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This woman is my new hero... er, heroine. This also reminds me strongly of a blog entry by GearGOD I read once... Be warned, it's quite a read. I was having a discussion about sexuality in and out of the Western world with a friend and she liked me to a rather interesting article, which I think was a post on some forum originally. It concentrates on erotic literature but covers a much wider field about how westerners look at sexuality and why they're convinced sex and younger people don't mix. I thought it would make an interesting discussion, so here you go:
When is Young too Young?
There was a recent discussion on ASSD on how young is too young to view erotic materials. One person argued that it is the law, therefore it didn’t matter what was right or wrong, it was the law. I was surprised that sort of statement was made there. Being of Libertarian persuasion myself, I don’t much respect that argument. I am much more concerned with what is right rather than what is legal. Doing what is legal without reference to what is right led many Germans down a path of evil.
That statement made me start thinking about the question, is porn bad for you? If not, at what age is it no longer bad for you? That porn is bad for you has been the standard argument used against all erotic literature since the Seventeenth Century as a reason to suppress it. It's a wonder, and comment on Milton's influence, that Chaucer managed to survive the Puritans. Shakespeare wouldn't have, had the Puritans had their way.
What is it about reading about sex that impels bad behavior? What about reading Tom Clancy? Does that impel you to be a spy? How about reading a Dashiell Hammett novel? Does that impel you to go murder someone? The assertion that reading erotic fiction is somehow different than reading other sorts of fiction, or watching a murder mystery movie, and that it impels behavior when other genres don’t, is simply ridiculous on the face of it. No genre of fiction impels people to behave like the characters in the story, except for a very small number of true psychotics who will model their behavior after a fictional character, whether that is a mass murderer or a sex fiend. And if we really care about this very small number of nut cases, we’d be better off banning detective stories and war movies with their killings and writing sex stories so that the nut cases won’t kill but will try to screw themselves silly. It seems like we’d be better off.
Those Americans who have been lucky enough to live in Europe know how ridiculous our ban on erotica really is. There, violence in movies and on TV is banned for minors, not sex. And guess what, Europe has much lower rates of sex crimes, STDs, and teen pregnancies than the United States. You mean suppressing a natural impulse like sex causes anti-social impulses? Gee whiz. What a revelation. Material that would bring prosecution in America is widely available on TV, news counters, everywhere in Europe. And the thing is, it doesn’t cause all those Europeans, adults or children, to break down and become raving sex addicts. They are much more balanced and sane in their approach to sex than Americans. “In America, sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it is a fact.†-- Marlene Dietrich. Suppression is the evil, not exposure. How many times is it going to take Americans before they realize that Prohibition causes more evils than it solves?
And last, study after study has failed to find any real link between exposure to erotic material and anti-social behavior. Readers of pedophilia stories don’t go out and molest children. It is true that pedophiles will read erotica, but they are already pedophiles. The fictional accounts do not turn them into pedophiles anymore than reading Thomas Paine turned Timothy McVeigh into a murderer. A rapist is what he is whether he reads or not. We don’t automatically assume that he read a Truman Capote book and that caused him to commit rape, only erotic literature would cause that. Absurd. That sort of behavior is internal, not the result of reading fiction. More importantly, not reading stories won’t make them not be pedophiles. You can’t turn off the behavior by banning books. Catholic Priests spend their time reading the Bible, not porn and yet we have had thousands of documented cases of serial pedophiles among the clergy. Should we ban reading the Bible? Of course the idea is absurd.
There is no reasonable person who could draw the conclusion that erotica influences behavior in such a way as to impel a reader into anti-social behavior. Therefore, access to erotica should not be blocked for adults any more than access to detective fiction or sports or any other material which gives pleasure to the reader.
As I mentioned earlier, this discussion was on a thread about keeping children, that is anyone under 18, from seeing or reading erotica. That proscription strikes me as hard to defend rationally. Are seventeen-year-olds really children? Granted, many in America have done everything they can to delay the maturation of kids, but the truth is that they aren't children no matter how much we try to pretend they are children. They are functioning adults. They are simply young adults with a lack of experience. Preventing them from gaining experience won’t help them mature and it doesn’t make them children.
