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| A flower stripped of its petals is not a healthy metaphor for sexual activity. |
I decided to go with that post title after the initial title, "Sex," shocked the unsuspecting undergrad sitting next to me in a computer lab on campus. Oops?
But on the topic of sex, or rather - sexuality, Feminist Mormon Housewives had a great post about how LDS teenage women are taught about sexuality. This post outlines some of the problems in the way these women are currently taught about sexuality and suggests ways to improve their education. The author goes to great lengths to avoid suggesting any changes that would mess with doctrine. While I don't agree with all her suggestions, there is something brilliant (and heart-breaking) in her plea that young women leaders no longer compare women who have had sex to damaged objects. Flowers with their petals torn off? Chewed gum? A board filled with nails? Pretty disgusting. It should go without saying that those object lessons are bad ideas.
One point really stood out to me in that post: it's not only emotionally scarring to a young girl to be told that rape survivors have lost their virtue - it's also doctrinally inaccurate in the LDS church and all of Christianity. But reading that post reminded me of a couple delightful posts from I Blame the Patriarchy, where we learned that insects who don't mate must be female, and that starving female preying mantises until they killed their mates was once considered good science.On another note (and the true reason I changed the title from "Sex" to something more inclusive), Womanist Musings has a great post up about Tyler Perry and the way black women are portrayed in television and film. The post doesn't exactly love Perry, but it points out ways in which what he's doing is incredibly progressive compared to BET and the white-infused world that is every other TV channel.
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