"There is an age line at which Western people do and should consider teenagers to be sexual minors. (emphasis mine)
I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree with you more. Regardless of what parents may prefer, American teens are generally ready, willing and able to engage in sexual relations by the age of 14, and the fact that we decree that they are psychologically unable to do so won't change that fact. The simple fact is that teenagers are probably more intensely sexually aware than almost any other age group in our society, and we will never be able to stop that from being so. Our only hope is to change our approach to raising kids so that by the time they are physically able to engage in sex they are also psychologically able. So long as we continue to try to bury our heads in the sand and insist that the adolescents who are fully capable of engaging in sex are somehow "not ready" we are dooming them to ignorance and, I believe, perversion. Immediately after puberty kids begin to develop the sexual fixations that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, and so long as we deny them the ability to comfortably engage in simple heterosexual relations we will continue to force them into ultimately less acceptable avenues of sexual expression. Stating that they are not ready for sex will not change the simple fact that they are, it will only twist them up unnecessarily. As the most simple example, I would posit that if we were to allow adolescents the ability to engage in the sex that their hormonal surges are demanding, the pornography industry would dry up and blow away within a generation or two.
Now I will admit that, as you and E have been discussing, the predatory behavior of adults toward the newly mature adolescents is a problem, but it is a separate problem. And I think that if we were to bend our efforts toward ensuring that adolescents are psychologically mature enough to handle their sexual desires by the time that they begin to feel them, it wouldn't be much of a problem at all. The only reason it's a problem now is because the adolescents are so ignorant and confused and therefore vulnerable.
It seems clear to me that we as a society want people to engage in sincere and caring sex with people they genuinely care about and the surest way to guarantee that is to at least allow if not encourage those at the very beginning of their sexual experimentation to engage in sincere and caring sex with people they genuinely care about. To do anything else is ultimately counter-productive. |
