Sara Pursley knew something was amiss. She had volunteered to create a Web site for “An American Gulag,” a book that investigates (and denounces) the fast-growing phenomenon of private boarding schools for “defiant teens”: schools that specialize in breaking the will of “hard core, acting-out” teenagers; schools where punitive “behavior modification” is the norm; schools that isolate teens from their families and friends; schools that require parents to authorize the use of mace and pepper spray on their own children.
For Pursley, the issue was personal: Her own brother had narrowly avoided being consigned to one such school.
One of Pursley’s goals was to get the “Gulag” Web site highly ranked by the Net’s big search engines. The Internet has become a major source of information for desperate upper-middle-class parents locked in battle with their troubled teenagers. Pursley wanted to make the full text of “An American Gulag” easily available on the Web, to counter the deluge of slick marketing propaganda for the schools — referred to by their advocates as “emotional growth schools” and by their opponents (including some graduates) as “lockups.”
The best way to attract a search engine’s attention is to label your Web page with appropriate keywords. But when Pursley began researching to see what kind of results she could generate using specific keywords at search engines like Lycos and Alta Vista, she discovered something peculiar: No matter what word or phrase she tried, the same Web site kept popping up. And not just once, but multiple times — at Lycos, for example, eight of the top 10 hits returned for the words “behavior modification” and “teens” were identical pages belonging to an outfit called Adolescent Services International. To her dismay, Pursley soon found hundreds of cloned Adolescent Services pages.
To the naked eye the pages all looked exactly alike. But a closer examination of the pages’ HTML code revealed a devious techno-trick: Many of the pages contained batches of hundreds of slightly different keywords. They weren’t properly labeled (keywords normally appear as part of hidden “metatags”). They were Trojan-horse keywords — invisible to the normal Web surfer, but laying in wait to ensnare the search engines.
Pursley was furious — and not just because the sneaky code created such a profusion of “decoy pages.” Keyword spamming, referred to in the search engine trade as “spamdexing,” is common on the Web. It isn’t illegal, although the practice is widely regarded as horrid netiquette. Pursley’s problem was with the perpetrator. She had encountered Adolescent Services before.
In her opinion, this purportedly neutral referral site directing parents to “schools for defiant teens” was actually one of the worst desperadoes in a bad bunch. Adolescent Services and its related organization Teen Help marketed a single set of closely affiliated schools located in regions as far flung as Western Samoa and Jamaica. These schools required parents to sign contracts allowing the use of mace, handcuffs and pepper spray on students; employed euphemistically named “escort services” to forcibly transport teenagers from their homes in the middle of the night; and strictly limited all contact between students and their families and friends.
“The spamdexing is obviously a flagrant violation of all search engine guidelines,” says Pursley. “But it is more than that. The whole site is a violation of advertising ethics. For me it’s a lot more relevant than some abstract cyber-issue, because it affects real people’s lives: It misleads people about what options are available for their kids. These schools are absolutely unethical and manipulative from beginning to end — from search engine rules to how they actually treat the kids.”
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“Defiant teen” schools became a national story in late January, when an Oakland, Calif., teenager named David Van Blarigan appealed to legal authorities to get him out of a school in Jamaica named Tranquility Bay. Last November, Van Blarigan had been woken up just past midnight by “two burly men,” whisked away to the Brightway Adolescent Hospital in southern Utah for “evaluation” and then taken to Tranquility Bay. But he managed to call a neighbor while in transit at the Jamaican airport, and the neighbor alerted the Oakland district attorney’s office, which promptly filed a civil petition seeking Van Blarigan’s return. According to the petition, as reported in the New York Times, children with whom Van Blarigan had been placed at Brightway who talked back to staff were knocked to the ground, and “if a minor child became too unruly, a hypodermic needle would be used.”
The Van Blarigan case polarized public opinion regarding these schools. While many parents might blanch at the prospect of sending their children to schools where the practice of handcuffing students is approved official policy, there is also no shortage of parents willing to testify that such schools have saved their children’s lives. Indeed, when Alameda County Judge Ken Kawaichi dismissed the petition, a crowd of some 100 parents broke out into cheers in the courtroom.
Van Blarigan remains in Jamaica, locked behind a high chain-link fence — even though his own parents concede that the teenager didn’t drink or do drugs and had no criminal record. But his case set off a chain of events that has begun to expose just how these schools are administered — and to reveal what critics call their pattern of misrepresentation and unethical marketing practices.
The author of “An American Gulag” is Alexia Parks, president of VoteLink, a company that conducts online polling and advocates incorporating online technology in the democratic process. “Gulag” is a sideline — her account of her own anguished attempts to locate her “disappeared” niece, who had been cut off from the rest of the family after being sent to a fundamentalist school in Missouri by Parks’ sister.
But Parks had no publisher for her book, and had actually just finished printing it out when she heard the news that Oakland Deputy District Attorney Bob Hutchins was bringing the Van Blarigan affair to court. As soon as she learned of the case, says Parks, she called Hutchins and faxed him relevant parts of her research. Hutchins, in return, began referring national media inquiries to Parks, transforming her into an instant media star. Her sudden high profile attracted the attention of Bennett Haselton, a teen activist already renowned in Internet circles for his battles against the censorship agendas implicit in software programs designed to block access to “objectionable” Web pages. Haselton spent a weekend scanning “Gulag” and uploading it online.
Pursley joined the crusade next. A Web developer who earns her living creating high-end “transactional sites” for Wall Street financial corporations, she noticed an article in Time Magazine in which Parks referred to her “online book.” After inspecting it, she immediately offered to upgrade the “Gulag” Web site, clean up the book’s ungainly text formatting and register the site with search engines.
