The Wandering Heretic

culture

My wife has had the amazing ability to instill enough trust and respect in our teens that they will discuss pretty much anything with us. (If I had been raising them alone, I would be lucky they would EVER talk to me. What can you expect from a wandering heretical monk?) They also inspire enough confidence and trust in their friends that they get an earful about the teen culture, attitudes, and practices. So I can pretty much get a teen’s eye-view of the teen’s eye-view. To be certain, some of these observations will be the teenage version of the urban legend; however, it is just as certain that what I hear is how they perceive themselves.

My son and daughter tell me, without any hint of exaggeration on their part, that the biggest addictions of teenage girls are dieting disorders (anorexia and bulimia nervosa) and “cutting.” The biggest addiction of teenage boys is internet porn.

Anorexia and bulimia were just getting started when I graduated college; or at least the public awareness of the problems was becoming more pronounced. I had an advantage in that regard, since the woman I dated (and married) was a dietitian. They were her area of expertise; so I heard about them sooner than most.

Cutting I had never heard of until learned about it on an episode of “7th Heaven” (and you thought that show was just fluff). “Cutting” is the term young girls use who slice themselves with razor blades on the arms and legs until they bleed, repeatedly and with regularity. Some do it because of peer pressure, but most do it because “it releases” their inbuilt pressures.

Pornography has been around for a long time., though not of the internet variety. The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel (23:14) referred to it in 597 B.C. (curiously, the voyeur in question was not a man but a woman). It was probably around long before that, if rumors of the excavation of Canaanite cities is true. Still, the preponderance of pornography probably has not been this prevalent and accessible since Ancient Rome.

I recognize that social phenomenon are extremely complex and not easily subject to cause and effect relationships. In spite of that recognition, however, I humbly propose that the addictions for the two sexes are related. Both reflect the culture that has been baptized in Pornography. ProQuest Information and Learning Company reports here the following facts about pornography in the United States:

Nor is it hard to find readily available porn. The internet is saturated with it. And, as adults have found, it is very, very hard to exclude from your teenage son’s gaze unless you look over his shoulder 24/7 while he is on the computer.

And so the teen culture is becoming “Pornified.” That is, the values and behaviors found in the porn films are becoming the perceived norm for sexual and relational behavior for our teens. It does not matter that most adults (and perhaps I say that with some doubt) can recognize that the behavior found in porn films is a fantasy that has no relation to the real world; any more than James Bond’s antics have to do with the life of the average office worker. Teenagers do not so easily recognize the difference. The same article quoted above notes that teens and college aged men who view porn regularly are “more likely to describe women in sexualized terms,” and more likely to exhibit “increased aggressiveness” and “sexually abusive behavior in adulthood.” In other words, they become what they watch.

Women and girls are then only viewed as attractive if they measure up to what the boys view on the internet. Simon Castles on his website tells us here “I remember a female friend telling me how jaded she was by the sexual imagery she saw everywhere. It made her feel inadequate. She resented the way all women were now expected to look sexy all the time – always with the right lipstick, always in the right lingerie, always with a sultry look on their face like they might just orgasm at any moment. The pressures and expectations on women were crushing.”

And that is why I feel younger and younger girls are addicted to dieting disorders and cutting. How else can you cope when your image to be attractive is the ugly fantasy of thin, over-energized, over-sexed nymphs. Something has to give. Unfortunately, it is the bodies of our young ladies and the gentility of our young men.

I don’t have a solution. And the sad part is, most adults do not even admit the crisis exists. Congress could not even pass legislation to segregate the addresses of porn sites to the extension .xxx because the public clamored against it. Imagine that. Congress did not propose banning such sites but only restricting them to use certain web extensions. Such a practice would have made blocking such sites easer if desired. Perhaps voters protested because it would have hampered their ability to view porn at their workplaces.

Or perhaps we want whatever thrills we can get without restriction or even inconvenience, no matter what it does to our culture or our teens. I saddens me.

Certainly, setting examples as parents of gentility, kindness, and respect to our spouses is a starting point. But it is a starting point I find fewer and fewer adults are willing to take. At the same time, our teens are so close to the edge of self destruction, it does not seem nearly enough.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 11:51 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.