Breaking Boards and Abstinence Vows

[vovat]

We watched two new Bullshit! episodes last night, specifically the ones about martial arts and teen sex. The martial arts one didn't really tell me anything new. I took Tae Kwon Do when I was in high school, and I pretty much realized even then that it was bullshit. I mean, it was good exercise, and much more fun than weight lifting or aerobics classes. As addressed in the episode, though, martial arts classes are generally going to include a certain amount of pseudo-religious psychobabble. There's a lot of talk about the ancient origins of whatever martial art they're teaching, and how it exercises your mind and spirit as well as your body. Also, you'll get a few random Asian words thrown in. I think I can still count to ten in Korean, although I have no idea whether my pronunciations are at all accurate. That's mostly just trimmings and trappings, though. What's more annoying is how the teachers try to sell it as Serious Stuff. I remember the owner of the gym I attended telling a kids' class that it was easier to get A's in school than to get a black belt. I never made it to black belt, but I participated in and watched several belt tests, and you didn't have to be any good at anything to pass. If your check clears and you show up, you move up in belt rank. If that's how your school works, I'm going to assume you're in a drastically underfunded district (which I guess is pretty much all of them these days). Then there were the rants about how many martial arts gyms weren't authentic (yeah, because I'm sure that one was), and the times they had us clean the building. They actually mentioned this in the episode as well. I put up with it at the time, but really, I kind of have to wonder if I'd let my kid stay in a martial arts class where they were forced to do household chores. If I'm going to pay someone for that, I'd rather it be the kid. I'm inclined to believe the gym owner is making enough money from the belt tests to hire maid service.


The teen sex episode wasn't really all that well organized, but it touched upon some significant points. The main one was that there's really no way to keep teenagers from having sex. One lady on the show said that you'd never have sex that enjoyable again, which made me disappointed that I didn't get any until my twenties. It wasn't a question of "waiting" so much as that I don't think any girl would have touched me with a ten-foot pole. Most of them still wouldn't. There was also something about how kids could be considered sex offenders if they were caught with naked pictures of other kids on their cell phones, even if they didn't ask for or want these pictures. Institutionalized homophobia was also addressed. I guess the teen sex topic is a little tricky because you have to draw the line somewhere, and it can be difficult to decide where. It's beyond obvious, however, that ignoring the whole situation and forcing obstinance-only...sorry, ABSTINENCE-only education is about as effective as sticking your fingers in your ears. And at least the fingers-in-ears technique isn't an offensive attempt to enforce religious values on people who might not share your religion. Since when is sex the province of the religious sphere, anyway? Okay, it actually has been for a long time, both in a good and bad way. You had your Canaanite temple prostitutes and your Roman vestal virgins. But does anyone ever stop to think about WHY what people are doing with their genitals should be of any concern to mystical guardians of the universe? You'd think they'd have more important things to worry about. But maybe the reason God allowed the BP oil spill is that He's too busy investigating every single occasion of non-marital sex in the entire world to do anything about actual disasters.

Comments

[alicornmoon.livejournal.com]

Meh, I love how she\they seems to think sex just falls into everyones lap in high school, that sex in high school is the only time where it really can matter (or you're not living life or something), and that the only reason you might EVER want to not do it until you've meant the right person (maybe even until you are really old, who knows?) is because someone told you to\you're waiting to get married -.-
Yup, we people with disabilities and issues related to low self esteem because of it aren't real ether :P
..And suddenly I'm glad I don't watch this show -.-

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'm bothered by that assumption, too. Sure, a lot of teenagers are going to have sex, and the point that avoiding sex education is a bad idea is certainly a valid one. I think, however, that the episode implies that pretty much all teenagers except the really religious ones are going to have the opportunity and the will to have sex, and that comes off as pretty callous to those of us who didn't.

As for the show in general, I think it's funny and makes some good points, but it's really gotten to be pretty much exclusively opinion-based.

[alicornmoon.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Oh well, at lease there are people in the world that still know high school isn't actually like high school movies to everyone ;). Or real life ether...

[burningofroissy.livejournal.com]

[You knew I was gonna reply to this, right?] I don't know that martial arts is all like that, though; or maybe I just lucked into a good school/instructor.

As addressed in the episode, though, martial arts classes are generally going to include a certain amount of pseudo-religious psychobabble. There's a lot of talk about the ancient origins of whatever martial art they're teaching, and how it exercises your mind and spirit as well as your body.

We got a lot of talk about the historical origins of shorin-ryu, but it wasn't anything that couldn't easily be verified. I have developed a good ear for mumbo-jumbo, and there has been a decided lack of it in the lectures. And I can't speak for anybody else, but I do have to say that I felt mentally better when I was actively doing karate. YMMV though.

