From this thread on the outing of anti-gay crusader George Allen Rekers – post by Kimstu:
The bolded part jumped out at me because it reflects a widespread and rarely questioned mainstream assumption that children need to be so protected. Look, I’m not gonna bang the drum for NAMbLA here, nor encourage the idea that kids should actually start having sex however defined at any particular age; but is it really that bad for a kid’s mental health, to be exposed to that aspect of adult life?
E.g., if your kid somehow defeats your blocks and gets access to Internet porn, is he actually going to be any less mentally healthy as an adult than if he hadn’t?
I don’t think so for a moment. That’s just American puritanism in action. They need to be protected from doing anything stupid; but that means you educate them and watch over them, not that you put them in a bubble. If anything we are sabotaging our children, by doing our best to cripple them by ignorance.
For a lot of people I think “protecting them from their own budding sexuality” is really in line with your idea about preventing them from doing anything stupid. The problem is that we all have different ideas of how to do that. I agree with Der Trihs, you arm them with knowledge and watch over them as best you can rather than feeding them misinformation or leaving them ignorant.
Der Trihs, you’re a poster that I’m either constantly completely agreeing or disagreeing with on this board.
In this case, of course, I agree with you completely. I don’t want to make this into a debate about religion, but this man is driven completely by religious insanity. They think that there’s something sacred, magical, shameful and yes, dangerous, about sex and they feel that they have to “protect” people from it.
Encouraging nothing but hardline abstinence, which is what these people do, is not only ineffective but harmful because all it guarantees is that teens won’t be armed with knowledge when they do inevitably experiment sexually.
I don’t know what that idiot meant. The phrase doesn’t make much sense to me. I suppose it’s possible to interpret it as saying that kids need to be taught how to deal with their own raging hormones and not do anything stupid, but I wouldn’t call that really protecting then from their sexualities, so much as just giving them the information to understand and control it.
Isn’t this guy part of James Dobson’s organization? He’s the guy who says that you can stop little boys from turning gay by taking them in the shower with you and showing them your cock.
I viewed porn at a pretty young age and I grew up into a mentally stable and productive member of soci–oh wait. Maybe there’s something to that then.
More seriously, I’ve always thought if I had kids I’d rather have them see graphic sexual imagery than graphic violence, but it seems most people would have it the other way around. They let their kids watch pretty violent movies but if there’s a steamy scene or any sign of T&A it’s time to cover the children’s eyes lest they see a tit.
When I worked at Gamestop I was required to read the disclaimers off of the boxes of games that were rated M for Mature.
“Ma’am, this game is rated M for Mature and so Gamestop requires me to tell you…”
“I really don’t care. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.”
[Ignoring her.] “Blood and gore… Use of drugs and alcohol… strong language… graphic violence… simulated gambling…”
“Yeah yeah, it’s nothing new.” [Waving her hand to hurry me up.]
“… partial nudity…”
“WHAT?!”
It’s fine for children to pretend to saw one another’s heads off with chainsaws but God forbid they see the side of a woman’s titty.
I’d assume he meant preventing them from being taken advantage of. And, with the whole Christian connection, I’d assume he thinks sex should only be with your spouse, and that any other form of sex is someone taking advantage of you.
Then again, I don’t entirely disagree with the idea that if we actually kept kids from learning about sex that sex rates would not go down. The problem is there’s no way to do it unilaterally so that the kid can’t learn about it from another kid, and it’s very difficult to know how much should be revealed. Apparently just discussing abstinence doesn’t work.
Can I ask why you seem to take it as given that decreasing the “sex rate” is a good thing and therefore the goal? Personally, I’m much more worried about unsafe sex and coercion than the sex itself - and pretending sex doesn’t exist certainly won’t stop that.
The tone of the quote is sarcastic. That is, the author does not believe that keeping kids “safe from gay adoptions” is a good thing.
You may certainly debate the proper approach to kids’ sexuality and whatever extent it’s budding. But that quote was not offered by a proponent of the practice.
Of course children need to be protected from their own budding sexualities. The dangers of sex are myriad, STD, pregnancy, rapes, emotional damage. The adolescent brain is not ready for sex even though the adolescent hormones are. Sex before 16 can be very damaging to the long term emotional and sexual health. From 17 to 19 it is less damaging and after that the brain seems to be ready. Porn is different in that for most teenagers can handle it and use it as a substitute for sex. However exposure to porn for younger children is damaging. I am a big fan of Loveline the radio show and most of the callers were young people whose lives had been damaged by premature sex or sexual abuse.
This is pretty much where I stand. The problem comes with parents from the “Carrie” school of parenting, where they project their own warped sexuality onto their children.
