Childhood Sexuality
 

The Brazillian thread has got me thinking about sex again - but of course in a twisted contemplative fashion...

So, our culture seems to have real issues with childhood sexuality. I believe this is another area where Kinsey came under fire since he actually interviewed children in his sex surveys. Child pornography and pedophilia are seen as inexcusable absolutes.

Yet, in my own personal experience - I recall engaging in childhood sexplay as early as age 7 (i.e. playing doctor, naked movie star, lots of nakedness, maybe some fondling, but not much else) so treating children as non-sexual people doesn't seem to hit the mark for me.

Take that, and our current culture celebrates and eroticises youth, so that we now find women who've removed the very signs of their "coming of age" (AKA pubic hair) through brazillians as somehow more sexy. Then add the usual porn of magazines like "Barely Legal" pictorials of school girls, and pre-adulthood is made even sexier.

Throw into the mix parents contributing to the sexualization of children with Build-a-whore (AKA club Libby Lu),and children's beauty pagents.

I put all this stuff together and have to ask, what messages are we really sending with this? By setting up these taboos of childhood sex, have we just created the desire to break them, or at least flirt with them? Do we really want to do our children - or this all being pretend makes it all okay? Is it any wonder there's a market for kiddie porn?

I find this schizoid nature of our culture very intriguing.

Heh, and almost all of my childhood sexual experiences were homosexual.

I suspect it is, at least for boys - but who will allow a study to find out the real answer ;)

Interestingly, I never equated shaving/waxing with the pre-pubescent thing. For me, I'm just a visual person, and hair just obscures the view. But that may just be me.

I too remember childhood "sexplay", but it was purely mechanical. With the gift of hindsight, I eventually discovered that during those games of doctor, I was not really feeling sexually arroused at all. I simply didn't understand the concept at that age. I mean, I understood what sex was, my parents started on sex-ed so early that I don't remember a time that I didn't know. But I had no concept of the full extent of the physical reactions involved. So I really don't equate that early mechanical exploration with any sort of real sexuality. And the few times I got cought, my parents never totally flipped out, but I did get the basic talking to.

As usual, there's no magic cut-off day for all people to suddenly become sexually mature beings. Everyone's different. But I am of the belief that early exposure to REAL sexual experience has a high probability of some psychological issues. To be honest, I found my dad's porn stash at a pretty young age, and shortly after that got access to internet porn, and I know that early exposure has shaped my sexuality, not necessarily in a good way. I'm not horribly scarred by any means, but I do have issues. Maybe everyone does, but I feel mine are pretty directly traceable to my exposure to porn.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't know. I suppose my only real answer is that, as always, I lie somewhere in the middle. I don't think the answer is to go puritan and shelter kids from everything. But I don't think we should be buying Playboy subscriptions for 12 year olds. It lies in responsible parenting as I see it. It's a big world, and kids are going to exposed to things you don't want them to be exposed to. Everyone's job as a parent is not to shut the world out, but to instruct how to deal with the world.

As for the current trend of younger and younger sexual displays...yeah, I find it messed up. Yes, some kids will be mentally prepared for sex earlier than others, but the age of 18 is a good safe cutoff where MOST will. And if we start ignoring that, it just encourages the age of acceptability to slip younger and younger because these girls are physically ready if not mentally. Unfortunatley, I don't really see what can be done about it. I'm just continually in shock at the parents who allow it to happen. Often the same people who would be outraged if they read the Megan's Law list and saw who is in the neighborhood are bringing their little princesses to Build-a-Whore. It just baffles me. The responsibility lies with the parents, imo.

hmmm... see and I have tried very hard to figure out how to raise a boy that wont, forgive me for outing his father here, grow up to be a sexual predator style man, yet be accepting.

Most of my son's male role models happen to be homosexual men. Personally, I dont have issues with this.
I have more than once explained that the couples were share our lives with love each other, and they made a choice to share thier lives and home with another man, and not a woman.

