<p>““With girls, the attachment is created from just the physical act of sex…””</p>
<p>on what planet? this is such a bizarre statement…I don’t understand it…that girls are only attached to males through sex…</p>
<p>and boys are never attached through sex, is that what you are saying?</p>
<p>where to begin where to begin</p>
<p>“mini, that’s the point. In hook-ups (isn’t that what the young folk call it?) where no real dating or non-sexual bonding takes place, the boy walks away without emotional damage. Girls don’t escape so easily, because powerful hormones have created an attachment & bond that the boy doesn’t share.”</p>
<p>I know the hormonal studies, but why am I not surprised that you’ve told only part of the story? Girls today are sexually mature (hormonally speaking) a full three years earlier than they were merely 100 years ago. Most folks think it is a result mostly of better diet; others think adverse changes in the diet have also had this result. So they are “hormonally” ready for sex a full three years earlier (boys, about 2 1/2 years), but marriage takes place three years later than 100 years. So the “would be” purity period has been extended from an average of 6 years to more than 12. </p>
<p>Now, by the hormonal argument, you SHOULD be advocating earlier marriage. But you’re not (and I don’t blame you.) Why not? Because the structure of society is now such that we’ve created something called “teenage” (a word that first came into existence in 1941, and really wan’t a part of the culture until late 40s), and semi-universal college attendance, and etc., etc. So, not surprisingly, to match these other cultural changes, a new state of sexuality that deals with the contradictions between “hormonal truths” and societal ones is created. And I think that is a GOOD thing - I really do. The idea that a 25-year-old woman who has been hormonally sexually mature at age 12 should have no experience of sex before then is a set-up for female exploitation and powerlessness. It is certainly nothing I would wish on my daughters.</p>
<p>Now don’t lecture me about diseases, etc., etc. This isn’t about teen promiscuity, or lack of good adult role models, or getting raped while you are too drunk to notice or any of that. It is about larger societal trends that are “hormonally irrational”, in which sex, relationships, and marriage are embedded.</p>
<p>And it doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with religion.</p>
<p>I see. You will make citations to books about how closed-minded we are, but when you make a wholly biological, scientific assertion (sex produces surge of particular hormones in one sex and not the other), you are excused from supporting your assertion, because we wouldn’t take the supporting documentation seriously anyway.</p>
<p>Maybe the problem is that these studies don’t actually exist, and you got this idea from theoretical, rather than empirical, publications.</p>
<p>“Any studies I could offer about how young girls are suffering in the present culture of “friends with benefits,””</p>
<p>A study showing that girls are suffering is a very different thing from a study showing that a gendered difference in the hormonal reaction to sex is the cause. And that’s what’s been asserted on this thread.</p>
<p>I don’t think the word “abstinence” elicits any outrage, but the father promising to “cover his dauthter in the area of purity” and daughter pledging herself as a “gift” on her wedding night makes me want to vomit.</p>
<p>well, when you considering that “abitinence” ranges anywhere from no touching at ALL<,not even hand holding to everything but intercourse, kind of hard to take it seriouslly… can’t imagine why there would be guffaws…</p>
<p>people are sexual beings and teaching abstinence is all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t work and often cause more harm because basic medical advice is not given, because it is seen to “sexually arouse” the person…</p>
<p>outrage comes from telling a girl she is not her own person, that she is her daddy’s until he passes her on to someone else</p>
<p>that the plegdes aren’t kept by most of the pledgers and when they do break the pledge, which they will most likely do, they don’t use protection of any sort</p>
<p>outrage…please…read some stuff on cultures that do this kind of thing, to various degrees with their young girls and then take a look at that society in general and how women are treated…there are paralles and not all so sweet as this…the mindset, the justification, the “protection” and male ago are all pretty much the same…its telling and treating women that they are too stupid to take care of themselves, and that sexuality is bad and that men can’t handle it if a woman has had some other partners…that is a big basis of all of this…do some religious research for those cultures that “value” purity, whatever the heck it means…the side issues should not be excluded from the “cuteness” of the daughter pledger her hymen to her father, which is what this is all about- a piece of her flesh…and she is not to even consider another male tell she is ready for marriage…and that is supposed to be healthy and empowering? to tell a female she has not control over her body, that it is her father’s to pass along…</p>
