Why I Wouldn’t Want My Son to Get Off on Watching Women Eat Feces

Last week, I wrote a blog post called “Two Girls, One Cup, and Your Kids”. In that post, I had the audacity to suggest that the Two Girls, One Cup video (and others like it) might not be the best possible material for our middle-schoolers to be viewing. I’d learned, quite by accident, that a lot of young kids in my area had been viewing this video, and was pretty sure that their parents had no idea. My primary concern was that these kids—some of them as young as 11—were as-yet unformed in their sexuality and just exploring and beginning to understand their own interests and inclinations.

The varied response was very interesting: a clinical psychologist talked about how early exposure to this kind of thing could have a lifelong impact on how a girl viewed her own sexuality and what she thought was expected of her; parents talked about the internet protections they had in place; and a surprising number of people suggested that I was a totalitarian right-wing lunatic who wanted to repress everyone’s sexuality and possibly kill them. One gentleman, whose knowledge of history is apparently a bit shaky, suggested that I probably thought homosexuals should be “gassed like the Jews”—I guess he wasn’t aware that homosexuals were also on Hitler’s hit list.

The general gist of the outraged comments I received was that a person’s sexuality was his own business and it said something negative about me if I didn’t think it was just fine if our kids were influenced by things like Two Girls, One Cup and grew up thinking that women eating feces and vomit was hot. Let me cop right off to the fact that I don’t think those particular “tastes” are “normal”. In no way shape or form am I going to try to tell you that I think that’s a choice that’s “just as valid as any other” or any such thing. I do, however, believe that what consenting adults do in private—assuming that it’s truly consensual—is their own business.

Apparently, some folks felt that my desire not to have our children’s sexual development influenced by this sort of material was inconsistent with the idea that what adults do in private is their business.

Children. Adults.

Get the difference?

Seems like not, so here’s the thing: you may find it hard to understand why, if I wouldn’t condemn an adult for doing something, I’d want to help a child avoid going down that same path. Frankly, that’s just stupid. It’s every adult’s own business, for instance, whether or not he smokes—but we don’t encourage our children to start smoking. And while those of you in the “you probably want to burn people with sex lives at stake” camp are probably fairly popping out of your chairs right now yelling that we ALL KNOW that smoking is bad for you, and you can’t compare that to someone’s sexual choices…

Nonsense.

Here are just a few of the reasons that I wouldn’t want my son (or anyone else’s) to be influenced by something like Two Girls, One Cup and decide that it was really hot when chicks ate feces and vomited:

1. Eating feces is a serious health hazard. I’d hate for my son (or anyone’s) to be in the position of needing to jeopardize someone else’s health and well-being to satisfy his sexual desires.

2. This kind of activity can be damaging to a woman’s self-esteem and even mental health. Argue away, but it’s a well-documented fact, and I would hate to see someone I loved responsible for that.

3. Most of the population doesn’t participate in this sort of activity; I’ve had at least one comment that suggested I should speak for myself and this was a puritanical view, but it’s a simple fact. Most people don’t eat shit for sexual gratification. That means that a boy who does develop these proclivities is limiting his relationship possibilities or setting himself up for conflict in his relationships, perhaps for the rest of his life.

The other argument I received was that kids just weren’t going to see this as sexual. Right. An adolescent boy watching two naked chicks make out—possibly seeing such a thing for the first time—would never associate that with sex, right? And the vulgarity of the feces consumption would ensure that he was far too grossed out to have any kind of physiological response to those naked chicks making out. Right. And sexuality isn’t influenced by our early sexual reactions AT ALL. Right?

Come on.

Two Girls, One Cup, and Your Kids

Last week, I took a trip across the country with a great bunch of middle-class suburban kids ages 11-14. Over the course of four days, Two Girls, One Cup was mentioned more than once. There were, mercifully, some kids who didn’t know what it was—but there were others willing to fill them in. A troubling number seemed to have actually watched the video. (If you have the good fortune not to know what I’m talking about, follow the link above—or suffice to say that the video sexualizes both the consumption of solid human waste and vomit.)

If I’d overheard one of these conversations in a public place, I think I would have engaged in that kind of wishful distancing that many of us employ instinctively when a child disappears—blame the parents, and that will mean that as long as I do everything right, my child is safe. The thing is, I know these kids and I know their parents, and while none of us are perfect these aren’t disaffected rich kids raised by nannies or latchkey kids whose single moms are working two jobs and forced to leave them alone too much. This is the heartland: family vacations, volunteering at the schools, homework before dinner.

And somewhere in the mix, a little Internet porn.

Two Girls, One Cup (and its ilk), it seems, has become the new millennium equivalent of sneaking a peek at dad’s Playboy…except it isn’t equivalent at all. Playboy sexualized pretty women in various stages of undress—something we might not have wanted shared with our sons too early, but that largely represented what they would eventually discover and experience. Not so Two Girls, One Cup and the like, which sexualize things most people never do—or never did, in the era when getting risqué meant sneaking a peek at Playboy.

