Here's the Amazon link.
This book sounds like it would be a great resource in addressing how to reach this demographic group with evangelization. The social and psychological issues these women face are probably among the most central factors in determining what kind of culture we will have in the future. I'm writing as a man, so I can't speak for the women in this age group, but the pressures they're under seem pretty intense. We need to live as Church, and whether we're in the demographic group this book discusses or not, we are all one body in one Lord.
I think the pro-life movement has wasted much time and energy on electoral strategies and legislative approaches that don't change the culture. I am a firm believer that a "culture of life" can exist only when we have made the Kingdom of God the central organizing principle of our society, which distinctly is not through co-opting governmental authority (lest it co-op us).
Speaking to people, not in doctrine and dogma, but in experience and emotion is the only way I can think that we can love our neighbor. Take sexuality for example -- we can discuss Catholic moral teachings when we meet someone we know to be engaging in sexual behavior with which we disagree. However, I think it's much more powerful to talk about how sex affects people's well-being in narration, not norms. For example, discussing the people who are still looking for a date for the night when the bartender's announced last call. Or the woman who has just found out she's pregnant after she got dumped by the boyfriend she moved across the country to follow just two weeks ago. Or the guy reading Maxim for advice on how to seduce the female friend he's been crazy about for the last six months, but has been afraid to broach the topic of romance.
Books like this need to be read by people who care about our culture. Please consider it. And no, I don't know the author and have no financial stake in the book.
Here's the book description from Amazon:
This book sounds like it would be a great resource in addressing how to reach this demographic group with evangelization. The social and psychological issues these women face are probably among the most central factors in determining what kind of culture we will have in the future. I'm writing as a man, so I can't speak for the women in this age group, but the pressures they're under seem pretty intense. We need to live as Church, and whether we're in the demographic group this book discusses or not, we are all one body in one Lord.
I think the pro-life movement has wasted much time and energy on electoral strategies and legislative approaches that don't change the culture. I am a firm believer that a "culture of life" can exist only when we have made the Kingdom of God the central organizing principle of our society, which distinctly is not through co-opting governmental authority (lest it co-op us).
Speaking to people, not in doctrine and dogma, but in experience and emotion is the only way I can think that we can love our neighbor. Take sexuality for example -- we can discuss Catholic moral teachings when we meet someone we know to be engaging in sexual behavior with which we disagree. However, I think it's much more powerful to talk about how sex affects people's well-being in narration, not norms. For example, discussing the people who are still looking for a date for the night when the bartender's announced last call. Or the woman who has just found out she's pregnant after she got dumped by the boyfriend she moved across the country to follow just two weeks ago. Or the guy reading Maxim for advice on how to seduce the female friend he's been crazy about for the last six months, but has been afraid to broach the topic of romance.
Books like this need to be read by people who care about our culture. Please consider it. And no, I don't know the author and have no financial stake in the book.
Here's the book description from Amazon:
Quote:
|
Book Description Publication Date: March 4, 2013 Hard to Get is a powerful and intimate examination of the sex and love lives of the most liberated women in history--twenty-something American women who have had more opportunities, more positive role models, and more information than any previous generation. Drawing from her years of experience as a researcher and a psychotherapist, Leslie C. Bell takes us directly into the lives of young women who struggle to negotiate the complexities of sexual desire and pleasure, and to make sense of their historically unique but contradictory constellation of opportunities and challenges. In candid interviews, Bell's subjects reveal that, despite having more choices than ever, they face great uncertainty about desire, sexuality, and relationships. Ground-breaking and highly readable, Hard to Get offers fascinating insights into the many ways that sex, love, and satisfying relationships prove surprisingly elusive to these young women as they navigate the new emotional landscape of the 21st century. Editorial Reviews (selection) "In this moving book, Leslie Bell gives us insight into the hearts and minds of 20-something women confronted with the emotional challenges of a culture that says they can have it all. Through poignant, rich individual narratives, Bell shows how professionally successful and sexually experienced young women wrestle with feelings of vulnerability and confusion about relationships and desire. 20-somethings will find relief and self-understanding through reading this book, and it will be of great help to those who treat and those who wish to understand them."--Nancy J. Chodorow, author of Individualizing Gender and Sexuality: Theory and Practice "Women should be assertive but not aggressive, feminine but not passive, honest but not overwhelming. But how? Especially for women between ages 17 (the average age for first sex) and 27 (the average age of marriage) the rules for how to be a woman are highly unclear. In this deeply wise, very lucid, and highly illuminating book Bell, a sociologist and psychotherapist, describes how women sometimes "split" their desires for connection, sex and professional success. And she points to ways of moving beyond the split. An important book for women - and men."--Arlie Hochschild, Author of The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times "Leslie Bell introduces us to a new developmental period for 20 something women in which they are focused on sexual and relationship satisfaction. By sharing these women's stories Bell helps us to explore complex issues of ambivalence, subjectivity, and identity that are at the core of personal, relational and sexual fulfillment."--C.J. Pascoe, author of Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School "While popular portrayals of women and sex are glossy, voyeuristic, simplified, unemotional, or trite, Hard to Get offers rarely heard detailed stories that are told with emotional resonance and connection to women's full lives and selves. Bell has made a superb contribution to our understanding about how women navigate sexuality in young adulthood in an era when they no longer must be married, and thus she has enlightened our understanding of women's social, sexual, and psychological lives."--Karin A. Martin, author of Puberty, Sexuality, and the Self: Boys and Girls at Adolescence "Hard to Get shows us why, in the 21st Century, sex is easy but relationships are not. Every 20something woman who is having sex, but feels that something is amiss, should read this book."--Meg Jay, Ph.D., author of The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now |