<p>Yes people get hurt, it is called life…people get hurt in marriages too. quite a lot actually…and when you learn that the rate of divorce among “Christians” is pretty much the same as us heathens, it shows that waiting is no guarantee</p>
<p>to me, if a man is so insecure in himself that he can’t deal if his wife has a “past” what kind of man is that…if he can’t help but compare himself to her past partners, and doubts himself so much…he is the one that needs some help…</p>
<p>Hanna, you’re confusing Stickershock’s statements with mine.</p>
<p>And as usual, people are confusing putting off sex until a more reasonable age, at least 18, with waiting until marriage at 25, 28 or 30. I believe this is intentional, just as I believe the OP’s consistent posting of articles like these is done for a specific purpose.</p>
<p>The median first marriage age for females is now 25.3, so I was NOT confused, and my use of age 25 WAS purposeful:</p>
<p><a href=“Search | Infoplease”>Search | Infoplease;
<p>Most people I know the attachment comes before the sex - not because of it. I would be very worried for the emotional future of any young person, male or female, who thought “attachment is created from just the physical act of sex”.</p>
<p>
NO! Read what I said. The attachment in girls can be created from just the physical act. A boy who had little appeal pre-sex can become someone she is attached to because of hormonal action after casual sex, the kind that by many accounts is more frequent on campuses than ever before. </p>
<p>
Well, yes. Women will produce oxytocin. Men’s attachment hormone is vasopressin.</p>
<p>Check out Nature Neuroscience. Plenty of empirical studies on neurobiological bonding. Also Nature. Also some very revealing viewpoints from the American Psychological Association’s AP Monitor on why research on bonding and attachment is not highly publicized: political incorrectness. It is highly unpopular to publish findings that women are more vulnerable than men in any way.</p>
<p>mini: Are only girls maturing earlier than boy? I think not. We send girls & boys into school together, knowing that their sexual maturity peaks at different times. The societal truth of which you speak have long matched younger girls with older boys (or men.) The hormonal changes you refer to have been occuring much slower, I would argue, than societal ones. The hormonal issues I’m refereing to, attachment hormones, have always been with us & when they are studied, their inconvenient conclusions are not released widely.</p>
<p>No, as I wrote (post 102), girls are maturing 3 years earlier, boys about 2 1/2 years earlier. Girls still mature about a year and half (on average) before boys; formerly it was only a year. The hormonal changes are vast - a 3 year change in a 15-year old is massive! </p>
<p>Schools were designed with non-sexually mature girls and boys in mind. And they basically haven’t changed in a hundred years. </p>
<p>I hope you don’t see me as disagreeing with what you say about neurobiological bonding - I actually AGREE (from the little I’ve read). But, with a full 13-year period between 12-year-old sexual maturity among females and a 25.3 median marriage age, that is an argument FOR premarital sex and bonding rather than against it. Unless you advocate MUCH earlier marriage (between ages 13-16).</p>
<p>(Now, please, it isn’t an argument for promiscuity, or hypersxualized clothing, or any of our other so-called social ills. Let’s not go there. But I’ve read enough history to know folks have been bemoaning the new hypersexualized female since around 1910. And, as it turns out, hormonally in terms of maturation, they’ve been correct, too.)</p>
<p>In these threads people continually confuse advocates of putting off sex until young adulthood (at least 18 or 19) for any number of very logical, common sense reasons, and not advocating casual hookups in college or in one’s twenties, with proponents of <em>abstinence until marriage,</em> whether that be at 25, 28 or 30.</p>
<p>This is done purposely, as is the usual attempt to paint people who advocate waiting until young adulthood to have sex as religious fanatics (see the OP).</p>
<p>
