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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> > It is only fair to recognize that it is girls who "let" boys be boys.
>
> Say *WHAT !!!??*

Except in the case of rape, how is it otherwise?

> *Girls* are to blame for 'boys being boys' ?

Blame is not an issue with me. Girls and boys both have hormonal urges at 
certain ages and they act upon them.

> Peers snigger, fathers encourage, religious tolerate
> 'boys being boys",

Not where I grew up.

>  - - - but it's the girls' who are at fault even
> though they have hormones, too ?

Fault for what? Being human? Sex is arguably our strongest instinct after 
survival. How we deal with it depends on our values, most of which are 
instilled by parents.

> Gene, I am very sad to say I am rethinking the
> high opinion I had formed of you ...

I try to be honest. How others perceive me is their decision.

My sexual sociology education was updated a couple years ago during the 
time I helped a young Scottsdale man buy his first house. Dan took the 
experience very seriously and we looked at a lot of homes before he chose 
one, then the seller and he couldn't get together on price and then another 
one like that, until we finally found yet another one and made a deal and 
it closed. So we spent lots of time together and among the many subjects we 
discussed--sort of grandfather and grandson--were the sexual activities and 
attitudes of young men and women today. Dan told me that many of the young 
women he and his friends knew were sexual predators in the sense that the 
girls and their friends bragged about how many boys they had seduced. I 
said, gee, a young man's dream come true. No, he said, it gets really old 
after awhile; all they want to do is have sex. This was quite an education 
for me. I can only presume that this new sexual attitude is not confined to 
Scottsdale and Phoenix. I also presume that not all young women today act 
thusly, as, indeed, all did not act alike when I was growing up. It seems 
each high school has some girls who become known as "fast."

I don't watch much mainstream television but I have read that the TV 
program Sex and the City has made an impact on the thinking of young women 
today, that it has glamorized the concept of young women as sexually 
aggressive. Only change is constant, and I am not surprised that sexual 
mores are not the same as when I was a youngster. Today's young people have 
the same hormonal urges as their parents did. They have birth control 
pills, which my generation did not. And they have AIDS to consider. I'm 
glad that Chris and I and our children are all beyond the exploratory part 
of our lives. Now we can worry about the grandchildren.