A Clear Voice

Before you make a lot of pronouncements about how rare it is for young teen girls to "pull a train,"
go stand in line for a ski lift for a while, or hang out some other place where you can be a fly on the wall for the conversations of kids that age. It's amazing how common this behavior is, and not just the particular activity in question here, but more traditional and mutual forms.

As for your assertion that teens were just as sexually active two or three generations ago, there are solid statistics to refute that. Given that the only form of "protection" available at the time was made from unreliable sheep intestine, and abortion was largely illegal, a constant level of teen sexual activity across the last three generations would, through improved contraceptive technology and availability, cause an overall long term decline in teen maternity and STD's and that's simply not the case.

While I do not wish to diminish concern about abuse, the point here is that, given the facts, your perspective seems a little distorted. You seem very motivated to find a reason to blame this young lady's freely chosen behavior upon some external force beyond her control. Maybe there was abuse, but some victims of abuse choose to respond differently, and CHOOSE is the operative word here. Our society suffers from too much readiness to characterize the choices people make as something happening to them, whether it's this or saying that some punk holding up liquor stores is caused by poverty.
We can address the issue of abuse without excusing people for the poor choices they make.

I'm going to have to agree on this one. I've known quite a few girls who were sexually active in college, and the normal patterns were either sleeping with their boyfriend or occasional drunken escapades. As much as I disapprove of that, it's a far sight from that to what this girl did. I've also known one or two girls who had very serious emotional damage from abusive parents (although not sexual, as far as I'm aware), and among that damage was an inability to say no to anyone that got them into very nasty relationships with abusive boyfriends, because they thought they deserved whatever they got.

When stuff like this is going on, the appropriate, and Christian, response is not to say, "Whatever she wants to do is perfectly OK," and nor is it to sit back and call her a slut from your moral high ground, it's to figure out what the hell's going wrong and try to fix it. Especially given the history of the family that I've seen, this girl is going to be pretty damaged, and what she needs is help, not self-righteous condemnation. There are people who walk into wicked situations with both arms wide open, and such deserve our condemnation. From what I've seen, there's not many people like that, and this girl isn't one of them.

dweeb,

On your first point, I'm not disputing the fact that sexual activity among teens is very common and I'm not saying that any girl who is sexually active was probably abused. All I'm saying is that among girls whose sexual activities are very extreme, especially at a young age (girls may have sex at a young age these days, and they may do extreme things, but the combination happens less often) abuse is quite likely a contributing factor.

I also never said that sexual activity was just as common years ago. I think it was more common than some people might realize, but certainlly less common that it is now. However, while the rates of sexual activity have gone up recently, I don't think that the rates of sexual abuse are that different. My point was that there have always been people who have sex in ways that are extreme for their culture, and many of those people were abused.

As to your last point, I believe in personal responsibility and I don't believe in the adult "victim culture." However, I will point out that generally the "victim culture" that you find so annoying consists of people who have realized the root of their problems, but instead of addressing them, they continue to use them as an excuse.

This case, however, is of a child who at the time she did those things was still living with her abusive family. I really doubt that she ever dealt with her abuse or connected her behavior to it, in fact it's probably quite repressed. She's a child. Children are not expected to have the same level of maturity that adults have. Calling this CHILD a slut who is freely making all her own choices is simply idiotic. If she's 40 years old and spending all her time crying about how she couldn't get anywhere because her father abused her, then we can talk.

Hi Brett! (I'm assuming that you're my brother Brett here.) You made a very good point. It's possible for there to be a good balance between self-righteousness and enababling.

I didn't call her any names. I simply pointed out that she had a choice in what she did. I don't buy that a 15 year old is some environmentally programmed automaton devoid of free will. No matter how bad her home life is, she still has a choice in how she responds to it, and there's no shortage of assistance available in seeking a path of appropriate response. There are 15 year olds robbing stores and killing people out there. There are people lobbying hard for the idea that 15 year olds deserve complete "reproductive autonomy." Whether a 15 year old has any judgment seems a matter of whose ox is being gored. I don't think it's helpful, though, to say that it's OK for a 15 year old and not for a 40 year old. The potential objective harm is the same or worse - STD's don't care how old you are, and a 15 year old has a lot more opportunities to share it with the rest of the population than a 40 year old. At what point between 15 and 40 do we start expecting better judgment, and is it a linear progression over 25 years or is there a quantum leap on the eve of the 18th or 21st birthday? The sad fact is that this girl's poor decisions won't impact anyone as much as they impact her, and as the one with the most to lose, if she won't think more clearly, it's doubtful anyone else is going to be able to do it for her.

I think a far more important question in how one judges this behavior centers on whether she never had a meaningful exposure to any reason why this behavior might be wrong, or she had been taught, and simply chose to do it anyway. Either one seems possible with or without the abuse angle, but answer seems probative for what kind of societal barometers stories like this represent.

Now, if one has a major issue with the people who ARE calling her names, I think a very constructive response is to ask, what about the boys involved? What kind of low-lives are they to even want to participate in such degradation of another human being? It can be argued that she's not hurting anyone but herself, but they're apparently every bit as willing as her allegedly abusive father to help make her into an emotional train wreck, not to mention how they might treat the next girl.

By the way, the teen conversations I'm overhearing indicate that this sort of "extreme" behavior is more common than you may think, although it seems to more often than not be alcohol related.

The skill of judgment, just like anything else related to maturity, is a continuum from infancy to the one guy that was perfect at it. In my experience, 15 year olds don't seem to practice a whole lot of it, even though they think they're better at it than anyone else. That's why I'm sure as hell not lobbying for "reproductive autonomy" for teenagers.

However, I don't really think we're all that far off here. I'm not saying any of these behaviors are OK. In fact, I'm not even suggesting that because people are young or have had extenuating circumstances, that they should not face the full consequences of their actions. This girl (and all the boys) should be expelled, and the 15-year-old robbers and murders should go to jail. But after that, people should also have some compassion and try to help them instead of condemning them. There is such a thing as condemning the behavior and continuing to love the person who did it. Yes, it's certainly true that many of them will choose not to accept the help or get past their problems, but it's no reason not to try.

The reason I was more focused on the abuse angle was not because I wanted to give her a break on the consequences, but because mostly everyone else I read was calling her names (but not you).

Yes, I'm sure you've heard many conversations, but I would question how random a sample you're getting. Not to mention, alcohol is another thing that seriously reduces judgment. But in this case, they chose to drink the alcohol, so I’m not feeling real bad about that.