I love reading the paper. I’ve written about that fact several times on this blog. Perhaps my favorite part of reading the paper is reading the in-depth reporting. Each day there are long-form articles that have been worked on extensively over a prolonged period of time. These exposes are journalism at its finest. Since October, we’ve collectively been discussing sexual harassment and assault due to this type of reporting.
The daily flow of allegations is grotesque. They’re not really all that shocking, especially in our desensitized culture. The fact is, we’ve been living in a fantasy and now just might be the time for us to start waking up.
The fantasy that has consumed us for the past 40 years is that sex has nothing to do with marriage. Birth control, the sexual revolution, garbage media, and pervasive pornography has poisoned the well. Only now are we seeing the long-term effects of this sexual binge.
We start by failing to give our children the personalized sexual education that they need. Our daughters are put on hormonal contraceptives and taught that they should use sex as power. Our sons have easy access to condoms and are taught that they should do what feels good. The Internet filters that we have are ineffective, and even places like Twitter and Instagram are filled with pornographic material. And we haven’t even made it out of high school. Add in the freedom of adulthood, and things get wild.
The thing is, the responses that we’re getting to this culture do nothing to seriously address the underlying problems. It’s like a physician telling a morbidly obese patient to exercise more. The problem isn’t the weight, it’s the depression, the broken home, and long-term unemployment. We can’t treat the symptom and hope to change the equation.
We have a society of chaos. There’s little regard for human life, no compassion, no empathy. We can’t even agree on the number of genders. The net result is that we’re hurting ourselves and darkening our souls. It’s this chaos that leads to a fantasy world where giving our daughters contraceptives is the noble and responsible choice, and men should act out whenever they choose, because they can’t help themselves.
There is such a thing as safe sex. It happens within the context of marriage for the purposes of unity and procreation. It’s the type of sex that actually has a concrete connection with love. It’s an act of supreme humility, instead of a power struggle. It’s trusting dependance. All of this context is present, even when it feels so ordinary.
If we really want a just society in which men and women are treated as equals, we need to separate sex and power. We need to put sex back into the context of the marital bond. We need to teach our daughters and sons about the truth of their sexuality, and why it should be cherished and celebrated. We need to teach our daughters that their reproductive system isn’t disordered, that their fertility is a gift. We need to teach our children about the true corrosive nature of pornography. We need to empower our sons and our daughters to love people and and not use them as objects. We need to love our children enough to give them the tools and knowledge that they need to be fully alive.
If we do that, across an entire generation, maybe we can give them that utopia that we dream of.
Tags: Sexuality
