6 ms·

Annals of Sociology: Red sex, Blue sex

30 points by marvin 18y ago

TweedHeads 18y ago
Everything annal has my approval!
randrews 18y ago
Am I the only one who thinks both sides are wrong? Not having sex because god doesn't want you to is sort of insane, but not having sex because you won't get into a good college if you do is equally bad. It's possible to do something dangerous, responsibly. Not that sex is terribly dangerous.
- Herring 18y ago
  for the 2nd group, that's unprotected sex... For this group, Regnerus says, unprotected sex has become “a moral issue like smoking or driving a car without a seatbelt. It’s not just unwise anymore; it’s wrong. [pg 3]”
  - randrews 18y ago
    Hmm, fair enough. Still, you combine that with people telling you that condoms don't protect you from anything, and you get a bunch of people terrified of sex.
- MaysonL 18y ago
  "There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.” Norman Mailer
  - noonespecial 18y ago
    Good one. Apart from killing, sex is the most powerful biological thing a human can do. Like killing, it shapes and changes the genome (and the community) far beyond the creature that actually commits the act. The problem with teen sex is that too many wield this power far too lightly. Like a child who's just found its father's gun, they don't really understand the ramifications of what they're doing or the risk that they are taking.
    - helveticaman 18y ago
      Do most adults?
    - thwarted 18y ago
      One of the best ways to learn is to take a risk or know someone who takes a risk. Obviously this doesn't work in all cases, one has to be mature enough to internalize and understand the ramifications when exposed to them. But they do have to be exposed to what these risks and ramifications are. "Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion." There's the answer right there. If the families and communities treat teenage pregnancy as a (relative) non-event, then there are no ramifications to getting pregnant. They "understand the ramifications" and "the risk of what they are doing" to be relatively low. By encouraging abstinence and not making it hard on those who don't practice abstinence, it's sending a message that sex isn't that big of a deal.
- helveticaman 18y ago
  As a virgin and Stanford student, I can tell you it's pretty hard to get into a good college if you're trying to get laid in high school. I mean, it's not impossible, but...the opportunity cost is very real. It sucks, but that's part of the price I had to pay.
ivankirigin 18y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect
- marvin 18y ago
  The Roe hypothesis is false. A similar argument has been used to explain why religious groups that oppose having children die out fairly quickly. But in the case of American politics, those making the argument assume that the American two-party system will still exist in the timeframe 30-100 years, and further that abortion will still be the primary political topic in a generation or three. The last assumption is ridiculous. And we haven't even considered that new generations often discard important values from the old.
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    There are certainly lots of assumptions, but it might be valid for the first generation that has already passed. This is borne out in population growth numbers by state. I linked to this mainly because I find it interesting, not because I believe it.
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
You can go on about sex education and religion all you want but I think it all boils down to cost of living. Red staters can get very cheap but decent housing and support a reasonable standard of living from labor that doesn't require a phd. So they have more babies at all ages, because it's not as big a deal out there. A baby in New York will condemn you to a life in the suburbs, cutting years off your absolutely necessary $20 martini nights at the club. The more interesting thing is the reporting on this matter itself. There's a constant stream of urban liberal editorials/articles on red state teen pregnancies. I think it's because at some level liberals are freaked out about being out-bred by such a wide margin. This is why the self-congratulatory and "chastising the hicks" bits are so necessary. This is why Palin and her family freaks out a lot of liberal women SOO badly. She's a stark reminder of their infertility.
- randrews 18y ago
  I wonder if it's really that "liberal women" are infertile, or that having children makes you more conservative?
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    I would argue the latter. Where it's cheap to form a household and have kids, people are conservative. This is true all over the country in culturally disparate regions. There are barely any exceptions. I'm sure it's complicated by mobility: people move from red to blue and vice versa to find people with matching tendencies. But I doubt that's enough to matter.
    - nostrademons 18y ago
      There could be a whole host of confounding factors. One other explanation: Where there are strong knowledge-based economies, there's a need to delay childbearing until one has the necessary education to be economically competitive. This results in low fertility rates, and it also results in high education levels. High education correlates with a liberal political orientation. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility. or: Where there are large numbers of skilled immigrants, people tend to lean liberal, as the cultural melting pot "desensitizes" them to new ideas. This exchange of ideas also spurs a bustling idea marketplace and healthy startup economy. This, in turn, results in higher levels of income inequality, which means that people have a large incentive to play the lottery and delay childbearing until they've had their shot at the big bucks. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility. or: Smarter people tend to be educated. Educated people tend to be liberals. Smarter people also tend not to get pregnant accidentally. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility.
gojomo 18y ago
The most interesting paragraph to me: Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost. With such a fragile formula, it’s hard to imagine how educators can ever get it right: once the self-proclaimed virgin clique hits the thirty-one-per-cent mark, suddenly it’s Sodom and Gomorrah. That seems to suggest that once peer-pressure starts working for the effort in the general population, there is a corresponding rise in hypocrisy as a sort of peer-pressure-release valve, and that can even undermine the committed core. This effect might be generalizable to other moral-suasion campaigns. This deserves studies and articles all by itself.
anamax 18y ago
The author thinks that the correct sex ed would reduce the teen pregnancy rates in those groups. The author doesn't know those groups very well. They're getting pregnant because they want to get pregnant and have kids. Different sex ed won't change that.
- randrews 18y ago
  I grew up in Texas, reddest of the red states, and a lot of my friends did abstinence pledges. Most were Christian Evangelicals to one degree or another (they even evangelized to me, though god only knows why. I wasn't really liberal at all back then). So I know these groups pretty well. None of them, not a single one, wanted to get pregnant and have kids at age 16. Have sex, certainly, have irresponsible unprotected sex even, but getting pregnant was not something anyone wanted. Maybe in five or ten years, but in high school, none.
  - anamax 18y ago
    I grew up with these groups too, albeit not in Texas but in the midwest and rural CA (and then some in the underbelly of Silicon Valley). For some, having a kid got them out of the high school that they didn't want to be in anyway. (Or, junior high in some cases.) In other cases, it let them say "I'm an adult" and others thought "my kid will have to love me". Some waited until after high school, or at least the spring of their senior year.

