Penelope,
 What a powerful beginning! I am overwhelmed. I have to think about this for awhile but it is a worthy, profound and sad issue. It harkens unto Hanna's world. I need time to address this juicy and fractious reality. In the mean time thank you for bringing it to our (my) attention. No doubt this will be a very long and beautifully tendrilled post for all of us. Thank you dear lady.

Wow, Penelope, thanks.
I find this idea of responsibility being placed completely in the hands of the girl quite fascinating (and its parallel of desire being placed almost entirely in the hands of the boy).
So this is why people are so angry at the girl who can't say no, why this figure is so vilified, despised: it's felt that it's not her choice to give in. It's not just her feelings, her experiences that are at stake. When she yields, she makes the game dangerous for everyone. It's like when the village elects a gatekeeper and gets angry when that gatekeeper wants to take a nap. And the gatekeeper realizes with a sinking feeling: What, we aren't sharing shifts?

But you can also see how the mythology of that special man, "the person to whom one yields," gets out of control. From Mead we might conclude that if you're playing your role as a woman, no one should be able get by you unless they are somehow extraordinary; unless there's something about them that exempts you. This can't be something rational -- it has to be circuit overload, if you don't want to be blamed.  (Or someone good at keeping secrets.)

Mia,

You addressed two spokes on this wheel which seemingly is focused on the female. It is a crazy conundrum of back and forths. I have not had the time to process this yet regardless of it being the most important post for me at this time. It is a wonderous issue and revealing of a very true discord (as apposed to dissonance) between male and female. In many ways I think Mead has grasped a reality yet I think that there is more involved and I don't know how to conceptualize it for myself let alone even speak of it coherently.

My sexual evolvement was very akward, painful and unrewarding even to this date. There is something very wrong with the male/female relationship in the US and in many other countries as well. The Scandinavians appear to have a better grasp of the Male/female relationship.... I suspect. When I lived in Denmark they "seemed" to be healthier and I assume that it was real. Men and women seemed to be equitably responsible for their sexuality of sense and completion and for their mutual roles in support for one another. I felt that they seemed "healthier" than Americans by ten fold, but who knows, maybe the same unbalanced responsibility prevailed there as well, but just hidden. No, I am sure of it, as I recollect now. Women were fully equal. They had power and men had power too and they were not conflicting. One thing I appreciated at that time in Copenhagen was that there did not seem to be the sexual obsessions that we have in the US. Little children at the beach were usually naked. Eight year old girls did not wear useless breast covering tops as they are trained to do in the US. Nudity was no big deal at the beach where I went. Some people went nude, some went partially nude, some people changed their clothes in public from street clothes into swimming clothes. Nobody stared or made comment. Women nursed in public without anybody seeming to give a damn one way or the other.  Men seemed interested in women for the relatiuonship and not for sex, unlike in the US. Men seemed responsible in Denmark for the health and welfare of their mates and girl friends, unlike here in the US. Life just seemed NORMAL in Denmark. It was so refreshing for me as a 15 year old.

When I came back to the US I felt like I was in a nightmare of sexual confusion. It has been so ever since. I think that our pornographic industries reveal immensley confused notions of intimacy for both men and women. What the heck is going on?! It doesn't make sense to me.

I think that posing the female as being the lone controller of sexual intercourse a strange and unatural construct. Definitely the burden is on the female in our culture. There are many families that teach their male children to be respectful of females but it is more like training them to "bide your time" rather than "share responsibility" for health, will, and personal evolvement of both the female as well as the male. They are very different realities.

I do not understand what you mean by the "mythology of that special man". I do understand your comment "why aren't we sharing shifts"?

I suppose that by placing the woman (girl)  as being responsible for sex (and the man not responsible for his insistance for sex) turns the woman into being either a prude or a whore while the man escapes responsibility is the norm in the US (Mexico and other countries too) the male eludes responsibility not only for pregnancy but more profoundly for not being expected to care for the woman he has impregnated.