If you need it explained to to you…
Well here in Ontario eight year olds will be introduced to anal sex as an alternative come the fall.
Wait, are a bunch of your co-workers minors? Because, I don’t understand why adult materials would be inappropriate to show to adults, unless minors were there too…
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Hey, I thought that was a Slashdot and Youtube tradition…
This is an example of the way that female on male sexual abuse is minimized. If the article were about some some male body-builder exposing his newly enhanced scrotal implants to a bunch of teenage girls in a private room and encouraging them to fondle, I don’t think there’d be any question about the inappropriateness of that sex act.
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I am in my 40s, and have yet to hear a cogent explanation about why people should assume that breasts=sex, or even more generally why nudity=sex. (thinks back to every instance of being naked, what percentage of that time was spent in sexual activity again?) So if I’m naked, I’m having sex? Hmmm… no.
But I think it’s interesting as a demonstration of some of the more or less arbitrary ways people define what they think constitutes “sexual activity”. And an underlying contradiction which puzzles me most is that those who seem to have the most conservative attitudes about what they think sex should be, seem to always be those who see it everywhere, and go the extra distance to label things as “sexual”. If a person really wanted to harp on about the old trope of “sex is the genital embrace of a married man and woman for purposes of procreation”, then why can’t they just have that, and dismiss all the other stuff as “not sex”? Fine, yes, that’s sex. Meanwhile I am merely massaging somebody’s genitals with my mouth as a form of physical therapy and stress relief, and it’s not sex at all. Problem solved.
Normal, healthy sexual development of already sexualized young people does not involve some 20-something (30-something? 40-something? or just meth-something?) woman exposing herself to 13-15 year-olds. Young people are sexual, but that doesn’t make them fair game for older predators.
Also, if you don’t think breasts are sexualized, you clearly haven’t been a 13 year old boy for a long, long time. Nudity isn’t sex, but breasts can be sexual. Heck, even Dr. Ruth said the brain is the most sexual of organs. It’s not biology, it’s context.
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But testicles are sex organs, and breasts aren’t, which makes only one of them a sex act. And even in your alternate scenario, a teenage girl is not likely to fondle somebody’s proffered testicles if she doesn’t choose to. Some people might frame these with a sexist differential, but I don’t. Either way, a person voluntarily groping somebody who chooses to be groped doesn’t qualify as either sex or rape. I am sensitive that it may to some, but that is why we each define our own boundaries. They are not the same for everybody.
I agree that young people are much better off with those of around their own age. But those who exhibit themselves were often forced to repress their original expressions of sexuality. If they have a healthy outlet earlier, they are less likely to seek an unhealthy outlet later.
Of course it’s context! I understand how breasts can be sexual. But this is not the same as defining them as being intrinsically more sexual than any other area of the body. Genitals are sexual for what I’d hope would be obvious reasons, but apart from them, it seems completely subjective, or if one prefers, arbitrary.
Correct, breasts are not, a priori intrinsicly more sexual than any other area of the body – the armpit, say.
However, in the context of Western Culture, particularly North America, they are much more sexual than the armpit.
This is not intrinsic, it is cultural. Cultures change. in 500 years, the female breast may not be seen as sexual at all (although according to cave paintings, it seems to have been so for at least 30,000 years across the globe).
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Mmm, not so sure I agree 100% with your police work there, Lou.
Breasts are secondary sexual characteristics that develop as a part of the changes that take place in puberty.
Breasts, for many women (and men) are prime areas for erotic stimulation due to the many nerve endings in the nipples.
Breasts are culturally defined as taboo to show (sexy!) and biologically exist as a marker of sexual maturity (sexy unless you’re a pedo!) and reproductive fitness (evo psych, ew ew spit).
Breasts are assigned as appropriate to one sex and not the other (gynecomastia is only a thing in people Assigned Male At Birth who also identify as male).
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That’s what’s got to go. I prefer agreed upon rules based upon actual reasons, rather than vaguely intimated “taboos” which suggest a schizoid attitude to the subject at hand.
I am not attracted to pre-pubescents, yet I don’t find breasts to be particularly noteworthy. Also, modern sexual behaviors are mostly decoupled from reproduction, so going back to using these as primary considerations might not be prudent. Many ladies will tell you, breasts might be a marker of reproductive fitness, but they sure can get in the way of physical fitness. As in, exercise, for those of us who aren’t making and feeding babies all of the time. I think that separating the reproductive aspects of sex from the other social and inter-personal aspects is part of growing into a more mature, civilized society. But people are generally still encouraged to get these different sexual aspects confused, when instead they can be taught the difference and have better hygiene, less babies, better (not instinctually driven) choices of partners and scenarios, and more pleasurable experiences.
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What if the comments drive you to drink?
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I’d just call that Tuesday…
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You clearly have not actually read the new curriculum (or many of the very easy to read non-hysterical explanations of exactly what is covered).
No, 8 year olds are not being taught about anal sex. Anal sex is introduced in grade 7 (so, about 12 years old), along with vaginal and oral sex. And also the many reasons for abstaining from these activities, and also they touch on consent, etc. And I won’t even get into the ridiculousness of the argument that teaching somebody about a sexual activity constitutes sexualizing them. 12 years old is a pretty good age to start teaching kids about what types of sexual activity are, and the risks associated with them. Because 12 year-olds are definitely starting to experiment, and experimentation with ZERO knowledge is much worse.
