[Ghoulish Delight]

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.