30 points by marvin 18y ago

Everything annal has my approval!

Am I the only one who thinks both sides are wrong? Not having sex because god doesn't want you to is sort of insane, but not having sex because you won't get into a good college if you do is equally bad. It's possible to do something dangerous, responsibly. Not that sex is terribly dangerous.

Herring 18y ago
for the 2nd group, that's unprotected sex... For this group, Regnerus says, unprotected sex has become “a moral issue like smoking or driving a car without a seatbelt. It’s not just unwise anymore; it’s wrong. [pg 3]”
- randrews 18y ago
  Hmm, fair enough. Still, you combine that with people telling you that condoms don't protect you from anything, and you get a bunch of people terrified of sex.
MaysonL 18y ago
"There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.” Norman Mailer
- noonespecial 18y ago
  Good one. Apart from killing, sex is the most powerful biological thing a human can do. Like killing, it shapes and changes the genome (and the community) far beyond the creature that actually commits the act. The problem with teen sex is that too many wield this power far too lightly. Like a child who's just found its father's gun, they don't really understand the ramifications of what they're doing or the risk that they are taking.
  - helveticaman 18y ago
    Do most adults?
  - thwarted 18y ago
    One of the best ways to learn is to take a risk or know someone who takes a risk. Obviously this doesn't work in all cases, one has to be mature enough to internalize and understand the ramifications when exposed to them. But they do have to be exposed to what these risks and ramifications are. "Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion." There's the answer right there. If the families and communities treat teenage pregnancy as a (relative) non-event, then there are no ramifications to getting pregnant. They "understand the ramifications" and "the risk of what they are doing" to be relatively low. By encouraging abstinence and not making it hard on those who don't practice abstinence, it's sending a message that sex isn't that big of a deal.
helveticaman 18y ago
As a virgin and Stanford student, I can tell you it's pretty hard to get into a good college if you're trying to get laid in high school. I mean, it's not impossible, but...the opportunity cost is very real. It sucks, but that's part of the price I had to pay.

