Sex Issues of the Day

The way we regard sex and sexuality in the US of late is disturbing. No one goes through grade school dreaming of the day they become a crime statistic, but everyone goes through grade school dreaming of the day they hvae sex. Yet we continually say things like 'kids should be protected from sex.' We hide it away like it's something bad, we make laws affecting this, and put the message out in the Zeitgeist that 'sex is bad.'

I myself grew up with a Dad fond of shooing me out of the room so he could watch something on cable with nudity and or sexuality. Kids learn about hypocrisy early when their parents do this, "I shouldn't watch this because it's dirty. But you are?" ..."Mom! Dad's watching something dirty!"

Wasn't until I was 10-12 I saw my first porn magazine (this was well before the internet came into existence.) As I recall it was "Club" magazine my friend's Dad had in his dresser. This was the first time I got a good look at women naked. Around this same time my cousin and I began fooling around duriung family visits sneaking off to do what kids do. Though we never had actual intercourse, we did manage to get into each other's beds and kiss and body rub. It was this way in fact I had my first 'partner-sex' climax. Not knowing anything but it felt good at that time, I thought I was peeing on her. Resolution in full effect I embarassingly got off and dressed and slinked out of the room for my own. 30+ years later I still have guilt about that for the mess I must have made. So my sexual life began (such as it was) began a bit earlier than the average. Had a Spanish girlfriend later when we were both 13 and that was my first frenchkissing experience Various other experiences with peers up until a friend of my Mom's got kinda flirty and not having been raised to feel ashamed of sex I initiated some touching with her and she reciprocated leading to an 'affair' at 16 for the summer. She was my first proper sexual experience and we did pretty much everything you can do. At least until my Mom's kissass boyfriend found out and told my Mom who threatened her with the law (being 2 years under the aoc.) And thus beginning my intense hatred of aoc laws.

Sex can be the very best thing we can do with another person. And having had only positive experiences with it myself, I still can't udnerstand why people take such a dim view of it. It's fun, it feels good, and everybody wants to do it (who's being honest anyway.) Even asexuals enjoy masturbating if not partner-sex, but I've yet to meet anyone who was completely non-sexual. So if everyone wants to do it (to some degree) why is it depicted as the worst thing imaginable? I think on this question a lot.

Some of my working hypotheses include: it's a population issue. Encourage and socially condone sex, and people make more babies which are a burden on any society. This at least makes some kind of sense. But falls down then when you consider how the government not only discourages sex asw ith aoc legislation, but then also tries to control birth control and abortion. If we were concerned about sex and population shouldn't we encourage the things that mitigate it?

Another notion much more pessimistic is that as the world's bully and beginner of wars, we want our population fearful since fearful people grant their governments more control over them to keep them safe. A public free to have sex will see strangers as potential sex partners, not potential threats as benefits a warlike government. It's hard to imagine people in power perpetuating something like this, but it fits the circumstances and goings-on.

Religion too plays a big part. Christianity is the defacto religion of our country in both numbers and traditions. All our holidays are religiously-inspired from the Judaeo-Christian traditions. While we've made inroads with secularism, and have a secular version of every religious holiday (Santa, Easter Bunny, etc. have nothing to do with the religious holidays.) But despite this increasing secularism, we're still a very religious-influenced culture. Christianity is decidely anti-sex. Both it's main figure, and main disciple were seemingly celibate and in the case of Paul flatout encouraged celibacy. So if a majority of your nation's people are a religious tradition down on sex, that that culture will reflect that makes sense.

But all this aside, we so blatant about our hypocrisy about sex it boggles my mind. Do people not see this hypocrisy and lunacy? We talk a great deal about protecting kids from the dangers of sex. We even have laws about not letting kids see sexually explicit materials. Yet I can't help but notice we don't have similar laws about protecting them from violent images. It's illegal in every state (presumedly, only checked ones I've lived in) to show a kid pornography. It is not illegal though to show them explicit violence. Gotta wonder what the deal is with that. Pretty much every kid wants to see sex by the time they hit puberty. Very few wanna look at ISIL beheading videos as recreation. So what our we saying to kids but violence is good, sex is bad. Then we scratch our heads when rape becomes a pandemic claiming we can't udnerstand why we're so rapey. Maybe because kids have grown up seeing violence including sexual violence, but have been forbidden from seeing positive-sexuality? It's like we're sending the message the only thing to be done with women is terrorize, carve them up, and rape them. We don't let kids see anything else. Modern premium cable T&A movies (isn't any kind of porn nor softcore) Show breasts, butts, and brief distant shots of female-genitalia. But no penises, no penetration, no anything one usually wants to see if they're watching "porn." As someone who enjoys porn, I'd rather watch static or a test pattern than any of that garbage. They're not even having sex. The man's limp and just 'smashing' himself against the woman and she's conspicuously concealing that with her palm. And while there's lots of girl-girl content, I've never seen boy-boy. Though interestingly, on PPV (if you have digital cable) there are seemingly hardcore selections available for about $15 a pop including gay, lesbian,and most recently I've noticed a tab for transsexual porn. I've yet to see any of these the cost being objectionable when I can get identical content for free, but judging by the descriptions and titles, I assume it's XXX. The stuff on so-called Skinimax isn't even X though.

No scientific study ever conducted found an association or correlation or causation between non-violent pornography and sexual violence (violent pornography is more suspect.) And where such material is available, sex crmes go down. Where's it's forbidden and banned, sex crimes go up. I wonder then if this is why violent material is readily available? If people can see simulated or even real violence, they get a "The Purge" like benefit and get those impulses out harmlessly. Whereas if violent faire is banned real violence is the result? But given how violent our society is, if this is the 'less violent' version I shudder to think about the alternative.

But the problem remains. Because we are a very violent people, that we restrict positive depictions of non-violent sexuality doesn't make much sense. Especially when we allow violent content. Being a fan of the "Archer" animated series, I watch with bemusement the content warning of every episode saying there' language, violence, and occasionally sex and nudity. Uh it's cell animation. Who's being protected from naked cartoon characters? Other cartoons characters? To say nothing of shows like "South Park" on Comedy Central. A number of episodes now being censored with text from CC saying like, "Comedy Central has censored this scene for your protection." Because the one showing Cartman crapping from his mouth might...What exactly? Have people shoving food up their rectums to see if that actually works? If anyone did that I'd think that's more a problem with their minds than they saw something on tv. Yet they don't censor violent content even in the same episode. And we blur or black box censor all nudity, even in non-sexual contexts like Discovery's "Naked and Afraid" survival show. Ya, cause a mosquito bitten rashy naked women a week without bathing or makeup might lead me to...What? Discourage my girlfriends from bathing and get bug bitten because that's so hot?

We desperately need to get our society and culture caught up with the 21st century. We're embarassing the hell out of our parents perpetuating this lunatic-asylum logic.