The quote spoke of a need for protection from “their own budding sexuality”, not the developed, warped/abusive sexuality of others. Absolutely children should be protected from predators who use them for their own sexual pleasure.
But the idea that they should be “protected” from exploring and experiencing their OWN emerging sexual natures is, imo, a form of abuse which can be as harmful as the sort of exploitation you refer to.
In either case, the adult is using coersion (shame, fear, guilt, ignorance) to manipulate for their own reasons, not for the good of the child.
Many adults have a very difficult time with the idea that children are sexual beings from birth and misinterpret that sexuality in adult terms, which is completely off-base.
For example, many young children self-sooth through masturbation, but to assume that practice in any way suggests a “sexual” connotation as adults understand it is ridiculous, imo.
If they see evidence of sexual interest or activity (normal curiosity, masturbation), they act to “fix” it. They instill harsh prohibitions against self-exploration or interest in anything of a sexual nature. They teach children that parts of their body are “dirty” and never to be examined or touched. They set up strict barriers between children and exposure to any sexual content. They deny information as if ignorance will make natural sexual awareness go away.
OR predators will seek to expolit that sexuality to their own ends, rationalizing that children are exhibiting a sexuality akin to that of adults and should be allowed to practice it WITH adults or in an adult manner.
We need to just allow children to claim and explore their own sexuality without censoring or exploiting it, while protecting them from those who would, setting safe guidlines and offering age-appropriate information. Children raised in this way are extremely unlikely to mature into either sexual predators or sexually repressed adults (or BOTH) but into adults with a healthy, mature sexuality.
I recall the South Park episode “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers.” The kids inadvertently get hold of “Backdoor Sluts 9,” a porn video Stan Marsh rented, and the parents discuss the danger if they should watch it. Kyle’s Mom says it’s not harmless, because there’s nobody there to “put it in context” for them. Meanwhile, Token Black volunteers to watch it, and is completely freaked out. When Kyle’s Mom tries to explain that, “It’s all about love!” Token says, “A guy with ranch dressing smeared on his ass being paddled by three midgets?! What’s that got to do with love?”
Seems to me this would be the occasion to give a kid the Straight Dope: Sex and love go well together, but sex is not about love. It’s a hard-wired urge, originating in reproduction, that, for reasons nobody really understands, often gets diverted into non-reproductive channels, which are mostly harmless, but sometimes very harmful indeed.
The problem is that we have delayed the mental onset of maturity by protecting children and keeping them isolated from the consequences of their actions for a much longer period of time than human children would get in a natural state. They evolved to be sexually capable at a young age, because outside of a complex culture it made evolutionary sense to start creating new offspring at that point.
In primitive or poor cultures, children start working hard at a young age, and the onset of puberty marks the age at which they can and do form their own families. It wasn’t unheard of in pioneer communities for girls to be married off when they were 12-14. But then, by age 14, a girl had already been tending babies for years, working the home as hard as an adult, and had all kinds of responsibility. I’m pretty sure a typical 14 year old in a pioneer society in the 1800’s was far more mature than the typical 14 year old today.
Today, a 12-14 year old is still a child, still completely isolated from having to make hard choices affecting his or her life. And yet, their bodies become fully functional, reproductively speaking, and their hormones start driving them towards sex. This can have life-changing consequences, and it’s not absurd on its face to say that there is a period of time in which children want to explore their sexuality but it’s the parent’s job to make sure they don’t go too far down that path until they are ready for it.
This has nothing to do with religion or morality. It’s just good parenting.
I basically agree with this but would have put it differently. Children should be free to express Love, not restricted and not ashamed of their own bodies. The world needs more Love, more connecting between people. They also need to be mentored in (non-sexual) Love on the way.
I have to disagree with Sam Stone slightly. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that people grow up later and laer, and are a little bit less “mature” forever. I relate that to biology where long immature phases allow the organism to develop much further in total. But toherwise I basically agree.
Sex these days is really, really complicated. It used to be that people humped people they knew, had a closer appreciation fo sex from their herb animals, and there were a lot less “unusual” methods going about. Sx these days is ffriggin complicated, and takes place in hugely varied circumstances. And there are a lot of people willing to take advantage of the young, even without getting into outright sex abuse. I think it might be very beneficial for young people to not have to deal with sex until they are older and more able to understand it.
I didn’t mean to suggest that delaying maturity was a bad thing. The world is more complex, children need more education, yada yada. This isn’t the 18th century.
Maybe a better way to put it is that the needs of a modern education and the complexity of assimilation into society means that we’ve extended childhood. Unfortunately, biology doesn’t change, so we’ve got a situation where children are becoming sexually mature before they’re really ready to handle the emotions and responsibility of a sexual relationship.