Shhhhh don't talk about THAT!

I'm sure I should caveat this post with a warning, it's a touchy topic.

I came across a blog entry discussing "child sex". My first thought was, oh my god what the heck?? Then I read through it and decided to share it here, I want to discuss it with you.

The article goes through a brief history of the evolution of societal sexuality. Beginning in the earliest societies, how they lived and exercised their sexuality, and how the rites of passage to adulthood were celebrated and not hidden. This was a time where puberty was the signal of the passage from a child, into adult hood.

Fast forward to current epoch and era, we have a culture where the average age of marriage is often 12 years or more, past the onset of puberty. We also have the influence of the church dictating what sexual activity is acceptable, and within what confines.

As such, entire generations of children have no idea where to put their sexual exploration, are often treated with disgust if discovered and influenced to view any nude expression or sexual exploration as forbidden.

The article goes farther in attaching blame to this sexual repression, for the prevalance of pedophilia and pornography and sexual violence, than I would be comfortable going, with out a lot more cause/effect evidance. That being said, in a very broad and general sense, I can see how the shame and guilt associated with sexual repression (which the author asserts is caused by the church's efforts to suppress sexuality in developing adolecents until they're in the confines of marriage, which goes against the natural process of puberty being a sexual awakening of sorts) can cause intimacy issues once an individual is married, or in extreme cases, make an individual unable to exercise their sexuality without the sense of guilt and shame accompanying it (for example S&M, sexual predators etc). Just a very broad sense. To be clear, I don't think that sexual intimacy should be enacted in front of children, the article seems to suggest that, I DO think that parents must carefully view their approach and attitudes and unconscious fears regarding their OWN sexuality, before they pass on unhealthy attitudes to their children.
Again I won't go so far as to say "OR ELSE" as the article does.

So here's the article.


Criminal laws make it a punishable offence for adults to touch the genitals or breasts of children under some circumstances, the law is very vague about whether a child who touches themselves, or another child, is committing a criminal offence. What about a parent or guardian that touches a girl's breasts at bath time as I mentioned above? Is this an offence? Or a father than assists his son to go to the lavatory by holding his penis? I could go on about the confusion, both popular and legal, which exists in our society on the subject of childhood sexuality. The fact remains that adults and children alike today find themselves in a desperate situation which ignorance and repression do nothing to enlighten or alleviate. How have we got ourselves into this dreadful mess?


I lay the blame firmly at the door of the Church. From the beginning, the Church was a conservative, patriarchal organisation which considered human sexuality an inconvenience at best, and a certain path to hellfire and eternal damnation at worst. Women were debarred from the Priesthood and every method, both legitimate, and illegitimate was employed to excise sex from the body catholic. This was due in no small part to the role sex had played in the so-called 'pagan' religions which preceded the establishment of dogmatic Christianity, which the Church was determined to stamp out, not least because well-adjusted, sexually satisfied human beings are unlikely to embrace the concepts of sin and redemption which the early Church Fathers so zealously taught to their guilt-ridden followers.

Once you have convinced someone that sex is a dirty necessity needed to procreate the race, it is a small step to persuade them that anything which might encourage such activity is equally shameful. Where better to begin such 'instruction' than with the children of those parents who were already firmly convinced that the ignorant dogmas the Church taught, were essential for their 'salvation'?

Prior to ascendancy of the Church, children were generally regarded as either potential adults or actual adults in the eyes of the societies in which they grew up. As such they were valued for the actual or potential contribution they could make to the prosperity and culture of their communities. Work was not incompatible with play, and went hand in hand with their gradual transformation into adults. But after the abuses, to which the industrial revolution subjected the children of poorer families, our young were gradually excluded from the labour force. As these developments continued, the lot of children vastly improved, but their role as productive, even essential, members of society diminished.

And so we arrive at the modern era of the development of institutional education for children. Prior to this, families had lived in larger units, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and so forth. Within this structure most of the education of children took place. While in older times little verbal instruction was given about sex in the modern sense of 'sex education,' children learned by seeing and hearing what went on in the family and in the natural world around them. As the extended family was replaced by the nuclear family, outside institutions took over the education of children, and the natural, family form of sex education began to disappear along with much of the rest of traditional instruction.

This resulted in the modern view that children are to be completely 'protected,' cared for, isolated in various ways, and treated as a fragile, vulnerable species entirely different from adults. This inversion of the natural order culminated in the cult of childhood and of 'the teenager', both entirely artificial constructs with no basis in biological or psychological reality. These radical changes have rapidly brought us to the point where children are often worshipped, treated as 'trophies' and increasingly 'spoiled,' yet contribute little or nothing to the practical, productive life of our society.