I am finiky about the films and TV he watches. I dont as a rule take him to pg-13 films, and pg's rarely.
But when he sees his dad, he watches all sorts of things. Battlestar Gallactica for example. Anyone SEEN that? I mean great.. but... WOW.. thats some steam.
Why does he need to know that at SIX?!?!?

Daddy never learned, even now at 32, has not learned that no means no. And Stop means stop. Have you tried to teach that to a child? Its tough.
The child knows darm well that we're built differently, and that I have different pieces than he does, and how babies are created.

But to my dismay, he's fully aware of the mechanics of a blow job!
I dont envy my fellow parents with young girls.
I took my niece shopping for school clothes this year, and couldnt find a way not to dress her like a tramp!

She wanted to pick up boys in the mall... at 9! Becuase her friends all had boyfriends and you arent cool if you dont.
Now what is with that?? I took my sister to planned parenthood at 16.. how young will I have to take my niece?

I said in another thread I was ill and shouldnt post... I rambled. Sorry.

Hmmm, for me the understanding certainly came later, but the arousal was definately there.


Well, I came into this before the internet, where porn had to be mines from naughty neighbors trash. So I certainly had some exposure. I'm curious how you think that shaped your sexuality, since my experience seems different - I mean, it certainly confirmed that I like naked women best, but I think my exposure to porn didn't change me in my sexuality. Then again, perhaps that's what makes me such a voyuer ;). But maybe this discussion best left for the offline world.

Yeah, I'm not sure I want to get into specifics. I think all I'll say is that I doubt I'd like what I currently like if it weren't for the ammount of exposure to porn I've had. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing, who knows.

I don't think it's about looks - it's about feel. And without hair, I feel a whole lot more of what's going on down there. I personally don't see any connection between that and acting "youthful".

I think for men, the connection between women that shave and young girls is stronger, especially if the man has always had sex with hairy chicks. Then you get the whole forbidden fruit thing. And I'm sure some women shave ONLY because their men like it, and it doesn't do a thing for them.

I do agree with all you've said about mixed messages.

Like ABG I was basically aesexual until way late in my development. I had no interest in seeing anyone's bits....all I remember is comparing pubes at summer camp showers. And that was just "oh, I have more than you do" or whatever. No sensual context whatsoever.

Hey, I never found my parents' porn. Maybe that's why.

The challenge of raising a girl to not be a build-a-whore is something I'm kinda scared of.

I didn't intent to imply that brazillians=closet pederast.

But I've noticed, annectdotally in my own experience, that porn in our culture has evolved to reflect the "bald" look more and more frequently. I just wonder why that is and state the obvious visual connection. There has to be some socialogical implications in that about our culture - or so I presume.

In other cultures, a glimpse of ankle was thought erotic, did that make them foot fetishists? Perhaps in some cases, but I doubt it over-all.

I think our porn and sexual iconography speeks volumes about our culture - but agian, who's going to allow that course of study?

All right… I feel a little better. Not great, but at least I’m not feverish.
Now… I grew up with two parents until the age of eight. I didn’t really fondle, or play doctor much, if at all. I know by the age of… six maybe, I had found my dad’s playboy magazines. But really, I only read the cartoons. I’m not sure they made sense to me at the time… I don’t remember. But I would sneak them all the time.

When my folks split at 8, within a year we had moved in with my moms boyfriend. I had the room next to theirs. I knew they smoked illicit substances, and that after that smell went away, they made a lot of noise, and were never seen again for the rest of the evening once they went in that room.
We had sex ed in 3rd grade, as there was a predator in the area, and wanted to make sure we were all aware, so I did know the mechanics of what was going on.

But I think, it was different then. I was a geek. My obsessions were with older movie stars.. but I didn’t get into teen beat or anything like that. I never cared about the clothe I wore, or wearing makeup. I made in into 9th grade, or 14 before I ever questioned my sexuality, or that of anyone else.
Now granted that's still young… But I was doing community theatre, and had very little parental involvement in my life. What I learned, I learned backstage. Then what I didnt learn there, as a teenager basically through force and rape.