Her discovery of the spamdexing by Adolescent Services International touched a nerve. Six months earlier she had been researching care options for her younger brother, who had been having trouble at school. Like many other concerned relatives and parents, she turned to the Web for help, and soon found the Adolescent Services site. At first glance, it looked promising, offering a wealth of pointers to “schools for defiant teens,” “acute care hospitals,” “residential treatment centers” and “youth escort services.” There was even a brightly colored map of the United States — click on any state, suggested the site, to receive recommendations for an appropriate school or hospital near you.
But no matter what state Pursley clicked on, the page spat out recommendations for the same four schools: Cross Creek Manor in southern Utah, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, Paradise Cove in Western Samoa and Tranquility Bay in Jamaica (Van Blarigan’s destination). Only one hospital was mentioned, the Brightway Adolescent Hospital, also in southern Utah (Van Blarigan’s way station). The lack of options “offended” Pursley, she says — although at the time she didn’t realize just how closely the schools, hospital and Adolescent Services were all linked.
The Adolescent Services site presents itself as a “service” center for parents dealing with “teens in crisis,” with the strong implication that it is unaffiliated with particular schools. But Adolescent Services was founded last year by a man named Narvin Lichfield, who for the previous seven years had been the managing director of Teen Help, the marketing wing of the World Wide Association of Specialty Schools. Who are these “specialty schools”? Precisely those five institutions that the Adolescent Services Web site recommended. Teen Help, in turn, had been founded by Lichfield’s brother, Bob Lichfield, who had also started both Cross Creek Manor and Paradise Cove. In fact, a network of consulting, billing and other marketing operations all based in the same building in St. George, Utah handles most of the administrative tasks for all the schools.
Even strong advocates of the “tough love” approach employed at schools like Cross Creek Manor and Tranquility Bay are leery of the opaque organizational structure of the World Wide Association of Specialty Schools. Tom Croke, who runs his own Web site offering referral services, has visited Paradise Cove, and even referred a student there. But he still questions the lack of accountability inherent in the set-up.
“It has been stated to me over and over again by Narvin Lichfield and others associated with the group that the reason for the convoluted ownership situation is to shield Bob Lichfield from liability,” wrote Croke in a post on a bulletin board he maintains on his Web site “… I know of no other treatment organization which has gone to the great lengths this group has to obfuscate the question of who is legally and morally responsible for the welfare of the children — whether in their stateside facilities or their offshore facilities — and professionally I cannot support that kind of thing. I stress, however, that I have no knowledge of anyone being harmed by them.”
“I have serious concerns about Teen Help,” wrote Croke in another posting, “and now [about] a new organization widely positioning itself on the Internet, sometimes appearing as if they were neutral referral agencies when they have a strong financial interest in maximizing intake at the original Lichfield programs … I don’t object to marketing and advertising; I object strenuously to advertising disguised as neutral advice.”
In an interview, Croke said he has no problem with the educational approach taken at Paradise Cove and Tranquility Bay. He thinks the decision in the Van Blarigan case was correct, and that such schools are an appropriate answer to the problems posed by “hard core acting-out teens.” But he stood by the words he posted on his site.
The ethical quagmire isn’t limited to Web site marketing practices or bizarre corporate shell games, says Thomas Burton, a Pleasanton, Calif., lawyer who is about to bring a suit against Cross Creek Manor on behalf of parents alleging their child had been abused there. The language of the contracts that parents sign is also problematic.
“Typically the contracts are completely misrepresentative,” says Burton, who has successfully won damages from several similar “boot-camp style” organizations. “When the parent signs up a child, the child basically has no more rights at all. And if anything goes wrong, the parent will be responsible, and they usually have no idea.”
A copy of a contract for Tranquility Bay dated last March includes one clause in which “The Sponsor agrees to hold harmless and release the Program, and its staff, from all liability for any injuries, illnesses, or other damages occurring to the student during enrollment in the Program whether on or off the property.” Another clause reads, “When it becomes necessary, in the sole discretion of the Program, to restrain a Student, the Sponsors authorize the Program to use pepper spray (or electrical disabler, mace, mechanical restraints, handcuffs) as means to or alternative to avoid, whenever possible, the potential for injuries, complications, and/or altercations that can arise from the Program staff having to physically restrain or wrestle with the student in order to subdue the student.” And on the last page of the 12-page contract, parents are also required to give Tranquility Bay the right to “monitor all outgoing and incoming mail.”
Blanket liability waivers rarely stand up in court, says Burton, but parents don’t usually realize this, and are thus often unwilling to challenge the schools in court should something untoward happen.
Pursley charges that the pattern of misrepresentation and unethical behavior extends to every level of the Teen Help/Adolescent Services organization. Neither Narvin Lichfield nor Jean Schulter, the current director of Teen Help, returned repeated phone calls seeking comment on their organization’s practices. But on the subject of their spamdexing tactics, at least, their own Web site is remarkably forthright.
The site includes a page that tries to sell schools on the benefits of its directory — although no schools other than those affiliated with Teen Help seem to have bought the pitch. The page reads, in part: “We also have an exclusive technology that ensures top listing of ASI on most major search engines. These search engines are used by parents and others to find your needed services. This technology is applied on a constant, 24-hour basis. The technology is cost prohibitive and impractical to be done on an individual basis. These unique services are provided at a fraction of the cost that you would incur if you advertised through other media that are known to bring about similar results.”
