Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Bold stupidity to the fore!

(Via Michelle Malkin)The Dawn Patrol has brought to light a new way for taxpayers to become poorer at the behest of the tacky, vulgar, and thoughtless, touchy-feely, artsy-fartsy people and the get-in-touch-with-your-gonads crowd at Vox: Voices of Planned Parenthood. University students in Florida are being given t-shirts with the words, "My orgasm is..." upon which to paint their (yes, you guessed it) interpretations of what their orgasms look like.

One of Dawn's commenters had a more wholesome version of my initial response, but he didn't actually take it the rest of the way. Sure, I'd have painted "none of your (and I'd have inserted 'goddam') bizness" on the front of the shirt, and on the back I'd have added, "and I don't really want to know about yours".

The people who come up with these programs seem to think it's just dandy for kids to cave in to their desires whenever they please: "obey your thirst" and to hell with consequences. Well, for starters, making lust the center of one's universe is one darned good way to make a kid feel as if he is nothing more than a sexual object, and that self-advertising is the key to self-worth. Feh.

From before their teens, most kids are already very aware of their own sexuality. They're very aware that it is the subject of competition in youth.

The point behind adulthood is to establish oneself as something more than an impulsive brat. Focusing on a single instant in which an urge is fed, however satisfying it may sound, isn't exactly encouraging a kid to grow beyond said moment. I suppose if you want to create nihilistic drones, that's dandy, but I prefer to have actual, intellectual conversations with bright young people, from time to time.

But beyond the simple challenge of maturity, this program, in forcing orgasm to center stage, makes a mockery of the more spiritual sides of intimate pleasures. It says that the moment is "mine and mine alone". I hate to break it to some of these folks, but, if yer gonna have sex, it's generally more fun when you invite somebody else to the party. And the party host who only wants to make himself happy is usually left alone and miserable at the end of the night. The best pleasure is a full-fledged sharing thing, with trust, and joy, and often a sense of the sacredness of each other and of the gift itself. The topic is of intimacy, and it ought to remain (duh!) intimate and private. This is not a thing which sits well on t-shirts, bumper stickers, or billboards.

By the very act of advertising, one turns a would-be heavenly-inspired thing, a Michelangelo, into a commonplace discard, a tarnished penny on the pavement.

But then, isn't that Planned Parenthood's specialty?

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