Source of book: Audiobook from the library
Fair disclosure here: because of the current political situation, I have concern that certain books are going to become difficult to find due to official censorship or, perhaps more likely, preemptive compliance in order to avoid trouble. This is particularly a risk in Republican-dominated areas like the one I live in, where a loud and active minority gets more press than they deserve and are all too often able to create trouble for the rest of us, who prefer free speech.
Because of this, I have been, and will be reading and reviewing a number of sexuality-related books this year. Some of them may be added to my own library later, if I decide they may be of use.
One of these is this classic by legendary children’s author Judy Blume.
We have listened to a couple of her other books, and I have found that they are rather interesting. On the one hand, like any book set in the present, they feel a bit of their time and place: the white collar middle class of New England in the 1970s. This means that they feel a bit set in certain secular white communities.
On the other, the themes are timeless, and the characters familiar due to their nuance and Blume’s keen eye for human nature.
Listening to this one, though, I think I was struck most with how progressive the 1970s seem by comparison to today in so many ways. Particularly compared to my own teens in the 1990s in the ultra-conservative religious subculture. I mean, in these books, children are treated like actual people, not little sinners needing to be beaten into submission, or pawns in the culture wars.
And normal human behavior is seen as, well, normal, and something to be discussed in terms of avoiding harm to self or others, now and in the future. Wow. It’s straight-up refreshing.
It is hard to believe this book is slightly older than I am - it turns 50 this year. It seems to be from a different era altogether. Or maybe from an alternative future I wish my children could have had, rather than the MAGA-Fascist one we have.
I will say at the outset that I was somewhat shocked at how sexually explicit this book is. I cannot imagine something like this getting published in our current climate - which is a shame, because “explicit” isn’t really the issue when it comes to sex, but context and content.
And, in that sense, this book is really great. I’ll explain that later in this post.
The book had its genesis in a conversation between Blume and her daughter Randy, who asked her mother to write a book about two nice teens who fell in love and had sex, and neither of them had to die.
Which, well, that doesn’t seem like that much to ask, right? Well, not so much, as reading literature from past eras certainly shows. Particularly if a woman had sex, and enjoyed it, she has to die. Because…
[Note: I will be reviewing A Lily Among the Thorns by Miguel De La Torre soon, and will discuss a lot more about my own views on human sexuality - these two books go well together. Stay tuned.]
Here is the thing: sometime around the 1920s, a HUGE shift in culture occurred. And it isn’t what people usually think.
Prior to that time, most middle-class males in the Western world had their first sexual intercourse in one of two ways. Either with a prostitute, or by raping a servant. The shift in the 1920s is that from that time on, the majority of males had their first sexual experience with a peer. That is, with a female of their own social class.
Or, what we would now call “premarital sex.”
Thus, when we Americans (or Europeans, Canadians, or Australians, and more…) look around, 90% or more of the adult humans we see had sex before they married. Full. Stop.
And guess what? Nothing horrible happened to most of them. They went on to get married, have kids, grandkids, and normal lives.
As an attorney who has handled family law cases - and estate planning cases too - I have quite a bit of insider knowledge about family history. You would be surprised (or maybe not) at how many respectable, church-going, normal religious people had their first child six months or less after getting married. Clients also tend to talk, and I have heard plenty of women in divorces talk about being a virgin on their wedding night. Or the other way around.
What I can say from this and knowledge of my own extended family is that of all the factors in whether a marriage is happy and whether it will stay together, virginity is at the bottom of the list. Probably behind freckled moon spots or the flight of an unladen swallow. I’m not kidding.
If anything, the shotgun marriages I have known the best tended to be happier on average. Perhaps because there was a strong sexual connection to start with.
The opposite can be true too, of course. People get married because they get pregnant, often too young, and break up. But people also get married so they have religious permission to fuck, often too young, and break up. So….maybe not a real pattern here.
Before I get too far off a rabbit trail here, let me just mention a few things that I have thought about for literally decades.
First, due to our current economic system, marriage and children increasingly make sense only (if ever) once a person is able to afford a family, which is happening ever later in life. Now that student loans are so often a lifetime debt, this time may never come for many people. Expecting that people will never experience sex and intimacy because they are enslaved to the financial system is unrealistic. As is, for that matter, expecting most people to wait until age 30 before sex. It simply isn’t going to happen, no matter how much you lecture them.
