This NY Times article about eating disorders among Orthodox Jews raises some theories about the origins of eating disorders in this population, but I think there are some other possibilities.
Modesty may make it harder to dress well for women who are even slightly overweight. Thin women look fine in a wide range of clothes, but slightly overweight women need to be creative in ways that don't always work with modesty restrictions --- showing cleavage is a good way for men not to notice extra fat elsewhere.
Also I suspect that being sexually involved is helpful for overweight women and their partners to feel good about their bodies. For religious women, that reinforcement isn't available. Religious men who have no experience either way may assume that thin women are better in bed. Alternatively, thin partners are more socially valued, and the social value may bring gratification pre-marriage. Likewise, religious women cannot feel sexy or sexually empowered by sexual activity. They may feel sexually empowered about how thin their bodies are, so they may seek thinness as their primary form of feeling sexy.
Because these alternative outlets for feeling desirable are not available to Orthodox teens, they need to find other ways of feeling good about themselves. I wonder whether the types of exercise that are incompatible with anorexia, such as weight lifting where it's important to eat minimum amounts of protein (0.5-1 g protein per pound of body weight) and to be moderate in quantity of exercise (every other day, at most), would be helpful. Gymnastics, dancing, rock climbing, and other ways of using that strength could also be helpful in helping teen women feel confident about their bodies, and also staying healthy.
Meanwhile, teen males also need to change their attitudes and how they perceive women of different sizes. That's harder, especially if they do not interact much with the opposite sex.
Showing posts with label sexual initiation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexual initiation. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Teen-written sex ed site: sexetc.
Teen-written sex ed site includes an article "Kissing: are you missing out on life's simple pleasures" imploring readers to slow down and smell the roses; another article covers what abstinent teens do. One quoted teen says, “Now that I’ve been in a relationship for over a year and we’re considering becoming sexually active, I realize that my sex ed experiences made me terrified of sex. My teachers made it seem like everyone had an STD, and that contraceptives are expected to fail. If it weren’t for my own reading, I wouldn’t know what kinds of contraceptives are available.”
It's neat to read a quote by a real teenager illustrating what the GAO talked about in how inaccurate and negatively slanted abstinence education is.
It's neat to read a quote by a real teenager illustrating what the GAO talked about in how inaccurate and negatively slanted abstinence education is.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Forever relevant
A retrospective look at Judy Blume's Forever, a book about a couple's first love and decision to have sex. (The article was published 4 years ago, but is making the rounds again through reproductive health blogs.)
What the article does not mention is the issue of sex outside of romantic relationships which has become more normative in the past decade or two. What I like the most about this book is that having such a healthy relationship of communication portrayed in the book creates an ideal that might discourage teens from pre-relationship and non-monogamous sex. Adolescents have famously short time horizons, and will wait for marriage only extremely particular conditions and maybe not even then, but waiting for a devoted and loving girlfriend or boyfriend rather than just a sex partner may be attainable.
What the article does not mention is the issue of sex outside of romantic relationships which has become more normative in the past decade or two. What I like the most about this book is that having such a healthy relationship of communication portrayed in the book creates an ideal that might discourage teens from pre-relationship and non-monogamous sex. Adolescents have famously short time horizons, and will wait for marriage only extremely particular conditions and maybe not even then, but waiting for a devoted and loving girlfriend or boyfriend rather than just a sex partner may be attainable.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Speaking of religious kids' decisions to have sex
The Bristol Palin interview reminded me of the strange wrong number 6 months ago from the 25 year old yeshiva kid from Brooklyn thinking about having sex with his girlfriend for the first time. I wonder what happened. Did they have sex? Are they still together? Did they get engaged? They could have even gotten married by now.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Abstinence as the Israeli peace process
A certainly flawed analogy occurred to me about the abstinence debate. Adolescent and young adult sexuality is like the Israeli peace process.
In Israel, no one is truly against the peace process. If the hawks believed there existed some action that they could take that would bring enduring and true peace to Israel, they would agree to it in an instant. The disagreement between the right and the left in Israeli politics is not for or against peace: it's for or against the likelihood that any given action by the state of Israel could result in peace. The hawks say that the prospects for peace lie in the hands of others, and Israel has done what it can and possibly more, i.e., many actions that were useless or dangerous.
As in Israeli politics, I don't think the disagreement over sex education is about the desirability of adolescents and young adults abstaining from sex until they have lower risk of STDs and are in a loving lasting relationships. The disagreement is about the likelihood of any action by adults inducing this ideal state. The abstinence camp is idealistic like the peace groups in Israel. The comprehensive sex ed camp say that adults have very limited actions they can take, and the best they can do is containment, and that attempts to induce this ideal state are useless or possibly dangerous.
It's not impossible for either ideal state to emerge. If nothing else, when the Messiah comes there will be lasting peace in Israel and around the world and everyone will make wise sexual decisions all the time. Until then, it's not clear.
