At just 2 we already find ourselves telling others that the things they think are correct behavior and thinking patterns need not be pushed on our daughter.
We don’t want her to have all the zillions of hangups and shames the majority of the world seems to have to live with. It is a hard battle.

Rather than giving antidepressant drugs out to everybody in America we should be trying to figure out how to raise children that wont need them.

My parents never talked to me about sex or about menstruation or masturbation (which was forbidden anyway). I think if they had or been more approachable, then maybe I could have had a better chance to avoid some particularly bad experiences I had with sex and relationships.

If parent’s can’t talk to their daughters about this biological inevitability, how can we possibly hope that they will give them access to information about sexuality, etc…

Because that is how I feel so much anymore, and this is my JOB, rather than my doing parenting. I imagine it’s got to be infinitely more crazymaking as a parent right now.

I confess, this is one of many reasons why I didn’t reproduce. Health and other things aside, I felt like the only way I could parent (especially girls) and not lose my mind over things like this was to find a way to raise kids in rural France. Which none of us can afford, so.

But I fear that the dominant culture will over-power my message and that my brave, bright 4-year-old who is 100% at home in her body right now will be hating it in only a few short years. We already talk about marketing and how colors aren’t for boys or girls but for everyone. And she’s taking karate, the only girl in her class! All of these things I hope are protective factors. But I still live in fear that it will be an uphill battle.

Thank you for what you do. Rest assured that I will be sending my girls your way when they’re old enough!

And YES on this: “The mainstream feminist movement (Emily’s List, et al) abandoned sex education and progressive sexual agendas, period…. the fundamentalists set the entire tone for the past thirty years, and pop culture/advertising took all the sizzle and turned into plastic sauce.” I’ve never seen that articulated that way and YES. Freaking yes.

And yeah, I know, items one and two are all shiny and new. Yay. Ugh.

Thanks for keeping me company.

I have never even written a list like this down, because I get so upset I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve been on the soapbox, for so long, SINCE I WAS THEIR AGE, and you know what?

It’s worse. My high school years were like a feminist bohemian utopia compared to what I see across my street today.

The mainstream feminist movement (Emily’s List, et al) abandoned sex education and progressive sexual agendas, period…. the fundamentalists set the entire tone for the past thirty years, and pop culture/advertising took all the sizzle and turned into plastic sauce.

Do you want fries with that?

The first two things you listed, as I’m sure you know, didn’t exist in the 70s. And now it’s my daughter’s generation. Also the overly-neurotic “id” thinking you mentioned.

it’s harder to have an honest, down to earth, frank sexual discussion in “the public square” today than it has been in my entire life as an activist. The kind of stuff scarleteen and you do, Heather, it’s like the frickin’ Underground Railroad.