Second, given that a shockingly high number of women do not experience orgasm with a partner most or all of the time, it seems to me that a woman would have every incentive to take a partner for a test drive before committing to them. Getting stuck with a man who refuses to learn how to pleasure a woman sounds like hell to me, and I would never blame a woman for wanting to check first that he isn’t a boor. Just saying.
Okay, with that, on to the book itself.
***
The title is Forever… with the three dots included. There is a reason for this, and the book continually circles back to that theme throughout.
The story is told through the eyes of Katherine, a high school senior. She meets Michael at a New Years party, and the two of them become interested in each other. Soon, they are dating, and navigating the question of sex.
Unlike in the religious subculture I grew up in, for their families, the issue of sex is more of a health and emotional question, not a moral one. And this is a good thing.
Here is where I think the book is particularly good: the issue of sex is based firmly in consent and mutual pleasure. While Katherine and Michael are teens, and act out in teen ways sometimes, they are basically good people, and concerned about each other.
For Michael, socialized into the idea that boys push for sex, has to balance the script he knows with his desire that Katherine fully consent. And he gets it right most of the time, actually. With the exception of some stupid and hurtful stuff he says when they break up, he is a really nice guy.
He makes sure Katherine is okay with everything they do, agrees to take things slowly - slower than he would like, actually - and is concerned that she experience pleasure as well. He is a pretty damn good lover for a novice.
Likewise, Katherine genuinely cares about him, and feels terrible when they do break up, even though she knows that she isn’t yet ready for “forever” decisions.
The whole love story is sweet and tender and beautiful, even if it inevitably leads to disappointment. After all, they are still high schoolers, with college ahead of them, and it really is too early for them to be making forever decisions.
When I say that the book is sexually explicit, I mean that it uses the appropriate clinical terms for body parts. It describes contact in a sensual although not obscene way. Michael touches Katherine’s breasts and vulva. She strokes his penis until he ejaculates. They have intercourse several times.
And, most shocking of all, Katherine describes the feeling of her orgasm. Because orgasms for girls are important in this book.
Really, the only negative thing I can say about the sex is that it was a bit awkward listening to it with one’s teens. I still have some baggage from my past, sigh.
There is a certain sadness in the breakup, of course. Breaking up always sucks. But it is clear that Katherine, as much as she loves and is attracted to Michael, is not ready to commit to marriage. And, I suspect if Michael were honest, neither is he. But the connection is powerful, and it hurts to break it.
Again, given my own professional experience, better to break up before getting married and having kids than after.
Other good things about this book:
Katherine and Michael can talk about her period without getting all weird. Personally, I was raised this way - my upbringing was a strange combination of really good sex education and really fucked up beliefs about gender. We could always talk about menstruation, and I never felt it was a particular taboo.
Also good is that Katherine and Michael take responsibility for the sex they have. They use contraception, first condoms, and then later Katherine takes it on herself to get the pill from the local planned parenthood. This is modeling responsible behavior - the point of sex education come to think of it. If you are too young to take responsibility for what you are doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.
In this sense, Katherine and Michael are indeed mature enough for sex. Not only by being physically responsible, but accepting the emotional responsibility, and choosing to act kindly (most of the time) toward each other. Honestly, this relatively brief relationship shows more emotional maturity than more than half the marriages I have seen up close.
There are a few things that do seem dated about the book, and, interestingly, Blume herself talks about them in her afterward to the edition we listened to.
In addition to sharing the story of her daughter, she also notes that back in the 1970s, prevention of pregnancy was the main concern for safe sex, so even for a short relationship, the pill was considered sufficient. Nowadays, in our post-AIDS society, Katherine and Michael would have been advised to continue to use condoms at least until they were a long-term relationship where both had been tested for STIs.
Another dated bit was the fact that Katherine appears to orgasm fairly easily through intercourse alone (although with foreplay.) This is now understood to be something the majority of women do not experience. Most women need direct clitoral stimulation for orgasm. I think it would have been helpful, given how good the rest of the book is in educating about the reality of sex, if this might have been mentioned somehow.
But these are really minor quibbles. The book is a classic for a reason: it is the most realistic portrayal of teenage sex - indeed young sexual discovery generally - that I have ever read. And it is really sweet and loving and tender and sad and real.
