No, that was a Blender, I Know You didn't have Blenders Either Back in those Days. No, We didn't. But We did Drink.

Alright, let's get this started.

Here is your required reading.

Now, Jordan seems to have accessed a third article or some other resource when writing his post because he has quite a lot of information about waivers that I haven't read. If you'd like to post a link to that, Jordan, it would be appreciated.

An Introduction:

This is the part where I would talk about how much I love Jordan, etc, etc. Jordan knows I love him. To go on about it here would only weaken the issues I'll be discussing here by making them seem irrelevant.

I love busting balls. It's possibly my favourite thing to do above anything else. My online ball-busting is usually limited to an incisive comment here and there. I mean, if you say something dumb and don't back it up properly, I'm gonna bust 'em. Really, even if you do back it up, I'm still gonna try.

So when I read Jordan's post, I immediately began to get into ball-busting mode. I kept reading, though, and slowly realized that there was just too much to cover in one comment. I immediately began planning a transfer of this topic to my own blog in order to expand upon it and showcase the entirety of my anger and confusion. However, given that I only had 10 minutes until I went to work, I had a choice to make. I could start work on my post, finish it over the next day or two, and spring it on Jordan with no warning (Like opening a cupboard to look for salt only to be pegged in the side of the head from 1500 yards by a CIA operative with a case of mistaken identity) or I could drop a small post informing Jordan of my intent. A declaration, if you will.

I'd come home from work that night with the intention of reading the post again and formulating ideas for my own while I slept. Apparently Jordan took my declaration as an act of aggression in and of itself, and removed the post in question and sat sitting by his computer waiting for a response. Unfortunately, without the original to work from, I couldn't begin writing my response, so I went to bed. Apparently Jordan passed out in front of his computer an hour after I got home from work anyway, so there was no great tragedy.

This morning I woke up late. I checked the blogzor before I went to work, saw that the post was back, and copied it into a text file in case it left again. But since I was immediately expected at work, I didn't have time to read it and spent my 7 hours at work thinking about really odd things (which I will post about in more peaceful times). The 7 hours completed, I came back, checked and wrote emails, replied to comments on various posts on various blogs, checked all the other blogs, and sat down to the task at hand armed with a delicious sandwich.

Which brings us here.

This post is going to be a tremendous ball bust of Jordan's post, but it is not a first-strike offensive. Jordan, by putting his somewhat unfocused opinions onto the internet at large, made the first strike. It wasn't aimed at me, but the concepts he attacked have no way of defending themselves.

This post is not going to have anything to do with whether or not Jordan's post was 'well written'... necessarily. I will not be grammar-policing, spell-checking, or calling his lack of sources into question. There is some very emo whining and a plaintive request for god to smite humanity that will not be mentioned again for the duration of this document. However, I am forced to excrete criticism on any post which is either structured so badly that people cannot read it, or throws out pretty heavy-duty accusations and assumptions with no backing. So, depending on your definition of 'well written' I may or may not be attacking his post on the grounds of how it was written.

Anyway.

I'm going to begin with a line by line dissection of the post I've been talking about, outlining specifically every item that didn't sit right with me. We'll see what happens from there. Prepare to have the viscera of this post torn gorily from its body and smeared across your monitor.

Jordan begins by explaining that he was only reading our school newspaper because it was preferable to having cutlery stuck into his eyes. I concur, and I can only assume that the cutlery in question must have been either very dirty or covered in electrified barbed wire, because he found himself reading an article by Ashley Csanady, who is possibly the worst person who ever decided to become a journalist (as you may have divined from reading the article yourself). I hope she dies soon. Moving on.

Jordan outlines some back story in the next paragraph. I feel tempted to add at this point that the kids are directed towards counseling, which is somewhat different than waiting for them to ask for it out of the blue.

The following paragraph is where Jordan discusses the waiver. Given that I don't know about it, I won't speculate.

Now, this is where things get interesting. In this paragraph the bells began to go off in my head, and they really didn't stop until the end. So, permit me to dwell here awhile.

This paragraph sets the tone for the rest of the article. Although it has only two sentences, it colours the reading of every word after it. First, Jordan suggests that allowing minors to have doctor-patient confidentiality is a bad idea. In fact, this confidentiality is often essential in ensuring an accurate diagnosis. If children are too afraid of their parents' judgments to tell the truth to their physicians, those physicians are exponentially more likely to fuck up their diagnoses and harm the children further.

The second sentence, though, is where things start to get strange. Jordan paints a somewhat strange picture of Sally (and since Sally isn't real I'm going to say that she can be safely extrapolated to represent many girls her age) as a raging slut-bomb, looking around for the first willing penis to blow herself up on (or vice versa)... Except that she isn't on the pill yet.

This idea is actually frightening to me because it relies so heavily on ideas about contraception and sexuality that are simply false. I mean, let's leave alone the implication that Sally would be perfectly safe meeting a sex offender if she wasn't on the pill. Let's focus on the idea that Sally will abstain from sex with Jimmy or Hank if she isn't on the pill. Likely, nothing is farther from the truth. Contraceptives do not make people have sex, sex organs do, and I'm pretty sure Jimmy, Sally, and Hank already have those. I mean, let's turn the tables here:

Jimmy turns 15, and his father sits him down and gives him "the talk". Or he tries to. Then he just chickens out, gives Jimmy a box of condoms, and says, "Be careful, son."

Does Jimmy grab the condoms and immediately begin plotting how to get rid of all 12 ASAP? Does the mere reception of the devices trigger a change in Jimmy that sends him running into the streets baying for pussy? Of course not. Good lord, how long did any of us hang onto condoms we were given by other people without even knowing how to put them on properly? Let alone actually get around to using them.

