Sex and Children...Why Can't They Just Get Along?

There's been a lot of hoo-ha in the press about the sexualisation of children - yep, it's that time of year again - with the usual moralists and scaremongers venting their iration over the death of childhood and all that...

This time it's sexually provocative clothing and lad's mags. Apparently, the likes of Loaded and pre-teen lingerie are sexualising our children - as such, and as usual, the government's out to ban lots of stuff!

So...what's wrong with the sexing up of children?

Well, the main arguement always tends to be that it makes them targets for paedophiles. Well, this is a rather contradictory arguement - why would dressing children in clothes designed for supposedly more mature adults make them more likely targets for people who supposedly disdain maturity? That's a bit like gay men dressing effeminately to attract other gay men (oh, wait a second...)

We live in a society that is, for some reason, determined to keep the throes of adulthood at bay for as long as possible. "Childhood innocence" is perhaps the most sacred image in our society for some reason and anything which stands to threaten that may as well be thrown to the dogs. It's not even a particularly conservative element, either - even liberal, progressive groups seem to promote the "protection" of childhood as among the most important tasks in modern society, primarily taking it as part of the rape-prevention scene; in other words, childhood must be protected to protect children from paedophiles.

What "childhood" has become, in fact, is a form of learned stupidity and helplessness. Childhood is marked by naivety and ignorance, traits which are inarguably negative qualities in adults, but which are apparently positive qualities in the young. A child who expresses interest in anything above his supposed age-group is inevitably penalised in our society - sex is most obvious example, of course. As such, there are laws and "accepted norms" which basically label every child up to the age 12 as an interchangable, innocent, sweet, angelic cherub and every child between the ages of 13 and 18 as an ignorant, violent, sex-obsessed thug, who clearly didn't have the right kind of childhood up to the age of 12. On top of all this, personality is suppressed - more than at any other age, children are forced both by parents, peers, the government and companies into set templates that penalise any form of free thinking before the age of 18 - in spite of the fact that, arguably, prior the age of 18 is when you form most of your perception of the world.

This is my issue: the attraction of children to lad's mags and provocative and demeaning clothes can only stem from ignorance, a lack of self-confidance, peer pressure and sexual confusion - just like with adults. Except that an adult can be freed from ignorance, have their confidence and independence boosted and determine their own sexuality and attitudes towards sexuality. The absolute opposite approach is taken with children - sex education, both at home and at school is a joke (I still remember my "sex ed" in school which consisted of showing two people kind of writhing about in a very dark room where only their heads and legs were visible. When I asked why we weren't actually be shown any sex, my teacher just laughed.) You have parents which "protect" (i.e. confuse) their children from sex and then are shocked and suprised that, when encountering any sexualised image, their children react in a less than pleasant manner. And, apparently, the solution to this is to just keep banning as much sex-related stuff as possible until children everywhere are nicely insulated from reality - rather than hitting of the root of the problem, namely:

Why the hell are you so freaking scared of your children knowing about sex?

Now, I am not trying to say that lads mags lingerie and t-shirts saying the likes of "MONGOLOID PORN INFERNO" on them are necessarily a good thing. But the issue here is not related to children - these are all degrading to both women and men, but the question is, why do people buy these? And it sure as hell isn't due to having a healthy attitude towards sex. If children actually knew a damn thing about sex then they might actually understand why it is that they shouldn't want to aspiring to be a WAG or page 3 girl.

More than anything, we should sure as hell not be taking the advice of the Tories - many of whom still come from a generation when husbands and wives shared separate beds - on what is considered "normal" or "healthy" sexuality. Their attitude to sexuality is naturally "conservative" and harks back to a Victorian age when sex was less publicised, but prostitution, rape and child abuse were FAR more prevelant. Oh, and yeah, Daily Mail, you're part of that, too...

Perhaps the reason why parents fear paedophiles so much is that represent the most forceful example of childhood being threatened by the imposition of sexual interaction. In a way, this is a rather horrendous thought - that the paedophile is a scapegoat for the modern sexualisation of children, representing its absolute pinnacle and being used as the excuse for basically every sex-scare in the last 30 years or longer. Would paedophiles be a such a problem if we weren't all so shit-scared of sex?

And of course, the main problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that if you do teach your children to be ignorant, uninformed and "innocent", then they will grow up to be exactly the same way. And then they'll have children and pass it on themselves and the cycle of abuse will continue. Geez, wouldn't the Tories hate that...

But it all usually falls back to, "they're so damn cute when they're stupid"...