(Of course, the optimists on abstinence are usually hawkish on Israeli politics, and vice-versa. Who said people had to be consistent.)
In Israel, no one is truly against the peace process. If the hawks believed there existed some action that they could take that would bring enduring and true peace to Israel, they would agree to it in an instant. The disagreement between the right and the left in Israeli politics is not for or against peace: it's for or against the likelihood that any given action by the state of Israel could result in peace. The hawks say that the prospects for peace lie in the hands of others, and Israel has done what it can and possibly more, i.e., many actions that were useless or dangerous.
As in Israeli politics, I don't think the disagreement over sex education is about the desirability of adolescents and young adults abstaining from sex until they have lower risk of STDs and are in a loving lasting relationships. The disagreement is about the likelihood of any action by adults inducing this ideal state. The abstinence camp is idealistic like the peace groups in Israel. The comprehensive sex ed camp say that adults have very limited actions they can take, and the best they can do is containment, and that attempts to induce this ideal state are useless or possibly dangerous.
It's not impossible for either ideal state to emerge. If nothing else, when the Messiah comes there will be lasting peace in Israel and around the world and everyone will make wise sexual decisions all the time. Until then, it's not clear.
(Of course, the optimists on abstinence are usually hawkish on Israeli politics, and vice-versa. Who said people had to be consistent.)
Review of Unprotected
This book is unfortunately one that can be accurately judged by its cover. A girl in an uncomfortably-short skirt and high-heeled strappy sandals, slumps dejectedly at a table, her Burberry purse slung over the other shoulder, shadows and limbs strategically placed. And by its title, Unprotected: A campus psychiatrist reveals how political correctness in her profession endangers every student, by Anonymous, M.D. This evident alarmism --- PC is so insidious that the author must remain anonymous or risk Birkenstocks being thrown through her front windows --- that pervades the book may cause parents and aggrieved social conservatives to pick up the book, but it does no good for Dr. Anonymous's arguments and alienates people who might otherwise agree with her.
A friend of mine, an observant Jew who every week attends prayer services where the sexes are separated by a curtain, is a prime candidate for a reader who might agree with this book's argument. Her conclusion after skimming the book, however, was, "Books like this make me mad." She objected to its overly dramatic language and attempt to scare the reader into agreement.
Dr. Grossman's arguments (Dr. Anonymous turned out to be psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman from UCLA) are themselves very worth consideration and further research. Here they are. I think any of these could spawn half a dozen good studies. I do not think that they are generally repressed by political correctness at the level of academic research. Research is usually not sufficiently disseminated, though, and maybe that is the problem: this certainly wouldn't be the first area where quality of health care suffered because practitioners followed their intuitions instead of evidence-based guidelines or the evidence was never disseminated in the first place.
At any rate, here they are:
1. Casual premarital sex may be emotionally dangerous for at least some adolescents and young adults, especially for women due to their hormonal response to orgasm and stimulation of erogenous zones. Many young women have strong emotions that accompany what they had wanted to consider casual relationships, which surprise them.
2. People know very little about STDs and underestimate the risks:
a. Condoms don't protect completely against some STDs, especially since adolescents and even young adults don't use them consistently.
b. Younger people are more vulnerable to STDs than older people.
c. Some STDs are incurable and some have a small chance of causing fertility problems over a relatively short period.
d. STDs are given short shrift in the larger health care picture. She concludes college should require universal testing for common STDs such as chlamydia, just as they require universal testing for TB.
3. Abstinence is not considered to be a virtue to the extent that other disciplined behaviors are. (I made this argument a few weeks ago.)
4. Counselors are required to be culturally competent to deal with all potential clients, but while they are taught sensitivity to rare minorities such as transgender and Muslims, this cultural sensitivity does not extend to larger traditional minorities such as evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.
5. A spiritual discipline, whether meditation, yoga, or traditional religious prayer, appears to be beneficial for mental health in both the short and long term.
6. HIV is more difficult for healthy people to contract from vaginal intercourse than people commonly believe, and this disproportionate fear of HIV may cause anxiety and panic attacks in some people, as well as discounting larger actual risks from more contagious STDs.
7. Abortion has different meanings to different women, and different meanings before and after an abortion. Some women regard abortion as simply a medical procedure, and other women see more profound meaning in abortions, and some women change their beliefs about abortion after their experiences with them.
8. Women underestimate the risks to their fertility of waiting to have children past age 35, most do not know that fertility declines dramatically after age 35, and that fertility technology is very limited in its ability to help women and also very expensive.
These topics can be addressed in both research and in practice.
In research, these topics are neglected, but only to the extent that many women's health and sexual health issues are. When raised in the right way, my experience is that almost everyone considers these to be legitimate arguments and subjects of study.
