Publication Alert: A Skills-Based Model for Promoting Adolescent Sexuality Development

I published a theory paper in the journal Human Development. In the paper, I present a model for thinking about adolescent sexuality in terms of skills – what young people know how to do and how young people act, in and through sexuality. The model explains the following skills…

• Sexual Selfhood: Desire, Ethics, and Identity
• Sexual Agency
• Sexual Negotiation: Consent, Protection, Pleasure
• Sexual Intimacy
• Sexual Empowerment: Boundaries, Coping, Analysis
• Sexual Advocacy

Emphasizing sexuality skills over specific sexual behaviors allows us to remove “intercourse” from the center of a research agenda on adolescent sexuality development. In this way, I decenter concepts such as virginity, marriage, and heterosexuality from how we think and talk about young people and about sex overall. Focusing on skills raises questions about how to facilitate skill development for all young people, whether they are sexually active in particular ways or not.

I am honored to have this article published in Human Development. I am also honored that the journal elicited commentary from two renowned scholars in the field, both of whom expressed support for the model and provided me with inspiring feedback.

Lisa Diamond discussed:

• The need for a cumulative life span approach
• Expanding the focus on biological processes
• Grappling with gender variation
• Gender as a product of sexuality
• Greater attention to sexual-minority development
• The meaning of meaning-making

I am particularly moved by Diamond’ssuggestions for how to use this model push the interrogation of gender, sexism, and sexual orientation in the study of adolescent sexuality. She writes about the need to research the “interplay between gender and sexual questioning,” particularly for transgender and gender non-conforming youth, saying that the model “provides a framework for reconceptualizing gender questioning as adaptive and even normative” (p. 298). In addition, she suggests attending to the role of binary gender socialization (differential systems of expectations and rewards for men and women) in shaping young people’s skills for sexual negotiation and, in turn, how their experiences of sexual negotiation may shape their sense of their own gender. Furthermore, she provides several examples of how the model can be applied to supporting sexual minority youth not only in their sexual identity but also in being sexual and acting upon their sexual feelings.

David Moshman discussed:

• Developmental change
• Relational developmental systems
• Promoting adolescent sexuality development
• Promoting sexuality development beyond adolescence

Specifically, Moshmandiscussed the value of the model for expanding the notion of sexuality education, given that “secondary schools can and should contribute to sexuality development” (p. 290). Moshman also asserts that the model can be applied to colleges and universities addressing sexual assault, in order to not only respond to sexual assaults as they occur, but also “to reconcile such responsibilities with the responsibility to educate and promote development” (p. 291). Sex ed in schools and campus sexual violence prevention have long been personal and professional interests of mine, and I am excited to apply the skills-based model to these pursuits.

Here is the Table of Contentsfor this issue, which contains my article as well the two commentaries. Please contact me if you have any questions, or if you have trouble finding the full text article.

I look forward to drawing upon this article in my future research and applied work, as I enthusiastically explore the implications of this work for understanding and addressing sexism; for supporting both gender and sexual exploration for queer, trans, and questioning youth; and for transforming the ways in which educational institutions constrain and facilitate the sexuality development of the young people in their care.

References

Arbeit, M. R. (2014). What does healthy sex look like among youth? Towards a skills-based model for promoting adolescent sexuality development. Human Development, 57(5), 259-286.

Diamond, L. M. (2014). Expanding the scope of a dynamic perspective on positive adolescent sexual development. Human Development, 57(5), 292-304.

Moshman, D. (2014). Sexuality development in adolescence and beyond. Human Development, 57(5), 287-291.

State your name and pronoun: Framing and Phrasing

This post is a follow-up to this one, which I wrote earlier this week.

At the beginning of this month, I again found myself at a retreat center working to make space with a group of progressive Jews together for the weekend. As we sat in a circle to introduce ourselves to each other on Friday night, we were asked to share our name and pronoun, in addition to answering an icebreaker question. As happened to me my first time, the ritual was not explained in detail before we did it. But afterwards, I had multiple conversations about it. I took it as a sign of progress, though, that the concerns raised in these conversations were not “why are we doing this in the first place?” but rather, they were, “why are we focusing on pronouns and not just asking people to share their gender identity?” And, “wouldn’t this exercise be really hard for some people, who may or may not want to out themselves right away?”

Great questions! While I definitely have my own answers to these questions, I also want to create a communal understanding of the answers. The biggest lesson I learned from these conversations is that as we continue to engage in this ritual, we need to use a more clear framing for why we invite people to share their name and pronoun.

Here’s a starting point. In working to create guidelines for our facilitators of Sex Ed Workshops for Young Adults, Joanna Ware helped craft the following example of how to frame this ritual:

"Let's go around and say our names and, if you feel comfortable, your preferred pronouns. These are the pronouns you'd like other people to use to talk about you, for example I use _________. We share preferred pronouns so that we all know how to refer to one another respectfully, and because our pronouns aren't necessarily self-evident. There is much more to gender identity than pronoun preference, and we ask for pronouns just so we can refer to each other respectfully throughout this conversation today."