Look at how biologists classify Primates. There are three phases by which all primates are classified: infant, entirely dependant on Mother; juvenile, increasingly independent but not yet sexually mature; and adult, sexually mature. We can approximate human ages with these standard scientific divisions. Until age 3 or 4 is the infant stage. Juvenile would be up to age 13 or 14 for boys and probably a year younger for girls. After that humans would be adults as viewed by standard application of science to humans. Of course, we don’t apply the same measures we apply to all other animals to ourselves. We are special. But we ought to. We too are primates. I think these are much more useful divisions to discuss whether or not someone is old enough to view erotic materials than our current, child till 18 then adult, division which has no nexus with reality or facts.
The truth is, once a human matures sexually, they are an adult. As I have argued above, adults should have access to erotic materials and that it is not harmful for adults to see these materials. Per standard science the age of adulthood should be the age at which the human matures sexually, menarche for girls and production of viable sperm for boys. I agree that having this as a legal limit would be difficult to enforce. “Excuse me, but before you buy the magazine I need you to jerk off in this machine that will test for viable sperm.†I can picture some truly ridiculous results. The fact is, there is no bright line of maturity we can use to set an ideal age limit. How then do we set an acceptable age limit?
Before answering that question, let’s examine the two remaining categories. Would an infant be harmed by exposure to erotic materials? Daddy is reading The Story of O while Mommy breast feeds the little tyke. Is junior going to be harmed? Not unless Daddy gets too excited and makes a grab for Mommy before the tyke is finished with dinner. Then Junior might go hungry.
Junior is not going to have the foggiest notion of what Daddy is reading, or watching or jerking off to because Mommy has been too tired since Junior arrived. The truth is an infant will have no cognizance of what ‘erotic’ even is. It would make no impression at all since infants have no concept of the erotic. It doesn’t exist in their world view. An infant could sit on Mommy’s lap while Daddy and Mommy watched Debbie Does Dallas and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. In fact, they could take junior into the bedroom and put him in his crib while they made the beast with two backs, groaning out their orgasms and junior wouldn’t have any idea that anything erotic was occurring. He’d go right on playing with his rattle and goo-gooing away. There seems to be no reason to ‘protect’ infants from porn.
That leaves juveniles to consider. At the younger ages it would seem that juveniles would behave similarly to infants, they would be too young to conceptualize what is erotic and therefore could suffer no harm. Once they are old enough to conceptualize what they are reading, then it would seem they are old enough to begin learning. Isn't this the basis of all of our educational theories? Teach them once they can understand, and the earlier they are exposed to any knowledge they can conceptualize the better they learn. Why then is sex different?
People bemoan the loss of innocence of children exposed to erotic material, but really all they lose is their ignorance. I remember my own time when I was wildly interested in the differences between girls and boys but in complete ignorance because no information was available. Was I innocent or simply ignorant? I wasn’t innocent at all; I lusted heartily in my ignorance. I remember playing doctor with the neighbor girl when I was 5, a very young age. I wasn’t innocent - I desperately wanted to get her knickers off - and worked my little brain to distraction talking her into it. And I don’t think I tarnished her innocence either, she seemed quite interested in my equipment as well. We did take a bite out of each other’s ignorance, for which we both got our bottoms paddled to remind us of our Puritan heritage, but neither of us suffered a loss of innocence unless what we really mean by innocence is ignorance.
So, it seems that juveniles will fall naturally into one of two categories. They are too young to even be cognizant of erotic content and don’t need to be protected from it or they will be old enough to be cognizant in which case, applying standard pedagogic models, the earlier they learn and lose their ignorance, the better off they will be as adults.
What follows is a very shocking conclusion; at least I find it shocking. I can’t believe I could even say it, but the truth shall make us free. There is no justifiable reason to ban or limit the distribution of erotica at all. If the child is too young, it will go over their head and won’t have any impact. If the child is old enough to understand, then exposure will vanquish ignorance, not innocence, and learning will occur. Once they are old enough to think of the question, they are old enough for the answers.
I know some parent will point out the time their child asked some question that the parent misunderstood and they answered in too much embarrassing detail and then they'll say this proves that children are too young. Yada Yada. Another author on ASSD told this anecdote, “My son is 28 and I remember an incident when he was a little boy (20 years ago?). We were watching a movie that mentioned condoms. He asked what that was. My wife and I looked at each other in shock, and came up with an answer. Then he nonchalantly said, ‘Oh, rubbers,’ and turned back to the TV.†It is the parents who get shocked and embarrassed, not the kids.