On their own, spamdexing outbreaks are hardly earthshaking. There’s a constant give-and-take on the Web between spamdexers and the operators of search engines. Primitive early spamdexing attempts included such broad-based attacks as repeating the word “porn” on the bottom of a Web sex page a few hundred times, or coding keywords in the same color as the background of a page — so surfers wouldn’t see them but colorblind search engines would find them immediately. As fast as the spamdexers come up with these schemes, the search engines beef up their algorithms in defense. The HotBot search engine already has filters in place that managed to catch the Adolescent Services tricks, and refused to register any of the decoy pages.
That spy-versus-spy battle will never be resolved one way or another. But to online activists like Parks, it’s not the obscure trivialities of geek warfare that are important — what matters is whether we use the Internet to enlighten or deceive.
Parks feels she has struck back, by using the Net to broadcast useful information even as misleading information is multiplying. Getting her book online has been a cathartic experience.
“To me the value was enormous,” says Parks. “I’ve already saved lives, if nothing else. I’ve already had parents e-mail me with horrendous stories. They are turning to me as guide, asking, how can we help? Putting it up has also made it accessible to the news media.”
In fact, Parks has received so much media attention that the William Morris agency recently agreed to represent her in the negotiation of potential book- and movie-of-the-week deals. But as part of the agreement the agency asked her to take the bulk of her book offline, at least for as long as it takes to secure contracts. She agreed, but promised that as soon as the negotiations are over, she’ll get the full text back online and carry on her fight.
“They are subverting free speech,” says Parks. “They are subverting access to information.”
And if an organization will do that, she wonders, then what will they do to your kids?
To hear him described, Nushawn Williams was an old-fashioned charmer — a man who seduced girls and young women with shopping sprees, flowers, music tapes, jewelry and home-cooked meals. “He made me feel special,” said one of his young partners on the Montel Williams show. Now this woman and eight others are HIV positive, and prosecutors in New York are investigating whether they can charge the 21-year-old man for knowingly spreading the virus that causes AIDS.
As more information emerges about Williams and the women he had sex with, health officials fear that this may be just the beginning of an epidemic. Williams, who may have a history of intravenous drug use, has provided New York City health officials with the names of 19 recent sexual partners; health officials in Chautauqua County, where he lived the last two years, have identified 110 who had sex with Williams or with partners of Williams.
Ironically, it was not his sexual reign of terror that brought Williams to authorities but an arrest for selling $20 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover police officer in a sting operation. A member of the Bloods and an ex-con, Williams is being held in a New York City prison and has also been charged with the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, who is also infected.
Williams’ wide circle of partners — and the fact that he preyed on teenagers and young women — brings to light new questions about the particular vulnerability of young people to the AIDS virus. One out of four new infections are in people under 22 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Salon spoke with Dr. Jeff Birnbaum, head of the adolescent HIV clinic at Kings County Hospital in Williams’ hometown of Brooklyn, about why teens are more vulnerable to HIV infection — and why, once infected, they can be more dangerous.
Nushawn Williams reportedly slept around without telling his partners he was HIV positive. Is this an anomaly or is it common for young people?
This was anything but an anomaly. There are thousands of people like him out there. This past week everyone has been talking about Nushawn Williams and I just think, what’s the big deal? I see kids like him every day — or I see the girls he has infected every day. Williams is an easy target: He’s a young black male, a drug dealer, having sex with 13-year-olds, and now he has infected them all with HIV. He’s Public Enemy No. 1. But he could be any color. There are lots of guys out there like him.
Is it hard to get teenagers to divulge the names of their partners?
I’m not defending Nushawn Williams, but if anything he was actually much more cooperative than most young people. He voluntarily gave the health authorities the names of 20 sexual partners when he was initially tested.
On “Nightline” a week or so ago, they presented Williams as being very proud of this, that these girls were like his 20 trophies. But the bottom line is it’s very hard to get somebody that young who tests positive to give up the names of their sexual partners for contacting, for partner notification. It’s very difficult to get teenagers to trust health-care providers in the first place.
Why don’t HIV-positive teens tell their partners?
A lot of them are not symptomatic for the disease. The fact that they’re HIV infected is not a concrete thing to them. There’s no daily experience of feeling sick that makes it real to them. Also, many infected teens live with an older guy, maybe 10 years older than them, with a history of violence or drugs. Since these guys are basically their sugar daddies, their financial providers, these girls run a lot of risk disclosing their HIV status.
How are most teens infected?
Nationwide it’s through unprotected sex, whether or not it’s opposite-sex or same-sex behavior. At my clinic, the majority of the patients are heterosexually infected teenage girls.
The media has made a lot of the fact that Williams seduced young women with jewelry and money. Do you think that makes teenagers more vulnerable
Teenagers are very sexual beings, so a lot of it might be experimentation. Sex is more about someone holding them. It’s one of the few things in life that makes them feel good. It’s not like they are going to start negotiating a condom just because you tell them there are health risks without them.
What’s the average number of sexual partners that the teens you see have had?
It varies from some who have had two or three to those who have engaged in prostitution for survival — “survival sex” as we call it — and have had hundreds. Most of those infected have had less than 10 partners.
What is the law for partner notification? Are you allowed to contact the people possibly infected?