This framing addresses the above questions in a few ways. First, it clarifies that we share pronouns because we will be building community together and thus necessarily, at some point, talking about each other and thus perhaps using pronouns. This exercise is quite utilitarian. We say specifically “there is much more to gender identity than pronoun preference,” so that people understand we are not using pronouns as a stand-in for self-definition. The purpose of this ritual is to clarify something that we know we will need (pronouns) and that we know in many situations we will not get correct by simply guessing haphazardly.  

Here are some pronoun options that I have commonly heard people choose. If you know more, please add them in the comments!

• No pronoun—just use my name, please, and it repeat my name as needed
• No preference—use whatever pronouns you want
• They/them/theirs
• Zie/hir/hirs
• She/her/hers
• He/him/his

I’m hoping that a better framing of why we ask for preferred pronouns and what we do or do not take them to signify will help us work together to build a safer space, to complicate the gender binary, and to stand in solidarity with trans and gender variant people in our community and who have yet to join our community.

And, as a new friend said to me last night, we do it just to be good people. To do something nice.

What do you think? I would be open to publishing guest posts on the topic from anyone who identifies as transgender, genderqueer, and/or gender variant, or anyone else who has worried about being mis-pronouned. I openly invite feedback on the reflections and concerns I shared in this post, and I would love to discuss it further both on and offline.

My name is Mimi, and you can use “she” and “her” to refer to me

The first time I was asked to share my name and pronoun, I felt pretty upset. Why make gender so primary, right here at the beginning of this event, as we introduce ourselves to each other? I was in the woods with a bunch of Jewish activists, trying to escape the gender binary and fight the patriarchy. So I said something like this: “My name is Mimi, and you can use ‘she’ to refer to me, as long as you understand that doesn’t say anything about who I am and what I’m capable of.”

I was at a point in my life where priming gender was really hard for me. “Priming” refers to the idea that simply bringing up a social category, such as gender, results in psychologically (and maybe subconsciously) bringing up the stereotypes associated with that social category, such that the pressure associated with those stereotypes has a stronger effect. I felt that identifying myself along the gender binary meant making myself vulnerable to expectations based on gender. Just because I didn’t think twice when people refer to me as “she” didn’t mean I was totally comfortable with everything in the category of “woman.”

Five years later, having learned a lot about my own and other people’s experiences of gender, and having more access to multiple means of both escaping the gender binary and fighting the patriarchy, I came around. Friends, colleagues, and co-conspirators at Keshet taught me many valuable lessons about how to be an ally to transgender, genderqueer, and gender variant people. I came to see my own privilege in the fact that when a person is left to their own devices to guess what pronoun is best to use when referring to me, that person will always choose “she.” At least, people always have, and I my guess is that they always will. So I never have to fear being “mis-pronoun-ed” (someone using the wrong pronoun to refer to me). In addition, I don’t have to endure any uncomfortable or tense moments when I first meet someone, as they figure out what pronoun to use. In fact, I’d never actually thought about what pronoun I use until that moment in the woods with the fruity Jews.

Now, opening a space by inviting everyone to share their name and their preferred pronoun has a lot of meaning for me, on multiple levels.

• We get to make our space safer for trans and gender variant people: We directly address the fear/discomfort of being mispronounced by establishing preferences at the beginning of the event
• We get to complicate gender: Through this ritual, we demonstrate our belief that gender is not always binary and is not always obvious by looking at someone.
• We get to stand in solidarity: People always have referred to me using my preferred pronoun without me having to say anything. But by saying something anyway, I am putting myself in alliance with people who need to specify their preferred pronoun in order for other people to know what to say.

For these reasons, I have come to value sharing names and pronouns as an important ritual for setting the space of a community event or retreat. In my next post, I share some questions that have come up in introducing this ritual to my current community.

Jackson Katz responded to my email (and here's what I wrote back)

Hi Dr. Katz,

I deeply appreciate your taking the time to respond to my email. I am going to take another opportunity to express my concerns with more detail and clarity, in response to the issues you raised in our personal correspondence.

In terms of not serving queer folk:

I agree that MVP does great work to address harassment that targets sexual minority and gender variant individuals. As I want to emphasize, I think MVP is in a very powerful position to impact violence perpetrated by and through heteronormative masculinity. In contrast, one of my major concerns, as I will explain further in a moment, is about the experiences of transgender and gender variant folks who might actually be in the room during an MVP workshop. Another major concern is that people who have or will have same-sex relationships will not realize in MVP that sexual and relationship violence can happen between two women or between two men, as well. Such work may not be within the goals of MVP as a program, but I do think there are steps that MVP can take to address and support these needs.

