The scandal touched off an angry local debate, including an unhelpful quarrel over whether some of the girls should be faulted for waging their own competition to go out with high-status athletes (box). But elsewhere, specialists voiced concern over the mixed signals adolescents are picking up from trusted sources like television and rock lyrics-not only on gender relationships but about sex, violence and celebrity. In sports-besotted suburbs like Lakewood, the exaltation of athletic achievement begins in elementary school. By the time they reach high school, athletes are campus demigods; they almost can do no wrong. Some schools even cancel classes so everyone can watch the team compete in the state tournament. While the majority of athletes remain levelheaded, the gush of adulation can instill a dangerous sense of immunity. Says Debra Haffner, executive director of SECUS (the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States): “They get tremendous status from aggressiveness. But no one teaches them how to live in the real world.”
In the wake of the Lakewood scandal both parents and school authorities are being blamed for not passing on more sporting values to the young jocks. More worrisome was the “boys will be boys” attitude of some of their fathers. One boasted to reporters about the virility of his three sons, who include a founder of the Spur Posse. Not all or even most of the parents expressed such feelings. Yet some maintained that what the athletes did was no different from the behavior of professional icons like Wilt Chamberlain, who claims to have slept with 20,000 women. A number of students also came to their defense, arguing that sex is simply a fact of adolescent life. “Nowadays, I guess everybody’s doing it,” said a worldly 10th grader. “It starts in junior high.”
She may not be far wrong. Surveys confirm that the age of initial sexual experience has been declining steadily over the past few decades. According to a 1990 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seven out of 10 seniors and 54 percent of ninth through 12th graders have had intercourse at least once. Other research shows that most have sex only sporadically, and usually in the context of romantic relationships. But sex educators insist that too often, romance is precisely what is missing. Good sex, they contend, is responsible sex, meaning an atmosphere of intimacy, sensitivity to the needs of both partners and agreement on protective measures. But by most accounts, parents are barely even discussing the subject with teenagers. “Most are not what we would call askable parents,” says Michael Resnick, director of research at the University of Minnesota’s adolescent-health-training program. “They’re still very ambivalent about talking with the kids.”
Some teenagers say sex-education classes emphasize the mechanics of sex and the dangers but make no mention of less tangible matters. At Lakewood, “love and stuff like that really wasn’t discussed,” recalls 19-year-old Chris Albert, one of three Spur Posse members who strutted their stuff on a TV talk show last week. Albert says he and his pals learned about sex the old-fashioned way–on the streets and from a boastful older brother. By 10th grade, he says, “pretty much everyone knows about sex. You’ve got to be pretty much an idiot if you don’t.”
To educators, knowing about sex is not the same as appreciating what it means. They note that besides avoiding the subject themselves, parents in many states have tried to discourage schools from talking about it. Resnick thinks the Lakewood episode was due largely to a lack of conscientious parenting. “If you have a group like this who’ve had gang sex or brag about their exploits, there’s either a vacuum of communication or communication that subtly endorses that kind of behavior.” Parents in turn blame television, movies and rock lyrics that endorse such behavior far from subtly. According to Resnick, surveys show that teenagers reflect increasing aggressiveness in their attitudes about sex. “What we see is what’s in the society at large,” says Resnick. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the norm. Those values are in a state of flux.”
Not all high-school jocks earn letters in sexual athleticism. Some of the steamy tales they regale each other with are at least part bluster. Haffner thinks the Lakewood episode itself was a case of “fairly aberrant behavior.” By that measure, the Glen Ridge, N.J., case, in which three high-school athletes were convicted of sexually assaulting a retarded girl with a baseball bat and a broom handle, would have to be called hugely aberrant. But isolated as those incidents may be, they are only an extreme reflection of a cultural message that all too many adolescents may now be receiving.
title: “Mixed Messages” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-31” author: “Nellie Bliss”
The Iranian government is commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the embassy takeover with an exhibit titled “Shattering of the Glass Palace.” It’s not hard to find. Banners declaring THE PEOPLE OF IRAN HATE AMERICA and DEATH TO AMERICA lead the way. An Israeli flag serves as a welcome mat. Inside, photographic exhibits detail alleged American misdeeds in Iran, as well as Vietnam, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another part of the exhibit includes the embassy’s document-forgery room and an electronic eavesdropping center.