In practice, it may be another story. It is true that some of these issues are not well-disseminated, but lots of research isn't. People are woefully ignorant about their own health, and the surprise isn't that some issues are neglected, it is that some concerns manage to rise to the top. The concerns she mentions that young adults are highly aware of are weight control, cholesterol, and osteoporosis. The motivation for the the first is immediate self-interest, knowledge about cholesterol comes via middle-aged men, and I'm not sure the third is a concern college students are aware of, but to the extent that they are, their knowledge comes via middle-aged women and grandparents with brittle bones. STDs are hidden and stigmatized and can't be as salient to young adults.
Another problem is that so frequently these discussions are politicized. Many have a suspicion of anything that might turn out to be the socially conservative version of political correctness. It seems to me that in the current administration, this suspicion is more than justified. I've heard from a few different people that the administration has made appointments even at low levels to enforce their socially conservative PC (SCPC). One example went down to the same semantic pickiness that liberal PC is mocked for: the appointee ensured that the term "prostitution" was used instead "commercial sex work," and even those who found the former term offensively pejorative were pressured into using the term. Since the liberals were underdogs in this and many other situations, it seems highly sensible that they would resist what they perceive as SCPC infiltration.
Reasons besides politics why each concern is not disseminated adequately are worth exploring, and I may do that.
I hope that in the future administration, we can move past these political divisions and actually work constructively together to solve these real problems, first by disseminating the existing evidence and then by doing new work. It may be simply an issue of framing issues the right way, and unfortunately this book does nothing to help its own cause.
A friend of mine, an observant Jew who every week attends prayer services where the sexes are separated by a curtain, is a prime candidate for a reader who might agree with this book's argument. Her conclusion after skimming the book, however, was, "Books like this make me mad." She objected to its overly dramatic language and attempt to scare the reader into agreement.
Dr. Grossman's arguments (Dr. Anonymous turned out to be psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman from UCLA) are themselves very worth consideration and further research. Here they are. I think any of these could spawn half a dozen good studies. I do not think that they are generally repressed by political correctness at the level of academic research. Research is usually not sufficiently disseminated, though, and maybe that is the problem: this certainly wouldn't be the first area where quality of health care suffered because practitioners followed their intuitions instead of evidence-based guidelines or the evidence was never disseminated in the first place.
At any rate, here they are:
1. Casual premarital sex may be emotionally dangerous for at least some adolescents and young adults, especially for women due to their hormonal response to orgasm and stimulation of erogenous zones. Many young women have strong emotions that accompany what they had wanted to consider casual relationships, which surprise them.
2. People know very little about STDs and underestimate the risks:
a. Condoms don't protect completely against some STDs, especially since adolescents and even young adults don't use them consistently.
b. Younger people are more vulnerable to STDs than older people.
c. Some STDs are incurable and some have a small chance of causing fertility problems over a relatively short period.
d. STDs are given short shrift in the larger health care picture. She concludes college should require universal testing for common STDs such as chlamydia, just as they require universal testing for TB.
3. Abstinence is not considered to be a virtue to the extent that other disciplined behaviors are. (I made this argument a few weeks ago.)
4. Counselors are required to be culturally competent to deal with all potential clients, but while they are taught sensitivity to rare minorities such as transgender and Muslims, this cultural sensitivity does not extend to larger traditional minorities such as evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.
5. A spiritual discipline, whether meditation, yoga, or traditional religious prayer, appears to be beneficial for mental health in both the short and long term.
6. HIV is more difficult for healthy people to contract from vaginal intercourse than people commonly believe, and this disproportionate fear of HIV may cause anxiety and panic attacks in some people, as well as discounting larger actual risks from more contagious STDs.
7. Abortion has different meanings to different women, and different meanings before and after an abortion. Some women regard abortion as simply a medical procedure, and other women see more profound meaning in abortions, and some women change their beliefs about abortion after their experiences with them.
8. Women underestimate the risks to their fertility of waiting to have children past age 35, most do not know that fertility declines dramatically after age 35, and that fertility technology is very limited in its ability to help women and also very expensive.
These topics can be addressed in both research and in practice.
In research, these topics are neglected, but only to the extent that many women's health and sexual health issues are. When raised in the right way, my experience is that almost everyone considers these to be legitimate arguments and subjects of study.
In practice, it may be another story. It is true that some of these issues are not well-disseminated, but lots of research isn't. People are woefully ignorant about their own health, and the surprise isn't that some issues are neglected, it is that some concerns manage to rise to the top. The concerns she mentions that young adults are highly aware of are weight control, cholesterol, and osteoporosis. The motivation for the the first is immediate self-interest, knowledge about cholesterol comes via middle-aged men, and I'm not sure the third is a concern college students are aware of, but to the extent that they are, their knowledge comes via middle-aged women and grandparents with brittle bones. STDs are hidden and stigmatized and can't be as salient to young adults.
