselor. All students in the program are required to do a practicum in which they counsel real clients. Preparing for an upcoming appointment with a new client, Julea reviewed his file and saw that the client had previously been counseled regarding his homosexual relationship. Because she knew that she could not, in good conscience, affirm this client’s homosexual behavior, Julea—perhaps with some trepidation—asked her supervisor what to do. The client was referred to another counselor.

Then came the university’s response: Julea was accused of “unprofessional conduct,” “an inability to tolerate different points of view,” “imposing values that are inconsistent with counseling goals,” and “discrimination based on sexual orientation.” Julea was told that she had three options: go through a remediation program to change her “intolerant” views, leave the program, or request a formal hearing. Unwilling to cave in under pressure and compromise her beliefs, she chose to request a formal hearing. At the hearing, she was questioned relentlessly as the faculty members tried to convince her of the “error of her ways.” While steadfast about her inability to affirm homosexual conduct, she also made clear she harbored no prejudice against those with same-sex attraction. She stated, “I’m not opposed to any person . . . I believe that . . . God loves us all.”

Apparently loving the sinner—and recognizing that we are all sinners—was not enough for Eastern Michigan University. To call homosexual behavior sinful was itself considered beyond the pale. The result of the hearing was that Julea, who had been a straight-A student, found herself expelled from the program. Julea tried to appeal the decision to the Dean, but to no avail. Thankfully, Julea was ultimately vindicated in 2012 after a three-year-long court battle. Others—like the wedding photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony in New Mexico—have not been so fortunate. But in refusing to compromise her beliefs for the sake of professional success, Julea made a courageous choice, a heroic choice—the kind of choice that any one of us could foreseeably be called to make in the near future.

Consider another example, this time a heroic married couple, Chris and Mary Anne Yep. Chris and Mary Anne have been heroic on many fronts. First, as the parents of ten children, they were extraordinarily generous in their openness to life, even though this sometimes meant that Chris had to work three jobs, including a nighttime paper route, in order to support his young family in the early years of their marriage. As any parents of a large family can tell you, undoubtedly their generosity meant putting up with the judgmental stares and condescending comments of neighbors, friends, colleagues, and medical practitioners. In a society where conventional wisdom holds that parents should give their children more things rather than more siblings, the Yeps have provided a heroic witness to the priceless treasure of human life, a witness for which their children—one of whom was a top student in one of my classes at Catholic University of America last year—are very grateful.

The Yeps’ heroism does not stop there. Frustrated by the lack of family-friendly and person-centered policies in the medical field, the Yeps decided to take a big risk and, with seven young children, liquidated their savings and started a business of their own, a business in which persons really came first. Their company, now called Triune Health Group, has flourished, and has recently been named one of the best places to work in Chicago. From flexible hours and work-from-home options that allow and encourage their employees to put family first, to keeping employees on the payroll when serious illness prevents them from being able to work, to going the extra mile to help their clients—for instance, helping a depressed and discouraged paraplegic find a suitable job and get his life going again—the Yeps have offered powerful and heroic witness to how a commitment to human dignity can and should take pride of place even in the world of business.

Another aspect of the Yeps’ heroism was forced upon them with the passage of unjust laws by the state of Illinois and then the federal government, laws that required them to provide coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs in their employee health plan. In the face of this new challenge to their commitment to the dignity of the human person, the Yeps once again stepped up to the plate to take a courageous stand, suing both the state of Illinois and the Obama administration for violating their First Amendment right to operate their business in accordance with their deeply held beliefs. They are like David, fighting not just one, but two, Goliaths simultaneously. As we await the outcome, we pray that they, like Julea Ward, will be vindicated in the courts. One hopes the respect for religion that the Supreme Court exhibited in its Hobby Lobby decision will decide the fate of the Yeps’ cases as well.

Heroism on Campus

A final example of heroism that I would like to highlight is that of a young woman named Cassy Hough. When Cassy began her freshman year at Princeton in 2003, she was appalled at the crass and permissive approach to human sexuality that was promoted on campus in everything from the quasi-pornographic freshman orientation programming to dorm meetings, course readings, and extracurricular events. Speaking out courageously among peers and professors about her own commitment to sexual integrity, she was met with a lack of understanding and outright disrespect. She eventually found a supportive group of friends, but she soon realized that she could not be content with just preserving herself from the dangers of the hook-up culture.

Seeing the tremendous pressure on her peers to conform to the reigning sexual orthodoxy, and witnessing the hurt, anger, and emptiness that they suffered as a result, Cassy realized that she needed to do something to help spread the message of sexual integrity on campus and offer more students the necessary support to resist the hook-up culture. So she founded a group called the Anscombe Society, named for the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, who was a great defender of the true meaning of human sexuality. Princeton’s Anscombe Society succeeded in helping many students understand, defend, and live sexual integrity in many ways, including convincing the university administration to change the content of the freshman orientation program.

Cassy did not stop there. Friends from other universities began to ask her for advice about how to form similar groups on their own campuses, and she realized that a broader organization was needed to support and train student leaders across the country so that they, too, could promote sexual integrity on their campuses. After she graduated, she got a grant to start the Love and Fidelity Network, which has successfully pursued this important mission to the present day. Now the Love and Fidelity Network has groups and student fellows making the case for marriage and family and providing support for sexual integrity at more than twenty-five universities.

Like Julea, Chris and Mary Anne Yep, Cassy, and so many other heroes of our times, we must be prepared to live not just good, but heroic lives. We must be prepared to risk popularity, reputation, professional success, economic well-being, and—it may yet come to this—perhaps even our lives, in order to defend the dignity of human life in all its stages, the value of sexual integrity, the truth about marriage and family, and the right to live in accordance with one’s beliefs in all spheres of life. If, and only if, we are willing to make these sacrifices, we will resist the forces of the culture of death in our own lives, and, with God’s help, transform that culture into a culture of life. May we all heroically rise to this great challenge of our time.

Melissa Moschella is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. This article is adapted from a graduation address delivered at Tyburn Academy in Auburn, NY.