Tryin' to make some front-page drive-in news.

True Ancestor has written a thoughtful post about the role a father (or in his case, step-father) plays in the self-esteem and sexual development of his daughters.

His thoughts, and those of his sister on her blog, are prompted by a book review in Atlantic Monthly on the sexual promiscuity of teenage (and pre-teen) girls.

It always amuses me, that adults are so shocked at the sex lives of teenagers. Don’t they remember? I mean, I was a teenager in the 70s. I lost it at 14, and by 16 I had a prescription for the pill. And in my crowd, there was a lot of sex. A lot.

I mean a lot.

A lot of dry humping, a lot of blowjobs, a lot of handjobs, and a lot of penetration.

And speaking from my experience, I can tell you that all I ever wanted through it all was male attention and love.

Why? I was done being a kid. My parents were divorced, and, well, I felt as though I was merely an extra in the drama that was the Martyrdom of my Mother. To me, anything I said or did was fuel for her drama, and so I learned not to trust her. And when her life spiraled so frighteningly out of control, and no father came to rescue me, I think I concluded that to be a kid was to be a chump – to be a kid was to have no say, no dominion, and no bargaining chips at all.

Well, it’s easy to imagine how a 14-year-old girl with no money goes about acquiring some bargaining chips. And part of it was about that. See what I could get for what I gave. But I was never a mercenary. I didn’t want things. I wanted love, and by god I was going to find some way to get some, no matter what I had to do.

But you know what? I’m not sure there was any damage done. Sure, as an adult it took me a while to figure out the difference between real love, and the kind of arrangements I made as a teenager, but hey, everyone’s got to overcome some bad lessons from their childhood, right?

The Atlantic reviewer shudders at the thought of today’s girls gone wild trading in the “debasing, uncomfortable, and messy blowjob,” and I can’t help but think “Man, not if you’re doing it right.”

Seriously, I don’t remember ever feeling debased. It was exciting. I liked it. Are you kidding me? Of course I did. It was sex! It felt good! It was a new thing, a grown-up thing. Wild horses couldn’t have stopped me from doing it.

So, I just want to say that it’s not the sex itself that hurts you or debases you. It is the manner in which sex happens to you that determines its life-affirming or life-damaging power, so let’s not cast these young women as victims if that’s not what they are.

Because that’s not what I was.