The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Central Park Jogger Speaks Out, 20 Years Later

Tara Parker-Pope has an interview on her New York Times "Well" blog with Trisha Meili, otherwise known as the Central Park jogger. To refresh your collective cultural memories: Meili was raped and viciously assaulted in Central Park in 1989. A group of Harlem teenagers was arrested for the crime, and convicted on scant evidence, only to later be exonerated. The case was famously written about by Joan Didion in the New York Review of Books and became emblematic of a racially and socioeconomically divided New York City.

Meili discusses with Pope her decision to come out publicly as the jogger in 2003, when she wrote the memoir I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility:

The media keeping my anonymity is something that I do appreciate. I was known as the Central Park jogger, and when I told my story it was my choice. That was a degree of control that I had completely lost with the attack and the rape. When I’d meet someone it’s not like I would say, “Hi, I’m the Central Park jogger.” It’s kind of a conversation stopper. I decided to share my story because I had a real sense that sharing the story would help other people. That’s the message I’ve gotten, that sharing has given them hope.

I found this particularly interesting because Didion's essay has a large passage about the American media convention of keeping rape accusers names out of the press, something I've written about here before. Because of this convention, according to Didion, Meili was referred to by name frequently everywhere but the mainstream media.

Everyone in the courthouse, everyone who worked for a paper or a television station or who followed the case for whatever professional reason, knew her name. She was referred to by name in all court records and in all court proceedings. She was named, in the days immediately following the attack, on local television stations. She was also routinely named—and this was part of the difficulty, part of what led to a damaging self-righteousness among those who did not name her and to an equally damaging embattlement among those who did, in Manhattan's black-owned newspapers, The Amsterdam News and The City Sun, and she was named as well on WLIB, the Manhattan radio station owned by a black partnership which included Percy Sutton and, until 1985 when he transferred his stock to his son, Mayor Dinkins.

Though New York City is not the tinderbox of racial unrest that it was in the late '80s and early '90s, nor is it anywhere near as crime-ridden, reflecting on the Didion essay makes me wonder if the case would play out in the media in quite the same way if it had occurred in 2009. Would the existence of bloggers make anonymity impossible for a woman like Meili, the unhappy victim caught in such a public trial?

What Aretha Franklin Can Teach Your Teen Boys About Sex

The New York Times health section must have been reading my mind: They answered the question I asked last week, "Is the Teen Sex Talk Different for Sons and Daughters?" with an article and a blog post today. According to pediatrician Perri Klass, M.D., the way you should talk to your adolescent sons about sex is both the same and different from the way you might speak to your daughters. While it's important to teach both boys and girls basic tenets of politeness, Klass writes that, as a pediatrician and a mother of boys, "I acknowledge that for their own protection, boys need to understand that there are people—male and female—who will see them as potential predators, and judge them automatically at fault in any ambiguous situation."

However, Klass notes that a little respect (as Aretha says) goes a long way. Klass quotes Dr. Lee M. Sanders, another pediatrician who takes care of teen boys, about how he approaches the subject of sex: "We’ll talk about respect, about whether they feel they are respected in their own families, the respect they have for their mothers, the respect they see other men paying to their own mothers or sisters—do you think that applies to other girls that you meet?"

Tara Parker-Pope's related blog post opens up the question to commenters, and in the peanut gallery Alex Lickerman, M.D., argues, "If the adults participating in the conversation are comfortable talking about sex, the child will be as well. We’re the ones who make children nervous about this topic. Before having this discussion maybe we should examine just how comfortable we are or aren’t with our own sexuality." As someone who was a teen not so long ago, I disagree with Lickerman—my parents weren't awkward when talking to me about sex at all, and yet I was still mortified—but I want to hear from the moms out there, especially the moms of sons: Do you speak to your sons and daughters differently about these issues?