Children & Sex, P. & the net
this is kind of a rant, but I’m posting it here instead of at TST because I figure Cyg doesn’t need the bad press.
And beleive me, this one could generate some bad press.
Why don’t we tell our children about sex?
No, really, I’m serious.
I know, we’re too embarrassed.. but why are we so ashamed of what is obviously a natural part of what we are? Hrm, could it be because we were taught to be ashamed, partially by the way our parents reacted when we asked them questions about it?
Or could it be that we’re afraid if they knew about it, they’d want to play too?
Actually, it gets worse. As a child, I was shown the classic ‘scream really loud if someone tries to touch you here’ films. I’m missing the point of these. Either you don’t enjoy it, in which case you probebly DON’T need a movie to tell you that you didn’t enjoy it, because you already know – or you do enjoy it, in which case, why does it matter?
[as a side note, it seems pretty clear that 99%+ of children – at least the ones who’ve turned into adults who I’ve then talked to – don’t enjoy nonconsensual sexual contact. So go fuck yourselves, pedos.. or make a virtual world and screw virtual children. But stop messing with – and up – the future loves of other people’s lives.]
Any way, returning to the children and sex thing. It occurs to me that this generation – the one coming up now – may be the first exposed to sexual content from a very young age. [You think the spammers really check to see how old people are? Noo, I do not think so]
So, if there was some really good reason, as opposed to more of the usual human fearmongering that seems to laden every single inch of our society, for this secrecy concerning sexuality, someone better come out and say what it is now. Oh ye older and wiser heads, start talking. ‘Because I said so’ is not a good answer.
[I wish more people read this thing sometimes. Actually, who am I kidding. If you totalled up the hits on my LJ, all three of my web sites, and added in traffic to the brassrat root for kicks, you’d still have less than a thousand hits a month. I just don’t draw the crowds for some reason. Can’t imagine why..]
[It’d probably help if people would link to me. Of course, It’d also probebly help if I’d link to people]
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On another topic, I’ve finally figured out why P.’s comments of the other day upset me so much.
P. was defending the current status quo of publishing, stating that there is little worthwhile content on the net and that we shouldn’t try to put paper content on the net. In general, I gather, she was criticizing the network as a publishing medium and the content that gets published. One of her comments was that we ‘all wanted our own place on the shelf’ and that she thought this was a bad thing.
That’s what set me off.
The elitist idea that my ideas are better than yours because some editor happens to like them.
This is exactly what happens with music labels, and I _hate_ it. I’m okay with the fact that only a thousand people even accidentally come across my stuff, and I have two readers. That doesn’t bother me. What would bother me is if I had zero readers and a several-mile-thick pile of rejection slips.
We all should _have_ our own place on the shelf. Every one of the four billion of us on the globe.
What the net does – is make the system truly democratic. You are free to publish anything you want to publish. People are free to read it – or not read it – as they choose. People can link to content they like, thusly making it more accessable. The only down side in the system is that all of the web servers are so inpermanent that the link which works today may be a 404 tomorrow. I don’t know what the working solution to this is, but I still beleive that the network is a beautiful animal.
And I can’t believe that P. would see it otherwise.
Why do we need editors and media conglomerates and publishers and labels and governments to decide what’s best for us, what we should say, what we should hear, what we should see, and what we should think?
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What is more important to becoming a writer/musician/creator? Practice authoring, or practice revising? Or must you have a balance of both?
May 22nd, 2002 at 12:13 am
Part 1: Human Sexuality
Actually, it gets worse. As a child, I was shown the classic ‘scream really loud if someone tries to touch you here’ films. I’m missing the point of these. Either you don’t enjoy it, in which case you probebly DON’T need a movie to tell you that you didn’t enjoy it, because you already know – or you do enjoy it, in which case, why does it matter?
The point behind these movies wasn’t that there was no enjoyment involved by the smaller human, but that it is something that will make the small human uncomfortable. Uncomfortable probably means not good, so talk it out with someone you can trust, ie. parent, school nurse, your dog, whatever. Child pornography and child rape are a puss-filled blister on humanity’s ass. I’m all for informing kids that “If this guy, who is much older and bigger than you, forces you to do something that makes you uncomfortable, K I C K H I M I N T H E G O N A D S.” Non-consentual sex is a crime. A child does not have the mental capacity or social prowess to say no to advances of that nature, hell, I can almost guarantee the kid doesn’t even know what’s going on.