Another problem is that so frequently these discussions are politicized. Many have a suspicion of anything that might turn out to be the socially conservative version of political correctness. It seems to me that in the current administration, this suspicion is more than justified. I've heard from a few different people that the administration has made appointments even at low levels to enforce their socially conservative PC (SCPC). One example went down to the same semantic pickiness that liberal PC is mocked for: the appointee ensured that the term "prostitution" was used instead "commercial sex work," and even those who found the former term offensively pejorative were pressured into using the term. Since the liberals were underdogs in this and many other situations, it seems highly sensible that they would resist what they perceive as SCPC infiltration.
Reasons besides politics why each concern is not disseminated adequately are worth exploring, and I may do that.
I hope that in the future administration, we can move past these political divisions and actually work constructively together to solve these real problems, first by disseminating the existing evidence and then by doing new work. It may be simply an issue of framing issues the right way, and unfortunately this book does nothing to help its own cause.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Why faith-based marathon training might delay teen sex
I was half-joking in my previous post when I said that marathon training might delay teen sex more than abstinence programs. Of course, that would not hard to do because the definitive study of abstinence programs finds they don't delay teen sex at all.
Marathons fit in with the question of how people who don't intend to run marathons admire those who do, and I wasn't thinking about it as a potential intervention. The reason marathon training might delay teen sex is that the studies by the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy show that comprehensive lifestyle programs are the most effective programs of all: these are the programs which involve the adolescents in some kind of activity, improve support systems, and take a lot of time.
The half-joking reasons why marathon training might delay teen sex are that they will be too tired and scheduled to find a partner and find time alone with the partner. But in the ideal case, first, it could create a close-knit and supportive group that meets regularly for long periods of time, so the group will reinforce its norms more strongly than a more loose group. Second, setting a high goal and working towards it may raise participants' self-efficacy, the confidence that they can accomplish their goals in general. Self-efficacy may be particularly important in the case of religious teens that have sex even though they think they shouldn't. Third, working towards a big goal may make that goal more salient in their minds, and may make sex slightly less salient. The endorphins wouldn't hurt. Plus, as one commenter said, maybe it would delay puberty, though I'm not sure if marathon training is safe so young.
This is assuming the maximal best case where all of the participants are super into the idea. Obviously in the real world, most would drop out, and only the most risk-seeking kids would stay in the program so it would be hard to find the right control group to test whether it works.
Casual team sports take up some time, but might not have enough intensity to raise participants' self-efficacy.
Marathons fit in with the question of how people who don't intend to run marathons admire those who do, and I wasn't thinking about it as a potential intervention. The reason marathon training might delay teen sex is that the studies by the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy show that comprehensive lifestyle programs are the most effective programs of all: these are the programs which involve the adolescents in some kind of activity, improve support systems, and take a lot of time.
The half-joking reasons why marathon training might delay teen sex are that they will be too tired and scheduled to find a partner and find time alone with the partner. But in the ideal case, first, it could create a close-knit and supportive group that meets regularly for long periods of time, so the group will reinforce its norms more strongly than a more loose group. Second, setting a high goal and working towards it may raise participants' self-efficacy, the confidence that they can accomplish their goals in general. Self-efficacy may be particularly important in the case of religious teens that have sex even though they think they shouldn't. Third, working towards a big goal may make that goal more salient in their minds, and may make sex slightly less salient. The endorphins wouldn't hurt. Plus, as one commenter said, maybe it would delay puberty, though I'm not sure if marathon training is safe so young.
This is assuming the maximal best case where all of the participants are super into the idea. Obviously in the real world, most would drop out, and only the most risk-seeking kids would stay in the program so it would be hard to find the right control group to test whether it works.
Casual team sports take up some time, but might not have enough intensity to raise participants' self-efficacy.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Short abstinence updates
Catching up on some of the abstinence news while I was away:
1. A WSJ article tells of a teen vampire series with a large and burgeoning readership enraptured with the characters' intense restrained abstinent romance. The WSJ review of the actual book, however, is skeptical: "The most devoted readers will no doubt try to make excuses for this botched novel, but [author Stephanie] Meyer has put a stake through the heart of her own beloved creation."
2. Abstinence is not merely not-having-sex, but is apparently seen by some teensas a step towards having sex. Before sex is salient, not having sex is the default, and there's no thought of doing otherwise. Abstinence doesn't become a conscious choice until sex is an actual possibility. How this should change abstinence-focussed sex ed is a good question.
1. A WSJ article tells of a teen vampire series with a large and burgeoning readership enraptured with the characters' intense restrained abstinent romance. The WSJ review of the actual book, however, is skeptical: "The most devoted readers will no doubt try to make excuses for this botched novel, but [author Stephanie] Meyer has put a stake through the heart of her own beloved creation."
2. Abstinence is not merely not-having-sex, but is apparently seen by some teensas a step towards having sex. Before sex is salient, not having sex is the default, and there's no thought of doing otherwise. Abstinence doesn't become a conscious choice until sex is an actual possibility. How this should change abstinence-focussed sex ed is a good question.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Wrong number
Last night I went on a second date with someone.
