ourselves out.
Fantasies that arise out of the crises of adolescence are characterized by trying on different personalities, testing various likes and dislikes, rehearsing our sexuality for events that are yet to come. Sis proudly tells us in her letter that she is an A-student in school. But immediately she feels she must fight the goody-goody definition this seems to bestow upon her by telling us she has “a very strong sex drive and wants to make love.” Does she? Or is this merely one of the okay things girls of her age feel they must say? (Just as their mothers, a generation earlier, felt they had to say the opposite.) When the opportunity for sex is actually presented to Sis by a boy she knows 66
well and who promises to be “very gentle” with her, she literally jumps up in alarm and cries, “I won't!” I am very sympathetic to young women like Sis. Despite all their brave talk, something deep within them knows they aren't ready for sex. Sis doesn't know why this is true. She is not reinforced by her peers – everyone around her seems to take sex for granted. She is alone with only her feelings to guide her – but they are enough . She doesn't have to know why she is not yet ready for sex; she only has to be in touch with her feelings: her body informs her mind, and her answer is no . I applaud her for going along with her gut reaction, particularly so because it is a self-determined response at odds with what seem to be the accepted slogans and ideas of her friends. Our lifelong struggle is to teach our reason and emotions to move in tandem on the same tides. Just as I believe every woman has the right to say yes if she feels like it – and is willing to take the responsibility for her actions – so has she the perfect right to refuse, if the mysterious ebb and flow of desire is not yet upon her.
In the fantasies that Sis sends us, we see that she is getting ready for the truly sexual time she knows lies ahead. But that time is not yet.
For Beth Anne, too, fantasies are exciting strategies for getting used to an idea about which she is still ambivalent. She tells us she is a virgin, and too shy to buy My Secret Garden at the bookshop where she works, even though she could get it there at a discount. In her fantasies, we see her other side: she is a woman who would like to have sex with “a customer, a stranger in the street, someone I don't know too well.” And then she adds a sentence that reminds us how much she is like Sis. “Boy,” writes Beth Anne, “when it does happen, I'll be really ready after all these rehearsals in my head.” Penelope's letter shows us another exploration of sexual identity through fantasy. The child of intelligent, permissive parents, she felt free enough with her mother to ask to be taught how to masturbate, after reading Masters and Johnson brought the idea to mind. In her letter, we see that she has grown into the kind of young woman we would expect from 67
such a family: she is sexually knowing, sophisticated, one who feels free and secure enough to ask men out herself “occasionally,” instead of always waiting passively to be asked. But in her fantasies, she explores a totally opposite identity, “the woman I can't let myself be (dumb, naive, unaware of my sexuality) … .”
Even if we had parents like Penelope's, something in us still wants to establish ourselves as people in our own right by rebelling against them. But when the parents are decent, reasonable, and intelligent people, rebellion itself becomes unreasonable; their very permissiveness is frustrating, giving us no firm base to push off against. But our negative emotions want to be expressed anyway. In fantasies like Penelope's, the problem is solved. She is the woman she “can't let myself be.” That is, she is the dumb broad that her parents' training has made it impossible for her to be. She has circumvented them in her imagination: rebellion at last.
Sis
I am young (fifteen) and a
Fantasies that arise out of the crises of adolescence are characterized by trying on different personalities, testing various likes and dislikes, rehearsing our sexuality for events that are yet to come. Sis proudly tells us in her letter that she is an A-student in school. But immediately she feels she must fight the goody-goody definition this seems to bestow upon her by telling us she has “a very strong sex drive and wants to make love.” Does she? Or is this merely one of the okay things girls of her age feel they must say? (Just as their mothers, a generation earlier, felt they had to say the opposite.) When the opportunity for sex is actually presented to Sis by a boy she knows 66
well and who promises to be “very gentle” with her, she literally jumps up in alarm and cries, “I won't!” I am very sympathetic to young women like Sis. Despite all their brave talk, something deep within them knows they aren't ready for sex. Sis doesn't know why this is true. She is not reinforced by her peers – everyone around her seems to take sex for granted. She is alone with only her feelings to guide her – but they are enough . She doesn't have to know why she is not yet ready for sex; she only has to be in touch with her feelings: her body informs her mind, and her answer is no . I applaud her for going along with her gut reaction, particularly so because it is a self-determined response at odds with what seem to be the accepted slogans and ideas of her friends. Our lifelong struggle is to teach our reason and emotions to move in tandem on the same tides. Just as I believe every woman has the right to say yes if she feels like it – and is willing to take the responsibility for her actions – so has she the perfect right to refuse, if the mysterious ebb and flow of desire is not yet upon her.
In the fantasies that Sis sends us, we see that she is getting ready for the truly sexual time she knows lies ahead. But that time is not yet.
For Beth Anne, too, fantasies are exciting strategies for getting used to an idea about which she is still ambivalent. She tells us she is a virgin, and too shy to buy My Secret Garden at the bookshop where she works, even though she could get it there at a discount. In her fantasies, we see her other side: she is a woman who would like to have sex with “a customer, a stranger in the street, someone I don't know too well.” And then she adds a sentence that reminds us how much she is like Sis. “Boy,” writes Beth Anne, “when it does happen, I'll be really ready after all these rehearsals in my head.” Penelope's letter shows us another exploration of sexual identity through fantasy. The child of intelligent, permissive parents, she felt free enough with her mother to ask to be taught how to masturbate, after reading Masters and Johnson brought the idea to mind. In her letter, we see that she has grown into the kind of young woman we would expect from 67
such a family: she is sexually knowing, sophisticated, one who feels free and secure enough to ask men out herself “occasionally,” instead of always waiting passively to be asked. But in her fantasies, she explores a totally opposite identity, “the woman I can't let myself be (dumb, naive, unaware of my sexuality) … .”
Even if we had parents like Penelope's, something in us still wants to establish ourselves as people in our own right by rebelling against them. But when the parents are decent, reasonable, and intelligent people, rebellion itself becomes unreasonable; their very permissiveness is frustrating, giving us no firm base to push off against. But our negative emotions want to be expressed anyway. In fantasies like Penelope's, the problem is solved. She is the woman she “can't let myself be.” That is, she is the dumb broad that her parents' training has made it impossible for her to be. She has circumvented them in her imagination: rebellion at last.
Sis
I am young (fifteen) and a
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