Sex Love and You (chapter one Response)

After reading Part 1 of Sex, Love, and You by Tom and Judy Lickona, I was pleasantly surprised. Most literature given to teenagers and young adults on the subject of abstinence is rather dry, outdated, and often reads more like a lecturing parent than a helpful guide to making good sexual decisions. How helpful can any book be if it's not read? Sex, Love, and You gives real world reasons why sex isn't a good choice before marriage.

Overall, I agree with the message given in the first installment of this book. The second chapter was the most informative. It listed thirteen reasons why people my age (junior high kids to college age young adults) are choosing to be "sexually intimate". These reasons are: sexual attraction, societal and media pressure, peer pressure, pressure from a partner, the desire to be "normal", parental example and permissiveness, the wrong kind of sex education, mistaken beliefs, boredom, drinking and drugs, low self esteem, lonliness. and no good reason to say no. I feel the most realistic reasons were societal and media pressure, pressure from a partner, mistaken beliefs, and low self esteem.

Societal and media pressure are all around us. There are people paid hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to "sell" sex to young adults. By sell sex, I mean, to market movies, products, and things to people using sexual innuendo, sexy men and women, and erotic ideas. The most vivid sexually charged commercials we see lately are the AXE personal hygiene products. The slogan is "How dirty boys get clean". The reason these ideas are marketed to teens instead of adults is because teens tend to have disposable incomes. They rarely have bills or any sort of financial responsibility. Any money they make, have, are give, etc can go movies, food, and material things--making them a prime target for advertising agencies and marketing companies. The sentence at the top of page 21 best describes the effect of this: "Eventually, the constant bombardment of sexual messages and sexual stimuli can weaken our defenses and make us more susceptible to sexual temptations". Showing people having a very good time in sexual situations is going to make young adults want to try sex, not the product people are promoting.

Pressure from a partner and mistaken beliefs go hand in hand. Often a person pressuring his or her partner will use these mistaken beliefs to justify sex. It may not be that they actually believe the "old