Any way, returning to the children and sex thing. It occurs to me that this generation – the one coming up now – may be the first exposed to sexual content from a very young age.
Most kids will look at it for a moment, shrug, and return to their legos. It will most likely be regurgitated when they grow older, but as long as the parental unit doesn’t treat it like a negative thing, the child will be fine. I really don’t find the idea of teaching your kid about vaginas and penii at the age of 2 appealling. For one, they won’t understand what a gamete is or the basic biology of the process of sex. “And here is the Anaphase of cellular reproduction…” “Can I have some ice cream?” I remember when I was that age, I was like “hey, there’s an extra hole here…*pause pause*…I’m going to go play with my legos!”, and I didn’t think about it until about 13 when the whole menstruating thing happened. I think by that age everything should be explained. It took me a while to REALLY know about sex from a biological perspective and personal exploration towards the enjoyment side that didn’t take place until after high school. I did this study on my own. I had an awkwardly stupid conversation with an ex-step-dumbass that all I can seem to remember from it was something about me being like a tree with fruit. Uh, hello, cellular differences.
Part II : Business and Social Ethics
The elitist idea that my ideas are better than yours because some editor happens to like them.
There are good books/musics/ideas out there. Sure, as a thinking human you have to go search for them because they’re not common, but…
Why do we need editors and media conglomerates and publishers and labels and governments to decide what’s best for us, what we should say, what we should hear, what we should see, and what we should think?
Because people don’t want to think for themselves, it takes up too much time and responsibility.
What is more important to becoming a writer/musician/creator? Practice authoring, or practice revising? Or must you have a balance of both?
I find them to be mututally exclusive. Revising is a step within authoring. A good author has both the art and the engineering skills to come up with a piece of literature that captivates the reader. There is ALWAYS a target audience. I’m sorry, but someone who reads Martha Stewart most likely isn’t going to be reading Henry Rollins (unless you’re me.).
May 22nd, 2002 at 9:04 am
Okay, one more try, let’s see if my POS mail program will let me reply to this.
First comment, thank you for a excellent reply!
Part I:
I’m also all for the ‘kick him in the nads and call the cops’ approach, but that wasn’t the message *I* took away from these films. Perhaps it was the message you did – if so, perhaps I’m just unperceptive and/or was a very strange child.
Personally, the tact I would have taken, is to explain to kids what sexual contact is, and then tell them if anyone does it and they don’t like it, they don’t have to put up with it, do A,b,c,and d to make him (or her – not all abusers are male) stop.
As far as explaining sex to kids.. I think the time to explain to them is probebly when they’re old enough to get it intellectually – and be intellectually curious – but young enough that they don’t have the hunger yet. That way you can explain it to them while they’re still halfway sane. Then they can go back to their legos if they like..
At some later point, I may post a ‘what I would tell my kids about sex if I were ever going to have kids which I’m not’ post.
But it is true that the reactions of the adults in my life, when I as a child tried to ask them about sexuality, did send a message that they were embarrassed/ashamed of it, which is not something that we really want to send as a message to our children.
Part II:
Yes, I know that there are good books out there. Many, many, many – they are common, once you learn to recognize the signs. And certainly good music – in general, pick a band with several radio hits and listen to their non-radio-hit material, you’ll find something good. Doesn’t always work – especially not lately – but in the 80s you could hardly go wrong this way. Also, pick bands from ubersmall labels..
But my point is that the internet publishing scheme is good because it furthers the ubersmall label effect. *anyone* can publish. 😉
As far as people not wanting to think for themselves.. isn’t that a bad trend that should be discouraged whenever possible?
May 23rd, 2002 at 3:17 am
Well, the next time you go making a point about something, label it as _your_ point about something, not something that you *think* I *might* have *meant* to say… especially after I attempted to revise and enlarge on the topic like, 3 hours before you wrote this. Good Christ. I did not say that there was no good content on the net — last time I looked, I spend something like 2 or 3 hours a day reviewing same — and I did not say that it would be a bad thing for everyone to have their place on the shelf. I simply said that content tended to get _better_ with an editor/review system. And mainly I talked about the logistics of everyone having a viewpoint (which are awful). And yes, I continue to maintain that it’s better for people to figure out what they want to say _before_ they say it, as opposed to after.
