jvenner@wateng.UUCP (Jason P. Venner) (02/03/84)
[Please mailers, leave this line alone]
In my opinion, the repressive sexual mores of Puritan based cultures are
responsible for the trauma that often occurs after incest, and or expressed
child sexuality.
Most children that I have encountered who's parents fall into the follow-
ing categories:
________________________________________________________________
|over thirty at (the childs) birth |
|______________________________________________________________|
|moderately (or more deeply) dogmaticly involved with |
|a repressive religion |
|______________________________________________________________|
|send their children to a religiously oriented school system |
|______________________________________________________________|
|obviously extremely uncomfortable with any aspect of sexuality|
|______________________________________________________________|
Are usually very self conscious of what is "bad" and what is "good" by the age
of seven or eight. They may be aware of it earlier, but I, perhaps because of
difficulties with communication, am unable to tell. They (the children) are
presented with, and acting out the confused and guilt ridden life styles of
their role models. When these children are exposed to sexual activity, there
is usually an expressed desire for secrecy on the part of the adult involved.
This secrecy is (usually) presented in a manner that indicates that it is some-
thing to be ashamed of.
I think that the primary cause of any trauma (not just the ones currently
under discussion) is the occurrence of a gross contradiction to the logic that
a child views the world. In this case we have children taught that:
_______________________________________________________
|sex |
|______________________________________________________
|sexual behavior (which may include teasing) |
|______________________________________________________
|anything that is (reasonably strongly) associated|
|with sex |
|______________________________________________________
is "bad." We also have an adult, who may be the childs parent, engaging in
something that is known (by the child) to be "bad". This adult is probably
trying to require secrecy, another indicator of "badness". Needless to say, I
would say that this situation is likely to cause situations which the child has
no easy rational explanation for, and has to deal with in some other (usually
less desirous fashion). In my opinion, this is the real cause of traumas.
_______________________________________________________________________________
[Things worthy of note]
When I speak of religion, I am primarily talking about ones that have
their roots in judaism. I do not have enough experience with other religions
to make statements (in this context) about them.
The logic that I speak of, are the rules that the child has learned about
how it is to interact with the world, and how the world interacts with it.
I personally do not see things as inherently evil, and inherently good. I
try to see things as cause and effect and shades of gray.
I personally had my first sexual experience at age six or seven. Luckily
for me, my parents had not instilled a strong guilt complex associated with
sexuality, even though, I knew enough to keep it secret. I am not aware of any
problems arising from these encounters.
--
yours sincerely,
Jason P. Venner
physical mail: Integrated Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario.,
Canada. N2L 3G1
UUCP: {allegra, decvax, cbosg, teklabs,linus, sunybcs}!watmath!wateng!jvennersaquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (02/04/84)
I tend to agree with you on the points you have made, but not completely. I think that parents have a great influence on the way their parents view sexuality, but peers and society are also extremely important. I think it is too easy to isolate certain elements such as the role of the parents and think that simply changing parents' attitudes will solve the problem I think our whole society's attitude has to be changed at the same time. You probably agree with me on this, so I am not trying to contradict what you have said, but simply emphasise a different point. My main concern over this NAMBLA resolution on inter-generation sexuality is that it seems to imply that simply removing laws regulating such sexuality will solve all our problems. I think that changing attitudes first is much more important. While society keeps the attitude that sex is something in which someone exploits somebody else, then laws which protect the weak ones from being exploited make a LOT of sense, and I think it would be VERY dangerous to remove such laws; Now, I said in a previous message that I believed there is a difference between child and adult sexuality. I still believe that is so, but I also believe that child sexuality is much more healthy than adult sexuality. Let's face it, our society considers sex to be something dirty and shameful. It also links sex with violence and exploitation. No matter how much we disagree with all of these, we carry it all within ourselves and we are influenced by these attitudes Do we want to pass these on to children and make them aware of such things? personnally, I'd rather not. I think the latter children find out about such attitudes, the greater the chance that they will not be influenced by them and will reject them. I think THAT's important; If our children grow up with a more healthy view of sexuality, then society will start to have a more healthy attitude towards it. This, of course, is a vicious circle. One could very well argue that the way for children to have a nice attitude about sexuality is to show them a nice one. I agree 100%. Now, when one pushes this argument to having sex with children, I don't agree anymore. I think it is too dangerous. Who decides who should have sex with kids and who shouldn't? so many of us are already quite selfish with our adult sexual partners, why should we be different with children? how will we tell how much is enough for each child? Also who decides what is a "healthy" attitude towards sex? all these questions need to be answered before we do something as drastic as letting adults have sex with children. Finally, and most importantly, do we distrust children so much that we think that they will not be able to find out for themselves how nice sex can be and how they want to live their sexual lives? if this is so, that says a lot about us, and children would probably be better off without our advice.