A person’s HIV status cannot be given over to someone without the written consent of the person who is being tested. I could not, if I was testing some teenager, just go out into the waiting room where their sexual partner is sitting and say, “I think you need to get tested because your friend in the next room is HIV positive.” That teenager would have to give me written permission to discuss it with that person. But if a teenager gives me the names and phone numbers of their sexual partners, I can contact the local health department authorities and give them names of those sexual partners, and then they go out and knock on their doors and say, “We have reason to believe you have been exposed to HIV through sexual contact and we recommend you get tested.”
When a patient tells a psychiatrist that he might murder someone, the psychiatrist is required by law to break confidentiality because another person is at risk. Do you think the same principle of life endangerment should be applied in HIV and AIDS cases?
You certainly could make a case for that. I have had people attack me, saying, “How can you sit back knowing that one of your patients is having unprotected sex with someone and you don’t disclose their HIV status to the sexual partner because they’ve asked you not to?” It makes people angry that people can “get away with it.” But this is different than the scenario of the loaded gun, the duty of a psychiatrist to warn. For years it’s been no secret that people can get infected from HIV when having unprotected sex. The responsibility is on individuals to protect themselves, to look at every sexual partner as being potentially HIV positive.
Do teens have to get their parent’s permission before they are tested or treated?
In most states, an adolescent can sign their own consent for HIV testing and treatment without their parent’s knowledge. The only time it does become somewhat problematic is when hospitalization is required, then the hospital may require the parent’s consent.
Are there a lot of HIV-positive teens who live at home and their families don’t know?
Not only is that true, but some go for several years before their family finds out. They go about their everyday business and, since most teens are recently infected and don’t yet have HIV-related symptoms, it’s not readily apparent they have a disease. So the parents don’t know. Many disclose to their parents when they become really ill — and sometimes, as a result, they get thrown out of the house.
What are some of the reasons why they don’t tell anyone?
Most of them tell somebody. A couple of them keep it to themselves, only talking freely about it in the clinic or with other kids who are HIV positive. They think, “Hey, this person is like me,” and they can compare notes about their secret lives. We’re always urging them to disclose to their sexual partners, but quite often when they do, it doesn’t guarantee that the boyfriend will start using condoms to protect himself. More often than not, he remains together with the girl and continues having unprotected sex.
Do they realize the consequences of unprotected sex? How much do they know about HIV and AIDS?
They are all very smart; they know the facts. If you ask any teenager on the street, “How do you prevent yourself from getting HIV?” they’ll tell you, “Use condoms when you’re having sex.” If you walk into a teenage pregnancy clinic and ask, “How many of you use condoms all the time?” they’ll all raise their hands. Well then, how come you’re all pregnant? So the knowledge and the behavior don’t always match up. It’s just teenagers being teenagers; this is the way teenagers behave, and did long before HIV came on the scene.
Do you think the confidentiality laws will change in the wake of the Nushawn Williams case?
I think a lot of society’s anger is going to be vented on Nushawn Williams, even though he wasn’t arrested for infecting someone with HIV; he was arrested for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old. So public opinion might change the laws. The other thing that may cause change in confidentiality laws is that when they were written in the early ’80s, there was absolutely no treatment. AIDS was a fatal disease. So why identify people without guaranteeing them confidentiality if there’s nothing you can do to cure it? But nowadays we have combination therapies and the use of protease inhibitors, which may change the way people look at HIV and AIDS. They could end up looking at HIV and AIDS as they do syphilis, and go after all the sexual partners and treat them and cure them.
One of the reasons the confidentiality law was passed was to encourage people to come in and get tested. One of the potential downsides of the law being changed is people might be frightened to come in and get tested; they may avoid health care all together.
Do you think the privacy rights should be different for minors, who often don’t exercise the best judgment? Should it be mandatory to tell parents?
Given the cards that are dealt against a lot of the kids — with families that are not model American families by any means — it’s not a good idea. You would be literally asking the question, should teenagers be allowed to make up their mind on anything? And I would not be successful in adolescent medicine if I took the attitude that teenagers didn’t have the intelligence or sense to make their own decisions — they definitely can make decisions. They don’t always make the right decisions, but I think when they make really bad decisions, it’s not because they didn’t ask their mother or father — it may be because they don’t have a mother or father they can ask.
two columns ago in Salon, I wrote about a heartbreaking visit I made to speak at a liberal arts college in the Northeast, on the subject of “the Sexual State of the Union.” I called the column “The Sexless Generation.”
I discovered, to my chagrin, that the latest crop of undergraduates was a sexually illiterate, fearful and bamboozled group — far more so than any other I’d met in the 15 years I’ve spent traveling to campuses and hearing young people’s sexual confidences. Their fears and superstitions went way beyond the usual youthful naivet*.
I couldn’t chalk up my dismal impression to a regional anomaly, because the school I visited was mainstream, not at all on the fringe. The students there have all grown up with the standard blizzard of “Say No” propaganda, encountered everywhere from their high school classrooms to MTV. Their older siblings and everyone they know who’s come of age since the late ’80s has had the same tutelage. Let me be the first to publicly state that this strategy of teenage libido repression has entirely backfired.
Some critics felt I was too harsh and paranoid in my assessment — or on a mindless boomer bandwagon of ’60s hedonism — but I think I’ve had my ear too close to the ground to be very far off the mark. To my surprise, I’ve heard from professors and campus administrators from other universities, telling me how they worry about the same thing and feel so unprepared to address it. “What do we say now?” they wonder: “Yeah, wear a condom, sure, but you don’t have to be so neurotic about it!” — “Why don’t you try just one week of having sex without first drinking a keg!” — “Monogamy is OK, but it might be a good idea to make out with ONE other person before you pledge eternal commitment at the age of 19″ — “Let’s haul out that old birth-control device exhibit from the ’70s!”