So let me say it again: Being prepared for sex doesn't really make you any more or less likely to have sex. If you want to, you're probably going to whether you're safe or not. If you don't want to, you'll probably keep your protection close by anyway until someone tells you that keeping it in your wallet weakens the latex and makes it more likely to break, and then throw it out and pick up a new one.

The fact that birth control exists is not a testament to the fact that people will do anything to have sex with no drawbacks. It is a testament to the fact that people will do anything to have sex, so keeping them safe is important. Continuing.

Jordan is normally in favour of letting women have birth control. Well, that's good, because most women likely don't give a shit about whether or not a man wants them on the pill. He just isn't in favour of giving it to women who won't be (or aren't educated enough to be) sexually responsible. My opinion on the matter runs entirely in the opposite direction. Women who are irresponsible or uneducated on their sexuality are the ones who need birth control the most. If they're more likely to be having sex without a condom and/or with men who don't care about them, then I don't want them peopling the world with other idiots. This brings me to a smaller side-point: Use a condom every time. The pill is effective at stopping pregnancy, but not preventing disease. All it does is elevate women onto equal sexual footing with men. Men can easily 'fire and forget' (although not as easily in the age of DNA pat tests), and women have always been left holding the baby. Anyway, my point is that stupid women should be given as many opportunities as possible to avoid throwing 20 years of their lives away over one mistake.

Oh, and luckily he contradicts himself 2 sentences later with, "Furthermore, I acknowledge that it is necessary to have protection when participating in these acts". But... hunh?

We've reached the halfway point of the post. This is where it gets kind of cool and thought provoking. Unfortunately, the thoughts it began provoking in my head were "What?" and "Where is this coming from?" rather than "Hmmm, that is a neat way of looking at it".

While it does seem interesting to juxtapose the idea of kids being forced to have parental permission to play violent games against the idea that kids can get birth control without anyone's permission, the two ideas don't quite stack up.

First, just remember not to confuse the idea of having birth control with the idea of kids having sex with each other. They are two different things.

However, let's ignore that in favour of a simpler argument. Let's actually consider a side-by-side comparison of your kid wanting to play violent video games vs. your kid wanting to have birth control, or condoms, or an IUD, or whatever.

You say, "No violent games, it will turn you into a raging psychopath". Chances are that your child will go somewhere else and play them. It's what I did. Expected outcome: You child does not become a violent killer. In RL.

You say, "No pill, no condoms, no nothing. You shouldn't be having sex so you shouldn't need contraceptives. Abstinence is the only effective form of birth control" etc, etc. Chances are (drum roll) your child will have sex anyway. Without contraception. Expected outcome: Your child has a kid (since you're so in favour of abstinence you're probably pro-life, too) and throws away the next 20 years raising it, or your child knocks up someone else's kid and throws away the next 20 years working shitty jobs trying to pay child support, or can't/won't pay and gets looked down on as a deadbeat for the rest of his life.

Now are those two situations really comparable?

Luckily, in the next (or 3rd from the end if that helps) paragraph, we're given another comparison to work with: Cheating the government out of tons of money with no consequences is the same as having sex without parental approval.

Now, you can probably guess that I also don't agree with this, but the reasons are different. I agree with the words written here in a literal sense, "Become exceedingly wealthy without dealing with punishment? Hell ya. Become sexually active at fifteen without my parents knowing a goddamn thing? Hell ya. I am all over that". I think I can safely say that I would have done it (and still would do the theft part), but that doesn't tell the whole story. The thing that seriously pisses me off about that paragraph is another unspoken assumption about the two acts:

They are both criminal in some way. Follow a line of thought with me:

Theft -> Is a crime -> Crimes deserve punishment -> You go to jail

Now let's try it again:

Sex -> Is a crime -> Crimes deserve punishment -> Your 'rents kill you

In both cases Jordan's argument removes the last step and replaces it with "You get away with no consequences". But does it make as much sense with the second starting point? Children should be afraid, although perhaps wary or concerned would be better words, of sex. You can be easily hurt, catch a nasty infection, or have a fucking baby. They shouldn't have to be afraid of being punished for trying it as well.

To finish it off, let's meander together through the last paragraph:

"How did this happen? How did we get to a point where no one is ever willing to sit and talk about anything? Everything has to be secretive. Hushed whispers behind closed doors. Everyone is walking around with blindfolds on and grinning because we think things are okay."

Now this one, I can agree with. No snide turn-arounds, no sarcastic remarks. Most people don't talk to their parents or their kids as much or as openly as they should. But that shouldn't be used as an argument to remove people's privacy. If your kid doesn't want to talk to you about their sex life (or lack thereof), you should not immediately be thinking about how you're going to find out about it through other means.

Being a parent is hard work. Put yourself in their shoes, your kid could be doing anything without your knowledge. But you need to trust a little. Trust too much and it's as bad as not trusting your kids at all, but there is a sweet spot there in the middle. It takes years of talking to your kid and really getting to know them long before they reach puberty in order to find it, though.

So use fucking contraception, or you're gonna have to start getting to know your kids a lot sooner than you might think.


fin

And now that we're past the ball-busting session, I can safely say:

Jordan, don't hate me. I do respect you seriously as a friend and I hope we can weather this. You just happened to really push my buttons there.

And I maybe thought that the old blog scene could use some spicy controversy...

And with that,
LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS AND DON'T BE SHY ABOUT IT!

PS, I have some other thoughts that I might throw down in another post tomorrow. For now I must go buy garbage tags, put out the garbage, and hit the sack.

Goodnight, friends.