Portable Magic

Last month, we had a little teapot tempest when local high school students were pulled from class to listen to a motivational speaker. Justin Lookadoo, a self-styled expert on teen relationships from a fundamentalist Christian point of view, had been engaged by the PTA to speak to the students on... something. I never heard what he was actually supposed to be speaking about, only that he did not include religious messages in the content.

With all the fuss, I was curious about the source material that many found so objectionable, so I checked out the two books that my library carries, "Dateable" and "The Dirt on Sex".

After reading both books, I have to concur with the critics. The writing style and format is perfectly awful, full of ridiculous slang, euphemisms, and crude illustrations, such as, "A girl's pee tube and her baby tube don't criss-cross." As for the content, even starting with the supposition that the reader/intended audience shares the fundamentalist precepts that the bible is the literal word of God, that sex should only occur within the context of marriage, that men and women should conform to traditional gender roles, and that homosexuality is an abomination that sinners willfully choose to engage in, I was appalled.

He asserts, repeatedly, that males are predators by nature and that it is the female's responsibility to fend off their advances. A single chapter out of both books addresses the male responsibility to set limits, but even here the author warns of "dangerous" girls who are "bigger horndogs than most guys," and speaks of the male's responsibility in terms of what the girl will "allow". The tone of the book on sex seemed to rely heavily on the spectre of pregnancy and STDs to scare teens into abstinence. My biggest wtf-moment was when the author suggests that depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are a "side effect" of teen sex.

He does offer some truths, amidst the corny slang and wtf-ery, that anyone with internet access or exposure to basic middle school Sex Ed would know. The effectiveness of condoms alone, the rhythm method, coitus interruptus, and various quackeries. But nothing about the more effective methods of birth control.

Much of it just made me want to vomit. Girls are advised to shut up, cover up, and support a man's ego (by not trying to participate or compete), and are compared to used cars and meat buffets. Guys are advised to be passionate, adventurous, take charge, and above all, to *not be a pansy*. Or sissy. He uses these words, over and over.

Final quote: "Guys, this whole women's lib thing has less to do with women getting rights and more to do with men becoming pansies. This isn't a discussion about rights. It's about what the Creator of man did. How he set things up. It's about the roles of males and females. How we are wired and why we are that way."