Actually, the problem with the cashier in the Feministing post was precisely that she attempted to prevent the girls from buying the pregnancy test.

She demanded to see ID--which 15-year-old girls are unlikely to have--and then insisted that there was an age minimum for pregnancy tests.

I can see asking for ID as functioning purely as a shame tactic (though I don’t think it would be as effective as merely lecturing) but clearly that wasn’t its purpose in this case.

That’s a fair point, and making up a fake law is (almost) always bad news, but I would point out two things in response.  First, buying the test was simply a matter of going to another register.  Second, it’s a private store’s right to refuse service to whomever it likes.

That’s not the point, Helen, so I don’t know why you’d call that a “response.” Refusing service is not the same thing as lying.  One shouldn’t have to go to another register to avoid outright, deliberate lies, especially when one is underage and unlikely to be able to identify the lie.  I don’t know why you’re defending this behavior.

Also, as to Helen’s second response it is of course a private store’s right to refuse service to whomever it likes, but I am sure the clerk did not own the CVS and thus was not in a position to make that call as I am sure it is CVS policy to sell a pregnancy test to anyone that would like one.

As to the immorality of fifteen-year-old girls having sex you will be looking a lot of girls through the history of the world in the eye and saying, “What you did was wrong.”

Biology is what it is, a woman’s body and its functions are what they are, a man’s body and its function are what they are, and no amount of “shame” will change that.

The only reason we think 15 year olds now should not be having sex is because we have managed to lengthen the average lifespan and prolong adolescence. This is a modern phenomenon that the Christian Western civilization is trying to come to terms with.

I think what the clerk did was wrong and that was the wrong time for anyone outside of the girl’s family to make her feel ashamed, though I agree with Ms. Rittelmeyer’s point about so-called “shame culture.” But it was the wrong time to make her feel ashamed because it would probably make her more likely to get an abortion.  And the girl’s statement that “We’re teenage girls, not the spawn of Satan, and we deserve just as much respect as a thirty-year old woman buying a pregnancy test.” would probably be true of the time when honor was the driving force that held Western society together, except that they didn’t have such a thing as pregnancy tests and it was only okay if the girl was already married.

Very interesting article, and, as a resident of the Bay State myself, I’ll assume that the remark in your opening sentence was made in jest!

On a serious note, I would like to raise one question - while I certainly agree that a fifteen-year-old’s pregnancy should not be treated as a joyous, or even normal, matter, at what point would we create a risk of causing so much shame among such girls that they conclude that they have no alternative but to abort?  I don’t know that there’s an easy answer to this dilemma, but I think we ought to consider the fact that the greater acceptance of teenage (and unmarried in general) pregnancies over the last 50 years has, in large part, at least removed that as a reason for abortion.

I regard shame and guilt as a waste of time.  If one intends to fight, one ought to fight.  America was a better place when men could duel to the death over matters of honor.

However, I am inclined to take up arms against anyone crass enough to stage a “Parade of Horribles.”

Assuming society wanted to teach a lesson in reduced social status to the pregnant girls, why not identify the fathers with genetic testing and punish them violently and publicly?

Singapore uses public flogging and Massachusetts uses “Parades of Horribles.” Which location do you think has better chances to survive and thrive?

@ Fletcher

“...at what point would we create a risk of causing so much shame among such girls that they conclude that they have no alternative but to abort?”

We crossed that Rubicon decades ago - e.g., when it became socially ill-advised and economically non-feasible for the young adult (male) lovers of “such girls” to marry them and build families together.

I dont think this shame has, really, anything to do with left and right ideologies. I knew many girls when I was fifteen, religious and not, that were having sex.

Blaming other people, in this case, is a cop out.

@Z

Quoting you:
“ especially when one is underage and unlikely to be able to identify the lie.  I don’t know why you’re defending this behavior.”