Personally, I didn’t stop to think about what people would expect or want of me, till I was in high school. And really not until they started saying I was a tease. I wasn’t, I was just… unaware.
I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore.
I didn’t have the media, the sexuality in my face every day like my son and my niece do.
I wasn’t looking to pick up boys in grade school! I wanted to play D&D with them, not make sure I had the right training bra.
How… in the name of heaven, do I tell my son as he gets older… yes, I know what you see on tv. I KNOW what you see in music.. but really, that’s not how we treat women. We don’t walk up to strangers and pinch their a$$. Its just not done.
How do I enforce with my niece… the boys don’t need to see your stomach. They don’t need to see your cleavage that you don’t have yet. I know the other girls do it… but… I don’t think they should either. And when we're out in public! How do you explain to young women, I know that men want to talk to you that way. I know that you see in the news that little girls dress up like whores... but really, its not the way we want to live our lives.
But then you have me. The walking oxy moron. I like to dress up. Most of my work clothes have cleavage… am I setting a bad example?
Or... even still you have my family. We have a recovering sexaholic in a 12 step program. That supposedly, made us kids the way we are.

Did they? I never knew about the adulterous relationships... or the porn, or the paid favors.
But even now, that seems common place. much as it doenst shock us to her about a kiddie porn ring. Or the Law and Order episode with the young models, and using the aging software in reverse to make the models look even younger... we dont bat an eye. Why is that?

Children are sexual beings in their own right. They experience feelings. They're naturally curious. And sometimes it's just being curious about their gender differences. Sometimes it's a curiosity about touch. I've had friends who cannot remember feeling at all sexual until the onslaught of puberty. And others who, like me, began exploring sexuality at a very early age. I flashed at 5. I was kissing by 9, with a one boy who was 10 and another who was 8. We were children finding our way with each other and there was nothing damaging about it. I was also about 9 when I started actually lying down with boys and we explored each other from head to toe. And there was no adult interference. It was all so innocent, even as we began to explore issues of dominance and submission. Seriously, we were really curious about changing places being the assertive partner, or the one who simply lied back and accepted the other's exploration.

The feelings were strange. There was tingling in the special places, but no understanding of consummation or orgasm. The need we felt was there but limited and, in my opinion, age appropriate.

I didn't feel guilty about any of it - I was assertive and confident and happy - until I got to junior high school and discovered that most of my classmates were just kissing for the first time, etc. And it didn't occur to me that people develop at different rates. When I learned to really compare myself to other people, I started giving my sexuality labels. This is right. This is wrong.

And though I hid some of this behavior from my parents, having an awareness that what we were doing was adult play (and I only came to that conclusion because we were, to some degree, mimics of what we saw on TV, etc.), I was frank in asking my parents about sex.

I think that certain media exposure can do harm. That children should be able to explore budding sexual interests with each other, or on their own, free from media images of what is supposed to be sexual, sexy, beautiful, erotic, etc. I felt that some of my natural instincts were perverted by some of what I'd seen on TV or in film. What initially felt like an exploration of my body and another's became a pantomine of some rated R film we snuck a peek at when our parent's weren't paying attention.

But I firmly believe that if we were all left to our own devices, to develop sexually on a biological level, most of us would have gone the way of The Blue Lagoon. Puberty would happen and sex would shortly follow, whether you were 12 or 16.

I think kids need to be less policed. And taught less to be scared of things.

I agree, and I bet there are studies being done on it. We just have to look in the right places.

I'd certainly like to understand the American obsession with perky, huge breasts, an obsession that baffles so much of the rest of the world.

Interesting...

I think what adults do should not be shared with kids. It is different for them to find things out on their own~without influence from the media or other kids who have themselves been influenced by the media.