In terms of silencing survivors in the room:

This point is tricky. As a sex educator myself, I struggle with the ability to provide a space in which survivors can receive strong support without identifying themselves, and, in addition, to make space in which survivors can choose to identify themselves and use the power of identification to push back against the silencing and shaming cultural norms in our society. It’s about actively structuring my teaching based on the assumption that in any given group, there will be people in the room who are survivors of various forms of violence. Addressing people who are survivors only as potential bystanders can be guilt-inducing and embarrassing. To be a male ally to women who have experienced sexual violence requires a trauma-informed curriculum and approach.

In terms of reinforcing the gender binary:

I completely agree with you that gender neutrality is counter-productive. To talk about sexual violence, we need to analyze gendered power dynamics in history, society, and in our lives. And I appreciate that the MVP policy is to allow people to self-identify, as in, if someone identifies as a man, he can go to the men-only break-out group, and if someone identifies as a woman, she can go to the woman-only breakout group. But I'm wondering, what about someone who doesn't identify as either a man or a woman? Or someone who identifies as both? Such people exist, and they matter. But I do not see them within the MVP curriculum, and that scares me. I don't know what to do about it, either. I have a lot of ideas, and I also recognize the complexity. So at this point I am working to name what I'm seeing. To render visible what is now invisible.

In terms of the need for more comprehensive sexual violence prevention:

Here is my question for you: What does MVP do to "set the stage" for an expansion of comprehensive programs? I can see all the fabulous ways in which MVP is a strong program to start the conversation, to address the most resistant leaders and to start building social norms that would facilitate further sexual violence prevention work. However, in reality, I picture schools and colleges saying "well, we do MVP, that's our sexual violence thing." Thus, in practice, MVP could very well be the sole source of sexual violence education in many communities. That's why I'm voicing my concerns. My question is, what can MVP do to be a better ally? When MVP does work with mixed-gender groups, the people in the room who aren't the hetero/masculine men (who were the original target group of MVP) are not being prioritized in the conversation. Interestingly, these are the very same people (women, queer folk, gender variant folk) who are not being prioritized in society at large. So what is MVP as an organization doing to directly link schools and campuses with programs that will address the needs of women, people who have same-sex relationships, and people who are transgender or gender variant?

The broader question I'm getting at is: What does it take to be an ally? What is the imperative on those of us with power to truly open spaces in which we can directly hand over power to those who need more of it in order to be safe, in order to speak up, and in order to exist? How can I be a better ally to others? How can I ask you to be a better ally to me?

How do we prevent men's violence against women without recreating the sexism we are trying to end?

"How do we have men and women working together on preventing men's violence against women without recreating the sexism we are trying to end?" 
--Jackson Katz, at the Mentors in Violence Prevention Bystander Intervention Conference at Northeastern University, May 31, 2012

Dear Jackson Katz,

Great question.

Here’s my short answer: Currently, you are indeed recreating the sexism you are trying to end.

Here’s my long answer: Thank you for having the wherewithal to recognize the complexity and challenge in being a person with privilege taking leadership on issues of systemic oppression and violence. Thank you for your leadership, thank you for your decades of work, and thank you for continuing to ask yourself how you can be a better ally.

What I say in this blog post may be read as a criticism, and I want you to know that I am criticizing you because we are on the same team. We have the same mission. As we work towards this mutual goal, I believe I have a perspective that you need to hear. So, let’s get coffee (or the internet equivalent, if you’re back in Cali by now).

Yesterday I was at the MVP Bystander Intervention Conference, and I’ve also participated in the MVP Institute training program as well as taught several workshops myself in the (distant) past. I have a lot of respect and affection for the work done by MVP. I personally have gained so much from your organization, including some of my favorite workshop activities addressing gender and systemic violence, and that’s why I am so invested in seeing it do good work now and in the future.

For my readers: Jackson Katz founded MVP in 1993, to recruit male student athletes as leaders in ending men’s violence against women. Yes, just men’s violence against women. Not all sexual violence, not all gender-based violence. That’s fine. No one can do everything, maybe. The MVP approach is to address men as potential active bystanders—to talk to men about why stand up as a bystander, and possible ways to intervene in sexist and violent behavior. Calling other men to understand men's violence against women as a fundamental social justice issue (see The Macho Paradox), Katz and MVP have brought their work to sports teams, fraternities, and the military.

Back to Dr. Katz: I’m grateful that you recognize the role that masculine role models can play in reshaping masculinity and addressing men’s violence. I can’t walk into hockey team locker rooms and talk to them about sexual assault. The NFL isn’t inviting me to speak with their players about rape. You are getting into those spaces and opening up conversation, and I’m impressed and grateful.

