But I Didn't Want To Be Safe

[poliphilo]

When I was four I developed an obsession with a girl called Carol and told her I wanted to eat her.  At around the same time I was having lurid fantasies about genitally-imprecise, gender-confused, sado-masochistic sex orgies. Slightly later I developed a big thing about cowboys with their shirts off, and- slightly later still- fell in love with the dark-skinned, half naked slave girl in an illustration to my children's edition of the Pilgrim's Progress.  There were Christian and Faithful striding patriarchally through Vanity Fair, manfully drawing attention to themselves- and there was she in the bottom left-hand corner of the plate, with her hair falling about her face and her breast hanging down just so, laying waste to Bunyan's allegory.  Balls to the celestial city,  I wanted her!

I was kept ignorant, but ignorance isn't innocence. Children are not innocent in the Victorian sense of the word. They are- as we've known since Freud- seethingly sexual and- just as important- insatiably curious.

So why this obsession with keeping their little minds pure? I can only suppose that most adults have- wilfully and ignorantly- forgotten what it's like to be a child.

If there'd been an internet when I was a kid I'd have been furious to know there were walls in place to keep me "safe"- and  I'd  have done everything in my power to circumvent them.

Comments

[nostoi.livejournal.com]

What a refreshing lot of sense you speak!

Is it a hang up on our societal notion that sex is a "bad" thing still? Christian morality?

I feel we force children into a pure state in much the same way as we once did with women. They do not think this, they do not think that. Because we do not WANT them to be impure or knowing or anything like that we force them into being what adult society wants them to be. It's so bloody condescending.

[(Anonymous)]

Biologically speaking people are designed to start being attracted to a person of the opposite sex when they start showing signs of being fertile, right?
But having a relationship with say a 10 year old that looks that way is morally and ethically wrong because they are not fully grown mentally, you would dominate the relationship etc.
So that kind of relationship is judged by most people to be an abuse of power.
Should a ten year old be able to have a sexual relationship with another ten year old? Again, probably no, as they still lack the knowledge to deal with this aspect of their life.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Knowing about sex and wanting to put your knowledge into practice are two different things. And surely a well-informed child is less likely to get pregnant or contract an STD than one who has been kept in the dark?

[(Anonymous)]

Sex *education* is a separate matter. Of course children need to know the basic facts of life, but you were referring to seething sexuality, orgies, sado-masochism etc. That is of an entirely different nature!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The orgies etc were already in my head. No-one put them there. What I lacked was any kind of explanatory framework.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

Having sexual feelings and having sexual relationships are two different things, however.

I think having a sexual relationship with a child is wrong in every way. However, children do have sexual feelings and sexual urges. I certainly did. I had fantasies and I masturbated and had orgasms well before I hit puberty. But before puberty (and even in the beginning stages of it), I was content to do all those things alone.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's certainly connected to traditional Christian morality.

I think you're onto something when you compare our present treatment of children with the way society used to treat women. It's often said that Victorian women were "infantilised". Well, modern children are "infantilised" too.

[nostoi.livejournal.com]

Indeed they are, and it's to their and our detriment. And not only about sexual matters, either. The message we give to children is that their opinion and feelings count for nothing because they are not mature enough to be able to think for themselves. And this has now progressed to the stage where young adults are seen as children still and treated as such.

BTW - I had sado-masochistic sexual fantasies when I was 6 and was masturbating at 8. I wonder how extensive these types of feelings and experiences are in children generally?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right, it's not just about sex. Adults have always been afraid for- and afraid of- the kids. Back in the 50s there was a moral panic about comic books. Now it's computer games and the internet.

I think most people censor their childhood memories. I don't believe you and I were at all abnormal.