That said, hmm. Hard to put this into words for me. What has been said about adults preferences is right, we can like what we like, etc. But, what Ponine has said, can't be ignored.

While the majority of adults understand the difference between a Carmen Electra in a schoolgirl outfit and a real schoolgirl, a lot of men don't. That I find dangerous.

I don't appreciate the Brittneys, Lohans, and whomever else, acting the way they do since they have buttered their bread with the souls of young girls. I saw Lohan with damn, who is that hot Irish actor, GC's avatar, on SNL. He hit on her and she totally went for it. Hello? What is that age difference?

The issue of being driven {sexually}and not accepting no for an answer. I think that sadly a lot of girls are introduced to sex in this way. Guys see something they want and damnit they are going to have it. This can go between teens of the same age, a little bit older guy, or, the pedophile. {should add that I also know of a lot of women who do the same thing...}

I know a young girl who was molested. Repeatedly. The perp said she wanted it. Wanted it? A little girl wants love and acceptance and to be shown worth. Shown that her worth is with her body? Her sexuality? That I find what is wrong with sexuality being so open. I think adults enjoying sex is great, Wahoo! But kids need to know that there is foundation to a person, their soul, and their worth is in that.

It is really hard for young girls who are physically mature at a very young age.

The big boob deal? Yeah, I don't get that. I've had guys just go on and on about how they love big breasts. I would tell them 'Then what are you doing with me? Are you trying to tell my something?'

I mean, it's one thing to admire, desire, whatever, certain physical attributes but to obsess....

Hope that made some sense....the products of MY sexuality keep bugging me to get off the computer.... :rolleyes:

Things are so bass-ackwards. We're teaching kids that sex is not okay, while presenting them the image that overt sexuality is all-important. Honestly, it should be the other way around, sort of. I think kids should be tought be to be less afraid of sex than they are, and more warry of overt sexuality. Not that I think sexuality is a bad thing, but I think it's something that takes a long time to master and definitely shouldn't be encouraged in children who do not yet have the perspective to control it.

Of course, there's no magic age where ALL kids are old enough to understand. Everyone matures at their own rate. But because of that, the only solution is to set an artificial cutoff that encompasses as many cases as possible while still being reasonable. 18 seems to work pretty well. They've (in theory) been through the entire basic education system, they've been pubescent for several years, so they have good odds of being as prepared as they are going to be.

Also, addressing a little of what Eliza brought up, I think prepubescent physical exploration with other prepubescent peers is a totally different can of worms than either A) post-pubescent exposure to the adult world of sexuality (i.e. pornography, or to a lesser extent main-stream entertainment with sexual themes) and B) imitation of adult public sexuality in pre-pubescent children (i.e. unmodest clothing, very early dating behavior). The physical exploration with peers I find totally natural and harmless. It's part of the learning process and it's with someone of your own general level of sexual understanding. However, when you're talking exposure to the adult world of sexuality, and imitation of adult sexual social behavior, you're introducing actions and behaviors that I don't think kids that young are ready to integrate in a healthy way. It just leads to confusion and messed up expectations. Not a good trend.

Well, I think the whole "Brazillian" thing is connected with childhood sexuality - if not childhood sex. I mean, it is one of the great "development" of woman hood to have pubic hair. It's controlable, unlike boobage, which has grow to popularity in enormous lengths. What a dichotomy! We like our woment to be girls "down there" but more than woman up top. Doesn't anyone else find that strange? What lengths will we go to for our men?

I guess I never really understood that other people had different experiences than I did. I did what I wanted to do when I felt like doing it. For me, that was relatively late (by today's standards). Perhaps one of the advantages of being a social pariah is that no one pressures you to do things against your will.

I learned about sex from a cartoon-style book in the doctor's office. It must have been VERY early on, as it was no more exciting than a book on polar bears or tropical rain forests. I was reading on my own by age 3, so it was probably not long after that. I'll bet someone left it out thinking I couldn't possibly understand what it was.