The next morning at 6:45, I was sitting down to breakfast and had just finished a reprint of the NYT article about need for Orthodox Jews to be more open about sex, and the phone rings. I run to get it.
Guy, sounding a bit muffled for the entire conversation and at times inaudible: "Hi. How are you doing?"
Me, assuming it was my date: "Pretty good. You're up early."
We exchange the usual generic preliminaries. I had been in the kitchen preparing to put breakfast together, but went into my room and sat on my bed to avoid waking up my roommate.
Guy: "It sounds like you're still in bed."
Me: "I've been up for awhile. I was just preparing breakfast, but went back to my room to talk to you."
Guy: "I really wish I could be there with you and hold you. Are you dressed? What are you wearing?"
Me, thinking that this seemed pretty premature: "I'm not dressed yet. I'm thinking about going jogging, so dressed for that."
Guy, wistfully: "Do you want to run together? I'll come over."
Me, thinking doesn't he have to get to work?: "Well, I don't run very fast. I think you'd be disappointed."
Guy: "But we could run together holding hands... Say something sweet."
Me: "Chocolate. Popsicles."
Guy: "Something sweeter."
Me: "Um, .... I can't perform on cue. Aren't the sweetest things the things that come up spontaneously? Anyhow, I didn't peg you for being such an early riser."
Guy: "I just missed you."
Me, thinking it's been less than 8 hours and wondering whether I would hear from this guy every 8 hours from now on: "Um, I missed you too. So, shall we get together later this week?"
Guy: "Wait, is this Shira [not the name he used]?"
Me: "Shira?" My first thought was that my second date was seeing other people, which is totally reasonable, but how tacky after the conversation.
He gets embarrassed as we figure out it's a wrong number. He tells me his name, say Yonatan. I give my full name, first and last. I explain that I thought he was last night date, and somehow he asks me if I'm religious, and how religious. We establish that we're both observant Jews. In spite of the confusion somehow it was a comfortable conversation and this being a huge coincidence, it is the kind of thing which is always billed as fate (I've heard at least one wrong number story where they ended up getting married), so he feels the need to add, "But I have a girlfriend." Obviously. We exchange sociological affiliations, high school, synagogue, grew up where, which yeshiva in Israel, etc., and establish how this mistake happened. I'd never heard of his synagogue, high school, or Israel yeshiva, so I assume that they are black hat (yeshivish).
I'm ready to hang up, but somehow it feels momentous that we had this phone call, and maybe we should keep in touch, though that would be ridiculous, so I settled for saying that I'm sure we would see each other around given how small the world evidently is.
But he asks my advice what to get as a gift for his girlfriend for her birthday. She's just-out-of-college age from a very religious background, and he's a few years older, and they've been together 2 years. He remarks on the irony that she's from a much more religious background, but rebelled a lot more than he did, and I ask if it's really an irony.
I ask why they don't get married already: 2 years is a long time, and honestly I'm a bit afraid for her that the relationship will drag on and break up and she'll lose the time. Her family wants her to marry someone more religious, and continues to set her up with more religious guys. It's unclear whether her family knows about him, but she apparently isn't willing to go against them at this point, or maybe she doesn't feel that it's necessary to think about marriage yet. Around her family, she adheres to the standard dress code, but in other circumstances she wears pants (normally not worn except among the most liberal Orthodox), and her roommates think she is with relatives when she is staying over at his place. He says dreamily, "It's so nice just to spend the night together, just kissing and holding each other, nothing else."
We have a generic conversation about gift ideas, almost anything he gets her she'll love etc etc, somewhere in the middle of which he says she wants to be shocked and he wants to get her something "shocking, sexy and fun."
"Sexy" seemed like a funny word to use --- obviously he and his girlfriend were somewhat intimate, but I had no idea how much. I was thinking of recommending one of the women-owned sex shops in NY, but didn't want to make any assumptions, so I asked what he meant by "sexy."
He tells me that they're going upstate for her birthday, and I exclaimed what a wonderful birthday present that was, but apparently he has to get her something in addition. He says he's also worried about spending shabbat in the hotel because of electricity is prohibited on shabbat, and that brings questions about the TV (don't turn it on?) and electric beds (?!). I suggested he bring a timer for the lights (he joked maybe they should just have the lights off the whole time), and added that if he's really concerned about the electric locks, in a pinch he has what to rely on to use electric locks on shabbat, but obviously other key options are better. After we talk a bit about the keys, he adds, "Will this rabbi say it's okay to make as much love as we want?"
I said that I didn't think that was likely, but some rabbis are accommodating about premarital sex using the mikvah, following usual procedure of married couples.
He says, "The thing is, we've done everything and anything. Everything! But not the act itself. And now we're planning to do the act while we're away."
