Start Building Your Gay Bomb Shelters
In light of the recent hubbub surrounding Sally Kern and her Big Gay Panic tirade, I'd like to take this opportunity to re-state the purpose of this blog. Although I focus mainly on the treatment of female sexuality in YA novels (as well as, unavoidably, life off the written page), I do care deeply about everyone's right to love and respect and, er, not be compared to a terrorist by virtue of having the audacity to be oneself. I think that most reasonable, intelligent people feel this way, even if they don't make a point to write about it on the internet.
It's times like these that I can't understate the importance of authors like Nancy Garden, who blazed a trail, using the novel as the medium for the message to teenagers who question their sexuality (and what teenager hasn't?) that they are not alone, and more importantly, they are not bad or wrong because of their feelings. Ms. Garden paved the way for Brent Hartinger and David Levithan and James St. James, authors who are still given flack for writing gay characters, but have at least progressed to the point where the characters' sexuality is not required to be the lesson or the plot point. Books featuring gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered kids are not just problem novels anymore about being persecuted, but about kids growing up and having sex and falling in love and they just happen to be GLBT. Just a fact of life. These authors have that option, and that is golden. Is it indoctrination? Maybe - and maybe it should be. That's right: hey parents of two-year-olds, some kids in your child's nursery school class will turn out to be gay, and that's OK. Some of them have two parents of the same sex and they're not trying to spread the gay any more than you are trying to promote your hetero agenda. More likely they're trying to toilet train and get a full night's sleep, just like you.
I think it's safe to say that the anyone who reads this blog is not in need of that little lesson. But I'd just like to stress that I intend for this to be a forum for so much more than whether or not young women get a fair shake in the sexuality department. Sometimes I need to get my blood properly boiled before I remember to say things I meant to say all along. Just needed to get that out there.
Oh, but I just can't resist - the study about 1 in 4 teenage girls with STDs? I have three things to say:
1) yeah, it's scary, on the surface, but I'm waiting for a deeper exploration
2) maybe this is just the thing we need to get some more comprehensive education out there in schools? (I can dream, can't I?)
3) when can we expect the accompanying study on teenage boys? I'm waiting....
Written material © 2008 Dawn Emerman
dawn, when i read about that study on STDS, i had the exact same thought: but who are these 1 in 4 girls getting them from? in the article i read on cnn.com, i don't think there is even a mention at all of boys in the whole thing. come on! let's both hold our breath on that accompanying study about boys....
Posted by:amanda | March 14, 2008 at 08:27 AM
I vaguely remember hearing a similar statistic from somewhere about ten years ago... some tirade-laden professor bitching out a friend of mine about the laxity of our generation, basically, threw that stat into the tirade. The stat included all the girls who'd ever had a cold sore. Because that's a kind of herpes, see!
This is not exactly a scientific refutation, but I cry shenanigans on that statistic. And cold sores come from a virus frequently transmitted in completely innocent ways... as innocent or more so than mono.
Posted by:Merrie Haskell | March 18, 2008 at 05:09 PM