And those are the examples they usually see. When’s the last time you saw a sex scene with a condom? How often are the two in a committed relationships where the lack makes sense? And how often do they show the woman needing to abort or otherwise deal with pregnancy? How many show any of the precautions you need to do before having sex? Few movies show people having sex responsibly.
Now if you want to cover something, why not deal with alcohol? It has all the same issues. Sure, you can use it responsibly. But people on TV aren’t often shown doing so.
Very interesting! I can certainly see how people would think that watching violence isn’t likely to pique Junior’s natural violent tendencies but watching a sex scene might drive him to sex up someone: bonking is less likely than boinking. Yet I’m still a little nonplussed about the reaction to the nudity in Amistad. Here you have completely nonsexual nudity. These people are captives, under horrible conditions; the nudity underscores their utter vulnerability and powerlessness. As I tell my students, if you can find that stimulating, you need help. Yet I still have parents who won’t let their kids watch. (Those kids watch a less-gripping but excellent documentary.)
Don’t get me wrong. The majority of parents have no objection, and some even write me notes of gratitude on the permission form–a form that includes a letter from me explaining what I’ve said above about nudity in the film. But there are usually a few parents who opt their kids out.
If kids see or hear something about sex, they will start asking questions…and many parents are more concerned about feeling uncomfortable than with their daughter getting knocked up at 16.
It is more than that. I think much of it has to do with the overall message. Violence may be graphic, but seldom is accompanied with the message is is normal and acceptable. Sex OTH is often portrayed as normal and desirable. Those of you disliking family values need to remember those that support them get sick of your efforts to attack them.
As a school teacher, you have no more right to teach irresponsible values, than Christians do theirs in a public school.
Can we stop going down the “blame the Christian fundamentalist” route? I think the notion that sex is worse than violence in media is a pretty common idea across the country, and I don’t think it’s because we’re worried what Jesus will think.
I grew up in a pretty secular household. We stopped going to church when I was around 6. But I can tell you that when my parents were deciding if I could watch something, the most unacceptable was sex/nudity, followed by swearing, followed by violence. And it wasn’t because they though I would go to hell.
It’s really not any different from how violence is presented. Violence in shows is often exaggerated, to the point where if someone tried to mimic it they’d get disastrous results they didn’t expect.
The difference is we teach kids from a young age to not be violent. Even once they hit puberty and start having sexual thoughts we resist education. Most parents want to avoid the embarrassment, so they just lay down a zero-tolerance “don’t do it, ever” rule. Abstinence doesn’t work, so they do it in ignorance. Stupid sex happens, and people confuse it with sex in general.
You brought up alcohol, and it’s really the same thing. Kids who come from strict households that locked any discussion of alcohol away go absolutely crazy when given the chance. They binge drink, drink and drive, and even when not putting anyone at risk make total fools of themselves. But kids from households where the parents are relaxed and willing to talk to their kids about alcohol, and even let them try it, generally don’t go overboard and use alcohol irresponsibly.
Trying to pretend sex doesn’t exist leads to stupid sex.
Just because it’s not true in your specific situation doesn’t mean that’s not where American culture got it from.
Obviously I don’t know you or your parents but I would suspect that the hang ups they brought down on you came to them from religious parents even if they themselves weren’t religious.
(Painting with a wide brush here) Religion often teaches that sex is dirty and icky and secret and shameful. A necessary evil to make babies. But violence is a way you get the tribe across the river to understand your Man in the Sky is better than their Man in the Sky if they won’t listen to “reason”.
On top of all that, there is, as I alluded to in my admittedly glib previous post, a smidgen of fear and subjugation of women.
Obviously not every religious person or religion is like that but I bet you can trace almost all of that sort of thinking back to roots in this general vicinity. It isn’t called “puritanical thinking” by coincidence.
The nudity in Amistad is completely nonsexual for any normal person. But for someone who has never been exposed to any nudity whatsoever before, any nudity is sexually exciting. You’ve probably forgotten or never experienced what it’s like to be a 12-year-old boy desperate to see lady bits. Nowadays, I doubt most 12-year-old boys are that desperate, since they’re much easier to see. OTOH, I was reminded in this thread just how exciting even the idea of nudity once was to boys who lacked access to it. National Geographic isn’t sexual at all, but I can remember when it was a major source of stimulation. Before Playboy was in bookstores, Nat. Geo. was probably the number one spank mag in the country! (Or number two after the Sears catalog.) And even with occasional access to Playboy magazines and scrambled late-night cable porn, I can remember as a boy being uncomfortably stimulated by nudity not all that different from Amistad. I didn’t want to be, but when you’re twelve you get a hard-on just from breathing.