What's more annoying is how the teachers try to sell it as Serious Stuff. I remember the owner of the gym I attended telling a kids' class that it was easier to get A's in school than to get a black belt. I never made it to black belt, but I participated in and watched several belt tests, and you didn't have to be any good at anything to pass. If your check clears and you show up, you move up in belt rank.

I hear that there are a lot of schools and instructors like that, and I've seen some stupid and lazy martial arts done. I have also seen my sensei flunk his own kid at a belt test because she was not performing at the level she was testing for. They're not all shoo-ins. ;)

I will say that TKD is one of the easier martial arts to learn and also one of the less effective--too slow with too much chambering.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it varies, and the fact that I went to a school that focused on children (although there were adult classes as well) could have something to do with it. As for the history, it's not that I mind it being addressed, just that I think it's a little ridiculous to pretend what you're learning in a modern class has any more relation to what Asian warriors in some previous millennium than, say, fifteenth-century English stool-ball does to Little League.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my husband used to do karate, and the people in his school called the schools that just let anyone who's been there long enough advance some derogatory nickname that I can't remember, like "fast food karate" or something. "McKarates"? Doesn't sound right, but something of that nature. He ended up joining another school in college that DID turn out like that, and quit because he just couldn't respect it. The respect is an important aspect of it all!

I think the discipline and mental-emotional-physical crossover of a good martial arts program is really its appeal. I hope there's a good program in my area, because I WOULD like my kids to give it a try....

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Commenting on the second part, this makes me think of an author whose books I really want to read, dpeterfreund, not least because her exploration of teenage sexuality/abstinence in them is so interesting and underrepresented. As she has said in her blog, she was an abstinent-by-choice teen, not because abstinence-only was forced on her, but the exact opposite: her dad being an OBGYN, she was FULLY educated in sex ed, and so knew very well it was a responsibility she just didn't want to deal with yet! I love reading what she has to say on the subject, as a former abstinent teen myself, because it's so refreshing not to have the issue so cut-and-dried as it is everywhere else it's discussed: "good" or "prude" vs. "bad" or "liberated."

[vovat.livejournal.com]

That sounds interesting. It annoys me when people think anyone who DOESN'T have sex in their youth is prudish or waiting for the so-called "right" person. There are other reasons why teen sex isn't a great idea. And while the episode implied that pretty much everyone lost their virginity in their teen years, I didn't, and I know a lot of other people who didn't. And they're not all religious or conservative; in fact, most aren't.

[annamatic.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really prudish in high school, or at least not in the sense that people generally think of. But I was a virgin until my freshman year of college; I was almost 19. I had kissed and petted a few boys before then, and had one very serious boyfriend, but we just never thought actual sexual intercourse was a really good idea, much as we would have liked to.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

As to the abstinence vs. sexual freedom topic, I don't think any culture (definitely no modern ones and probably none of the medieval or ancient ones) has really yet determined what's the best way to control sexual urges and wanton, unsafe sex. Frankly, I don't even know if there is a way to control teenage sex (or even wanton sex amongst adults, for that matter). Everyone's mentality about how to treat sex is different--not just among cultures, but among individuals as well--and everyone has different levels of what they consider safe or responsible sex. It's kind of scary, but there are some people out there who want to test fate and see how far and how raunchy they can get without any consequences. Apparently porn stars get all sorts of STDs and other diseases all the time, but shrug it off because it's not something "serious" like AIDS. As long as they can still go to work after the initial symptoms wear off, they're happy. Sorry, I didn't mean to go on such a tangent. But most people (teens especially) get their ideas of what sex "should" be like from porn, and while that's a bad thing, as long as people are going to look to porn as the ideal version of sex, it's up to the porn industry to be more responsible with their actions. Maybe they should be hiring porn stars to do safe sex talks. That might actually get the teens' attention...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Especially if they dressed in their work outfits! ;)

[zimbra1006.livejournal.com]

I took martial arts all through middle school and high school, and I actually think there were merits to some of the weirder stuff like making kids keep the studio clean - discipline - and they actually did enforce good grades (I think if you had less than a B average in school, you couldn't go there till you got your grades up). The kids were all well-behaved and polite (I had to teach their classes sometimes) so I think some of that mystical mumbo jumbo about respect and all that did help. Also, you could totally fail belt tests, or at least be held back (you'd accumulate electrical tape "stripes" until you were ready to take your test, and I don't think we had to pay for our tests).

I didn't do "mall karate" though, it was a studio for a small branch that most people have never heard of. If I have kids I would definitely enroll them in a school like that! My mom forced me to do it because she wanted me to have better self esteem and I think it might have actually worked, partially because I do feel like I could probably kick someone's ass if my life depended on it.

I do get the impression though that most people's karate experiences were not like this. My friend went to United Studio of Self Defense and rocketed up the ranks pretty quickly and a lot of it seemed like BS to me.