kamala wrote:actually... i do think sex is way more powerful than most of western culture is willing to acknowledge. Our media really trivializes it while glorifying it for the sake of sales... but as a result we have the quickening depletion of the family dynamic, romance is a fleeting concept, and each generation gets more promiscuous while our std's get harder to cure. Most of my generation doesn't want to get married or have children, has a fear of emotional intimacy, and is too jaded for commitment.
that being said .... lets everybody fuck 
STDs are a bigger problem when our government insists that abstinence works instead of STD and protection awareness. The high rates of STI transmission and teen pregnancy correlates with having a republican president, strangely enough.
Though I believe our society's overemphasis is highly damaging to several aspects of the community (perceptions of beauty and body image taking serious hits), a bigger problem for the destruction of the family unit I think has to do with knowing divorce is no longer stigmatized. Its not to say the behavior was different....but in earlier times, there was a higher chance that social boundaries would keep people together for duty and the families sake. People didn't cheat any less. Teens still had sex. Its just....people were a bit more accountable for their decisions from mores.
As for the problem of commitment....that's merely a problem of location. You prolly won't see as much of it in LA....but where I live and for a good portion of the South, family is still a very big deal. Men commit to women at younger ages and stay with their families. People get married right out of high school and see the culmination of their lives in having and maintaining a successful family. So......perhaps you should take a tour of some of the other regions in the country to be a bit more inspired. The state of family and love is not as bleak as it seems.
The statistic is that half of US marriages end in divorce. Well.....think of it this way.... If half of them do.....half of them still don't. That statistic is never painted in that light. Half of marriages make it. And it takes work. Just loving someone is not enough. When two whole people come together in the hope of making a life together and they're willing to do the work, they have very good chances.
Though there was an article recently on the idea that men are currently in a state of stasis....having their bachelor desires fulfilled with no real push towards settling down. That magazines like Maxim and Stuff cater to a selfish demographic and that men are being stunted developmentally because of this lack of transformation. I don't say I don't deny it...
But...in the past year, I have seen several of my friends and people I can't stand get married. To say men are not committing is an error. They are still committing. And sex isn't the tie that binds.
And that doesn't even touch the kinda role finances play. Most marriages here fail because of money....not sex. And one of the things noted in that article about male reluctance was that a lot of men are afraid of committing to a woman, it not working out, and for the rest of forever 'til she gets remarried, he has to pay for his mistake in money. Our litigious society and our tough economy are just as much to blame for the destruction of the family as is the overemphasis on sexuality.
When it comes to sex tho....I don't understand how a link isn't being made when it comes to perceptions of beauty and this new craze of child snatching. When you have ladies put as the standard for what ladies should look like....and with the exception of a lil boob or whatnot, these women are anatomically similar to pre-pubescent/adolescent female bodies.....is it really a far leap to an increase of child molestation cases and teen STI/pregnancy rates increasing?
We're telling our men that grown women can only be attractive if they look half a hair older than 15 on the body.....and then shocked and aghast when 15 yr olds get knocked up or raped and dumped in an alley with any degree of regularity. That's what I don't understand. Besides all the trouble women deal with trying to get to that airbrushed, damned near unattainable standard of beauty.....when men actually like you based on having the ability to get to touch you as opposed to, "She's got a lil too much trunk....eff that!"
sorry to ramble.....its just that the problem of sex is a convoluted issue as well.
Just.....keep your eyes open and judge accurately. Things are available if you want them to be.