ivankirigin 18y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect

marvin 18y ago
The Roe hypothesis is false. A similar argument has been used to explain why religious groups that oppose having children die out fairly quickly. But in the case of American politics, those making the argument assume that the American two-party system will still exist in the timeframe 30-100 years, and further that abortion will still be the primary political topic in a generation or three. The last assumption is ridiculous. And we haven't even considered that new generations often discard important values from the old.
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  There are certainly lots of assumptions, but it might be valid for the first generation that has already passed. This is borne out in population growth numbers by state. I linked to this mainly because I find it interesting, not because I believe it.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

You can go on about sex education and religion all you want but I think it all boils down to cost of living. Red staters can get very cheap but decent housing and support a reasonable standard of living from labor that doesn't require a phd. So they have more babies at all ages, because it's not as big a deal out there. A baby in New York will condemn you to a life in the suburbs, cutting years off your absolutely necessary $20 martini nights at the club. The more interesting thing is the reporting on this matter itself. There's a constant stream of urban liberal editorials/articles on red state teen pregnancies. I think it's because at some level liberals are freaked out about being out-bred by such a wide margin. This is why the self-congratulatory and "chastising the hicks" bits are so necessary. This is why Palin and her family freaks out a lot of liberal women SOO badly. She's a stark reminder of their infertility.

randrews 18y ago
I wonder if it's really that "liberal women" are infertile, or that having children makes you more conservative?
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  I would argue the latter. Where it's cheap to form a household and have kids, people are conservative. This is true all over the country in culturally disparate regions. There are barely any exceptions. I'm sure it's complicated by mobility: people move from red to blue and vice versa to find people with matching tendencies. But I doubt that's enough to matter.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    There could be a whole host of confounding factors. One other explanation: Where there are strong knowledge-based economies, there's a need to delay childbearing until one has the necessary education to be economically competitive. This results in low fertility rates, and it also results in high education levels. High education correlates with a liberal political orientation. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility. or: Where there are large numbers of skilled immigrants, people tend to lean liberal, as the cultural melting pot "desensitizes" them to new ideas. This exchange of ideas also spurs a bustling idea marketplace and healthy startup economy. This, in turn, results in higher levels of income inequality, which means that people have a large incentive to play the lottery and delay childbearing until they've had their shot at the big bucks. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility. or: Smarter people tend to be educated. Educated people tend to be liberals. Smarter people also tend not to get pregnant accidentally. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility.

gojomo 18y ago

The most interesting paragraph to me: Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost. With such a fragile formula, it’s hard to imagine how educators can ever get it right: once the self-proclaimed virgin clique hits the thirty-one-per-cent mark, suddenly it’s Sodom and Gomorrah. That seems to suggest that once peer-pressure starts working for the effort in the general population, there is a corresponding rise in hypocrisy as a sort of peer-pressure-release valve, and that can even undermine the committed core. This effect might be generalizable to other moral-suasion campaigns. This deserves studies and articles all by itself.

anamax 18y ago

The author thinks that the correct sex ed would reduce the teen pregnancy rates in those groups. The author doesn't know those groups very well. They're getting pregnant because they want to get pregnant and have kids. Different sex ed won't change that.

randrews 18y ago
I grew up in Texas, reddest of the red states, and a lot of my friends did abstinence pledges. Most were Christian Evangelicals to one degree or another (they even evangelized to me, though god only knows why. I wasn't really liberal at all back then). So I know these groups pretty well. None of them, not a single one, wanted to get pregnant and have kids at age 16. Have sex, certainly, have irresponsible unprotected sex even, but getting pregnant was not something anyone wanted. Maybe in five or ten years, but in high school, none.
- anamax 18y ago
  I grew up with these groups too, albeit not in Texas but in the midwest and rural CA (and then some in the underbelly of Silicon Valley). For some, having a kid got them out of the high school that they didn't want to be in anyway. (Or, junior high in some cases.) In other cases, it let them say "I'm an adult" and others thought "my kid will have to love me". Some waited until after high school, or at least the spring of their senior year.