Some-one not capable of at least being suspicious of such a statement as the cashier’s probably shouldn’t be sexually active, anyway. Yes, as Maria notes, biology is what it is. Biologically, sexual intercourse leads to pregnancy (or so I’ve heard); pregnancy comes with many, many responsibilities, the sort that generally require—or at least ought to require—competence. I doubt that this girl possesses it adequate quantity.

Well, the disease called feminism seems to have done its work even among “conservative” women, as even here on Taki’s we see it in action.

Note the “faux” realism on display here:

“Biology is what it is… and no amount of “shame” will change that.”

Nice. Now let’s try that in the tendency to murder or incest. After all they, too, are “natural,” and biologically driven: if I kill my grandmother to grab her money, and then marry my sister, biology being what it is, no amount of “shame” will change that.

And true “enlightenment” will come only after a psychotherapist lectures me for 2157 hours that it is wrong to kill my grandmother and marry my sister because… well, it’s kinda not nice since my sis is kinda aching for that jock in school, and my granny is kinda dead.

That’s very enlightened of you, Maria. I can feel your intellectual and moral supremacy right here, from Istanbul, 10,000 miles away. I’m slapping my forehead “drats, why didn’t we ignorant, unenlightened unwashed think of that? It has nothing to do with shame, because people want to have sex due to biology. They can’t help it. And we thought people learn sex after going to grammar school. So all those rumors that those who don’t attend grammar school remain barren, even asexual were just that: rumors.”

And let’s not skip the fact that the ultimate purpose of “shame” is to change biology. For instance, we primitive “Muzzies” (it feels wonderful to put us down with this one, isn’t it, Maria? “See, those terrorist cultures use shame to regulate people’s behavior? Don’t you see how unenlightened, ignorant, primitive they are?,” that sorta thing)… we have become so steeped in the shame culture, that just by using shame “tactics” we can change the way our kidneys or oesophaguses work. Try it. If you can get the hang of it, you save tons on doctors’ bills.

Only sex has turned out to be totally intransigent, drats. We have tried and tried and still people want to have sex. Go figure.

Any other brilliant “insights,” Maria?

Look, “shame” is a way of creating a “slate” for someone by one’s reputation in the community. No one on earth thinks sex is anything other than what it is. In fact, it’s amazing you don’t see the fallacy of your logic here: it is exactly because biology is what it is, that we, as societies, have developed a social control mechanism with the label “shame” to keep it under tabs. Shifting it to “community service” is not just more expensive and pointlessly-elitistic-ego-trip-y: it will NOT work.

Shame depends on empathy, something which even smart breeds like dogs are not capable of (point your finger to something, and the dog will look at your finger, not what you point at). Shame depends on inculcating in someone that if one acts one way, one will have to face consequences. And no, “young lady, you’re grounded for 5 weeks for getting pregnant at age 15” is not a *consequence*. It’s a joke. Shame is possible only in societies where such “mistakes” are followed by very severe consequences. Only then people are able to get it into their thick skulls, by empathizing with those who suffer those consequences and learning to *fear* them, that they feel shame when they are warned that if they head in that direction they’ll be the next one facing those consequences.

Alright, dearie? Save the bloody phoney, more-realistic-than-thou lecture on biology.

Well, I wont go into KE’s remarks.

As I have seen here, on this site, Pat Buchanan thinks America has a problem as the birth rate is down. This is true as birth rates are down in all industrialized countries. Now, I dont think its a good idea for fifteen year olds, regardless of political ideology, which they would seem to have little of, having children when they arent old enough to work. Yet they are helping to increase the birth rate in this country and are not, though some say its liberal, looking into abortion. They want to become mothers. Maybe its because they want to have children early so as not to be burdened later in life which would hurt their career, I dont know.

I think this deserves a deeper, much deeper, look and should not become something used as a political canard.

Maybe its because they want to have children early so as not to be burdened later in life which would hurt their career, I dont know.

I really doubt that.