That said, Bystander Intervention training is NOT a comprehensive sexual violence prevention program. Bystander Intervention should NOT be promoted in mainstream spaces as a priority over actual skill-building that addresses actual people of all genders as people with bodies, people with intimate relationships, people with the capacity for sex and for love. Where are those people in Bystander Intervention training? I understand the importance of getting your foot in the door by addressing everyone as potential Bystanders so participants aren’t as defensive. But your approach is actively silencing those people in the room who may be more than potential bystanders—they may be victims and survivors of sexual or relational violence. Where are those people able to express their lived experiences in your workshops?

Furthermore, when you split up the participants into groups of “men/boys” and “women/girls,” to talk specifically about “men’s” violence against “women,” you are erasing the existence of trans* and genderqueer people. Erasing them. There is not room for people with non-binary gendered experiences and identities within the curriculum you use. What are you going to do about that? That is a major problem. It’s a problem that is the Achilles heel of your intervention. You cannot expand so much. You cannot be everyone’s solution.

When MVP comes to “mainstream” spaces and coed spaces—spaces that are not these hyper-masculine communities that were the original location of this Bystander Intervention—then you recreate the sexism you are trying to end by silencing the voice of survivors and by rendering invisible those living outside the gender binary.

 What are you going to do about that?

From your ally,
Mimi Arbeit

An Open Letter to Tufts Magazine

Dear Tufts Magazine,

“The New Girl Order,” an article by Kay Hymowitz in your Fall 2011 issue, is a misinformed and narrowminded article that insults both girls and boys in America today. Hymowitz puts girls in danger by making the argument that there is no more need for feminism and that somehow the position of girls in society today is the best it could ever be. Hymowitz bluntly perpetuates the war of the sexes by looking for point-by-point equality rather than stepping back and asking, given a history of patriarchy, what can we do now to achieve gender equity. Furthermore, Hymowitz’s final messages seemed pinned on hurtful and antiquated ideas about marriage.

Hymowitz cites girls’ advancement in education as evidence that feminism has succeeded and is no longer necessary. Increasing numbers of women in science and engineering must mean that we’re all set. But we are not: I could talk about the glass ceiling, the need for more women in politics and the need for more fair and holistic representations of women in the media. I could talk about how women on college campuses face an epidemic of sexual violence and the “terrible trio of shame, blame, and fear” when they try to pursue their own desires. I could also cite the very research that Hymowitz dismisses—the tradition of Carol Gilligan of listening to voices of girls as they become teenagers, as they silence their own needs in order to become that perfect girl that everyone else wants them to be. Furthermore, I could and should write about so many women who don’t make it to college because they don’t have access to the education or the money they need, or because they were not encouraged to pursue their dreams. So many “American girls” are not the girls about whom Hymowitz writes—the ones who benefit from own race, class, citizenship, and other privileges that remain invisible in this article yet delineate her entire argument.

Another major misconception in this article is that equality and equity are not the same thing. Hymowitz seems to believe that we have reached equity once we have both “College Women’s Centers” and “College Men’s Centers.” She lives in an utterly binary, separatist world. I don’t want to live in that world. I am a feminist, but I do not, as she thinks I do, “worry that if we pay more attention to boys we will take our eyes off girls.” In fact, I heartily believe that the key to improving our education system and transforming gender socialization is empowering children and youth of all genders to explore, express, and embody. Hymowitz lauds a girls’ softball coach who decided to “coach them like men.” But treating girls the way we treat boys will not help anyone. What about the boys who want to sew, cook, care for children, build close friendships, and share their feelings? Where is the room for them in our culture, in our gender system? According to Hymowitz, feminists “could say that the culture of male privilege is so powerful that it can’t hurt for boys to be pulled down a peg or two.” Actually, dismantling the culture of male privilege is essential—for women and girls, for men and boys, and for everyone who can’t live and love within such a rigidly policed, binary system of gender.

Hymowitz, for a moment, would agree with me that girls and women stand to gain a lot from more attention paid to boys and masculinity. But her reasons for wanting to attend to boys are quite the opposite of mine. She says that girls are going to begin looking for males to marry, and will struggle to find males as educated and accomplished as themselves, and will instead choose to be single mothers, which she sees as a crisis. (Of course, in her world, the option of two women marrying each other does not seem to be available.) I find this last paragraph utterly offensive. It proves that her investment in the “betterment” of boys is not because feminism has done its work but actually quite the opposite—she invests in patriarchy because it provides a foundation for normative heterosexuality. Men have to be successful and powerful in order for women to be their subordinate wives.

I’m sorry, but as I finish reading this article, I completely fail to understand why you published this in the Tufts Magazine. Once I have my Ph.D. from your institution, will you be ashamed of me unless I become the wife of a man who also has a doctorate or other advanced degree? Women’s lives do not revolve around wearing a diamond given to them by a man with the right resume. Clearly, we still have a lot of work to do in promoting positive development for all youth and freeing all youth from hegemonic gender ideologies.