I ask about protection, and he responds immediately, "Birth control or condom. We haven't decided yet. She doesn't want to use a condom because she wants to feel [incomprehensible]." I get worried, but apparently she started the pill awhile ago in anticipation, so they're safe.
I repeat the textbook line about condoms always being a good idea just in case and to get into the habit, although in this case, it seems unlikely that they're likely to have sex with other people --- it's already a big deal with each other after 2 years of dating. I think about mentioning UTI risk, but don't.
We talk about mikvah and premarital sex, and what different people do. He's been resigned that premarital sex was wrong, ans they decided they were going to break the law, and there was nothing to do about it. He knew that it was better for his girlfriend to go to the mikvah, but the force of the social stigma against premarital sex was so strong that he was willing to do a huge sin rather than violate the social norms. This is unusual, so I'm going to repeat it: he clearly cares about the religion, but he was willing to pick the worse option religiously rather than violate a social norm.
When we think about other religions that ban premarital sex, they can't mitigate it. In Judaism, everyone agrees sex without following the ritual laws involving mikvah is a huge sin, at least as bad as eating on Yom Kippur; premarital sex following the mikvah laws is more murky, but almost everyone will agree that using the mikvah for premarital sex is better than not using the mikvah for premarital sex, and there's a substantial opinion that it's negligibly wrong compared with the alternative.
He was amazed that people talk about religiously reasonable ways to have premarital sex, and I gave him some tips on ways to get around the social issues (i.e., not going to a formal mikvah, but instead using a body of natural water, even with a bathing suit (kashrut.org)), but ultimately it's a matter of conscience how much to keep the laws.
He seemed happy to bring his actions a bit closer to Jewish law since that's the usual framework he's working in, but then he realizes that if they're going to have sex for the first time, and follow the Jewish law, they can't have sex again for 7 days, which uses up the time that they have upstate. He really wants the first time to be special. I break the news that of course the first time is special for being the first time, but it tends to last 30 or maybe 90 seconds, and it's only on the second time that couples start to figure everything out. That seems to sober him: if he's going to think about keeping the laws, having sex for the first time will last a very short time and then they won't be able to have sex again for the rest of the vacation, so the vacation can't be so momentous.
He tells me how much he loves her, and from his tone at the beginning of the conversation, it was clear, so again I asked about marriage. We talk some more about the possibilities, and the fact that sometimes people keep the laws and sometimes not. He says he'd like to be more religious; as excited at the prospect of having sex he sounded, he even sounds a little relieved about the idea of marriage, but he's not sure she would be for it. (He didn't say why: liberals would say it's because he doesn't want to sneak around anymore and this is the only way he saw not to sneak around; religious would say that he want to do the right thing; my guess is a bit of both.)
In the end, it sounds like he decided not to have sex and maybe to think more about marriage. It's not clear.
"I have one final question. But I'm too embarrassed."
"It's okay." We go back and forth a bit, with lots of silence on my end to give him space to ask the question before I add, "If you have any further questions, please feel free to call, or I can give you my email address. You can send a question by email if you prefer." It was probably a bit much for him to anchor the conversation more in the real world, so he asked me to hold on and the line went dead.
The conversation lasted half an hour. Presumably he has my number, but I'm sure that's the last I'll ever hear from him. So many times he said, "I can't believe we're having this conversation." Neither could I.
My reactions:
1. What a coincidence that out of all the phone numbers in my city, he reaches someone who speaks a religious language he recognizes, who had personal circumstances such that the first few minutes of the conversation were able to turn into a longer conversation, who at that very moment had just been reading the next page of the newspaper which was about premarital sex among Orthodox Jews, and who was open to having a balanced discussion about the big problem weighing on his mind.
2. Her family likely has no idea how little control they have anymore. They think that they can constrain her marriage choices, but in fact they're just delegitmizing marriage and making it more likely that their daughter is going to have substantial not-leading-to-marriage relationships.
Religious groups lament decline of marriage, and wonder why. In this case, it seems pretty clear. Here the family probably feels more religious pressure than they would have felt in the past to adhere strongly to ever-stricter social norms, so they pressure their daughter, probably about trivial issues. The daughter lives in a different city than her family and has enough autonomy to pursue this relationship, but it takes a real act of courage to stand up to them for a more public issue like marriage, especially given that she doesn't feel any real pressure to get married right then.
3. This guy so clearly wants to do the religiously acceptable thing, but he is also feeling constrained by social norms . He of course wants to have sex, and he was quite proud emphasizing the Everything! they had done prior to this, but he is not too impatient to wait for marriage. I was saying pretty radical things about how it's not unreasonable to have premarital sex with mikvah, so I probably did not prompt his self-presentation instinct to kick in. I think he really did seem to be reconsidering having sex with his girlfriend, and proposing instead.
4. I'm really not primed for early morning counseling. I was groggy and spoke way too much and told him things he already knows. Now that it's afterwards I have so many questions. Perhaps better under the circumstances that I didn't get to ask them.