I wonder how many of the teenage maternity cases had a father around. I believe the sociologists have determined that lack of a (biological) father in a household is a strong predictor of teenage pregnancy.

http://www.nazg.com/iqrai/index.php/2008/07/13/shame-with-love-at-strife/

“at what point would we create a risk of causing so much shame among such girls that they conclude that they have no alternative but to abort?”

Simply make sure they understand that an abortion is the far greater shame, and also provide maternity homes where they can hide their shame.

Obviously, one should also shame young men into taking responsibility for their caddishness by not aborting their kid.

In a shameless culture, even those capable of shaming others will be less effective due to lack of practice; in such a state, there are fewer standards governing the proper application (and remission) of shame.

“The blog Feministing recently featured a horror story about a fifteen-year-old’s attempt to buy a pregnancy test.”

Why didn’t she simply go to the school nurse?

The point of the liberal monograph, “It Takes a Village,” was that the entire community, not just
the parents, should pass on cultural values - what is permitted and what is beyond the norm. Now that a
liberated teenager confronts a disapproving adult, a member of the community, it no longer takes
a village. Presumably, the teenager is avoiding accountability to her parents. So we invent some new principle, freedom from shame, or anything handy, to keep chipping away at any norms that give society moral cohesion.

OH NO!!!! 15-year-olds got PREGNANT!!!

15-year-olds have always gotten pregnant. The difference is that 15 year-olds are no longer allowed to get married.

And Danby’s shown himself a moron.  What are you, twelve?

This isn’t really the death of shame. but an assault on traditional morality by the ruling regime, which naturally crafts the mores of the society it controls in ways that upholds its own power while destroying the legitimacy of the order it replaced.  This is a country where public figures are constantly apologizing for the tiniest infraction of PC rules (using the word “niggardly”, for example).  The powers that be certainly think you should feel shame about un-PC thoughts and words, and are not adverse to using the pillory for those who violate these rules.

There is more to i.d. (identification) than meets the eye, especially when the person suspected of having an identity is not easily visible, being located in a womb.  So, bringing up the point of i.d. to the caretaker of the baby’s womb can possibly generate or stimulate some deep response within the mother in relationship to the personality of the baby in the baby’s womb which the mother has been give responsibility over by god.

Certainly we should restore Shame Culture, but whatever happened to plain old “Hell Culture” where Catholics and Protestants alike said sex without marriage was a mortal sin and if unrepeated of you would go to Hell? I trace it all to the Episcopal Church allowing birth control in 1934 and other protestant denominations following suit shortly thereafter.

Kevin,

In response to your point - “Simply make sure they understand that an abortion is the far greater shame, and also provide maternity homes where they can hide their shame” - the problem is that it is still far easier to keep an abortion secret than a childbirth.  I’m too young to remember the pre-sexual revolution era, but I can’t imagine that people weren’t well aware of what was going on when a teenage girl in the 1950’s, say, “went away: for several months.

Maria,

For whatever it’s worth, from 1566-1837 the average age of marriage in England was about 26-27 years old and the same was basically true for colonial America.  Importantly, the women in those marriages, while a bit younger on average than the men, were, on average, well into their 20’s.  I suspect this pattern was true for much of Europe.  Even during the early middle ages folks tended to put marriage off until well into their 20’s.  Presumably, people during those times were less tolerant about sexual activity outside of marriage, yet, they still tended to put marriage off until adulthood.  Finally, what’s immoral is not a 15 year old getting pregnant but rather a 15 year old getting pregnant outside of marriage.

The first victims of any culture infected with the virus of modern liberalism (secular socialism) are respect and shame. We alls ee that daily in the children. 
Much more on the cultural among the 950+ posts of mine on theconservativecrawfish Blog. Like your website!

I agree with Danby and disagree with Irenaeus.

A fifteen-year-old pregnant girl who is forced into a marriage without the option of divorce becomes an example of putting community survival ahead of individual rights.

In earlier times, women had sufficient strength of character and will to endure marriage without psychotherapeutic indoctrination, humanist angst, and the rest of modernity’s idiocies.