All my best,
Mimi Arbeit

Doing Femme

Yes, wearing makeup can be a feminist act. Wanting to appear feminine and femininely put-together can be a feminist desire. I never meant to imply otherwise. What I meant to say is that wearing makeup is not always a feminist act. Sometimes, it is a demonstration of internalized oppression, a desire to hide flaws, an act of objectification and submission, a nod to the system. When I wear makeup and skirts and pink and feel I’m doing that as a feminist act, I call that femme. I feel feminine, beautiful, brilliant, and powerful. I feel in control.

Doing femme means simultaneously critiquing and celebrating femininity in a variety of forms. It means embracing the aspects of femininity and female-focused culture that I find empowering and pleasurable in conjunction with embracing aspects of myself that totally clash with traditional conceptions of what it means to be feminine and womanly. Femme is about embracing contradictions, strengthening personal agency, and having a whole lot of fun. At least, that’s what femme means to me.

My last post was also about embracing contradictions. This contradiction: my decision to wear makeup does not only come from a place of femme desire and personal agency. It also comes from a place in which I feel I need to be girly in order to be accepted, in which I fear rebellion at risk of my own comfort and privilege, in which I yearn to achieve that standard of prettiness that I see held up as the ideal. Yes, that girl exists inside of me. Those fears and insecurities are a part of who I am.

Those fears and insecurities don’t make me any less femme and fabulous. Or do they? To be honest, I had not thought about it much until this week. I had associated doing femme with the times and places in which I feel truly free and empowered to be myself, to live and breathe and show off my own contradictions, to push boundaries. I had associated doing femme with weekends, vacations, or those days that seem so stressful that my best coping mechanism is to break out the red dress and black lace tights and go for it.

Until now, I had not thought to associate femme-and-fabulous with that place of insecurity and fear. When I chose to wear makeup at the wedding, I knew I could be radical and choose not to; but I still felt pressured by a desire to conform to mainstream practices of female beautification. Because I felt this pressure, this strong influence and pull that would, in the end, be a strong element of my decision, I didn’t feel I was doing femme. If it wasn’t totally free, it couldn’t be femme, right?

I realized today (through a conversation with a glorious femme friend) that not only had I been holding myself up to a ridiculous and damaging ideal, but I had also been holding up femme to an ideal that restricted it. I was trying to protect my femme identity from my own imperfections. I was protecting my femme identity from the parts of me that feel insecure, disempowered, and scared. But that’s not fair. What will it take to free my femme identity and let it flourish?

Femme can be imperfect. The reality of my inner experience is that, at this point in my mind-twenties, I can proudly and strongly embrace of my own power and beauty and brilliance. I am quite femme-confident. AND. And I have a good chunk of that internalized-female-oppression that entails a constant questioning of whether I am measuring up or not. I have both. And I bet a lot of other people do, too! And that’s okay. And that’s difficult. And it’s real. And yes I am using the word “and” over and over again on purpose to demonstrate that finding personal agency includes this process of embracing over and over again the contradictions of our own desires. And we can find beauty in these contradictions. And we can find power. And we can find feminism.

We can find these things, if we’re willing to risk looking for them.

Stamps of Sexism

As much as we try to have a feminist, egalitarian wedding, we are still participants in the heterosexist patriarchy. We grew up in it, we are getting married in it, and we can only hope that we will do all we can to work so that future generations do not have to also suffer under it. The intention of this post is to render visible the stamps of sexism that are leaving their mark on our wedding, with hope that through making these visible, through acknowledging and understanding the effect of the patriarchy even on this careful couple, we can develop the communal awareness necessary for working together to repair this broken world.

10 stamps of sexism (among many) in our wedding and in the wedding, in the order in which they appear:

1. My Tisch.
In traditional Judaism, only the groom has a tisch (which means table in Yiddish). The Tisch is the time right before the wedding ceremony. There is a specific ritual in which the men distract the group while the bride is supposedly getting ready. Well, the Tisch now takes place after photographs have been taken, so I will already be ready. So I am also going to have a Tisch, except there is no tradition for a bride’s Tisch. So I will be making up my own thing, while my partner participates in an old, old tradition.

2. My hair and makeup.
This is not a Jewish tradition. This is an American tradition. Let me know if you need me to explain further.

3. My dress.
I didn’t want to wear a dress. I wanted to wear a skirt. I was told, by various sources, that I needed to wear a dress. My partner was not told he had to wear a dress. In fact, when he told people what his (untraditional) wedding outfit will be, no one told him he was wrong or not taking this seriously enough.

