Aj Schwanz

As of 2005, federal funding was denied to all public school sex education programs except for those advocating abstinence until marriage. Consequently, a disturbing percentage of young people are equipped with nothing but G-strings and Jenna Jameson to guide them through the roiling sea of hormones they are entering, and all the attendant dangers of STDs and pregnancy that are its sharks. Our national love of porn and pole dancing is not the byproduct of a free and easy society with an earthy acceptance of sex. It is a desperate stab at freewheeling eroticism in a time and place characterized by intense anxiety. What are we afraid of? Everything . . . which includes sexual freedom and real female power. (199-200)

I just finished reading Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy, and man: is my heart heavy.

The book, a bright pink cover with the sillouette of the girls you see on mudflaps, takes a look at the new kind of “empowered woman” - Playboy bunnies, Girls Gone Wild participants, bois versus butch, and other “liberated” women who laugh about porn, advocate “shopping for sex,” and somewhat have a bad taste for the roots of feminism thinking it was taken too seriously. A look was taken at the history of feminism and how far our society has come from the ideals espoused at the beginning:

Instead of advancing the causes of the women’s liberation movement or the sexual revoluation, the obdurate prevalence of raunch in the mainstream has diluted the effect of both sex radicals and feminists, who’ve seen their movement’s images popularized while their ideals are forgotten. As Candida Royalle said, “We’ve become a heavily sexualized culture, but it’s consumerism and sex rolled into one. Revolutionary movements tend to be co-opted — swallowed up by the mainstream and turned into pop culture. It’s a way of neutralizing it, when you think about it . . . it makes it all safe and palatable, it shuts up the radicals. Once that happens, the real power is pretty much dissipated.” (196)

How many revolutionary movements is that true of? Ouch.

My heart aches for the women the author interviewed as I read their confident and careless words: did they realize what they were saying? Did they see the holes in their stories? Not free, but chained to an image that culture has created.

And I can’t help but be discouraged when thinking about sending my son out into such a world. Already my husband and I have had many conversations about education: I find fear creeping into many of my thoughts. I *hate* thinking, “What educational experience will cause my son the least amount of damage?” rather that “What educational experience will help my son become the man that God created him to be” - because secretly in my heart I don’t believe such a place exists.

Some friends of mine are working on bringing awareness to and helping eliminate the sex trade industry in Thailand. I wonder about those trapped in the sex trade here - those “confident, sexually-liberated” women walking around right in front of our eyes.

If we believed that we were sexy and funny and competent and smart, we would not need to be like strippers or like men or like anyone other than our own, specific, individual selves. (200)

The chains are harder to see, but still there. Identity in God: it’s SO life-determining to have an identity rooted in God. Where do you see evidence of these chains?