I imagine it’s going to be hard to retreat or change tactics from the fear-mongering and abstinence-glorifying that’s so in vogue. Knowing what it takes to make a baby or transmit the AIDS virus doesn’t give anyone an understanding of how their body responds and feels sexually. One friend of mine noted that our current sex education policies are “like teaching kids to drive by describing to them the internal combustion engine.”
A genuine sexual education would include the basics about your body’s sexual responses, what to anticipate when you’re intimate with another person and how to explore your own fantasies. We should include the notions of pleasure, creativity and communication through sex — in fact, I would put those toward the front of the syllabus. Without respecting (and esteeming) those motivations, teaching kids to say “no,” use safe-sex techniques and prevent pregnancy becomes a mechanical discipline rod that will break under the first strain of life’s contradictions. We can’t preach to young people about saving their lives if we don’t cherish their sexual potential at the same time.
To be fair, it’s not the statistical majority of teenagers that I’ve found sex-phobic — rather, it’s an influential minority, the students who set the tone on campus even if they don’t define every single person there. Of course some young people are still “doing it.” And just like me at that age, they don’t enter their sexual lives at the peak of sophistication and confidence.
But my survey of today’s students revealed a profile I had never seen so clearly before. I’d like you to see what students say in their own words and draw your own conclusions.
First, let me tell you how I learned what was on their minds. When I visit a school, I typically hand out index cards and ask the audience to answer a few quick questions. Two of them are: Do you masturbate? Do you have orgasms? I also tell them to write down a quick question for me that might be hard to ask in front of a group. The whole exercise is anonymous and only takes a couple of minutes. I also give out my e-mail address, and afterwards many people send me more lengthy letters.
In my previous campus surveys, I’ve seen about 18 to 20 percent of young women reporting that they do not masturbate. This is always a significant indicator to me of how knowledgeable these young women are about their desires and how comfortable they are with their bodies. But during this recent survey, 46 percent of the women responded that they didn’t masturbate. That’s more than twice as high as I’ve ever recorded before! I could even see in the audience, as I lectured, how many people were in nervous hysterics each time I mentioned the very word. It was way beyond the typical blush and giggle.
What was even wilder was that 9 percent of the young men said they didn’t masturbate, and 4 percent reported they didn’t have orgasms. That is incredible. I have never had even 1 percent of the men at my lectures describe themselves that way before. Could these be the same men who later asked me, “If I don’t have sex, I’ll be OK, right? You don’t have to have sex to live, right?”
Well, I’m sure the local Family Decency Association would be glad to reassure them that, yes indeed, you can live till you’re old and gray without once blemishing your life with sexual intercourse — but that’s not really the point, is it?
They cannot live their lives in total denial of their sexual feelings and yearnings, any more than they could entirely suppress their appetite or their dreams. We’ve told them that even thinking about sex can lead to dire consequences — as if eradication of sexual thoughts were some kind of reasonable request, like cutting out cheese from their diet.
We tell kids that they can drive when they’re 16, and we teach them how to do it, too. Likewise, they can vote when they’re 18 and drink when they’re 21. But, apparently, sex is so calamitous we can’t even mention an age that would be a suitable point for them to know the basics of orgasm. Gee — would graduate school be a good time to finally learn how to fuck?
The questions I received from this latest batch of undergrads overwhelmingly asked about the kinds of things one would learn during the first week of a good human sexuality course or if you even had a decent book in your house about sexual relations.
Even the sexual sophisticates and more experienced students on campus were under the thumb of the conservative, let’s-save-sex-for-later-and-be-monogamous-and-plan-our-careers crowd. The student who pointed out to me that “no one holds hands on campus” truly made the saddest observation of all. Holding hands is a sign that you might be sexual with someone, and that could cost you your reputation.
Many of the young women I heard from were obsessed about who is and who isn’t a “slut.” They are the front line of defending this distinction. Why are the girls the most vocal policers? We’ve all heard about a backlash against women’s gains in the economic sector, but things really seem to be decomposing in the sisterhood department. A “good girl,” it seems, has no erotic self-interest or solidarity with other lusty women whatsoever. In all her innocence and ignorance, she trades sex for the allegiance of the highest status mate possible. In the ’90s, women aren’t chaste for religious or moral reasons, but because they are now supposed to use their sexuality as the ultimate commodities brokerage! To the Big Sisters of New Order, a girl who has sex because it feels good is just giving away that cream for free — and depressing the market for other milk cows on the move!
I’ve been aware of the trend in anti-sex propaganda aimed at teenagers for years, and how its ante got upped by the AIDS panic. Yet the examples I saw always seemed so laughable to me — an erotic variation on “Reefer Madness” — that I couldn’t believe that many young people would fall for it. After all, they don’t believe anything people over 30 say, right?
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Teenage sexuality is depicted in two ways — as that of a victim or a criminal. Other role models are loathe to step forward.
A few kids asked me if I had ever had anonymous sex — and as I replied, I began to realize that by “anonymous” they meant “sex on a first date” with somebody who you know on a first-name basis! For me, responding to their question meant I had to flip a switch in my definition. Finally, someone they could point to who would admit to acting spontaneously on their sexual attractions! Yes, I had sex, before and after AIDS — with quite a few people — and here I am, standing up, nowhere near a gutter, with no regrets. I have a family. I have a home. I masturbate and fantasize whenever I want. It all worked out.