So here you have young teenagers in your class whose parents have presumably tried to keep from them any vision of nudity whatsoever. Chances are, they’ve failed, in which case the nudity in Amistad will be no big deal. But if they’ve somehow been successful, then this–images of degraded people treated worse than cattle–will become their first longed-for glimpse of female nudity. This is what will flash into their minds as they grope alone in their bedroom for the next who-knows-how-many nights. If that’s the only image of nudity their minds have, that’s what they’ll use as they try to imagine themselves in other situations with nudity, with sex, with women.
Whoa.
Shit.
What’s a parent to do? Go and ask, “Bobby, you know how I’ve forbidden you to look at anything with nudity or sexuality whatsoever? You’ve, uh, pretty much ignored that and sneaked around behind my back, right?” Of course not. The parents who’ve been that vigilant obviously aren’t capable of having that kind of discussion, or they’d have set more flexible boundaries to begin with. Better just refuse to sign the permission slip and hope the issue goes away. Oh well. The kid can learn about 19th century Supreme Court decisions affecting race relations on the playground, like we had to.
I largely agree. Sex and nudity is pretty open in Europe, and Europeans don’t grow up into sex fiends, and last I heard, weren’t some of the more sexually open European countries actually experiencing declining birthrates?
Seems to me young people need to be exposed to more nudity and sex, not have it forbidden and hidden away.
This is a big disconnect between a lot of European countries and Americans-- nudity is not viewed as inherently sexual (and thus dangerous) by a lot more Europeans than by Americans. Americans don’t want to talk about it with their kids, the idea of their kids or parents or siblings having sex is gross, and any sort of sexual content tends to make parents uncomfortable if their children are present. If there were active attempts to normalize nudity as a non-sexual thing and educate folks on safe ways to orgasm in the presence of another person without contracting STDs or getting pregnant, then this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
My theory? Kids are violent brats from just about as soon as they can hit another toddler on the head with a toy. Kids aren’t sexual until puberty, except in very unfortunate circumstances. Ergo, exposing kids to sex is unnatural (and ooky, and borderline pedo). Exposing kids to violence is same old, same old. This attitude carries over to depictions of sex and violence for adults. Furthermore, sex is generally considered a very private, personal thing. Whereas there’s no particular taboo over public fighting.
I have a nine year old and I can tell you that I’m a lot more comfortable with him seeing movies that have a PG13 rating for violence than sex. Of course, the violence tends to be comic book, super hero violence - not realistic violence. In general, the movies with sexual content that are PG13 have, to my mind, really inappropriate portrayals of sexuality. I’m happy to talk about sex and I’d be comfortable with sex/nudity in TV/movies if it were not completely immature sex/nudity. I haven’t seen Amistad, but I’d be fine with that in a high school setting, at least from how it’s described here.
I guess I feel more confident that my kid will recognize that the violence in Captain America or whatever is unrealistic than I do that he understand that the kids in Superbad are a bunch of jackasses.
Thing is, before puberty kids have no clue what makes sex interesting. What they know of it they learn from adults. Lewis Black said it best: “It’s more disturbing for a child to hear adults talk about how seeing a tit is disturbing and disgusting and indecent and shocking than it is for a child to see one.”
It’s absolutely possible for a child to be abused sexually, I don’t deny that. I do deny that merely seeing boobs on a screen constitutes abuse.
Right. You ban porn until age 18 because by then the kid will be sufficiently mature to be able to put it into context and understand it properly, except… that precious little then takes place during the intervening time to make sure of it: to give the tools to have a positive, anti-oppressive, enthusiastic-consent, safer-sex-educated, hell, even anatomically complete picture of sex.
Even if this approach succeeded in blocking out all access to sexy material, which of course it won’t, it wouldn’t do any good even for the goal it theoretically set out to accomplish.
But why can’t you say something like ‘Those people are having sex. They’re adults who have decided to share something with each other. Sex is an adult thing and a very big decision to make. Your father and I decided as adults to take on that responsibility, which included the possibility of having you.’ That way your son realizes sex is something you think about before you do it and not something you do on a whim and puts it in the same category as ‘don’t be violent’.
Then again, I grew up watching Melrose Place, so I probably have a different viewpoint.
I do think that trying to hide all sex from our kids and then hoping that they will magically morph into mature responsible sexual adults is a big mistake and hurts us deeply, and that doesn’t even count the double standard. Men (boys) are expected to try to look at naked chicks and masturbate, but women (girls) are not supposed to have the same outlook at all. So we are raising a whole bunch of repressed girls who have major problems with their sexuality which they might not sort out until adulthood. Great.
I don’t understand why you can’t talk to your kids about sex.