The previous post is basically the first post of what I hope will become a vibrant discussion here—it will serve as the introductory post to this site. However, I'm going to route to this site several previous posts from my blog that have relevance to this topic, and they will appear before the previous post in the chronological order. These posts should provide some good fodder for feedback and starting discussions...

12:26:13 AM    comment []

I've created a new category that I'm thinking might be one that's going to "take off" on its own, meaning it would have posts not be routed to my main blog at all... I think it will need it's own domain. (I've already got plans for several of those on other topics.) I'm kind of excited, because I realized that it's an important topic, one I sure would like to discuss...

It's name? Sexlines. OK? So what does that mean? Well, here's the short description:

Where to draw the lines? What's right and wrong when it comes to sex (including porn, sexuality, images, depictions, thoughts, fantasies, actions, etc.) and age? How young is to young to have sex? To be sexual? To be sexualized?

I had this realization, due to a few sites and ideas I encountered today, that I really don't know where to draw the line on sex, sexuality, sexualization, and sexualized representations and age. I mean really... I think nobody really does, even though some may claim to. People have a whole lot of different ideas. Governments, institutions, religions, parents, teens, adults, young people, old people, authorities, leaders, families, men, women, cultures, countries, philosophies...all have different ideas about various aspects of this issue. I think that most are very subjective. What should we take as our guide? Gut feeling? A rational argument? A philisophical argument? A legal argument? A moral argument? A practical argument? I could make all kinds of varieties of any of these and so could anyone else! It's so complex and so confusing—and so important not to get wrong...

I think it's important to talk about...to think about...to dialogue about...to question...to wrestle with...

Everyone should have a say: pre-teens, teens, young adults, middle-aged adults, older adults, parents, men, women, religious leaders, ethics scholars, psychologists, doctors, social workers, those who have been abused, those who have been repressed, those who think all sorts of different things...

Because it really occurs to me that I just don't know where the lines should be drawn... How young is too young, and what is it too young for, and who is it too young with, and how old is too old, and how old is it too old, with whom, and how young are they? What is the difference between looking, fanticizing, and acting? How well do groups and individuals create and enforce distinctions between looking, fantcizing, and acting?

Part of what brought this up for me are two examples of images of girls/young women, some of whom I don't know the true ages of (and partly that's part of the point), images that came from different sources...

The various parts of me are conflicted: the radical sexual liberal, the feminist, freedom rights of children advocate, the protection of children advocate...

Wow.

Who has a right to make these decisions? Different people want different things, and yet as a society we have to make decisions for other people, because sometimes two people don't want the same things from one another, and sometimes even if they both claim to want them, we must decide that they don't get to do them... (If this doesn't make sense, a blatant example: even if a 10-year-old might claim to really want to have some sort of sexual relations with a 40-year-old, many of us would believe that we must, because the 10-year-old is not truly capable of making that decision for himself or herself, deny her or him the right to make that decision and deem that activity unacceptable)...

But here come the tough questions...

What about a 10-year-old and another 10-year-old? Two 11-year-olds?
12 & 12?  13 & 13?  14 & 14?  15 & 15?  16 & 16?  17 & 17?  12 & 13?  11 & 13?  12 & 14?  12 & 15?  14 & 16?
14 & 17?  17 & 19?  15 & 17?  15 & 18?  15 & 19?  15 & 20?  14 & 20?  15 & 25?  17 & 45?  16 & 45?

Now mind you, I haven't even gotten to what, exactly, these people in question are doing: Holding hands? Fantasizing about one another? Looking at clothed, sexualized pictures of one another? Looking at partially-clothed sexualized pictures? Looking at nude pictures? Looking at graphically sexual pictures? Kissing? French kissing? Making out? Heavy petting? Oral sex? Intercourse?

If I am a 40-year-old man, and I get off looking at pictures of "girls", is that wrong? Am I depraved? Am I sexually dysfunctional? Am I a criminal? These "girls", what if they are 9? 10? 12? 13? 15? 17? 19? 20? What if they are actually 16 or 17 or 18, but they look 13 or 14 or 15? What if I am a 30-year-old man? A 20-year-old man? What if I'm a woman? What if these are boys rather than girls? (Clearly, no argument will have any sway with me made purely on the basis of an anti-same-sex bias, but other than that, it's all fair game!)

Who decides these things? What kind of different answers do we get when we ask pre-teens, teens, boys, girls, men, women?

How different is your viewpoint if you're involved vs. if you're not? What if you're the 12-year-old? The 40-year-old? A parent? A friend? A survivor of sexual abuse? A medical professional?

When is too young to get married? When is too young to have children?

Where does culture fit into all of this anyway? What if in X culture it is completely acceptable for 40-year-old men to marry 14-year-old girls? 16-year-old girls? 12-year-old girls? What about 20-year-old men and 15-year-old girls? What if it were older women and younger men/boys (this has in fact been found in a relatively small number of anthropologically-studied societies)? Where do sexism and patriarchy come in? Where does personal choice come in? How do we decide if it's really a totally free personal choice or a coerced choice? Is there ever such a thing as a totally free personal choice?! Can something be right in one cultural context and wrong in another? Who gets to decide?

I will never accept culture as an excuse, that is to say, culture can never justify a human rights violation. Denying women equal rights, mutilating their genitalia, or making them wear something or not wear something, or do something or not do something—and trying to use culture or tradition as an excuse or justification will never fly with me. But exactly where do we draw the line? If everyone in society does something, is it less damaging to an individual than in a society where most people don't do it? Would it be more damaging for them not to do it?

