Should we women and men protect children and women?

Oh I agree! Since nobody we know would own up to being a thief, murderer, pervert, or any other kind of criminal I started setting playdates up for my son at the prison.

I agree with Boomerang - instead of those field trips to museums and such, lets bring our children through the combat zone and show them the hookers and drug dealers.

It certainly would be a learning experience they will not soon forget.

Hey Linkat! If you're not busy this weekend what say we get together and take the kids to the peep show? Maybe stop off at the crack house for dessert? We can make a day of it!

Nice! The kids will love it!

Great!

Let's see.....

Mo has T-ball on Friday night and "Perversion Immersion" class on Saturday... but we're free Sunday after church. Will that work for you?

peep show, the kids will just laugh and disturb those who want to concentrate on the show

I once saw a japanese girl (about 7 year old) spot a cover of a video tape
at a gas station in a country where porn is sold at gas stations, and the kid,
having spotted big male genitals entering big female something - who knows what exactly the cover showed, I just remember the girl started to laugh, pointed at the picture and said a Japanese syllable , something like Muh or something and wanted to share the fun with her parents

These things are usually really funny - not sexy or scary - for kids up to a certain age. Then they find out their bodies react to the pictures when they are becoming sexually
active themselves.

I wish my grandpa hadn't freaked out when I once opened the door of his bathroom by mistake and saw him plain naked, his old, gray body that looked kind of strange but not scary to me. But he was scared to death, he almost died there! And ever since I had scary dreams that somebody stole all my clothes in the street and people see me naked, awful. But when I grew up, this dream stopped.

So common, we kids have no problem with seeing naked people. We just have a problem seeing naked people freak out when kids see them. Then
it is difficult for us to get undressed when it is necessary. Now who started the trauma? So peep show may be a good idea, after all.

Alright - the peep show it is!

Actually my daughters are so not concerned about being naked - they will run around the house and dance and scream - I'm naked, I'm naked!

Must be from watching mom and dad.

there are places in the world, usually some neighborhoods of big cities, where kids have no choice but walk through such neighborhood every day
so for some kids it is not a trip to a combat zone, it is their everyday life

sometimes people agree through words, sometimes people agree through actions

so naked parents is an example of showing kids the truth, not hiding the truth

I read somewhere in Denmark they teach kids to use condoms at kindergarten, but the Danes are always a bit extreme. I would worry that my kid forgets how to use the condom cuz they would forget it , after so many years of not touching a condom

it is not necessary to show them everything but it is up to the parent to feel what is not necessary, I also remember when I first saw a dead guy at a funeral and was scared for a few weeks at night, but then at least I was ready for another funeral later

Oh please save me your lectures about how the lowest common denominator is something everybody should do.

I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and even spent a few years on the tracks and my parents did their level best everyday to keep us safe and unpolluted from what was going on right outside our front door.

My son lived the first two years of his life in a house that was a combat zone.

I hope none of us ever have to go back to that.

Naked parents aren't the "truth". Nor is it true that most people in the world are criminals.

Eyep.

I agree, that's why I keep saying it is necessary to find a healthy balance between protecting and exposure. You cannot hide everything forever.
The question is how much should be open and when. What I see in American society these days is that everything is totally wrong or totally cool, very stereotypical thinking, which leads to the most ridiculous situations and the whole world is shaking heads in disbelief. A little bit of common sense is necessary. And this is not a lecture, but an open topic to be discussed. A mind closed is a disaster.

I guess my question is -- how does exposing a child to violence, criminal behavior and overt or perverse sexuality enhance their understanding of the world in any way?

I really don't get where you're coming from with this.

I grew up poor but had no idea I was poor. Should my parents have driven me around rich areas to show me how the other half lived?

So how do you see the rich now? I have no idea what it is like for a kid to be poor, as I was mixture of everything, poverty and luxury all mixed up.


Well, I started a huge topic. I don't claim I can handle the whole of it, far from it. It just occured to me that the modern tendency to protect everyone from everyone is kind of causing problems. People don't take drugs because as kids they came across a porn site. People don't become fanatics because they came across someone sleezy when they were 16.
People don't become racist because they ate too many hamburgers. And nobody will kill anyone no matter how many disturbing ideas I will post here. The problem is somewhere else. It is the tendency to hide the truth
and create artificial truths that fit the artificial non existing virtual paradise
we create in our minds. Some kids can't handle this amount of lies and hypocracy and turn to drugs. Some kids can't handle the shocking news about their perfect parents and grab a gun. I have recently seen a video about two kid preachers in the US. These kids play the game perfectly and
fit the illusions of those who follow their game. It is another kind of brainwashing. We do need love, we do need wise people to learn from, but for God sake, we need someone who does not lie to us, who does not play games. Only such a person can inspire people.

