Something IS Wrong With Today’s Kids!

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Clarissa

November 14, 2012

The content of the essays, however, is a different thing altogether. In the very first essay, a student, a 20-year-old woman, refers to a character, a 20-year-old woman, as “promiscuous.” The character in question has a boyfriend. There is absolutely nothing else that might qualify her as promiscuous. If having a boyfriend at the age of 20 makes one promiscuous then I’m kind of scared. What is one supposed to do at this age not to be called a slut? Not have a boyfriend? Get married to a guy the second you meet him?

Jeez, women, when will you stop interiorizing these idiotic messages?

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11 responses to “Something IS Wrong With Today’s Kids!”

thevenerablecorvex

November 14, 2012

Maybe she doesn’t actually know what “promiscuous” means.

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1. Luna
  
  November 14, 2012
  
  Haha that’s the first thing that occurred to me when I read this post! thevenerableconvex beat me to it.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    November 14, 2012
    
    After my students told me a female character is a prostitute because she has sex with a man who is not her husband and that it follows that she has to be accepting money for sex because why else would she have sex with him (even though there wasn’t anything of the kind in the text), nothing will surprise me.
    
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2. bloggerclarissa
  
  November 14, 2012
  
  Oh, I so hope you are right. Do you think it has become interchangeable with “sexually active” for some people?
  
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  1. thevenerablecorvex
    
    November 14, 2012
    
    Not in any usage that I’ve ever heard, but then I am not hip the lingo of today’s youth.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      November 14, 2012
      
      I was thinking more along the lines of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh lingo. Like when he said that Sandra Fluke is a slut for wanting to use birth control.
      
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Dame Eleanor Hull

November 15, 2012

It’s not only today’s kids, although I think it may have something to do with “kids,” that is, late-adolescent black-and-white thinking. I started teaching Arthurian literature to college students 25 years ago—you know, Arthur, Lancelot, Guenevere, the Round Table—and for 25 years I have had to explain what words like “slut,” “whore,” “promiscuous” and “prostitute” actually mean, and to point out that Guenevere, while married to Arthur, has one lover, Lancelot, to whom she has been faithful throughout her life. That is, this is not a brief fling, but a relationship of some 20 years’ duration. The 20-year-olds remain bitterly judgmental. But once I had “returning” students of 30 and up, their understanding of the situation was considerably more nuanced. I think it’s a question of life experience. Once your students get some, Clarissa, they may lighten up.

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Lindsay

November 19, 2012

What is one supposed to do at this age not to be called a slut?

I’ve come to suspect there is nothing you can do. That word, and other words like it, are remarkably stretchy. I’ve noticed they can encompass any woman (or girl) the speaker wants them to.

You don’t even have to have had sex.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  November 19, 2012
  
  I know. This is a way of condemning women simply for existing. And it is extremely frustrating to see young women use it so carelessly.
  
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  1. Lindsay
    
    November 19, 2012
    
    It took me a ridiculously long time to see that “slut” wasn’t actually a real thing, that you can objectively define. I actually credit the Slutwalk protests with helping me understand that! (Which would’ve meant I finally grasped this concept at the age of 28. So even if your students are quicker on the uptake than I was, they might still not be there yet.)
    
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  2. musteryou
    
    November 19, 2012
    
    Lindsay: “It took me a ridiculously long time to see that “slut” wasn’t actually a real thing, that you can objectively define.”
    
    Nothing is anything you can define, anymore. That is one of the essential characteristics of contemporary life. The sooner we learn this,the better.
    
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