Yes, it takes judgment on the part of parents to know which answer their child is ready for. Do I say, "That's how adults have fun," and junior shakes his head at the stupid adults who don't know how to have real fun and goes off to jump in rain puddles. Do I say, "That’s how adults make babies," and launch into the speech. These sorts of scenes are going to happen whether there is a ban on erotica or not. Erotic literature or pictures won't force the questions early. It will be part of the learning process when junior is ready. The questions are already there whether adults want to admit it or go on in their own pretended ignorance. A parent’s embarrassment won’t change junior’s inquisitiveness. One thing we know absolutely is that most parents wait way too long before they have that little talk.
I think the ban on porn for kids has more to do with their parent’s uncomfortable feelings in not wanting to discuss it. This is a reflection of how sick American culture is when it comes to sex than any real harm that could come to the kids in dispelling their ignorance. How often have I heard a parent tell an anecdote about how they couldn’t tell their child even simple facts of life and how uncomfortable they became when the subject was broached. No wonder our kids become crazy on the subject. They catch ‘crazy’ from their parents. It is the parents who are the problem when kids have questions about sex, not the kids. Exposing children to erotica will not harm them; their parent’s attitude will.
When I was living in Germany an American co-worker came in on a Monday morning completely flustered. His ten-year-old daughter had been watching the German equivalent of Wild Kingdom on TV. He walked into the back of the room as the show was describing animal mating and two rabbits went at it. His daughter was unaware of him watching. Flustered, he walked out. Later he looked in as the show moved on to larger and larger animals. Panicked, he wondered what he should do; turn off the TV? The capper came when the show switched to two humans, naked, in bed, doing the same primal mating dance. He fled; she still unaware of the turmoil the show was creating in him. He was still upset on Monday. His daughter, of course, took it all in stride. The only one bothered by the factual and graphic descriptions of animal kingdom sex, including human sex, was poor dad.
Children learn from their parent’s emotional reactions as much or more than by the words used. Making sex an open subject, instead of a veiled hidden one, will help shape a natural and rational approach to sex in the next generation. I have many art books, painting, sculpture and photography, around my house full of naked people. I don’t worry in the least about them being seen by anyone. Why should I? It is just people the way they actually are. If a young person looks and has questions, I will answer their questions honestly and directly. I know that they won’t be interested if they are too young. If they are old enough to be interested, they are old enough to be told the truth. It wouldn’t be any different if they were looking at any book, a book on religious persecution or an erotic book. I probably would keep a book on the IRS code hidden; that is perverse.
One reader wondered about the difference between ‘good’ erotic literature and ‘bad’ porn. What about good and bad literature in general? Should we ban 'bad' detective stories but allow good ones for our children? Sherlock Holmes is okay to read but Micky Spillane is banned? Who makes that judgment? In any case, it isn't the Government who should be making this decision. I’ve used porn and erotica interchangeably throughout this tract on purpose. What is one person’s porn is another’s art. The quality or subject matter or even genre doesn’t really enter into it as far as I can see. It still comes down to the same circumstances; if the person is old enough to understand what they are reading or watching, then they are old enough to understand the explanation and they deserve the explanation. The only difference between explaining ‘romantic’ erotica and scatological crud is how uncomfortable you are going to be explaining it. Luckily, after our kids grow up, if we do the job properly, they won’t have to be uncomfortable explaining it to their children. After all, that is the parent's job not the Governments, raising their children.
Last, I am not talking about using kids in porn. This isn't about involving kids in sex, it is about learning. I have seen images on the net that made me sick; pre-pubescent children engaged in sex with adult men. Those people deserve the Elizabethan punishment, death. There is a difference between fiction and forced sex. I think kids should be allowed to read about the horrors of war as soon as they can understand, but they shouldn’t be forced to actually experience it. The same goes for sex.
Learning is not the same thing as kid touching. I do believe, having traced the line of thought above, that exposure to erotica will no more damage children than will exposure to any other genre of literature. If they are old enough to understand, they will learn. If they are too young, it will simply be irrelevant. In neither case will they be harmed. It is ignorance that is harmful. It is their parent’s displays of repression and embarrassment that are harmful. Reading never hurt anyone, except the ignorant and those who rely on ignorance to maintain their power.
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Topic: Nudity and stuff, The greatest rant i ever saw (Read 1742 times)