This country has been riding high on what I call the War Against Teenagers, and it’s only getting worse. It’s so depressing! Here our new generation stands, in the physical and sexual prime of their lives, and our culture tells them that thinking about sex will only get them in trouble, and actually having it will more or less ruin their lives. Go get ‘em tigers!
I personally intend to tell every young person I can that having sex with other people, taking pleasure in their own bodies and contemplating their sexual feelings and fantasies is one of the most beautiful, provocative and creative experiences they can enjoy — not to mention one of the few things that connects them to every other person on earth. If critics say, “It doesn’t look that way to me,” they need to look at the capitalist carnage around them, instead of at their cunts and cocks, to find out the reason why.
| “OK, my turn!” my 19-year-old daughter chirps as the tape comes to an end. This road trip is only beginning and I can see trouble ahead.
“Hey, you know the rule,” I remind her. “When I’m driving, I get to pick the tuneage.”
“Come on,” Erin pouts. “Since we left it’s been nothing but Soundgarden, Wilco, Pavement. I’m going nuts! I need to hear Jerry!”
That, of course, would be Jerry Garcia, demigod to all persons tie-dyed. The one who died fat and addicted, I love to remind her, if for no other reason than to watch her nostrils flare. But she wins this one, and pretty soon we’re truckin’ to “Uncle John’s Band” and I’m wincing.
This is an old argument — one of the few that threatens our avidly affectionate relationship. Music was always a strong part of our bond; I raised her on Springsteen, Neil Young and the Pretenders. As a 3-year-old she could sing the words to “Born to Run” like she could the alphabet song. But in recent years, she began to rebel. As I was rocking into the future, she started boogying backwards. I think we passed each other around 1975.
This is not to say she has not dabbled in modern rock. One of the first concerts we attended together was Pearl Jam, and we swooned jointly over Eddie Vedder’s screeching charisma. We went to dozens of shows in the next few years — Spin Doctors, Green Day, Soul Asylum, Counting Crows. It was so cool: I didn’t have to try to find a date who shared my love of the mosh pit, and she didn’t mind being seen with me as long as (A) she got to take a friend, and (B) I didn’t act like we were related.
Then things started to change. I blame peer pressure. Someone turned her on to a Bob Marley tape and soon she was hooked. For the first time, I had to close her door when a tape was blaring, fearing that if I heard “them belly-full but we hungry” one more time I would go postal. Then it was the Grateful Dead, then Janis Joplin, then Crosby Stills & Nash, then Bob Dylan. Why, I demanded, would she listen to the atonal wailings of the elder Dylan when the hot and hunky (if challenged in the talent department) young JAKOB was fronting the Wallflowers? Her answer was swift and simple.
“It just seems like modern music is about nothing,” she said unapologetically. “Like nobody believes in anything. When was the last time you heard a song like ‘The Times, They are A-Changin’? It just seems like music used have meaning.”
Aha, I got it. I was cursed with offspring for whom a throbbing beat and flashy guitar wail were not enough. Then again, I should not have been surprised that her Alice in Chains CD was gathering dust. After all, this was a kid who planned to major in Environmental Sciences so she could save the planet. She had outgrown the sophomoric cock-rock that I was still addicted to. How embarrassing.
And it caused me to reflect on my own musical history. At what point did I cease looking for a message in a tune? Perhaps when John “Love is All You Need” Lennon was murdered? Or when Neil Young provided a bitter antidote to the utopian promise of “Wooden Ships” with (Four Dead in) “Ohio”? Or maybe it was when I witnessed the beatings at Altamont? Maybe my own cynicism disallowed me to hear any peppy/preachy lyrics and take them seriously anymore. But Erin was not yet cynical. So, honoring her idealism, I backed off and thought of ways to compromise.
Hearing Rage Against the Machine for the first time at the Tibetan Freedom Concert was an inspiration. I called her at college. “You can’t believe this band! They sing about Zapatista rebellions and military spending and they also RAWK!” She was unconvinced. So I sent her a tape, which impressed her only modestly. But it began a dialogue. She wondered about singer Zach de la Rocha’s political history and I filled her in, told her he’d spent time in Chiapas himself. This fascinated her. Sensing the door was open, I also sent her a tape of Dan Bern, the brilliant and radical new folkie blowing the hinges off that once-cushy genre. And Kula Shaker, the fascinating shit-hot Britpop band who rail against materialism and pledge allegiance to Buddha.
And in turn, she discovered the modern feminist folk-goddess Ani di Franco, and sought to turn me on to her. “She’s really not a man-hater,” she offered by way of analysis. “She’s just very independent and I’m sure that bugs a lot of men. I don’t think she has a lot of male fans. I think she’s amazing.” I listened and fudged a good opinion. When she fell for the Indigo Girls, it was easier to agree to their talent.
The important thing is, I think we’ve found a middle ground. If it rocks, it also has to have meaning or at least history to raise it to a higher level, or my own highly evolved ovum will reject it. This I try to keep in mind as the road trip progresses. “OK, OK, put on Dylan,” I sigh. I can grind my teeth through his wail if she then endures Nirvana’s thrash. They say parenting is an ongoing compromise.
reading Mavis Jukes’ endearing new book, “It’s a Girl Thing: How to Stay Healthy, Safe and in Charge,” is a little like taking a trip down memory lane — someone else’s memory lane, granted, and one not nearly as bumpy as the one that wound through my own adolescence, but still one familiar enough to remind me that growing up female wasn’t half as bad as I remember it. Filled with funny personal stories and frank advice on everything from buying your first bra to sexual harassment, “Girl Thing” arms young girls with an arsenal of information without making them feel like there’s a war ahead — and that’s no easy task.
