3 ms·

But lets turn back the clock a few thousand years, where pre-teen boys were practically expected to engage not only in sexual acts/experiences, but often with t

But lets turn back the clock a few thousand years, where pre-teen boys were practically expected to engage not only in sexual acts/experiences, but often with those FAR older than themselves. At the risk of more unsubstantiated statements (qualifier, I spent 7 years studying latin+latin history), I feel like the amount of sexual content exposed to children in that era was FAR greater than now, even with the internet+porn, just in different media, and handled in very different cultural and social light, with much less stigma. There seems to be a lot of paranoia around this issue, but observe that there have been HUGE ranges of how humanity has handled sexual content over the last few thousand years around the globe, and generally "we've turned out ok." This is a question that answering empirically will be VERY difficult, due to the sheer complexity of the human development process and the number of confounding variables, and I think a degree of faith needs to be had in the resiliency of our species and social structure to adapt.

coryfklein 13y ago
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That exposure to hardcore porn online is okay because it's better than being raped as a child? Or it's okay because we can adapt to its negative influence and come out alright? What if I want something better than "ok" for my kids?
- existencebox 13y ago
  Firstly, to say that the older/younger relationships from that era would be generally considered rape even by todays standards would be quite a stretch. Secondly, I must apologize in advance, I'm having a lot of trouble stating my point, probably because I'm sitting in a cluster computing conference, and will try to give this a better shot when I can devote more focus to it, but in short: I think we have some very skewed ways of looking at sex and sexual act. A stigmatization of the topic as a whole even makes it very hard to talk about. There are examples of rape and "improper" behavior in sexually liberal, and sexually conservative societies. There need to be new and less black and white ways of looking at and judging both sexual maturity, "appropriate" behaviors, and conduct. It is not productive to point the finger at a prevelence or lack of sexual material and then yell "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", this is going to be answered I think by a better understanding of human behavior and cognitive function, and right now we're grasping in the dark for useful metrics and basing decisions on questionable logic. Anyway, I feel like I may be going away from the answer you wanted/rambling a bit, so I'll cut this short and perhaps reread/reedit my response. I also want to brainstorm a bit with my female, who as a psychologist/cognitive scientist, works with the most extreme cases of sexual deviance/criminals, and in positions of sexual assault support, and I'm sure has some relevant thoughts on the issue.

coryfklein 13y ago

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That exposure to hardcore porn online is okay because it's better than being raped as a child? Or it's okay because we can adapt to its negative influence and come out alright? What if I want something better than "ok" for my kids?

existencebox 13y ago
Firstly, to say that the older/younger relationships from that era would be generally considered rape even by todays standards would be quite a stretch. Secondly, I must apologize in advance, I'm having a lot of trouble stating my point, probably because I'm sitting in a cluster computing conference, and will try to give this a better shot when I can devote more focus to it, but in short: I think we have some very skewed ways of looking at sex and sexual act. A stigmatization of the topic as a whole even makes it very hard to talk about. There are examples of rape and "improper" behavior in sexually liberal, and sexually conservative societies. There need to be new and less black and white ways of looking at and judging both sexual maturity, "appropriate" behaviors, and conduct. It is not productive to point the finger at a prevelence or lack of sexual material and then yell "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", this is going to be answered I think by a better understanding of human behavior and cognitive function, and right now we're grasping in the dark for useful metrics and basing decisions on questionable logic. Anyway, I feel like I may be going away from the answer you wanted/rambling a bit, so I'll cut this short and perhaps reread/reedit my response. I also want to brainstorm a bit with my female, who as a psychologist/cognitive scientist, works with the most extreme cases of sexual deviance/criminals, and in positions of sexual assault support, and I'm sure has some relevant thoughts on the issue.