4. My kittel.
It is traditional for the Jewish groom to wear a kittel, a white robe, during the wedding ceremony. My partner and I will both be wearing one. See #1 regarding the contrast between his participation in an ancient tradition while I, going through almost the exact same motions, will be doing something unusual, surprising, shocking, and possible upsetting to others.

5. The opening blessing.
We are going back and forth with our officiant to try to figure out a version of the opening blessing that feels good to all of us. The traditional opening blessing references the distinction between sanctioned and unsanctioned sexual unions, and I just can’t stand the fact that we would open the ceremony with even the implication that we were implying that marriage is necessary to sanction our sexual relationship. If that’s not patriarchy, then what is?

6. The Hebrew versions of the blessings in general.
My partner and I grew up in Conservative synagogues and youth programs with lots of Hebrew prayers. As such, our ceremony includes Hebrew prayers in their original form, although they will be followed by English feminist-humanist interpretations of the meanings of these prayers. As such, there is a ton of sexism and patriarchy hidden in all that sneaky Hebrew.

7. Signing the Ketubah.
The Ketubah is the Jewish marriage contract, signed by me and my partner and our two witnesses. They will sign in English and in Hebrew, and one’s Hebrew name generally consists of one’s first name, one’s gender, and then one’s father’s name. We will go out of our way to ask our witnesses to sign also using their mother’s names to identify themselves. But should I really have to ask?

8. Stepping on the glass.
For logistical reasons, we could not come up with an egalitarian version of this ritual. My partner will be stepping on the glass. That’s a piece of patriarchy for you.

9. The dads toasting.
Our mothers will be offering toasts at the rehearsal dinner, and our fathers will be offering toasts at the wedding reception. I fully respect their decisions, but I am allowed to find it noteworthy, right?

10. Partner dancing.
My partner and I have been taking dance lessons in the hopes that we will do more than just hug for our first dance. While I have been finding the dynamics of power and consent in partner dance quite interesting, I am clearly the follow and he is clearly the lead. I guess this relates to #8, in that I am not a huge fan of taking on something myself just because it is traditional for him to do it. But I still find myself feeling feminized in a way I don’t really enjoy.



I hope this post doesn’t get me into trouble.

My first Giant Academic Conference: The Society for Research on Child Development

This post is my attempt to summarize some of my recent thoughts on directions for research with the potential to transform the way we design and implement sex education. I just got back from spending three days in Montreal with lots and lots of developmental scientists. At the conference, I found many sessions that could help me think about—and connect with others who are thinking about—adolescent sexual health and its role in normative, positive development.

Among variables that help us measure adolescent sexual development, age at first sex gets a lot of attention. One aspect of this discussion is whether or not “onset” of sexual activity in middle adolescence can be healthy as opposed to inherently risky. The average age of first sex in the United States is 17, so that means many teens have had sex before age 17, too. Discussing this question in one session gave rise to a magnificent group insight: What if we look at the content of adolescents’ sexual experiences, the meaning they make of sex and the thoughts and feelings they have before and after sex, instead of judging them for engaging in a behavior that can have such a myriad of situation-dependent positive, negative, and neutral consequences?

So the next question is, as researchers, how do we do that? Here are some ideas I had while in Montreal:

1. We need to start asking about the nature of consent in adolescent sexual experiences. I saw many interesting studies that gathered detailed information from college students about their sexual activity and other factors such as body image and sexual satisfaction, for example. However, I did not see any studies that asked college students whether of not the sex they had was consensual—whether they had wanted it, or whether they felt pressured. I want to know.

2.  We need to study sexual activity as if it takes place between two people, as if two people are doing it together. I saw some great research on sexual behavior, and some great research on romantic relationships, but not a whole lot of attention paid to the fact that much sexual behavior takes place in the context of a romantic (or sexual) relationship. Not necessarily a committed, long-term relationship, but some kind of interpersonal dynamic. And that dynamic—the emotional and social content of the interaction between those individuals—is an important part of the immediate context that can directly influence the healthfulness and hurtfulness of sexual activity.

3. We need to study the effects of gender roles and gender socialization on adolescents’ sexual identities and behaviors in more and more complex and nuanced ways. I went to sessions on the sexualization of girls, and I went to sessions on masculinity, and I went to sessions on racial socialization. All the sessions address intertwining themes, but most of the research presented missed some very important points: mainly, what the other researchers were discovering. Extensive collaboration can allow us to study the effects of the systems of power and privilege that structure today’s society. We will need to reach outside of the field of sexuality and sexual health in order to return to these issues with a new perspective and a transformed vision for change.

What else do you think sexual health researchers need to consider? What questions would you like to pose regarding the developmental course of adolescent sexuality?