The result was a head-on clash between the biological and sexual maturity of children and the new social roles assigned to them, which provide no socially sanctioned outlet for their sexuality. When this conflict was eventually noticed, both secular society and the Church were forced by their own bondage to the childhood culture they had created to declare children to be non-sexual. But when faced with the awkward biological reality of the 'non-sexual' child who could not help but explore and express their sexuality, the adult social, educational and religious powers turned to a variety of repressive tactics to keep the dirty little moppets down. These tactics ranged from admonitions about how 'nice' girls didn't 'play with themselves', through physical restraints and corporal punishment, to legal sanctions and psychiatric committals, culminating in the 19th century obsession with chastity belts and diabolically ingenious mechanical devices to prevent masturbation.

Some might consider this an overly harsh indictment of the role of the Church in fostering sexual repression, but having met countless numbers of people who can vividly recall the fear, shame and physical punishments connected with their sexual development as a child, I am left in no doubt that their ignorance and guilt was largely the outcome of the pernicious dogmas of fanatical Christianity.

The irony is that many of the parents who continue to inculcate these misguided notions into their children are neither practising Christians nor particularly religious, and often blissfully unaware of the origin of the repressive beliefs they embrace.
The end result is that many millions of parents have passed on to even more millions of children the belief that their sexuality and their naked bodies are things to be ashamed of and concealed the idea that puberty clearly marked the point at which childhood ended and adulthood began — just as it does in nature.

Most earlier societies recognised and celebrated this important transition with 'rites of passage and 'puberty rituals' which formally signaled the entrance of the child into the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood.

These practices continue to this day in some so-called 'primitive' cultures where young people are expected to be sexually active at puberty and often begin raising families soon afterwards, even though most Western civil and religious laws forbid it.

In such cultures children are not only permitted sexual play and experimentation from puberty, but actively encouraged in it. This is seen as the beginning of a natural process that prepares them for their future role as sexually balanced adults.

Perhaps the most pernicious effect of the modern cult of 'childhood' is the widespread denial that our children also indulge in various kinds of sex play.
Yet, because that play is either ignored, actively discouraged or even punished, it becomes part of the secret life of our children who quickly acquire the guilt and shame which contribute so largely to the ignorance, denial and repression which bedevil adult sexual relations in our society.
It is ironic that despite the so-called 'swinging sixties' and the sexual freedoms which they ushered in — particularly for women — we cling to the notion that sexual activity should only begin with marriage, despite the fact that most of us reach puberty many years, sometimes decades before we marry. I firmly believe that not only are healthy, sexual relations within marriage seriously inhibited by the negative teachings most of us received as children, but that even more damage is done by the typical postponement of marriage far into the years of sexual maturity.

In the affluent nations of the world (coincidentally the same nations that have the greatest problems with pornography and paedophilia) the average marriageable age has steadily advanced through recent centuries to the mid-twenties — some twelve years later than the average age of puberty!
This irony has not been lost on many health professionals and psychologists, yet continues to be completely ignored by the vast majority of parents and teachers.

The evidence from historical, cultural, biological and psychological causes overwhelmingly demonstrates that Nature intended us to be sexual adults at puberty and to experiment sexually to some degree much earlier.

Yet our modern, western culture so inhibits this natural growth process that we enter adulthood seriously crippled sexually, psychologically and often morally and spiritually too, often unable to enjoy satisfying lives of sexual intimacy.

It is my firm conviction that the primary cause of this dire state of affairs is the sexual persecution and guilt inflicted on children by the traditional negative views of dogmatic Christianity and our sexually repressed, western culture.

What alternative is left to our children, conditioned to regard sex as 'dirty' and their bodies as 'shameful', but to succumb to furtive, guilt-ridden fumblings on the one hand, or the denial and repression of the most fundamental of our desires on the other?
Is it any wonder that countless millions grow up to become deeply frustrated, confused and damaged adults, who in turn, will pass the same dreadful inheritance onto their children, thus continuing the vicious circle of guilt, repression, perversion and abuse?

It does not surprise me in the least that millions of frustrated and damaged adults should seek some outlet for their sexual urges in pornography, nor that some should wish to have sex with children, nor that many others can only express their sexuality through pain, humiliation and abuse. What does surprise me is that we are not all like that!

Until we as adults learn to accept, heal, and explore our own sexuality as a natural part of our humanity and spirituality, there is little hope that the dreadful descent into ever more extreme forms of aberrant sexual activity and its attendant evils of mental illness, abusive relationships, repression and violence, can be halted.

We need to teach our children that it is perfectly natural and normal to explore their own sexuality and that of their peers.
Children need to see that their parents are not ashamed of their own sexuality.
Parents who deliberately conceal their own bodies and sexual encounters through misguided feelings of guilt and shame do not realise how much damage they are doing to their children.
The most serious sexual problem in our society today is not premarital sex, unwanted teenage pregnancies, paedophilia, AIDS or even sexually explicit cigarette lighters; it is our failure to accept that children are sexual beings.
By denying them the right to explore, express and enjoy their sexuality as nature intended, we are ensuring that many of them will grow up to be the paedophiles, perverts and rapists of the future.