At any rate, this proves my point better than anything else that I could have possibly said — you distorted my viewpoint and my words and there’s never going to be anyone the wiser — _because_ you have the freedom to say anything you want and _because_ of the anonymity of the net. Not that I particularly care about this per se, but, the example stands. The combination of natural error — even newspapers mispell people’s names — and potential induced error, whether intentional or not — which as a computer professional you should know all too well about — seems, well, deadly to accuracy. What can I say.
Anyway, why in fuck do you people think that I want to become a librarian? To help organize stuff for other people, of course, so that more folks can have the same kind of experience of teaching themselves that I had. It’s almost a vicarious education for me, as well — being able to find out, at least, what exists out there. For never in ten lifetimes will I be able to read everything that I want to read. And yes, I want to read everything you and my other friends write — but I also want to read the authors that are great because they are really exceptionally good writers or thinkers (yes, by _my_ standard, not by someone else’s) or because many people read them and thus they have an influence on the current thought of society.
For instance, I haven’t even started on the works of all the Nobel peace prize winners yet — supposedly the people with the most pro-active approaches to peace in the world. Yet you and I talk about the best ways to achieve peace every day. Not doing further research — acting like the best ideas will spring fully formed out of your forehead like Athena — just seems silly.
And last but not least, yes, I do tend to place value on (respected) conventional books, especially fiction, simply because of the perserverance factor. Many books take five years or a decade to write. Then you send it in. It gets rejected however many times. But if you _believe_ in the project, you don’t give up, you find a publishing house, you are forced to think about the editor’s suggestions — which like any editing is not as valuable for the specific suggestions as for the process of thinking by the writer that it engenders — and ultimately, if you perservere, the manuscript comes out better. Yes, I am going to put more value on something that has ten years of thought behind it than something that has ten minutes… like this post…. 🙂
call me silly ….
Enough already. My main point: I have not yet decided what I exactly think, and was simply trying out ideas with you. Please don’t represent me otherwise.
p.
May 23rd, 2002 at 7:23 am
Well, the next time you go making a point about something, label it as _your_ point about something, not something that you *think* I *might* have *meant* to say… especially after I attempted to revise and enlarge on the topic like, 3 hours before you wrote this. Good Christ. I did not say that there was no good content on the net — last time I looked, I spend something like 2 or 3 hours a day reviewing same — and I did not say that it would be a bad thing for everyone to have their place on the shelf. I simply said that content tended to get _better_ with an editor/review system. And mainly I talked about the logistics of everyone having a viewpoint (which are awful). And yes, I continue to maintain that it’s better for people to figure out what they want to say _before_ they say it, as opposed to after
Counterpoint one: I made this post before our last discussion in which you clarified your position – look at the dates on it and you can see that.
Counterpoint two: At the time I had made this post, you had _very clearly_ stated that it would be bad for everyone to have a place on the shelf, and backed it up with a analogy (the Danelle Steel one). I don’t think you remember what you said in that discussion, or you would understand better why it upset me so much.
It is true that this text does not represent your clarified position – however it is also true that you are in a position to post your own text clarifying your position, which would not be true were this conventional media i.e. newspaper, book, etc. Hence, it appears that the needs of accuracy are better served by this system than by a conventional one.
And my respose to the last is that that is fine, however you did not indicate at the time that you were trying out ideas on me and your tone of voice indicated that you were not only serious, but also seriously annoyed. Obviously no recording exists of the discussion, and obviously you and I remember it quite differently – it’s impossible to know which of us’s memory of it is correct and which is incorrect – but I very much did _not_ get the feeling that you were just trying out ideas on me to see how they felt.
For that matter, it would not astonish me, given your feelings on traditional education, etc, if you after careful consideration came to the same conclusion. That is why I’m upset about all this. Because your remarks were, as the D&D people would say, ‘in charicter’.
June 4th, 2002 at 12:40 pm
I side with P. on this one.