It matches my own experience of a sexual awakening so much better than any of the Fundie crap I grew up with.
There are a number of lines that are really excellent that I remembered enough to look up.
“Sex is a commitment...Once you're there you can't go back to holding hands...and when you give yourself both mentally and physically...well, you're completely vulnerable.”
That is a simply outstanding observation. This is why, for me, I really can’t envision casual sex as something I would enjoy. But also why I love sex with a partner I love so much.
This next line is a great rebuttal to the kind of moral panic each generation of parents seems to have.
“I still get angry when older people assume that everyone in my generation screws around. They're probably the same ones who think all kids use dope. It's true that we are more open than our parents but that just means we accept sex and talk about it. It doesn't mean we are all jumping into bed together.”
Ironically, the Baby Boomers were, statistically, the most promiscuous generation of my lifetime. Since then, each generation has delayed sex more, had fewer partners, and fewer unplanned pregnancies. But it’s all the kids’ fault, right?
I’ll end with this line, from the end of the book, which is just incredible.
“I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do - that maybe I always will. I'll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think it's just that I'm not ready for forever.”
In my own life, my wife and I met and married fairly young - although we didn’t date until we were both in college. Ours was a young marriage, although not as young as my parents, for example.
We had a beautiful courtship and sexual awakening together, and, as the line says, it was beautiful and very special. And we don’t regret a single thing we did together and I will never be sorry for loving her. Even if it hadn’t worked out, it was still beautiful and special and something I will treasure my entire life.
In a way, I miss being young and in love like we were, even though I really don’t want to be in my 20s again. It is good being middle aged and in love too, and a quarter century with a beloved partner is also a beautiful and special thing. But I am grateful that we had that beautiful experience of being young and in love together.
Forever… is a classic for a reason, and I am glad we listened to it. It presents a far more healthy look at sexuality - including teen sexuality - than most media even these days. All of us should aspire to treat each other with respect, love, and consideration. For any of us, taking responsibility for our sexuality like Katherine and Michael do would be a good thing. And really, many marriages and relationships disintegrate because the partners do not take this kind of responsibility - physical and emotional - and seek consent and pleasure for the other. But we all should.
In this era, when online influencers of the “manosphere” push toxic and violent masculinity, and then wonder why toxic men can’t get laid, Judy Blume offers an alternative: loving and consensual relationships. The world will be a better place if her vision wins out in the end.
***
Note on my sexual education:
In many ways, I had an excellent sex education. My parents were always frank and willing to talk. I would say it was FAR better than my public schooled peers got at the time, and definitely better than I have found most homeschooled kids to have gotten.
The good:
Scientifically accurate information about bodies, puberty, menstruation, and intercourse. Solid information about STIs, contraception, and pregnancy. A good emphasis on consent and mutual pleasure, even if I wasn’t taught what a clitoris was and how to pleasure one. Generally good information on the emotional dimensions of sex - how it can paper over red flags in a relationship, the need for women to feel safe in order to orgasm.
The not-so-good:
For obvious reasons, no scientifically accurate information about sexual orientation or gender identity. Although, to be fair, this was the 1980s, and homophobia went a lot deeper than religious beliefs in the larger society. Nobody in public school was getting great information here either.
There was also, of course, the usual “no sex until you are married” thing, with “the line” drawn in various places depending on who you were reading. For Gothard, no kissing before marriage. For others, as long as that penis wasn’t in a vagina, it was okay. My parents were somewhere in the middle.
The worst, though, was the gender essentialism - which turned out to be so far from reality that I pretty much had to abandon the whole thing. You know the stuff: “men trade love to get sex, women trade sex to get love.” That’s horseshit. Men need love as much as women do, and women can and do enjoy sex for its own sake. And the gender roles thing, that became more important to my parents as time went on.
But overall, I got good education - and it made a positive difference once I started experiencing sexuality with a partner, while laying the foundation for a healthier marriage than most.
***
The narrator for the audiobook was Caitlin Kinnunen, and I thought it was kind of meh. It was hard at times to distinguish between the voices, including between Michael and Katherine, which is actually important at times. Oh well, at least the book itself was compelling, even if the audio left me a little flat.
No comments:
Post a Comment