For more light-hearted fare, there are children’s drawings of America as a demon, skeleton or carnivorous Uncle Sam pillaging the rest of the world. There are also several games. One is a carnival strength meter where you pound Uncle Sam on the head to score points and hear feedback like, “Wow, you pack quite a wallop.” (I gave it a whack and got, “Ouch, I’m seeing double.”) More target practice can be had by blasting Uncle Sam in the face with a tennis-ball gun or shooting him out of the windows of a Wild West saloon with a video pistol.
Seeing the same anti-American messages that have been repeated for the past two decades, it’s hard to know where Iran stands right now in its attitude toward the United States. President Mohammed Khatami was one of the first heads of state of an Islamic country to extend formal condolences to the United States and offer an outright condemnation of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. And, with the Taliban as a mutual enemy, the two countries are now in a diplomatic position that would have been unthinkable only two months ago. Khatami will be speaking at the United Nations this week, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran is ready to get close to America.
The domestic political scene in Iran is a dangerous minefield of double-entendre. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week said any relations with the United States would be detrimental to the interest of the Iranian people and unacceptable. Only a few days later, the Iranian press reported foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi was courting Japan to act as a diplomatic go-between to the United States and quoted him as saying, “Iran can have relations with all countries except Israel.” The overall message is garbled: death to America, but no offense.
Historical grudges aside, Iran’s struggle to deal with America is a reflection of its own struggle to deal with traditionalism and modernity, religious and secular values. At the annual march held Sunday to commemorate the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, a couple of Uncle Sam effigies danced around one prominent banner which read LIBERALISM = TERRORISM.
The clash is apparent in the layout of Tehran itself. The smog-ridden streets in the southern part of the city are filled with the prayer call of the muezzin, the smell of kabob and the scenes of working-class Iranian women, black chadors tightly clenched in their teeth, bargaining over kilos of rice or tidbits of saffron. The northern suburbs, in contrast, are a cluster of highrises, satellite dishes and upscale shops. At the Golestan shopping mall, an open-air venue designed in a faux-ziggurat brick, CDs by Santana and Joe Satriani are on sale near snack bars selling hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza. The multistory Milad shopping mall offers the latest computer games, Disney movies on disc or Italian cappuccino. And, lest patrons forget, both malls have several signs reminding women to observe proper hijab (Islamic dress).
These social contrasts are among my sharpest memories of growing up in Iran and, in a way, make me feel like I never left (although my accented Farsi makes everyone think I’m a foreigner now). I attended the Shiraz International Community School (SICS) which taught subjects in both English and Farsi. My family celebrated Nowruz, the Iranian new year, as well as Christmas, along with trendy Iranian families that mingled with the expatriate set. The culture clash became more prominent when my sheltered international school was blended into the gender-segregated public school system in 1981. Teaching English was outlawed, Arabic and Quranic studies became mandatory. Many of the former teachers of the international school felt they had to prove their newfound Islamicness by slapping students around for minor offenses. For our fifth grade field trip, we went to a cemetery for the teenage martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war and told to follow their example.
It was partly the memory of this field trip that led me this time to Behesht-e-Zahra, the largest cemetery for the soldiers, including many teenagers, killed in the 1980-88 war with Iraq. The graves of nearly 200,000 war dead are crammed, sometimes with hardly a foot of space in between, into what has now become a mini-city with restaurants, a mosque and a bustling flower and rosewater business. It is an eerie testament to the cult of martyrdom pervasive during the war and to the huge loss for the country.
Iranian youth today, who comprise nearly 60 percent of the population, are fortunate in that they avoided the war and are given a marginally greater degree of cultural freedom. Girls layer on makeup and show salacious bits of hair. Unwed couples walk the streets hand in hand. Last Wednesday, after the Iranian national soccer team beat the United Arab Emirates in a World Cup qualifying match, cars pumping techno and Iranian pop music whizzed through streets trailing huge Iranian flags. Teenagers with flags painted on their face sang and danced in circles. The politicians may be busy hashing out dialogue with the United States, but after two decades of politicization, the Iranian youth seem happy to settle for some fun.