The associations formed in the early days of sexuality are powerful and lasting, and there is no question that our kids are getting very different messages about what is sexy and sexual than the ones we were exposed to in our youth. Adolescent boys are going to react to naked women kissing one another—and if those women happen to be incorporating feces and vomit into their make-out session, those images and associations are going to get confused. Sexual triggers will develop where they don’t for most people (or didn’t in the past).

I suspect that we can’t avoid this entirely, any more than parents 50 years ago could prevent their adolescents from spying on the neighbor lady when she bathed or looking at the pictures their older brothers hid under the mattress. But the risk is something entirely different today, and access is a thousand times easier than it was even ten or fifteen years ago.

We all need internet filters, no matter how good our kids are. They’re also curious and subject to the buzz that gets going about something like this. We all need to be aware; parents of today’s adolescents cover a large age-range and have different degrees of familiarity with the Internet. Know what’s out there, and how readily available it is. You can read all about Two Girls, One Cup on Wikipedia, for instance. And we need to talk to our kids about more than how to avoid pregnancy and STDs. Uncomfortable as it might be for everyone involved, they need to know that there’s a wide range of healthy, loving sexual activity that doesn’t involve the sorts of images they’re seeing: images that may, for some, be the first exposure to explicitly sexual material.

NOTE: For those in the "you're a neo-fascist totalitarian" camp, please see my follow-up post: Why I Wouldn't Want My Son to Get Off on Watching Women Eat Feces

Blogs that Appall Me, # 2

It's been almost a year since I wrote my first Blogs that Appall Me post. As I said then, I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I was hesitant to provide links and publicity to a blog I found appalling, and pointing out the negative is generally only useful if it leads to some kind of productive action--this didn't seem like it would. So, after that initial post, I let the idea languish. But I've once again run across a blog that so horrifies me that I just can't keep my mouth shut.

Today's nominee is called "WTF Are We Going to Do Now?" It's about having a baby, and it's NOT tongue-in-cheek.

Before I go on, let me remind you that the Internet is forever. Our kids are stuck with what we've written, whether that means someone Googling their names and turning up information they'd rather have kept private or it means making ugly discoveries themselves. We've all seen movies in which some adolescent child hears a story or stumbles across an old letter or journal entry and discovers that the circumstances of his birth weren't what he thought. But tomorrow's kids won't even have to work that hard.

Brad's child, for instance, will only have to visit the "about Brad" page (or the version of it that's archived on the Wayback Machine or some other archiving site) to learn that his father was "not excited about this baby" but had decided to "do his best" to love it since that's "a father's job". Just what every kid wants to hear, don't you think?

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt on referring to his upcoming child as "the new pet". I'm hoping that's just a matter of concealing the news from their older child until he's ready to share.

Brad's wife, Katy, is a little softer. She only refers to this new child as her biggest "life interruption". And she gives her husband props for "giving up most of what he wanted to do with his life" in order to support her and their existing child. My first reaction to that was just a wave of pity for her and that child, to feel that they were an onerous obligation that kept this man from the life he wanted instead of...you know...BEING the life he wanted. But then I thought a little further, and I couldn't even make sense out of it.

You see, in another post, Brad shares that he's been a stay-at-home dad for almost ten years. Apparently at the moment both parents are at home, but he's hoping the wife will go back to work soon. Based on his ten years of experience, he offers all kinds of sage advice about how it's our responsibility as parents to suck it up and pretend that we're enjoying time with our kids when we'd rather be playing xbox.

I have to admit that I feel a little sorry for Brad and Katy. When my daughter came tumbling into my life (also unexpected, and at a very bad time for both medical and financial reasons) it was like a little piece of the sun had unexpectedly landed in my house and just stayed around lighting the place up and spreading warmth. It's painful to think that there are parents who are so focused on what they're giving up that they can't take that kind of joy from their children. But it's all the more troubling that they choose to share it with the world and, ultimately, probably with their children.

For once in my life, I'm glad to see a deluge of full-page pop-up ads. Maybe people will give up before they get to the actual text, and the bots won't be able to wade through the crap and archive these atrocities.

Out of the Mouths of Babes - Sarah Palin

As we were leaving a store this afternoon, my 12-year-old daughter pointed out a headline saying that Lindsey Lohan and her girlfriend were having a baby. Now that I have a 12-year-old, I know a lot more than I ever expected (or wanted) to about teenage celebrities, but when she talks, I listen and engage. She's an adolescent, and opportunities may be limited.

I mentioned that I'd heard Lohan had been blogging about Sarah Palin, and the tone sounded positive.

"Why am I not surprised?" my daughter asked.

That surprised ME. "I'm very surprised," I told her. You know, Sarah Palin is very conservative and religious..."

"But," my daughter cut in, in that well, DUH tone of voice, "she's a wack job.

Identity politics at work again?