Wedding-planning While Feminist

Chloe’s blog post on Feministing last July put into perspective some of my recent thoughts regarding weddings and wedding-planning—and even marriage itself. It's good to know that so many other self-identified feminists chose marriage and pursued wedding planning, and it's good to hear them write about the ups and downs of it. In this post, I will mostly share passages of what moved me from Chloe’s piece and from the comments section. Perhaps in the weeks and months to come I will write more posts on this topic…

Here’s the conflict: As a young feminist, I learned about the history of the heterosexist institution of marriage, about the patriarchal systems that rests on this institution. Chloe writes:

And try as I might, I can’t help thinking of marriage as something that traps women, something that, despite my best efforts, will take away some of my freedoms. Perhaps it’s my personal fear of morphing into a woman I don’t want to be, a woman who doesn’t have the time or energy to prioritize the things that matter most to her, but like some fellow young feminists, I worry about how hypothetical marriage might change me.

Chloe is describing her experience at her cousin’s wedding. She knows her cousin is a feminist who, like Chloe, understands the feminist critiques of marriage and wedding rituals. With that social and self-awareness, what devout feminist would decide to get married? Well, Chloe’s cousin did:

Here they were on a warm July evening, under the chuppah, getting married all the same. Here they were, making this choice together, bringing two families together not for the traditional purposes of sharing wealth and power, but to add new members to each family – a daughter-in-law whom the best man called his “new big sister” and a son-in-law who had already lived for a year under his in-laws’ roof, just like a son.

Marriage can be about something else, something besides a father “giving away” a daughter and a man “gaining ownership” over a woman. Marriage is, when coordinated in a certain way and orchestrated by certain cares and values, about intentional family. Brianna comments:

Marriage needs to be opened up . . . marriage is a way of telling the world, this is my family. This man, or woman, or people, they are my family, even though I’m not their biological relation nor are we connected by adoption . . . and I have only their best interests at heart. And you, my family, should respect that and treat him as your kin too.

Here is the dream I had since my partner and I first started discussing the possibility of a wedding:

One of the nice things about being a feminist is taking shitty institutions that have traditionally given women a raw deal and making them progressive, personalized, and fun.

However, one bride takes on this opportunity to reinvent, and make the wedding personalized in her own feminist way, by not caring “what others think”:

As the “fiance,” I’ve come to discover that, while this role is circumscribed by icky stereotypes, this actually makes me feel more free. The fact that women in these roles are damned if you do, damned if you don’t anyway means that you can do anything you want . . . because we are trying our darndest not to care what others think, it’s much easier.

Part of my challenge in planning my own wedding is that I do care what others think. I profoundly care what my partner thinks, and I care what my partner’s parents think, and I care what my parents think. I even care about what my friends think. I especially care about what my brother thinks. I want people to enjoy our wedding, and also to feel comfortable. At the same time, I want us to be able to express ourselves. But our wedding will not be an expression of only our own values. Since we want our wedding to be about family, our families (and friends-who-are-family) are critical parts of the process of planning and creating this celebration. So it’s not just mine, or mine-and-my partner’s. In an ironic twist, the very value that Chloe identifies as redeeming the wedding as a process to be reclaimed by feminists—family—also means that our wedding will be a little less explicitly “feminist” in favor of incorporating our family in key ways. I know more than anything that it will be a wedding of feminists—but what would qualify it as a “feminist wedding”?

I am a Feminist (Finally!)

I write this piece in honor of International Women’s Day and Feminist Coming Out Day.

I am a feminist, but I didn’t always call myself one.

I didn’t call myself a feminist in kindergarten when I told the boy down the street that we should have a playdate, even though he thought I wouldn’t like anything he liked since I was a girl. I said, I have dinasours and we could play with those.

I didn’t call myself a feminist in third grade when the boys organized a soccer game during recess, and I said I wanted to play. They were confused, but I had been playing soccer for years, and I insisted.

I didn’t call myself a feminist in seventh grade when some of my friends started pinching their bellies and saying they felt fat. I thought they were weird (and gorgeous).

I didn’t call myself a feminist in tenth grade when the boys on the track team teased me about another boy and without missing a beat I told them to stop it, seriously, not cool and not okay.

I didn’t even call myself a feminist in eleventh grade when I learned to teach workshops about how sexist jokes and reinforcing gender stereotypes lead to sexual harassment and violence against women. Because I thought to myself well, the gender binary is the problem. Separating women and men into different categories is inherently detrimental, and we should just destroy the binary and discard the categories. The exact wording of the label “feminist” didn’t seem to allow for that.