Children at school soon find out in history that the history of human mankind is a history of blood, murders, envy and hatred. The first dangerous thing is that they are presented these facts as something to be learned. Then they see violence on TV and boys usually enjoy playing video games where they can kill at least a robot. So the society is split into
officially producing and telling kids about murders as natural part of history, then they are given toys to play killing others and then they learn to hide all their opinions and feelings that don't fit the politically correct box. Does this mess make sense? Why on earth is the internet full of
the dirtiest porn sites that are really hard to be hidden from kids and then
I am not allowed to type the word **** here? It is because people are afraid to be straightforward. I don't know what we are all trying to protect about us? What do you want your kids to grow up as? We only protect our kids from seeing the evidence that we are liars. If I ever have children, before they go to their first history class, I will tell them, history is full of awful murders and violence. Adults often turn into the wildest animals, they are even worse. And kids easily learn that from them. I will tell them, we have to study the violence and pain and all that, and we have to ask
over and over again, if that is really a necessary part of human life.

I am really moved by all the sincere efforts to show that women are human beings completely, all the stuff that was done to give women complete freedom to choose their lives and values. But at the same time
we should let those who don't believe in equality of women to express themselves fully. In other words, hypocricy makes things difficult when we
try to see who is who.

Anyway, I guess I hit the wrong button, I am out of here. I am sick and our of work so I hit the forums and wanted to discuss something controversial and see if we can find something interesting together. But
I guess this is not the right place for me to express my concerns.

I'm trying to discuss it with you but before I can I need to understand what your position is.

What I'm hearing is that everyone is a liar and we all try to protect everyone else with lies and, frankly, I don't get that.

As to "rich" --

"Rich" is a complicated concept but by most standards I'm rich so I guess I see "the rich" as my neighbors.

Sure, they don't want to expose their kids to porn but then, neither do poor families. Pornography is not "truth" in any way. It's a business and, like any other business, it is designed to sell a product to people who want it.

I'm not opposed to porn (unless it involves children or is shown to children) and whatever goes on between consenting adults is fine by me.

Kids can't handle lies and hipocracy so they turn to drugs? Really? I've done a few drugs and I did it because it was fun. Hindsight tells me that it was probably stupid but lies and hipocracy haven't a thing to do with it.

Kids can't handle shocking news about their parents so they get a gun? Really? I know people who have had seriously screwed up lives but they haven't killed anyone.

You're not allowed to type "****" or "****" or "****" in here because most of us are adults with decent vocabularies that don't have to resort to such language.

But I did call someone an asshat today so, yeah, guilty.

it is not that everyone is a liar, but that a lot of market and politics is based on deceiving people, and a lot of religions too

by drugs I don't mean some light stuff you take for fun and go to work next day, i meant things like heroin or speed, highly addictive drugs

i know several people who took that and were addicted to the drugs and some of them died and when I asked those who survived, they told me that
they could not handle the hypocritical world of their parents living in a nice
virtual world of material comfort - and i guess this nice virtual material comfort of some of adults is what provokes a lot of young people who decide to to against the society or leave the society or choose some crazy religions

this is really a huge topic, i didn't realize i started so many different issues in one post but we can discuss the specific parts if you want to

i can name several movements like Beat, hippies, punks, grunge

all those people reacted to lies of the society, and when i started to threat,
talking about overprotection, i meant something where protection turns into a lie or hiding something true - and that is where a new movement starts, when a new generation reveals the lies - the sad thing is that there is always loads of suicide and overdosing within these movements, a lot of promiscuity (which I don't support) a lot of drunk people and lot of broken relationships and marriages - these are not my opinions, these are facts

the last such a generation i was part of was grunge( although it is not usually connected with a generation) but when I was young, in my early twenties,i would hang out with my peers in clubs, dancing to grunge music, drinking a lot, discussing philosophy, and changing girls like socks - which was everyone else did and the girls did the same - some of us turned into
yuppies after a couple of years, some of us became famous writers, some of us still to try to make it in the world of arts, some of us have small businesses, some of us made in in Hollywood and make films

so most of us somehow survived the crisis handling the lies of the world
but some people just don't survive - and most of us were some kind of intellectuals who enjoy reading stuff like Kafka or Dostojevsky and it helps them to understand what is true, but a lot of young people are simply not
so intellectual and they have nowhere to go to find the truth so they end up doing drugs, then selling drugs, then killing each other

Do you think someone once woke up and found themselves to be a cockroach realistic or metaphorical?

i must mention an example of a family, a father and son example,
where when I was a kid and visited the family, this father used a lot of
bad words, his son called him by his first name, the father was his older buddy rather than an authority that protects and bans things, his father
would take part in "bad games" that kids normally play without parents
and the father, to me, as I was a kid too, seemed so different from other adults, cuz he was so natural, so down-to-earth - the mother also had loads of freedom to do whatever she wanted to do, sometimes left the house for a week, so the kid grew up almost totally free - but his father made sure he did the necessary part of homework, mostly practicing piano and drums

later when i met the son, who is living in NYC now, i noticed how mentally balanced, how happy and realistic the guy is- he has a good job playing in
bands in New York and studios and teaches, making enough money to lead
a decent life, his father does his rebellious stuff somewhere in Connecticut,
raising another kid with a native American woman and the kid probably enjoys the same freedom the first son had (the first wife died of cancer)

So maybe this family is an example of what I suggested at the beginning,
a kid that was exposed to bad language, had a lot of freedom to do
"bad things" learned to be responsible for himself and learned to live
a decent life - never needed hard drugs to solve his problem, doesn't drink
to escape reality, he is an American in the most idealistic way - totally free
and enjoying his freedom without causing problems to others, a stable,
emotionally balanced, confident guy