dangers, pleasures and desires oh my.

I loved the connection of oppresion to the idea of "dire consequences" in Tolman's Doing Desire reading. I didn't make the connection at first but upon further reflection it became more clear, especially when i re-read a piece saying,

"the ethos of privacy and silence about our personal sexual experience makes it easy to rationalize the refusal to speak [to adolescents]."

For women with experience to not talk to their daughters about what is to be expected, is to expose them to the dangers of sex that society has portrayed in the popular media. Not only this but a, "source of empowerment is lost", as Tolman would say. A girl who does not receive the pleasure from her desires is given yet another double bind. One where her body is telling her that she wants something yet when she gets it she is not pleased.

Tolman proposes near the end of her article that suggests that women talk to girls about their own desire and how they need to find a balance between pleasure and danger in sexuality. In her experiment with the three girls she found that by just talking to them she was able to "interrupt the standard 'dire consequences'" idea that adults refer to when speaking about sex. The idea of "dire consequences" is keeping women from speaking about their sexuality. By not educating girls about the pleasures and dangers of sex, women are just suppressing down not only their own sexuality but a "source of power and information", as the quote at the beginning of the piece mentioned, for young girls as well. It is a self perpetuating cycle keeping women uninformed and without energy to react and change.

Also as a not so serious side note, if all girls were more educated and aware of their own desires, and the pleasures and dangers associated, then we all might just have a little more "wanted" sex, and that is almost never a bad thing. Just sayin'