Jukes, a sixth-grade teacher, fondly recalls that when she was in sixth
grade in 1958, she and her mother belonged to an elite organization, the “Ladies’ Business Club.” Only she and her mother were allowed in this very private club, and it was there that she learned about the mysteries and privileges of being female.
My own experience, when I was in sixth grade in 1979, was very different. Women’s lib had come and gone, and what little awareness it raised in my conservative Southern community seemed to manifest itself in bitterness more than empowerment. In that climate, growing up female was still a pretty private affair, but it didn’t seem like much of a privilege. Most
things about growing up female were presented in terms of limitations: You
couldn’t swim when you had your period, at least not until you figured out
how tampons worked — and that could easily take a whole summer, maybe two. You couldn’t eat everything you wanted to because you might get fat. You couldn’t act a certain way around boys, because they couldn’t be counted on to control their physical urges. Sure, boys had to worry about inopportune
erections, but this seemed silly compared to what girls had to go through.
Jukes’ stories about girlhood — popping the bra question, her first
near-kiss, discovering her brother’s “camel mask” (a jock-strap) — made me
marvel at the universality of the experiences that I thought were mine alone. I’m not sure how much has changed since I was in junior high, but certainly not enough to make being an adolescent girl in the ’90s easy. To find out, I talked to three 14-year-old girls from San Francisco, all of whom had read and loved “It’s a Girl Thing.”
though Caitlin, Odie and Sophie agreed that “Girl Thing” would have been
more helpful had they read it in the sixth grade (they’re starting their
freshman year of high school this fall), they each singled out different parts of it for praise. Odie liked that the stories seemed directed at her.
Sophie found Jukes’ advice about sex to be relatively free of heavy-handed
judgment. And Caitlin liked the fact that “beautiful” was understood to be
something more than “pretty.”
The first thing I wanted to find out was whether they thought it would
be easier to be a boy. They all looked at me with a big “duh” written on
their faces. “It’s always been a man’s world,” Sophie said, and Odie and
Caitlin agreed. But when I asked them if they liked being girls, they all
replied without hesitation, in unison, “Definitely.”
Some things have changed. Phrases that came up regularly in the
course of our conversation — “sexual harassment,” “emotional
responsibility” and “male sensitivity” — were definitely not part of my
14-year-old vocabulary. Still, this is progressive San Francisco, not provincial Carolina, and apart from being remarkably self-aware and mature, they spoke of several difficult coming-of-age experiences that were almost identical to
my own. The sixth grade, for instance, still sucks. (“The eighth-grade boys
– the ‘cool’ ones — harassed me and called me names,” Odie said, cringing
at the memory.) Asking your mother for a bra is still a nightmare, no
matter how open she may be about it — but once the asking is over, the
actual experience of getting a bra is one of unparalleled joy. (“I
remember having a bra, but not even wearing it,” Caitlin told me. “Even
just having it was great.”) And older boys are still there to torment you
by reminding you that you don’t have much need for that hard-earned bra.
Though more books about puberty and sexuality are available for girls today, most are still “way too technical” to be very useful. All three girls
gave Jukes bonus points for getting personal with the details. With regard
to some “stuff” (yes, “stuff” is still the all-encompassing euphemism for
anything having to do with sex), some books aren’t quite graphic enough.
“When you’re going over all the stuff, you know, the fallopian tubes or
whatever, you get lost — like, OK, now where am I?” complained Caitlin.
“A picture or something would help.” Each of the girls said they
appreciated Jukes’ endorsement of masturbation — “If I’d known about
exploring my own sexual responses, I probably would have spent much less
time lying in bed at night, staring blankly into the darkness, twirling my
hair and sucking my thumb. And my teeth would have ended up being
straighter, too” — but they all agreed that Judy Blume’s “Are You there
God It’s Me Margaret” was still a better “how-to.”
Sex education has been a regular part of these girls’ school life for almost four years. A lot of things they wanted to know about sex — and some things they didn’t — they learned as early as fifth grade, in science and health
classes. “It gets pretty factual,” complained Odie, “and then it doesn’t
really broaden what you already know. One woman came in with a model of a vagina and showed us how to use the female condom,” she said, as the others — including me — burst into a fit of giggles. But they’re tired of
the facts — they want real stories. “It would help if they talked more
about how people felt about things,” said Caitlin.
So, I asked them how they felt about things. Here’s what they had
to say:
About being a teenager:
CAITLIN: Some things are exaggerated, I think, about being a teenager
and how rough it is. Some people try to understand, but I think they
understand it too much — they think it’s this really difficult
thing. Sure, it’s harder than being in elementary school, but its also a
lot more fun.
About being a girl:
SOPHIE: I hate it when that’s an excuse — like, “Oh, it’s that time of
the month.” Why when you’re mad does that always have to be the reason?
CAITLIN: There’s so many ways you can pick on girls — but there’s no
word for “slut” for guys.
About getting your period:
CAITLIN: I remember exactly how I felt. I remember my heart went wild, and I was really excited. I wasn’t really nervous, but I was really excited — my face turned really red.
ODIE: I was excited, because I got mine after them, and I was like, “Oh
finally.” Now, I’m like, “Oh God, this is a drag.”
SOPHIE: When I got it, it was with people who I didn’t know very well in
Boston. I have really good friends there, but we don’t have the same
openness as I do with my friends here. When I got back here, it was like
taking off a really heavy coat or something, because we could tell each
other everything.
