{"id":4384,"date":"2017-11-30T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4384"},"modified":"2017-11-26T19:20:05","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T03:20:05","slug":"mark-reads-lifeboats-chapter-6-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2017\/11\/mark-reads-lifeboats-chapter-6-part-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Lifeboats’: Chapter 6, Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fourth part of the sixth chapter of Lifeboats<\/i>, Kit is unsettled by his experience with one of the Tevaralti. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still at a point where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m waiting for all these details to converge into something<\/i>, but I certainly got a lot out of this chapter regardless. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that Duane is setting up Kit to continue to experience a sort of existential crisis on Tevaral, namely in that he is realizing how hopeless this complicated situation is. His conversation\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhowever brief\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwith that one Tevaralti is haunting him, and I got the sense that Kit was trying as hard as he could to ignore it. It helped that he was able to immerse himself in the utter joy of watching The Return of the Jedi<\/i> with two people who have never seen it before. (I am firmly in the pro-Ewok camp, for the record, I WILL DIE ON THAT HILL.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a satisfying ending to a trilogy, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I want to capture someday in something I write.<\/p>\n

But there is a specific element to this part of the chapter that I wanted to focus on more than anything else. Kit does<\/i> have something to distract him from the horrors of impending doom, and that thing is SEX EDUCATION. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that even though there is sex ed in this version of our world, it still hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t managed to help Kit get over the all-too-familiar awkwardness of discussing<\/i> sex. Granted, Cheleb is so forward and clinical in hae\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way of approaching the topic. To Cheleb, it is nothing more than an interesting fact about a species that Cheleb has never met before. Hae\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s culture must not<\/i> have hang-ups about sex like ours does.<\/p>\n

Yet even saying that feels like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not actually describing this accurately. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually an understatement! Here in America, we have severe<\/i> issues around educating kids about sex and talking about it as adults. Obviously, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a generalization. There are pockets in our world where sex is<\/i> talked about openly. The queer community I found at Cal State Long Beach was a huge help for someone like me. I had come from a community where we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t allowed to talk about sex in any<\/i> form, and certainly not the kind of sex I was interested it. I mentioned this on video and<\/i> I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written about it before, but if it weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t for a couple of rebellious teachers, I would not have been taught how to put on a condom. I was taught that sex should not come before marriage because otherwise I would die, and that once I was married, there was pretty much only one way to have sex, and it should be done for babies and babies alone. (Seriously, Mean<\/i> Girls <\/i>was barely a joke for people like me.)<\/p>\n

Even as an adult, though, I still didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always find that I could talk about sex and all its complications with everyone I called a friend. How do you get someone to listen to your concerns about using sex as a coping mechanism when they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible? What about waning sexual desire and the emotional complications that come with that? What about non-monogamous relationships or the failures of the gender binary? Who are you supposed to talk to about these things? They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t teach you any<\/i> of this.<\/p>\n

I learned about the complexity of sex and desire from numerous sources. LGBT panels I participated in while volunteering at CSULB; Tumblr; discussions about sex at places like Arisia or LeakyCon. But it was never part of any formal education, you know? And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a serious problem for everyone<\/i>, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. People who are having sex\u00e2\u20ac\u201dregularly, within marriage, outside marriage, casually, etc\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand people who are not\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecause they might choose to be celibate, because they are sex-repulsed, because their sense of sexual desire fluctuates\u00e2\u20ac\u201dall need to know<\/i> about sex.<\/p>\n

Whether we like to admit it or not, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a stigma surrounding sex, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nervousness reminded me of. Now, I know that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the only way to read his reaction. Truthfully, Kit is awkward here because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another layer to this. He hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t had sex yet, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being asked to talk about it as if he is representative of his entire species. On top of that, his relationship with Nita is still in the beginning stages, and that means he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got lots to figure out in the meantime. How can he talk about sex with a stranger when he hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even spoken about it with his best friend and girlfriend? The closest he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s come to breaching the topic was talking about porn Ronan, and that still<\/i> barely addressed it, you know?<\/p>\n

I kind of want Nita and Kit to have a big conversation about their relationship before this book is over. THAT WOULD BE GREAT.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/t_QRuC3ydBQ<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"