This article about sex really depressed me

[Caligula]

\link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1753327,00.html\here}

And made me think we need a new dose of feminist conscious-raising. I'm aghast to think my DD will grow up in a world where she's expected to do this mechanical sex and wax her pubes and be treated like a whore as a normal dating experience.

Come back Mary Whitehouse, all is forgiven

ps the idea of Jordan being an 'icon' is risible - she is just thick, as well as made up of plastic and silicone.Who , with a modicum of grey matter, could possibly want to aspire to someone who represents complete artificiality?

yep, a seriously depressing article. all this about waxing seems me to be a cunning way to create a "problem" - women having pubic hair, stone the crows, to which, never fear there is a commercial solution - going to salons, buying home products etc.

Very powerful paragraph mt - respect!

agree carmenere, but i think it is also a way of legitimising ever increasing tastes for under age girls and - dare I say it - paeedophilia.

sorry, meatnt I agree with Italianjob ( although with carmenere too!)

jordan is not thick. sorry.

actually, I almost started a MN thread a couple of weeks ago, asking if people thought that there had been a quiet sexual revolution during the 90s.

what struck me particularly strongly was women's thoughts about one night stands. In my experience in the 80s, a one night stand was what happened when a man let you down. It wasnt till the end of the 90s that I came across women who went admitted that they were going out looking for casual sex.

guardian article seems to reflect this shift.

I found this article depressing too. The stuff about the teenage girls particularly , but also the boys and young men saying that they still woudln't want to go out with someone they had a one night stand with. So on one hand they want to have porn star sex with women with no bodyhair who will do anything but they wouldn't be girlfriend material. It seems to be something from a much earlier age. I thought attitudes had changed.

fgs - men havent changed. Anyone who swallows received wisdom about the sexual revolution does so at their own peril.

I think that that article was shocking, and far too true.

I am 21 and at university and at the end of every single night at a club you just see loads of girls/boys desperately looking round for someone, anyone to shag and its so depressing. I actually stopped going to one club night (at the union) because I couldn't move without somebody acosting me for sex. If I go into town with female friends, we are constantly shouted at, stared at and groped. Telling someone you are not interested doesn't seem to work, they just carry on groping, this has got worse since I started going out at 15.

I have a serious boyfriend and I am seen as strange and wrong because I am starting to plan a life with him. Nobody so far as congratulated me on our plans to get married, in fact all I hear is that I will never have sex with anyone else again. Thats ok with me!

I was horrifed when I discovered that most of my friends in long term relationships had cheated many many times. It was seen as normal and ok. I was the only person to express my disgust when my friend considered an affair with a married man, everyone else congratulated her and blamed her boyfriend (a lovely bloke, who was frightened her was loosing her).

My housemate is 19, she started having sex with her boyfriend just after she started uni, and already their sex life is filled with ann summers stuff. She was really surprised that me and my dp don't bother with it that much. She never has sex without dressing up etc. Before my other housemate died we used to sit around and discuss our sex lives graphically and the point was never about love, it was about how much ann summers stuff we used and how porno the whole thing was. I never had much to say! But before I met them I had never considered my sex life boring. The 18 year olds on my nursing course are so different to the 18 year olds I met in 2002 when I started my 1st degree, much more graphic and out there. Although, since coming to uni I have been used to seeing porn, in halls it blasted out of boys rooms, it was shown on the tv in the JC, most of my male friends have it and will happily show it to you. Its just seen as normal.

This is so long! I sound like a prude and I am not, but I have been so shocked by going back into first yr at uni!

Smurfgirl - so interesting (and terrifying)

I can't imagine many of your friends finding satisfaction in a life-long relationship (where most of us will end up with very little sex)

Two of my favourite quotes:

"Literature is 99% about sex and 1% about having children. Life is the other way rond."

• David Lodge

"At the end of what is called the "sexual life" the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship."

• Graham Greene

That is interesting smurfgirl. When I started university (7 years ago) I don't think it was as bad as that at all, although people were very into one night stands. So perhaps the situation is ever worsening.

MP what brilliant quotes.

I have just read the article in Guardian Weekend and came on here hoping there was a thread on it! (I'm always days behind...)

The thing that really shocked me was the bit i the article about the boy who lost his virginity at 8. Eight FGS!!! Mt DS1 is six and the thought of him in two years time having sex is just... well I can't even get my head round the idea. He's a little boy! And then having anal sez at 14! None of that can be desire, or love, or closeness, which is what I believe sex should be about...

I agree with the comments about the junior porn wear for little girls - I'm just so glad I don't have girls and have to cope with the peer pressure to wear 'junior babe' type t-shirts and boob tubes when they don't even have boobs. But it's just a junior-fication of the type of t-shirts that many women choose to wear - specifically I'm thinking of the FCUK stuff which is just so sleazy, IMO. Kids will want to do and be what their elders, big brothers and sisters and parents do and are - so why I'm so surprised I don't know.

I agree Wordsmith about the 8 year old boy - very shocking. There was some controversy recently about M&S selling thongs for pre-pubescent girls wasn't there?

I've seen those thongs for 10 year olds... WHY FFS?
It saddens me to see how much 'adult' clothing there is for babies, I like the whole furry boots and jeans look, but I don't particularly want to copy it for my baby.. iyswim!

IMHO children are frequently products of their environment, it doesn't surprise me that there are young people sexually active so early on, primarily because they know no better. Sex should be about passion and affection, but such thoughts require a degree of education and input from adults! So many grown ups behave in exactly the same precarious manner!

As for uni - it is like a cattle market! I was/am horrified. I don't go to the student union any more primarily because I felt like a piece of meat!

It's post-feminism innit?????

Because we acheived everything we needed to to do with boring difficult things like equal pay.. [girly giggle] we didn't like it cos the lads didn't fancy us with our plaited armpits and nasty smelly bodies and wobbly t*ts, so we ditched it all. And now ALL women have to behave like men...but only the really good things that men do, like drinking hugely too much and puking all over the pavement, shagging everything that moves and telling everyone about it and then having fights and happy slapping.

And the only problem with sexuality empowering women is that we have to look a certain way ......and most of us don't. But that's OK 'cos more people are prepared to have surgery to make sure that they do....and barely pubescent girls shave their pits to make themselves socially acceptable And eventually, as only the perfect blow-up doll woman will be able to breed 'cos the rest of us won't get any partners at all of course, kindly evolution will kick in and do the job for us....girl children will be born with ready-made breasts and full-develped sexual organs and will not grow any body-hair. The first words will be 'f*ck me big boy' and 'Yes, yes, yes....' and the world will be perfect.

Oh Emily Pankhurst will be SO proud....

I am going to look out my copies of Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin and Pure Lust by Mary Daly. This had made me soooo mad.....I might even throw away my razer...so there.

this is obviously a parp subject for you joelalie

Nooooo! Whatever gave you that idea....

I do tend to get carried away....