Anyhow, I don't remember a time when I didn't know about the mechanics of sex. It was like pooping. We all do it, and there's nothing wrong with it, but that doesn't mean we talk about it at the dinner table.

But I didn't get to watch a lot of teevee growing up, so maybe that influenced (or DIDN'T influence) my opinions.

I am kind of curious that some think their exposure to various media sources influenced their later development. I can assure you that I had an EXTREMELY proper upbringing (no white shoes after labor day!) and yet as an adult I have quite the collection of various implements. So where did THOSE urges come from? Because I fantasized about that LONG before developing any explicitly sexual fantasies.

I just want to hug and squeeze you right now you smart, smart, eloquent man. That is exactly what I was driving at, only I couldn’t find the right academic language and resorted to personal anecdotes. I completely agree with what you’ve said in this post.

Again, I can't speak for any other men, but for me, I don't look at a bare palying field and think, "mmm, young," I simply look and think, "Oooh, I can see it, nifty!" Not to mention the textural difference. Among other things, not that I have any real first hand experiences (heck, I've never even changed diapers), but from my sex-ed days I certainly remember that a prepubescent vagina looks quite a bit different than an adult's. Hair or not, there's little chance of confusing the two.

Now that I think about it, perhaps those of us in the younger generation have a different perspective. Afterall, when I started being aware, and started having access to porn, bare was already the norm. So I never really completely associated hair with adulthood. It was just another style choice, based on what I was exposed to. So it never ocurred to me that the motivation was to look younger, I always assumed the motivation was just to improve the view and feel.

In Japanese animation, it's considered obscene to draw pubic hair. That is why all the naked animated women are hairless and girl-like.

They'll have rape machines and demons killing women with their sperm, but drawn pubic hair? SCANDALOUS!

I do love, and am baffled by, the great cultural divides.

It may be urban legend, but I understand the Japanese banning of pubic hair started with MacArthur and the post-WWII occupation. It just became a part of the culture.

In some cases, it's funny and creative (I have a manga that features several suggestive panels of a fish sticking his head into a conch shell until he spits), in others, it's annoying (why does Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain" need genital fogging on an otherwise beautiful DVD?).

How these attitudes of taste become acceptable and part of popular culture is indeed a facscinating question...

That, is also my fascination. Why are these a fasicnaiton for today's society? It certainly wasn't a practice in my sexual "bloonming".

If you're going that way, then why is shaving your legs and armpits and plucking and bleaching in all kinds of other places not even questioned?

In the 70's there was quite a decent sized movement to get rid of female shaving entirely. I snuck out my parents' copy of The Joy of Sex enough to learn that "soon women will cease shaving altogether"....copyright date 1971. The 70's were a blip in American history.

When exactly did leg shaving become the thing to do? Did the aristocratic ladies of the 1700's shave their legs? Did the pioneer women of the 1800's take time to shave their legs? Just how much is that connected with the idea of a woman being a young girl? Or is it about tactile sensations instead?

"What lengths will we go to for our men?" I know it's my programming, but I shave because I feel better shaved - and that goes for all my shaving. I sure as hell don't endure shaving my nether-region for HIM - fvck, there's no way I'd do that. I do it for the better sex that I get out of it.

I would like to know this historical aspect if anyone does know the answer. I say no to the 1700's... but I wonder about pioneers... and that time period.
Do Amer indian women have hair on their legs? So few Amer Indian men have facial hair... I wonder.
very curious...

From the wikipedia. Take it FWIW:

I'm just glad I'm not hairy.

But, now, I'm singing "girls wear short shorts".

If you dare wear short shorts, Nair for short shorts...

Damn you Matt!

Hey, at least I spared you the horror of me singing and dancing :evil:

It's OK It's in my head - only you're wearing the short shorts in the "line" :shudder:

My work uniform shorts are pretty short

<sings> Matt wears short shorts!