“The rigid area of the club room bound by the four walls became a mobile liminal “space” that the members carried with them as they moved throughout the rest of their world…A place did not have to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual to be safe any longer…This mobile safe space forced nongay environments to become gay-friendly in their eyes.” – Richard Barry Sheltered “Children”
“Anywhere I can feel comfortable being gay is a gay place.” – John
“Having sustained multiple levels of pain, teen mothers like Tanika channel betrayal into resiliency as an antidote to their pain, telling of newfound self-respect as a consequence of having gone through pregnancy and now raising a child. Teen mothers borrow aspects of self from strong women around them who pass on valuable lessons about who they should become and others whose contrasting lives become pivot points for their own decision making as parents…Kaplan characterizes motherhood as it has been framed for her by parenting teens as a “resistance strategy” where pregnancy and parenting substitute for the absence of intimate relationships, in effect allowing them to gain control and restore meaning lost on them up to this point in their lives.”
I think this is really interesting, and have never heard of teen pregnancy framed in such a way. I think as a culture we definitely follow a deficit-based model on teen pregnancy – we only talk about how bad it is for the child, for the mother, and how it can be avoided. It’s treated like an epidemic, a disease. I think it’s really valuable to see teen pregnancy as the ultimate teaching experience that allows single mothers to feel like true adults, resilient and strong. It follows the same strategy of upending our traditonal expectations of a situation – substituting “at-promise” with “at-risk”, and pointing out that teen motherhood can allow someone to restore meaning to their life.
The article of Why do girls engage in those terrible friendship wars? indicate the situation that girls tend to get hurt by friends and the difficulties adults have, including parents, teachers, and school counselors, to solve the problem due to their sensitivity and natural tendacy to take things more personaly than boys especially adolescents. Continue reading Girls Girls Girls-Effy
“The correlation of drop out and teen pregnancy is particularly high for young women with mental retardation. Academic failure and leaving school prior to graduation are strong predictors of early pregnancy (Rousso, 2001).” Fine, 2006
I am pretty shocked when reading this finding, but it seems pretty true. When students drop out from school, they start their lives in the real society. Since lack of sexuality education from school, they are more likely to commit sexual behaviors without protection, which leads to a high rate of early pregnancy. Also, once drop out, custody from parents and teachers is missing, teenagers are more likely to be motivated by their “thick desire” to explore sexuality, which has not been fully discussed and explained in schools. I agree with Fine that the current sexuality education in school has an uneven impact on girls, youth of color, teens with disabilities, and LGBTs. Current sexual education in school does not teach girls how to view sexuality critically and equally. Instead, it leads girls to be more curious about sexuality.
School is a very important place for teenagers, so it should act as a main portal for students to build up a critical view of sexuality.
Girls’ hierarchies are much less stable than those of boys’, and so girls’ are acutely aware of subtle nuances of inclusion and exclusion. Girls’ emphasis on closeness and intimacy and understanding (/basics/empathy) does not always lead to nice and thoughtful behaviour.
— Why do girls engage in those terrible friendships?
This article is more like a story that narrate my childhood. When I was in elementary school, we four girls were the famous group in our class. We were, in the eyes of others, good friends. However, things were much more complicated than just good friends. A group of four is surely not a small size for girls, so we normally broke into two pairs. It was normal except the members of each pair always changed. For example, on Monday, A and me were closer but later on, B came and told me something bad about A, whether she did something weird or A said something bad behind me. So on Wednesday, B and me were closer and we tried to exclude A out of our four-member group. Then A would be excluded from our group for several days, and once I played with A again, she soon came back to our group. It was like a circle that everyone in our group had at least one time to be A. However, till we graduated from elementary school, no one was really excluded and we were still good friends in the eyes of others.
I agree that the author regard the friendship between girls as a war, where everyone uses multiple strategies to try to “beat” (exclude) her “enemy” (someone she dislikes) out of the field. I have heard that some teachers said the “fight” between girls is not a big thing, since it is just about inclusion and exclusion, and they feel it is better to let girls figure out the problems by themselves. I, however, hold different opinions. Wars between girls are sometimes more harmful than physical fights between boys. As the author mentioned, girls are acutely aware if she is excluded or included. While friendship and study are two main issues for every student, the awareness of being excluded by “friends” often leads to a great emotional change. Kids are seeking for being accepted by a group, once a kid is aware that she is excluded, she may be super depressed. The feeling of being excluded can cause huge problems — being distracted from study, feeling distressed on everything… In this sense, I feel issues on friendship should also be included in the curriculum, for the reason that a positive guidance can reduce numerous avoidable “wars”. Surely educators want friendship to play a positive role in students’ study instead of bothering them and affecting their academic performance.