About having sex:
ODIE: I think I’m physically ready, but I’m not emotionally ready, so I
don’t even think about it. It’s hard to say. We’ve all talked about it, and
we’re all pretty sure we’re not ready — we’re all virgins. Most
descriptions about sex, it’s like you’re on some schedule. It tells you how
it’s going to be in detail — as if there are rules. It’s not always that
way. The book talks about how you shouldn’t have sex if you
don’t want to. But what if you don’t know that you don’t want to until
you’re actually doing it?
About “sluts”
CAITLIN: There was this girl in my class who was having sex with her
boyfriend, and they had been going out like two years, and she was still
labeled a slut.
ODIE: Yeah, that’s kind of bad. It’s hard, because people get labeled.
SOPHIE: Girls aren’t sluts just because they’ve had sex. It’s because they’ve done, like, every guy.
ODIE: Girls who are emotionally ready and who are ready to go further than other girls, in some cases they are sluts — but some people aren’t. If they are emotionally ready, then they shouldn’t be labeled that.
About abortion:
CAITLIN: A girl in my class got pregnant when she was 14 and had an
abortion. It seems like it really messed her up. She just seems really
depressed about it all the time.
ODIE: I think she should have taken the responsibility before.
But I’d have an abortion, too. I know I would. I’m not ready to have a
child. After baby-sitting and changing diapers and all that — I mean, it’s
hard work. I’m not going to have a teen pregnancy.
SOPHIE: One of my
mom’s friends from high school got pregnant and went
away somewhere to have the baby, and gave it up — and they still haven’t
talked about it. It’s just something they don’t talk about. I mean, I don’t think you should be proud of it. But it’s the guy’s responsibility, too — it’s not like she was having sex with herself.
About boys:
ODIE: Our friends that are guys aren’t that masculine. They’re not macho guys — they’re sensitive and understanding, which is a big part of why we’re friends.
SOPHIE: I think the guys we know that are really macho are just really
insecure.
CAITLIN: I make it a point to tell our guy friends, when they say
something criticizing or sexist, to sort of knock them on the head.
About drugs:
ODIE: It doesn’t seem like such a big deal in my family. I’m not going
to go out there and do something stupid. I know the consequences — I know
what can happen if you abuse the substance. So I think if you talk about it
openly, and it’s not blown out of proportion from the beginning, it really
helps. It makes a big difference.
SOPHIE: There’s a big difference between smoking weed and doing heroin
or something. But a lot of the drug education makes it seem like it’s the
same thing. We’ve had teachers tell us we’ll go to hell if we smoke weed.
About trusting adults:
SOPHIE: At our school last year, the girls split up with a female
teacher, and we were supposed to talk about our problems. And if you didn’t
want to talk about your problems, they gave you problems to talk about. You
did that once a week, and it really didn’t really help. It created more
problems.
ODIE: Parts of the book say “tell a teacher” or “tell the police” if you
have a problem — I don’t agree. I wouldn’t want my teacher to know — a
lot of times, they invade our privacy. But I definitely trust my parents. I
have a really good relationship with my mom.
CAITLIN: I trust my parents. But some things you just don’t want to tell
them …
ODIE: Plus, we have each other. We tell each other everything.
On female sex symbols:
CAITLIN: I hate Fiona Apple. I loved her at first, I heard her song and thought, “She’s really smart.” And then this video comes on — and she’s
just stripping! It’s her and all these beautiful bodies and all these
really skinny legs, and when I saw her, she looked like a heroin addict.
ODIE: I used to hate Hole. I saw them at Lollapalooza, and Courtney Love
was such a freak — she wasn’t wearing underwear. She was so screwed up.
But then she got her act together.
CAITLIN: Pamela Anderson Lee looks like she got part of her butt taken
off and put on her lip.
It was amusing to see what a strong sense of propriety these girls
have, as if they’ve heard all about how rebellious their parents were,
and now they simply can’t be bothered with it. Their parents’ generation
went through a collective identity crisis, but these three were quick to
dismiss the identity experiments of some of their peers — “saying you’re
bisexual to be trendy,” “pretending to be anorexic to be cool” and
“pretending to be something you’re not” all ranked high on their list of
stupid things people do. When they dress differently or “act weird at a
concert,” they assured me, it’s not an act of rebellion (though their
parents may interpret it as one) — they only do it as a joke. “Because
we know who we are,” Sophie explained.
Could it be that this generation of teenage girls has inherited the best
of both the garter-belt-wearing and bra-burning worlds?
Or is it partly because they’ve heard so much about the horrors of AIDS and
other sexually transmitted diseases (and, in contrast to the generations
that have preceded them, they believe themselves to be susceptible to them)
that they feel less pressure to have sex, which allows them more time to figure out who they are and what they want? Odie, Sophie and Caitlin all agreed that the “sex” part of sex-ed is generally overemphasized — they want to know more about romance. Listening to the three of them as they giggled and talked their way through the afternoon, unself-consciously sharing their intimate thoughts with a complete stranger, I thought — for just a second — how cool it would be to be 14 again.
“You know what I would do,” offered Caitlin. “I was thinking I should
write one of these when I’m older, and I was thinking I should take notes
now. Write exactly how you remember you felt and how other people your age felt, because I always wonder about that.”
“Yeah,” Sophie added. “The sex stuff is good, but when I was in sixth
grade, I didn’t think I was ever going to have sex,” Sophie said. “I think
there should be more about kissing.”
“Yes!” Odie nodded emphatically. “There should be a book on kissing –
for kids.”