This topic could easily expand to other areas of human activity, but I'd like to keep it more or less focused on sexuality, with some overlap into more general body issues, as well as such things as marriage and childbirth.

I wish us luck—we're going to need it!

2:55:24 AM    comment []

To return to the anti-adoption issue for a moment, here is a statistic from an article from Carol's own website:
"Children growing up in a single-parent home face a double-negative effect in their lives: living both in poverty and with only one parent. Poor children are more likely to be too short and too thin for their age. Also, they develop academic skills more slowly than nonpoor children and are at greater risk of being educationally disadvantaged."
Now, since it's my guess that it's not the older, educated, employed, intentional single mothers who we're talking about here, it's probably the young uneducated ones who find themselves pregnant and (foolishly IMO) decide to keep their babies, who are then raising them in poverty. Someone tell me how this is possibly in the best interest of the children?! Bullshit! I think it's nothing but selfish pettiness that would cause a woman in such circumstances to keep her baby... Not when there are thousands of terrific, prepared, ethusiastic would-be parents and families out there who would give it a great childhood—while the mother gets herself and her life together!

Myself, I'm no longer very young (30 is feeling dangerously close!!), and I am educated, but not only would I do everything possible (condoms, emergency contraception, abortion) to not end up with a full-term pregnancy in the first place, but I wouldn't hesitate a moment to give a baby up for adoption. Now, I'd damn well find the absolute best family I could, probably some nice lesbians or gay men (can be damn sure no fundies would get my baby!), but there's no way in hell I could parent a child at this time in my life, and I know it perfectly well. It's only common sense. It doesn't take a rocket scientist...

Raising a child is by far the most important endeavor upon which one can ever embark. A child should always be planned, meticulously planned, impeccably well thought-through. Prospective parents should have to write a 100-page essay on every aspect of parenthood and why they want to be a parent and what they think about this and what they will do in case of that—it's not to say that they wouldn't change their minds or go with something different in the future, but by gods people should think about things before doing them, and there's nothing more important than caring for and nurturing a little human being! That's why I think adoptive parents are often the best kind, because they're so deliberate about what they're doing: they very consciously and deliberately want to raise a child. So whatever else they may have going on or not, they've got the most important fundamental covered. Any idiots can do a little horizontal mumbo and shit!, the woman ends up pregnant, and there you have it, instant parents, ready or not. Sometimes they rise to the challenge and everything works out great, but often it's not the case. Sure there are plenty of other factors, but I just think that if every child were a planned child and every parent an intentional one, it would constitute a significant improvement in our society.

4:52:35 AM    comment []

This blatantly discriminatory sentencing provision does not live up to American standards of equal justice. —Judge Pierron

My comments: This just absolutely breaks my heart. This poor boy. Goddess only knows what hell he may be going through in prison. Gods, I hope someone is looking out for him... A mildly mentally retarded young man, essentially a boy himself, sent to prison on a sodomy charge. He may as well be a Jew at Auschwitz. Fucking goddamn bastards who sent him there!!! And now two more have denied him freedom. Man, when they get the bad Karma that's coming to them, well, then I'll probably have pity for them too... But right now I swear I could ring their necks! What kind of monster could do such a thing?! How can they live with themselves? Self-righteous, morally-bankrupt, cold, callous bigots!

Apparently things had been looking pretty good for Matthew's case after the US Supreme Court, upon overturning the Texas sodomy law, ordered the Kansas Court of Appeals to review his case. The one compassionate human being among the three on the panel, Judge G. Joseph Pierron Jr. (the dissenter in this week's ruling), last month said to the prosecutor: "I'm just trying to come up with a reason, other than you don't like homosexuals."(!) But unfortunately his voice of reason and fairness was outweighed by the other two (Judges Henry W. Green Jr. and Tom Malone) who essentially upheld the right of the legislature to make discriminatory laws. As Susan Sommer of Lambda Legal put it: "This is an opinion that reflects an archaic set of attitudes about homosexuality that the U.S. Supreme Court completely transcended." Well, hope remains for poor Matthew Limon in the form of the Kansas and US Supreme Courts. If Limon's case makes it to the highest court in the nation, hopefully it will still possess the attitude of reason and fairness that caused it to order this review in the first place... Yet another very good reason to FLUSH BUSH in 2004!

On a broader note, all the more infuriating and heart-wrenching and sickening is that Limon is not an exception to the rule. The mentally disabled and the mentally ill are routinely imprisoned in this country, and that is a horrific crime against humanity! Of course I think our entire prison system is fundamentally flawed, grossly ineffective, and conclusively inhumane... But imprisoning a mentally ill or mentally disabled person is the moral equivalent of raping or battering a child: a brutal and senseless use of force against an utterly defenseless human being, one for whom society has the utmost responsibility to protect and care. Every one of these individuals whom we have imprisoned bears witness to our vast failure as a human society.

Let's send Green and Malone to prison instead, and give them a swift kick in the ass while we're at it! They should be disbarred on charges of utter failure to display even an ounce of basic humanity...

4:44:24 AM    comment []

A very interesting forum (again!)... I think I made some points that hadn't really been made (not particularly surprising, since I am a radical--I mean, what percentage of Americans do you figure go around espousing the idea that statuatory rape laws are an indication of the fact that people under 18 are denied basic civil rights in this country?!). ;)

8:43:10 PM    comment []

http://www.act4justice.com/

http://www.helpmarcus.com/

8:37:39 PM    comment []