I've had this glued in a book of mine since the early '00s and thought I'd share it with you here.

[www.nowtoronto.com]

Excellent article. Very perceptive person. I agree with it all. Thank you for sharing it. (Gosh, I wish everyone could/would read it!)

Another issue I feel strongly about is the over-sexualization of young children. Can we please let children HAVE A CHILDHOOD?????


My favorite raw vegan

Oh, this is where I put this post! I thought it got deleted! Getting paranoid about that anti-spam bot targetting all my posts!

Yes, the oversexualization of children, it's atrocious. Britney Spears Christina Agulera and that Justin Timberlake used to all be in the Mickey Mouse Club together for goodness sake! You know what though? I feel like alienating kids from their own bodies in a puritanical way is just as damaging to their developing sense of self and to their connection to their bodies and their selves as sensual, sexual creatures. Of course I don't advocate early sexual relations but I do acknowledge that children, even babies, are VERY aware of all the parts of their own bodies, what feels good and what doesn't, and they are unbelievably curious about themselves and each other. When we create a culture of either overt sexuality or shame, guilt and revultion with the physical self, we throw the balance out of whack. They need to be allowed to experience their lives with guidelines that have an eye to what is truly healthy for them and NOT what fits in with our cultural bias. We are so far away from that ideal though, I don't even know how we could turn things around. Corporate greed has made a business of selling the innocence of youth to the highest, flashiest, trendiest, sickest bidder.

coco, you are very wise. I agree with everything you've written about children and sexuality. Sexuality is such a broad topic and certainly not limited to sex acts.

Healthy sensuality and sexuality starts from birth. Dance was a big part of my childhood. I remember my older sister and I always loving to dance. I can remember my mother, older sister and I singing and clapping while my youngest sister (at two or three years old) did what we called "the beauty dance" after getting out of the bathtub. Her innocent joy at dancing naked and being given attention for it really was beautiful. Contrast that with another family I knew who didn't dance at all - EVER - and would probably faint at the suggestion to clap while a naked toddler was dancing! They were repressive and inhibited in many, many other ways, as well. Sad. My younger sister is in her 40's now and has always been a great dancer and a friendly, outgoing person. Although I can point to lots of mistakes my parents made, I am thankful for the acceptance and acknowledgement for being a sensual and sexual person that I did get.


My favorite raw vegan

Great column! Thanks for posting, coco. I've never found porn interesting, but I'm a woman and we aren't as visually oriented[rolls eyes]. I do think that one of the reasons women cannot connect with some men on an emotional level is because those men are retarded by their overreliance on the facsimile of human intimacy that is porn. Good for the author that he saw this early on and detoxed!

What I am increasingly disturbed by, and which IMO wouldn't be possible without the adult porn industry, is the sexualization of children, not just that, but that child sexuality is fetishized. I was thinking the other day when reading in the paper about two middle aged professional men that were arrested locally on child porn and molestation charges(making and distributing child porn) that this evil is at crisis levels. It's not just that, as sociologists are arguing, the male in our society feels emasculated by woman empowerment and some men may feel the need to debase younger females because they're more easily dominated than adult women. We know that this has always been a secondary motivator for the production of adult porn, which typically features the woman being dominated. I am thinking that this is leading organically to the fetishizing of child sexuality: the domination of a child sexually becomes more gratifying if the child is [falsely]elevated to "legitimate" sexual status, alongside other adults, that is, if child sexuality is accepted as equal to adult sexuality, which makes the exploitation of it more normative[talk about taking the Overton Window to extremes]. Most troubling to me is seeing young parents, who were perhaps the first generation in our culture to be "adultified," abetting this fetishizing of child sexuality by giving in to it from the external culture.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2010 01:50PM by Tamukha.

Shoes with heels, little teeny padded/push up bras, teeny weeny bikinis, shorty shorts, mini skirts and dresses, belly exposing tops, spaghetti straps, barbie makeup and nail polish, etc etc all marketted to children starting as young as 5 or 6. Sexy sexy sexy sexy sexy. My kids are sensual and sexual creatures as nature intended, yes, but not in a contrived and sexualized way. WFT is that and what parent in their right mind buys that SH!T for their tiny daughters? AAAHHH!!! People are sick.

And then they shame them about masturbation. What, exactly, are they supposed to do with all that sexual energy that all those products are generating in their social set? You know what they do? Hand jobs and bj's on the school bus on the way to school. No kidding, I read about this stuff in the news.
Seriously, what is wrong with some people.

I loved the article. It's refreshing to see a man who came to that conclusion by himself, without being preached to. Honestly, I think it's reckless to assume that your children will not look at porn if they have a computer in their rooms or some other unsupervised area. I hear so many parents say "well, they can see it at their friend's house or at the library" and simply refuse to take charge of what happens in the home. Imagine a kid nowadays who starts looking at porn at 10 or 12. What kind of warped ideas about girls will he get? Where does love fit into all the images? (I think the writer was not in touch with his emotional side and could only express erotic feelings. The de-sensitation caused by cold sexual imagery cannot be healthy for an emergin adult.)

Coco, I agree with you about children's natural curiosity. Playing house and exploring bodies with "Doctor" are normal and healthy. The other extreme is being too graphic at too young an age about sexuality and almost encouraging sexual exploration or early dating. That's not balanced, either.

Awesome article, very similar to many of my own personal reasons for not liking porn, you are all right about this horrifying over sexualization of children, it is reaching insane proportions, Last Halloween I saw a french maids costume in the like 4-5 year old sizes...WTF??? whats worse was the cups where filled, to make it look like the kid had breasts... I was pissed off when I was taking care of my niece, and the bathing suit my sister sent over for her was a G-STRING! that should be freaking illegal, I threw it out and bought her an adorable 1 piece with this skirt thing on it she just absolutely loved, she called it her princess suit...

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?