Is there anything these people can’t blame feminism for?
Because of politically-correct feminist imperatives, girls now know more about sex but less about the opposite sex. There was a time when girls were told that boys were vastly different from them, possessing stronger libidos and bodies. Girls were taught to avoid placing themselves in compromising situations; they were armed with the facts upon which good judgement rested and safety depended.
Now, though, such counsel is sacrilege. Girls’ minds are filled with notions of the sameness of the sexes, with its corollary that they can go where their sisters of yore feared to tread. Why, God forbid that we should tell them that, like it or not, they are the more vulnerable sex, and that this fact of life should inform their thinking.
Not that I’m laboring under the illusion that modern girls are all sugar and spice and everything nice. Owing to feminism, which liberated the fairer sex from common-sense, morality, restraint, and chastity, quasi-harlotry now infects much of contemporary womanhood. A lady close to my heart said it best: “Forty years ago you knew who the bad girls were; now you know who the good girls are.” And now we have a whole generation of girls-gone-wild.
Because knowing about sex and believing that you have the right to go out alone is what’ll rape and/or kill you. Not, you know, actual rapists and murderers.
But equal with feminism is bad parenting — you know, the people who would let their daughters (and it’s just daughers) go on “hedonistic” vacations to Spanish-speaking countries.
Let’s be blunt, one way a daughter could frame this is, “Hey, Mom and Dad, can I go to Cancun for spring break (or to celebrate, or some other occasion)?” But translated that often means, “Hey, Mom and Dad, can I go to Cancun, where I’ll most likely have sex with some libidinous boy you don’t know from Adam – maybe even with lots of boys – drink, smoke, and perhaps even do drugs?” That sounds crazy but is, in essence, accurate. Crazier still is that the parents’ answer is often “yes.”
Now, I’m not a big fan of the entitlement issues that come along with kids who think they “deserve” an exotic vacation for high school graduation or for simply existing. But that aside, at some point parents have to evaluate whether or not they trust their kids, and they have to let their children grow up and make their own decisions. Were I a parent, would I let my 15-year-old go to Aruba alone? Probably not. But do I hope that I’ll know my 18-year-old well enough to be able to reasonably evaluate whether or not they’ll go on a sex-and-drugs spree in a foreign country.
The “girls gone wild” culture is, as far as I can tell, a non-existant part of the majority of young women’s personal experiences, and to be honest I’m sick of every female in my generation being associated with it. Young women are not all running amok flashing our breasts for beads and enticing innocent high school boys into having sex with us. Those of us who do engage in certain behaviors that this author would criticize — sexual performance to please a male audience, etc — do so as a response to a lot of complicated social factors, and it’s over-simplistic to just call those women heathen sluts and assume that their experiences are universal for young women. Hell, I went to Mexico for spring break last year with six other people, and it wasn’t exactly an exercise in unrestrained hedonism — we were in bed by midnight every night, and woke up by 9am (we did drink Pacifico and pina coladas in the pool all day, but that’s about as wild as it got). I’m sure there were plenty of people there who were a lot crazier than we were, and that’s fine — but just because their experience is more visible doesn’t make it more common.
Of course, what no one seems to be pointing out is that, even if we assume that “girls gone wild” are everywhere, it’s men who are videotaping them, encouraging them to behave a certain way, rewarding sexualized and male-pleasing behavior, and making money off of them. Feminism has never said, “You go, girls! Get naked for that guy and let him make millions off your ass!” We just see the dishonesty in slut-shaming and pinning all the blame on women.