The next morning at 6:45, I was sitting down to breakfast and had just finished a reprint of the NYT article about need for Orthodox Jews to be more open about sex, and the phone rings. I run to get it.
Guy, sounding a bit muffled for the entire conversation and at times inaudible: "Hi. How are you doing?"
Me, assuming it was my date: "Pretty good. You're up early."
We exchange the usual generic preliminaries. I had been in the kitchen preparing to put breakfast together, but went into my room and sat on my bed to avoid waking up my roommate.
Guy: "It sounds like you're still in bed."
Me: "I've been up for awhile. I was just preparing breakfast, but went back to my room to talk to you."
Guy: "I really wish I could be there with you and hold you. Are you dressed? What are you wearing?"
Me, thinking that this seemed pretty premature: "I'm not dressed yet. I'm thinking about going jogging, so dressed for that."
Guy, wistfully: "Do you want to run together? I'll come over."
Me, thinking doesn't he have to get to work?: "Well, I don't run very fast. I think you'd be disappointed."
Guy: "But we could run together holding hands... Say something sweet."
Me: "Chocolate. Popsicles."
Guy: "Something sweeter."
Me: "Um, .... I can't perform on cue. Aren't the sweetest things the things that come up spontaneously? Anyhow, I didn't peg you for being such an early riser."
Guy: "I just missed you."
Me, thinking it's been less than 8 hours and wondering whether I would hear from this guy every 8 hours from now on: "Um, I missed you too. So, shall we get together later this week?"
Guy: "Wait, is this Shira [not the name he used]?"
Me: "Shira?" My first thought was that my second date was seeing other people, which is totally reasonable, but how tacky after the conversation.
He gets embarrassed as we figure out it's a wrong number. He tells me his name, say Yonatan. I give my full name, first and last. I explain that I thought he was last night date, and somehow he asks me if I'm religious, and how religious. We establish that we're both observant Jews. In spite of the confusion somehow it was a comfortable conversation and this being a huge coincidence, it is the kind of thing which is always billed as fate (I've heard at least one wrong number story where they ended up getting married), so he feels the need to add, "But I have a girlfriend." Obviously. We exchange sociological affiliations, high school, synagogue, grew up where, which yeshiva in Israel, etc., and establish how this mistake happened. I'd never heard of his synagogue, high school, or Israel yeshiva, so I assume that they are black hat (yeshivish).
I'm ready to hang up, but somehow it feels momentous that we had this phone call, and maybe we should keep in touch, though that would be ridiculous, so I settled for saying that I'm sure we would see each other around given how small the world evidently is.
But he asks my advice what to get as a gift for his girlfriend for her birthday. She's just-out-of-college age from a very religious background, and he's a few years older, and they've been together 2 years. He remarks on the irony that she's from a much more religious background, but rebelled a lot more than he did, and I ask if it's really an irony.
I ask why they don't get married already: 2 years is a long time, and honestly I'm a bit afraid for her that the relationship will drag on and break up and she'll lose the time. Her family wants her to marry someone more religious, and continues to set her up with more religious guys. It's unclear whether her family knows about him, but she apparently isn't willing to go against them at this point, or maybe she doesn't feel that it's necessary to think about marriage yet. Around her family, she adheres to the standard dress code, but in other circumstances she wears pants (normally not worn except among the most liberal Orthodox), and her roommates think she is with relatives when she is staying over at his place. He says dreamily, "It's so nice just to spend the night together, just kissing and holding each other, nothing else."
We have a generic conversation about gift ideas, almost anything he gets her she'll love etc etc, somewhere in the middle of which he says she wants to be shocked and he wants to get her something "shocking, sexy and fun."
"Sexy" seemed like a funny word to use --- obviously he and his girlfriend were somewhat intimate, but I had no idea how much. I was thinking of recommending one of the women-owned sex shops in NY, but didn't want to make any assumptions, so I asked what he meant by "sexy."
He tells me that they're going upstate for her birthday, and I exclaimed what a wonderful birthday present that was, but apparently he has to get her something in addition. He says he's also worried about spending shabbat in the hotel because of electricity is prohibited on shabbat, and that brings questions about the TV (don't turn it on?) and electric beds (?!). I suggested he bring a timer for the lights (he joked maybe they should just have the lights off the whole time), and added that if he's really concerned about the electric locks, in a pinch he has what to rely on to use electric locks on shabbat, but obviously other key options are better. After we talk a bit about the keys, he adds, "Will this rabbi say it's okay to make as much love as we want?"
I said that I didn't think that was likely, but some rabbis are accommodating about premarital sex using the mikvah, following usual procedure of married couples.
He says, "The thing is, we've done everything and anything. Everything! But not the act itself. And now we're planning to do the act while we're away."