As for the actual OP… Speaking as somebody who was once a 15 year old hetero boy, I can say that I absolutely fantasized about exactly this scenario (although maybe with less other boys around)… Having said that, I never experienced anything remotely like this, so I can’t say that it wouldn’t have actually traumatized me greatly. And seeing as how many men who HAVE experienced such situations (well, moreso the actual sexual contact side than simply seeing a pair of boobs) have later come out to say that it caused them a good bit of emotional harm. But then, I feel like a lot of people arguing that it was harmless in this thread have completely missed the part where she apparently performed oral sex on one of them. I agree that the boob exposure (less so the permitted groping) is very unlikely to scar 13-15 year old boys who have been on the internet, but that BJ is where things get pretty dicey.
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How do people suppose that receiving oral at 15 years of age would be harmful or traumatic? People say this as if it should be obvious, so I feel a bit “devil’s advocate” to wonder how or why. (people trying to shame me be insisting that I must be a pedo or some other kind of insensitive, evil person does not honestly help to contribute to any understanding here) I am not saying that there might not be anything to these claims, but if there is, I have encountered very little insightful information about it. When it comes to behavioral/mental/emotional issues, my experience has been that this usually means that it is a more ideological or cultural problem. People at 15 tend to be quite sexually charged, I know I was. And being attracted to someone 15 years my senior was as likely to happen then as it is now. It is probably not people’s intention, but the futility of discouraging teens from sex seems lost on people, not unlike when people call for abstinence over birth control.
There is also likely to be a statistical skew here, in that people who were happy with their pre-adult sexual experiences are much less likely to complain, seek treatment, or offer testimony against it. Which leaves us only with the negative stories. Anti-drug propagandists are well known for doing the exact same thing - ask a cop or the DEA about marijuana, and they’ll give you stories about how it ruins most people’s lives - but it’s not like they are biased or anything, is it? Likewise, there really is a huge amount of propaganda about “non-normative” sexual experience. I have known some groups paid by the state in my area to offer relationship counseling who swear against polyamory and casual sex as being “unnatural” and harmful. How is it so harmful? Because it brings the shame and stigma of being non-normative, which is a completely unfounded, circular argument. Chances are that if they encouraged polyamory and sexual openness, the state would not use them, as it would not suit their agenda. Any time people resort to prescribing behaviors based upon claims of harm. I think it is important to review evidence, look at statistics, and consider biases. The closer these prescriptions are to changing the fundamentals of human relationships, the more scrutiny they deserve.
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It’s not “receiving oral at 15 years of age” that would be necessarily harmful or traumatic (as long as one is mentally ready for it, and some are not), as many MANY people have experienced that and more by that age. It’s “receiving oral from a a drunken 32 year old” that seems to be the more problematic issue. I’m not sure I can say one way or the other whether it really will end up being traumatic for the 15 year old in question - at the very least he’s already unfortunately learned the lesson that getting a woman drunk will lower her inhibitions enough to do things sexually that she normally wouldn’t do (at least, presuming that she doesn’t regularly give BJs to 15 year olds), and I’m also not sure that having consensual sexual relations with somebody 17 years older than you at the age of 15 is all that much different from an 18 year old having sex with a 35 year old, as long as there are no power dynamics (teacher/student, boss/employee) at play. BUT, people generally mature at different rates, and who’s to say what state this 15 year old is at in his sexual maturation, which is why stat rape laws often seem to focus around 18, as the age of consent.
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Breasts are a sexual signal. They remain covered until such time as a
sexual signal is to be conveyed.
The woman in question sent a sexual signal to a minor.
Interestingly, some women who have breast enlargement become detached from
them and don’t see them as a part of their body so much as jewelry.
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But is this a signal with any semantic content? It might be more accurate to say they could be a symbol, in which case they could have meaning without content. It also sounds rather ritualistic to say that a signal would remain hidden. When does anybody normally communicate like that?
If your model of this as communication is accurate, then the recipient chooses how they act upon this information. If the world at large finds this disagreeable, they may intervene and censor such communications. FWIW this sounds a lot like implicit value judgements, which tend to provide polar “you either believe it or you don’t” type of explanation which is hard to account for.
There are probably other annoying specimens who don’t see their body as part of a system for communicating internalized cultural values!
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All the time.
And yes, there is no semantic content. Why the breasts are exposed is
ambiguous, which is why men get into trouble with cleavage, yoga pants and
miniskirts when women are “innocently” sending sexual signals.
This mechanism tends toward neurosis in men, I.E. more than one response to
a stimulus, when we want to respect a woman’s right to safety, etc., while
she’s attired in a variety of sexually signaling ways.
I work in the immediate vicinity of a large metropolitan university, and
the view is staggering. Between the campus and the starbucks across the
road is a steady flow of eye rape.
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Sorry, you raise fascinating points by responding to my comments, but my
gmail annoyingly doesn’t allow me to see your responses as I type mine
back, so I miss things you say.
In the NLP model of communication, the strength of a communication is in
the response it elicits.
If the woman’s gesture was in fact a signal, then she got a variety of
responses back from adolescents. The question then is; why is she sexually
signalling adolescent boys, and why is she wanting to instill neurosis in
them?
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