I've decided that adolescent girls vary enormously in their sexual, or libidinous, natures. I thought about it all the time, ached for it, before I even understood precisely what the yearning was for.
Don't you think there's a good argument for a girl learning something about the emotional events that can be triggered by sexual feelings before she's old enough to conclude she ought to get married right away, so awash is she in emotion?
I'm not talking about boys. I tend to think it's at a much lower level of intensity with them. The sex/emotions link, I mean. It's a big argument, and Barbara Ehrenreich, Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin would disagree that there was any great difference, I think.
I don't know if we would have been less, er, latitudinarian (LOL, melinda!) raising a girl, if we had been given that opportunity, than we were raising a son. I do know that the repressive sexual approach of my parents was not good at all, it created unhappiness and guilt and self loathing, which was cruel and unfair; and I would have felt like a success if my daughter had turned out as well as my son did, emotionally. |
