I know all about the current views on child molestation and the current penalties there of and what is considered molestation but for some stupid reason, I happened to recall some stuff from decades before these laws were enacted and the epidemic began.
It made me wonder what psychologists would think of this stuff.
In my late teens, I happened to get hold of a Swingers paper, normally available to adults only. Among the interesting ads and pictures – mostly tiny printed ads – I found a section for incest. I recall it because it showed a nude girl of about 14 and she wanted to know if anyone else was interested in Daddy Love like she was and would like to join her and her Pop. Further on was a similar ad from a guy who was having consensual sex with his 20 year old daughter seeking those with equal interests.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, being more interested in the ads of single women seeking single partners for fun and frolic. (They all lived too far away.)
As years passed, I ran across something similar in college where a group of guys and girls in the student union were in an energetic discussion concerning the effect of voluntary sexual intercourse of a child with a parent. They had come across some reports somewhere by some who had traveled the back woods, often very isolated ‘hillbilly’ communities in Kentucky and Tennessee, said it was not unknown for some of the mountain people to have sex with their kids. The few kids he met who admitted to it said they enjoyed it and sex among siblings was not unusual until they found other contacts. He also mentioned finding some young children who were obviously mentally slow as a result.
Now, according to today’s outlook, such sexual contacts always screw up the kids, are always forced upon the unwilling child, and always produce some form of mental illness later on. According to what I’ve read and overheard over the years, perhaps not. Who is right?
I remember as a child, running into other boys and discussing the great mystery of sex and there would always be a few who bragged about having a teen sister who happily taught them all about it by doing it with them. Since it was always someone else’s sister and not our own, who we normally couldn’t stand at that age, we considered those guys lucky. I mean, they knew that rubbers really don’t squeak during intercourse! They drew accurate sand pictures of down there on girls, described how it felt and so on, so we believed them.
I even ran into a few stories later on about older brothers who had been asked by younger sisters to educate them in sex and did. No one seemed to particularly care, unless they knew of the sister in question and considered her a real dog and would not do her even with someone else’s equipment.
I know of two cases as fact. Now, years later, all involved seem happily married to different people, of course, are leading good lives and seem unaffected by it all.
So, what would psychiatrists think of such situations? Such sex in a family is considered morally wrong and against the law, even casual sex. I read a book called ‘Time Enough For Love,’ science fiction, by a very predominate author (either Heinlein or Clarke) dealing with virtual immortals who had lived for so long that they considered casual sex among family members as a means of bonding, affection and play.
I think I’d be surprised to find the book easily available today. The author, I noticed in reading his works, gradually started slipping in incest in his later books.
Today any form of sexual contact with a minor is considered molestation. Minors experimenting with other minors, especially in the same family, can be hauled off to the shrink and to jail. (At 13 I was happily touching and feeling the nude body of a 14 year old neighbor girl, who was doing the same to me, but no actual sex. She approached me. It was fun and neither of us grew up skewed mentally.)
So, are the psychiatrists correct or are their ‘diagnoses’ a slanted product of the pressure of the times. Something like the sudden and suspicious rash of shrinks pointing out to people, who had no knowledge of it before, that they had been molested as a child?
Then the change in public opinion. All of those years ago, no one cared if the sex was voluntary, though they did get involved if it was rape. They expected unrelated kids to experiment, with dads usually explaining the facts of life and condoms as soon as they discovered junior was no longer packing an empty gun and moms having chats with daughters who talking about boys a bit too much, becoming concerned about how they looked in shorts and stuffing their bras with tissue.
Now days if a kid talks too knowingly about sex in grade school, some other kid reports him to the teacher, who might investigate and send him to the shrink, who might not only call in the parents but HRS as well. Kids of 7 get suspended if caught kissing a girl of the same age. Heck, when I was in first through third, we did a lot of smooching on the cheeks with girls. If a kid is caught fooling with his girlfriend, even if of the same age, he can be arrested. If incest is discovered, well today they might as well hang up everything because even if voluntary, their lives are over once the cops, the news, the legal system, shrinks and HRS gets done with them. They might as well leave the country because it will follow them forever, what they have done.
What is the right reaction? I admit that I no longer know for sure. Forced is wrong. Is voluntary? What about if the ‘victim’ enjoys it? To what degree then is it wrong? Who should set the standards?