In a healthy relatiuonship of mutual respect, yes. But the neurobiological binding studies show hormonal release causes attachment. The hormones are released during sex. Much like any form of pleasurable activity releasing hormones that trigger reactions in our brains & can actually change brain structure.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/20/60minutes/main696975_page2.shtml[/url]”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/20/60minutes/main696975_page2.shtml</a></p>
<p>“My own daughter, my 16-year-old daughter, tells me she’s going to be sexually active. I would not tell her to use a condom,” says Pattyn. "I don’t think it’ll protect her. It won’t protect her heart. It won’t protect her emotional life. And it’s not going to protect her. I don’t want her to get out there and think that she’s going to be protected using a condom. But wouldn’t his daughter be more protected with a condom than without? “Not long term,” says Pattyn. " and we were funding this jerk’s programs with federal money…</p>
<p>mini:
</p>
<p>HH:
</p>
<p>Some common ground, here. A woman deciding to control here own sexuality & exercise it when all those hormonally immature boys catch up is a good thing.</p>
<p>At least we have now established that we are all in favor of sex before marriage (or at least the median age for marriage - for half of all women, it is even older that 25.3). And for women to have sex in their teens. </p>
<p>Now we are only arguing about age, and how much of it.</p>
<p>StickerShock. Can you please post a link to these studies? This stuff is always interesting if it has any chance of being data.</p>
<p>I read an article in Psychology Today (yeah I know sensationalist) that said men have a better chance of success in attracting a mate if they assume that all girls think they are hot. Girls have a better chance of success if they assume that all guys are jerks. What do you all make of that?</p>
<p>mini, I think you are jumping to conclusions. I don’t think having sex in one’s teens is a good thing. And sex before marriage is a personal decision I would not dictate to anyone. I just would not condemn anyone who chose to wait. But if anyone wants to have sex, they should be fully educated about ALL the consequences, not just handed condoms. </p>
<p>This is quite far afield from the purity pledge article.</p>
<p>“Check out Nature Neuroscience. Plenty of empirical studies on neurobiological bonding. Also Nature.”</p>
<p>No, it is the obligation of the person making a scientific assertion to provide support for the statement. It is not the obligation of others to go combing through 100 back issues of some journal to disprove the assertion.</p>
<p>But since I have a few free moments, I decided to Google your most recent statement.</p>
<p>You said : “[sex produces surge of particular hormones in one sex and not the other] Well, yes. Women will produce oxytocin. Men’s attachment hormone is vasopressin.”</p>
<p>Here’s some information from Colorado State:</p>
<p>“Both sexes secrete oxytocin - what about its role in males? Males synthesize oxytocin in the same regions of the hypothalamus as in females, and also within the testes and perhaps other reproductive tissues. Pulses of oxytocin can be detected during ejaculation. Current evidence suggests that oxytocin is involved in facilitating sperm transport within the male reproductive system and perhaps also in the female, due to its presence in seminal fluid. It may also have effects on some aspects of male sexual behavior.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/hypopit/oxytocin.html[/url]”>http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/hypopit/oxytocin.html</a></p>
<p>According to Colorado State, your latest statement is at best a misleading oversimplification of “attachment hormones” released during sex. So I’m not going to take your word for it that there are empirical studies out there showing that as a matter of endocrinology, women get emotionally attached after sex, but men don’t. Either show them (one?) to us, or acknowledge that this is still a theory. Heck, I’d even be interested to see a study showing that this is the case in rats.</p>
<p>Alum, I will look for links. I’ve read up on this in the past, but don’t have it handy. As for your Psychology Today article, I think men DO tend to think they are more appealing than they are! </p>
<p>And the motto of my friends during the dating years was “None is better than some.” It served us well. Guys had to demonstrate that they were, in fact, far removed from jerkiness before we would give them the time of day.</p>
<p>Sorry. It was Hereshopping who put forward sex at 18 or 19. </p>
<p>You wrote:</p>
<p>“A woman deciding to control here own sexuality & exercise it when all those hormonally immature boys catch up is a good thing.”</p>
<p>On average, that would be around age 14-15 or so.</p>