Everything I Ever Really Needed to Know...Part II

This evening, since the duck fiasco was on my mind, I tossed out a "hypothetical" to my eleven-year-old daughter.

"If you were babysitting," I asked her (even though she's not quite old enough to babysit yet), "and you took the kid shopping in a stroller, and when you got home you discovered a toy from the store in the stroller, what would your options be?"

"Well," she said, "you could take it back. You could keep it, but that's not a very good choice. Or, if the kid was a little older, like about three, you could take him back to the store with the toy and explain so he'd know you have to pay for things."

Moment of silence. "That's all I've got. No, wait. You could PAY for it."

So.

Um.

My eleven-year-old is better equipped to raise a child than a hundred or so screaming adults in the "mommy blogging" community. And they said there was no hope for the next generation!

So I'm not a Big Fan of Blogs...But I love Disney Princesses

Let's overlook for a moment the fact that I have five personal blogs and eight professional ones. It's all in a day's work, mostly. I'm not a big fan of blogs. That is, I don't get why a lot of the people who blog blog, and I don't get why a lot of people who talk all the time about how they don't like to blog start blogs, and I REALLY don't get why people read blogs. I mean, industry blogs are one thing. Blogs that provide commentary on recent developments in your field, blogs that provide little informational bulletins about things you need to know about...that I get. I guess if you're a teenager and your favorite rock star has a blog and you don't realize that he actually pays some PR person to write the blog for him and doesn't even know what it says, then you might have an inclination to read the blog. But just wandering the internet reading about how other bloggers burned their toast this morning or had a revelation while stuck in traffic or wish they'd remembered to kiss their husbands goodbye?

Um.

Yeah.

This evening, though, I ran across a blog post about Disney Princesses.

Let me just say that I have deep appreciation for Disney Princesses. DEEP. It's not that I especially like them (or even that I did when I was a child). It probably comes as no surprise to you that I'm not much of a romantic. "Someday My Prince Will Come" is not exactly my theme song. I find happily ever after sort of unlikely, and there's a part of me that thinks it would be sort of cloying even if it turned out to be true. Okay, a big part.

So why the love of Disney Princesses?

It's not the gowns (though I really like the pink one Cinderella has on BEFORE the fairy godmother got involved...I always thought her own dress was better than the magical one).

And it's not the veracity for sure, because I've ALWAYS been bothered by the fact that everything ELSE turned back to what it was before at midnight, but the glass slippers remained. Oh, sure, I told myself it was because they were the only wholly created item, while everything else was some other item or creature in disguise, but I didn't really buy it.

It's this: I have an eleven-year-old daughter. Eleven. You know, BALANCED ON THE VERY FINE LINE BETWEEN CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE? And she loves Disney Princesses. She's occasionally tempted by Green Day posters and such, but thus far she has eschewed them in favor of keeping her room Pink. Princess comforter, outrageously priced (but gorgeous) Princess blinds, Princess sheets, Princess lamp, Princess posters, some....Princess THING I can't even identify that scrolls Cinderella and the Prince across a lighted background. You get the picture. And it's a picture of a little girl's room, at least for a minute longer. It's a picture of such excitement over Cinderella III that I end up letting her open the DVD the night before her birthday so we can watch it while it's still the weekend. It's a picture of a child/teen who sometimes tries to get out of the house in make-up, but sometimes plays INSIDE in a tiara with a magic wand.

I'm a fan of Princesses, and especially Cinderella, whom I have always preferred in her apron with her hair loose and her head covered by a scarf. Frankly, until I saw this blog today, I didn't even know that the Princesses were under attack. But this lady, whomever she might be, has it covered. I don't even have to defend those Princesses. And even more surprising, I found myself reading the post before...and the one before that.

So the thing is...knitting is ruining the world

A year or so ago, my sister took up knitting in earnest. If you're having visions of those "lovely" afghans grandma used to make everyone for Christmas...add a factor of ten. For a long time, she knitted only prayer shawls. Then she taught my daughter to knit. The two of them set to work knitting hats for homeless infants (I swear), which was nice, and when my sister would babysit for me I'd come home to find them both asleep in my living room, cuddling their knitting needles--which was not so nice.

Time passed. The knitting continued, but the fervor died down. And then I got a Christmas letter from an old friend, and he mentioned that his wife--a government lawyer--was running a yarn co-op. I made a conscious decision not to think through what that might be.

But this morning, the line was crossed. I'm a big fan of humor columnist Barb Cooper. I know, I know--she's awfully positive for a girl like me, but what can I say? She's smart and she's a mom, and she has an incredible way of pointing out the humor, the irony, and even the hope in those little moments we tend to gloss right over in life.

Until today.

This morning, I dropped by the So the Thing Is Blog (which, I might add, I was DELIGHTED to see being regularly updated for the first time in...ever), and...

it was about knitting.

Not the whole blog, of course, but there are. Um. Photographs of yarn.

I blame the Yarn Harlot.