I ask about protection, and he responds immediately, "Birth control or condom. We haven't decided yet. She doesn't want to use a condom because she wants to feel [incomprehensible]." I get worried, but apparently she started the pill awhile ago in anticipation, so they're safe.
I repeat the textbook line about condoms always being a good idea just in case and to get into the habit, although in this case, it seems unlikely that they're likely to have sex with other people --- it's already a big deal with each other after 2 years of dating. I think about mentioning UTI risk, but don't.
We talk about mikvah and premarital sex, and what different people do. He's been resigned that premarital sex was wrong, ans they decided they were going to break the law, and there was nothing to do about it. He knew that it was better for his girlfriend to go to the mikvah, but the force of the social stigma against premarital sex was so strong that he was willing to do a huge sin rather than violate the social norms. This is unusual, so I'm going to repeat it: he clearly cares about the religion, but he was willing to pick the worse option religiously rather than violate a social norm.
When we think about other religions that ban premarital sex, they can't mitigate it. In Judaism, everyone agrees sex without following the ritual laws involving mikvah is a huge sin, at least as bad as eating on Yom Kippur; premarital sex following the mikvah laws is more murky, but almost everyone will agree that using the mikvah for premarital sex is better than not using the mikvah for premarital sex, and there's a substantial opinion that it's negligibly wrong compared with the alternative.
He was amazed that people talk about religiously reasonable ways to have premarital sex, and I gave him some tips on ways to get around the social issues (i.e., not going to a formal mikvah, but instead using a body of natural water, even with a bathing suit (kashrut.org)), but ultimately it's a matter of conscience how much to keep the laws.
He seemed happy to bring his actions a bit closer to Jewish law since that's the usual framework he's working in, but then he realizes that if they're going to have sex for the first time, and follow the Jewish law, they can't have sex again for 7 days, which uses up the time that they have upstate. He really wants the first time to be special. I break the news that of course the first time is special for being the first time, but it tends to last 30 or maybe 90 seconds, and it's only on the second time that couples start to figure everything out. That seems to sober him: if he's going to think about keeping the laws, having sex for the first time will last a very short time and then they won't be able to have sex again for the rest of the vacation, so the vacation can't be so momentous.
He tells me how much he loves her, and from his tone at the beginning of the conversation, it was clear, so again I asked about marriage. We talk some more about the possibilities, and the fact that sometimes people keep the laws and sometimes not. He says he'd like to be more religious; as excited at the prospect of having sex he sounded, he even sounds a little relieved about the idea of marriage, but he's not sure she would be for it. (He didn't say why: liberals would say it's because he doesn't want to sneak around anymore and this is the only way he saw not to sneak around; religious would say that he want to do the right thing; my guess is a bit of both.)
In the end, it sounds like he decided not to have sex and maybe to think more about marriage. It's not clear.
"I have one final question. But I'm too embarrassed."
"It's okay." We go back and forth a bit, with lots of silence on my end to give him space to ask the question before I add, "If you have any further questions, please feel free to call, or I can give you my email address. You can send a question by email if you prefer." It was probably a bit much for him to anchor the conversation more in the real world, so he asked me to hold on and the line went dead.
The conversation lasted half an hour. Presumably he has my number, but I'm sure that's the last I'll ever hear from him. So many times he said, "I can't believe we're having this conversation." Neither could I.
My reactions:
1. What a coincidence that out of all the phone numbers in my city, he reaches someone who speaks a religious language he recognizes, who had personal circumstances such that the first few minutes of the conversation were able to turn into a longer conversation, who at that very moment had just been reading the next page of the newspaper which was about premarital sex among Orthodox Jews, and who was open to having a balanced discussion about the big problem weighing on his mind.
2. Her family likely has no idea how little control they have anymore. They think that they can constrain her marriage choices, but in fact they're just delegitmizing marriage and making it more likely that their daughter is going to have substantial not-leading-to-marriage relationships.
Religious groups lament decline of marriage, and wonder why. In this case, it seems pretty clear. Here the family probably feels more religious pressure than they would have felt in the past to adhere strongly to ever-stricter social norms, so they pressure their daughter, probably about trivial issues. The daughter lives in a different city than her family and has enough autonomy to pursue this relationship, but it takes a real act of courage to stand up to them for a more public issue like marriage, especially given that she doesn't feel any real pressure to get married right then.
3. This guy so clearly wants to do the religiously acceptable thing, but he is also feeling constrained by social norms . He of course wants to have sex, and he was quite proud emphasizing the Everything! they had done prior to this, but he is not too impatient to wait for marriage. I was saying pretty radical things about how it's not unreasonable to have premarital sex with mikvah, so I probably did not prompt his self-presentation instinct to kick in. I think he really did seem to be reconsidering having sex with his girlfriend, and proposing instead.
4. I'm really not primed for early morning counseling. I was groggy and spoke way too much and told him things he already knows. Now that it's afterwards I have so many questions. Perhaps better under the circumstances that I didn't get to ask them.
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