I didn’t call myself a feminist until college. I didn’t call myself a feminist until I was an undergraduate at Columbia University and campus organizing against sexual violence was based at a women’s center at Barnard College (an all women’s college): The Columbia/ Barnard Rape Crisis/ Anti-Violence Support Center. I was, I admit, upset that the work I wanted to do was in such a place because I thought, since high school, that the binary was the problem and that this structure would reinforce it. But my training as a peer educator at Columbia/ Barnard challenged me to grapple with the tensions inherent to feminist activism: yes, the gender binary is a problem and yes, we need to advocate for the rights of women—both, and. And, females, in our society face different socialization pressures, different emotional education, different kinds of sexualization than males face. And, females are more likely to be sexually abused or assaulted than males are. And, males are more likely to perpetrate sexual abuse or assault than females are, because we live in a patriarchal society and are immersed in rape culture and an epidemic of physical, sexual, social, emotional, and economic violence against women and girls.

And, I am a feminist.

I am a feminist because I listened to stories, and I read books, and I spoke with mentors and friends. And I grappled with the truth: we cannot truly get rid of the gender binary without also working to get rid of sexism. We cannot truly achieve gender liberation, sexual freedom, or economic prosperity until we tackle the patriarchy head-on and transform rape culture into a culture of personal agency, mutual consent, and universal human rights. Yes, I believe all humans are real humans, and I believe we need to protect the fundamental human rights of all humans. That’s why I’m a feminist. Finally.

Better, Bolder, Hotter

First: watch this video.

Lyrics here.

Rebecca Drysdale made this video for Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project, and I hereby dub this video my favorite thing on the Internet. I challenge you to find something online that I will love more than this video–seriously, go for it.

I love so many things about this video.

It’s hot and fun and funny.
Having fun has a very important role to play in the process of enjoying and promoting sex positivity. After all, sex is about pleasure and ecstasy and just plain feeling that. Watching this video makes me feel good. Pleasure is an important theme throughout the video—what the youth find pleasurable, what adults find pleasurable. In addition, the video itself provides an opportunity for us (the viewers) to enjoy the pleasures of the entertainment media—comedy, music, and dance.

It makes me want to throw a dance party.
I have been searching for sex positive hip-hop and pop music for many years now. This song promotes positive messages about queerness, community, and sexual empowerment. What other song would you rather dance you? (Read: another challenge for you to post sex positive links in the comment section.)

It is an active, multidimensional demonstration of how better it can get.
She did not just tell us that it gets better–she proved it by making this video. We can see that she is a smart, talented, edgy, hilarious young artist. She also shows the personal, professional, and sexual confidence necessary to sing loud and proud a plethora of explicit sexual slang and anti-gay slurs effectively used to communicate a clear positive message. Furthermore, she has a community. You heard her at the end–there were over 50 people involved in making the video! They embrace her artistic talents and demonstrate their support of her sexual identity. If that’s not better, I don’t know what is.

Special shout outs to Rebecca Drysdale, The It Gets Better Project, and The Trevor Project for their ongoing support of LBGTQ youth. Thank you!

The Gender Jungle Gym

What is gender? Without using gender categories like boy, girl, woman or man, the term is hard to define. Here's my attempt:

• Gender is a structure of social systems that teach, elicit and reward different behaviors from different people depending on a person's sex classification, age, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Historically, the systems of gender have been structured according to two boxes, one bound as boy/man and the other as girl/woman.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

The idea of gender as a box, a role, a stereotype is familiar to many of us. We often feel nudged, shove, or pressured into these boxes, resulting in alienation from ourselves and from each other.

And there's potential for something better.

Sometimes I like to think of myself as on a gender jungle gym. I use my upper body strength to pull myself out of the box, and I swing my body around in order to perch on top, pause, and view the horizon. From here, I can see all of you pull yourselves up and swing yourselves around, from sports to skirts to tears to engineering. Sometimes graceful, sometimes awkward, you are consistently courageous. You inspire me, and I want to know your stories. I want to know how you feel.

I invite you and encourage you to post in the comments section and tell some of your stories, some of your feelings about the gender boxes and the gender spectrums and the gender jungle gyms that structure our lives.

I've been away so long...

I have been steeped in grad school applications (and my job), and I'm really sorry I haven't posted in so long! Here are a few thoughts, really briefly:

I just read a fabulous post on Feministing.com about sexist humor. It really gets to the core of why I protest offhand comments, jokes, and yes, it specifically mentions the ever-sexist Family Guy.

I'm beginning to enjoy the New York Times Style section more and more. I highly recommend a recent article about young adults increasingly popular androgynous clothing styles, and an article from a few weeks ago about high school students dressing in clothes more often attributed to a different gender.

In terms of my own job and my own thoughts... What can we do about sexual harassment on the middle school schoolbus? How can we create systems that support safety and accountability? How can we work to teach past and potential perpetrators new behaviors? How can we help the students who have been targeted and the other students who fear being targeted? This problem is far bigger than individual incidents, and the schools and bus monitors need to treat it as such.

I'll start writing more frequently, and in more depth, in January. Thank you for your patience! Meanwhile... your responses to my brief ideas would be much loved!