Eve took a fruit, Eve bit the fruit
Juice ran down her chin
Babies will put things in their mouths
Never heard of sin.
–Joan Osborne/Lumina
For me, sex and innocence are intertwined.
All children are sexual. We Americans try our best to deny it, and make children sexless cherubs, but children figure it out. They figure it out innocently. They touch things. They put things in their mouths. It feels good. They keep doing it. Adults might label it as sin, but there really isn’t a single thing that exists that is more human or more natural.
Then again, arsenic is also natural, so there you go.
How people think about sex, how people treat sex and sexuality whether in children or adults, is entirely a cultural construct. There is not one correct way to view sexuality in anyone, either in children or adults.
In some cultures, no sexual feelings are considered appropriate outside of marriage. Which seems rife with problems, since all humans have them from a very young age. Practically all humans.
In some cultures, female children are mutilated to prevent sexual feelings.
In still others, girls are married very young so their sexual feelings are channeled to a particular man.
People don’t seem to be as worried about the boys.
The curse of the uterus. Being the child bearer seems to give women approximately the same status as livestock in many cultures. I wonder how much of that is because of the value of the babies potentially being produced (more specifically the ability to trust their lineage) as opposed to the value of the woman herself.
So what do we do with the baby who figures out that his penis is fun? The little girl who figures out that laying on her hands and wiggling feels good? The answer in most of the U.S. seems to be to teach the nippers that those things are fine, but should only be done in private. Which seems like a good thing to me.
But…in other cultures, the answer seems to be that the ideas way to deal with sexual feelings in girls is to cut out her clitoris. In some cases, to sew up her vagina. To most of us, the idea is abhorrent. There are many other societies that think it’s better for the girls.
So who is right and wrong?
Are there any sexual moral absolutes?
I don’t think there are.
Other people would probably think it is OK to kill me for acting that belief out. Which in my mind is reprehensible but in theirs is normal.
Humans seem to really like to fuck things up. That much is clear.