Did you have sex as a teen? Well, according to a new book, that might be the reason you’re so messed up when it comes to relationships. Your brain may have been damaged!
That’s what Dr. Freda Bush and Dr. Joe McIlhaney, the authors of Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children, would like us to believe, according to a recent CanWest News Service story:
“When we are involved in sexual relations, the brain is actually flooded with neurochemicals that cause us to attach to each other, emotional bonding and also a powerful desire to repeat the behaviour,” says Bush in a telephone interview from her home in Jackson, Miss.
“These chemicals can imprint the brain and can cause addictive behaviour with lifelong consequences.”
But wait! It gets worse:
Both sexes also experience a dopamine rush — dopamine is a hormone that makes you feel good and rewards you for exciting behaviour.
Bush says that when two people are in a committed relationship, that addictive hormone is a good thing, as it ensures a strong union.
However, for young people whose brains are susceptible to pattern-forming behaviours, that may set them up for a lifetime of seeking the thrill and reward from sex, and make it hard for them to attach themselves long-term to a partner later in life.
And worse still:
Bush and McIlhaney also point to research which shows that the younger a person has sex, the more partners he or she is likely to have.
“Because they are imprinted so early with the sexual behaviour and because of the multiple partners, they can mould or gel the brain to eventually accept that pattern as normal,” says Bush. “And when they are ready to have a long-term relationship, it interferes with their ability to develop it, because those neurological circuits have been weakened in the ability to attach, and the dopamine rush rewarding you for the behaviour has taken precedence.”
The good doctors, who incidently worked on some of Bush II’s abstinence-only initiatives, (surprise, surprise) recommend no sexual activity until one’s mid-twenties (and a committed relationship), certainly a realistic, not to mention appealing, option for most people. Good luck.
Over at Bahamas Blog, Dr. Marty Klein offers a detailed indictment of the book’s claims. Check it out while you think about what you’ve done.
Tagged as:
creepy,
feelings,
Health,
windbags
Toronto media outlets today were buzzing today over a revelation that Karen Stintz, a city councillor, spent $4,500 (USD) (reported here as $2,650 and here as $1,850) of the public’s money on public speaking lessons with an American trainer. Now, anytime someone starts banging on about someone wasting taxpayers’ dollars, my eyes tend to glaze over because I feel like I need to save up my political indignation for matters that I think are much more appalling, like war.
But when Andy Barrie and co. were discussing the issue on Metro Morning today, my ears pricked up. This is because, as the Toronto Star reported, Stintz enrolled for the public speaking lessons after some of her constituents “told her she spoke too fast and sounded ’shrill’”.
“Shrill,” of course, is a code word for “frightening woman that no one listens to.” And we’ve all been there, haven’t we? You’re in a meeting, and you start feeling pissed. You open your mouth to talk, and your emotions take over, and all of a sudden you realize oh, my god, they’ve totally stopped listening to me because you know that people are now only responding to the intensity of your feelings, rather than the content of your language.
When you’re on city council, you need people to listen to you–especially if you’re planning on taking a run against the still-popular mayor in the next civic election. So you sign up for public speaking lessons. And your office has a budget for that kinda thing, so it gets paid for.
The thing is, when you go to the Star website and click on the story about Stintz, you’ll find an embedded video giving samples of Stintz speaking in council before and after her Eliza Doolittle treatment. And what’s truly astonishing about the video is…there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her voice at all prior to those costly elocution lessons.
It’s galling for Stintz’s voice–voice being such an important marker of gender–to be criticized in the first place. Sure, male politicians’ voices are parodied and satirized frequently–but no one expects them to actually do anything about them. And what’s with the excessive media attention paid to Stintz, given the other councillors and their expense reports? Plus, the implication in some of these stories is that what’s really wrong with Stintz spending this dough is she’s grooming herself for the upcoming mayoralty race. To which I reply: so? Politicians and other professionals pay huge sums of money for this kind of professional development all the time. If we’re going to criticize Stintz, let’s let it be for meaningful things like her voting record in council.
Tagged as:
feelings,
labour,
Politics,
voice,
women
Confabulous badges!
