A point cross-posted from elsewhere...
May. 12th, 2009 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fr_defenestratoSeeing as how ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ptownnyc was recently tellin' stories out of (hippie Sunday) school and how touchy-feelie beastie-priesties came up and were smacked down, I found myself in the weird position of opposing the attitude that 'priests are creepy'. At least from the paedophilic angle: I think it's fundamentally wrong to judge an entire profession-ful of people by the untoward acts of a few.
Then, a tangent, made of matter that's been wandering around and around in my head since the offspring-over-protective Lord Broccoli was staying with me, if not much longer:
I have a pretty Bertrand Russellish approach to children and sex education. I can't go so far as to put myself in the NAMBLA camp, because I have no particular desire to shop for, find, and adopt any young boys and tutor them in literature and buggery; but I believe we do our society an injustice whenever we deny frank, objective knowledge of human sexuality to young people whose bodies have started giving them hormonal grief. I think it is perfectly evil to insist, on the basis of the presumed will of an unsummonable deity, that children must be shielded from carnal matters until some ridiculous age post-sexual-maturity.
And I believe post-pubescent children should be given a lot more credit than this society currently affords for having active sexual drives and alert, complex minds to weigh the consequences of their actions. True, a lot of teenagers are idiots, but then so are some senior citizens. My point is, treating a 14-year-old as a clueless, powerless victim in ALL cases of sexual contact with an adult (even including with another so-called minor!) is idiotic and insulting. Yes, some adults victimize children and I'm not suggesting that's ok in the least. When I was 14, though, oh my dog, did I ever want to do my freshman year algebra teacher something fierce!
[Oh, yeah: and my dad. Yeah, I know that's kinda way over here on the bell curve, but my first hot, hairy daddy crush was my hot, hairy daddy. He was 37 when I was 14 and his middle-age spread had barely started. RrrrrrrUFF!]
A decade later, on the day I turned 24, a 16-year-old friend whom I'd just had sex with claimed to have, at age 9, seduced his church organist. Given some of the brilliant, fully conscious children I've known over the years, this does not necessarily sound like rubbish to me. I only wish I'd been a little less shy and a little more knowledgeable about such matters as a kid.
What I'd like to know from folks whose opinions are stridently opposite mine: what, exactly, is the would-be universal prohibition of sharing sexually explicit information with children supposed to be protecting them FROM? Lord Broccoli used to claim his 13-year-old daughter was 'too young to be able to emotionally deal with that sort of thing' but I strongly believe he was recycling old Puritan-era baggage that he himself had long ago discarded. I have yet to hear an argument about how sexual matters harm children that does not come down to (a) the will of a deity or (b) subconscious fears and prejudices about the mythologized 'purity' of childhood.
So I have just two words left as palliative:
Disney porn.
ptownnyc was recently tellin' stories out of (hippie Sunday) school and how touchy-feelie beastie-priesties came up and were smacked down, I found myself in the weird position of opposing the attitude that 'priests are creepy'. At least from the paedophilic angle: I think it's fundamentally wrong to judge an entire profession-ful of people by the untoward acts of a few.Then, a tangent, made of matter that's been wandering around and around in my head since the offspring-over-protective Lord Broccoli was staying with me, if not much longer:
I have a pretty Bertrand Russellish approach to children and sex education. I can't go so far as to put myself in the NAMBLA camp, because I have no particular desire to shop for, find, and adopt any young boys and tutor them in literature and buggery; but I believe we do our society an injustice whenever we deny frank, objective knowledge of human sexuality to young people whose bodies have started giving them hormonal grief. I think it is perfectly evil to insist, on the basis of the presumed will of an unsummonable deity, that children must be shielded from carnal matters until some ridiculous age post-sexual-maturity.
And I believe post-pubescent children should be given a lot more credit than this society currently affords for having active sexual drives and alert, complex minds to weigh the consequences of their actions. True, a lot of teenagers are idiots, but then so are some senior citizens. My point is, treating a 14-year-old as a clueless, powerless victim in ALL cases of sexual contact with an adult (even including with another so-called minor!) is idiotic and insulting. Yes, some adults victimize children and I'm not suggesting that's ok in the least. When I was 14, though, oh my dog, did I ever want to do my freshman year algebra teacher something fierce!
[Oh, yeah: and my dad. Yeah, I know that's kinda way over here on the bell curve, but my first hot, hairy daddy crush was my hot, hairy daddy. He was 37 when I was 14 and his middle-age spread had barely started. RrrrrrrUFF!]
A decade later, on the day I turned 24, a 16-year-old friend whom I'd just had sex with claimed to have, at age 9, seduced his church organist. Given some of the brilliant, fully conscious children I've known over the years, this does not necessarily sound like rubbish to me. I only wish I'd been a little less shy and a little more knowledgeable about such matters as a kid.
What I'd like to know from folks whose opinions are stridently opposite mine: what, exactly, is the would-be universal prohibition of sharing sexually explicit information with children supposed to be protecting them FROM? Lord Broccoli used to claim his 13-year-old daughter was 'too young to be able to emotionally deal with that sort of thing' but I strongly believe he was recycling old Puritan-era baggage that he himself had long ago discarded. I have yet to hear an argument about how sexual matters harm children that does not come down to (a) the will of a deity or (b) subconscious fears and prejudices about the mythologized 'purity' of childhood.
So I have just two words left as palliative:
Disney porn.
