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<H1 ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#0000FF">Teaching Sexuality</FONT></H1>

<H3 ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><FONT SIZE=+2><B><I>by</I></B> Jane
Rule</FONT></FONT><BR>
</H3>

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<P><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>The furor created by <B><I>The Body
Politic's </I></B>&quot;Men loving boys loving men&quot; posed hard political
questions for me. On the one hand, I deplore repressive police action designed
not only to stifle any discussion of the subject of sexual activity across
generations, but also to intimidate anyone even so involved with the paper
as to be a subscriber. On the other hand, I understand the rage against
sexual exploitation by men not only of children of both sexes but of women
and other men, the pleasures of which The Body Politic can sometimes be
accused of advertising. I am convinced that censoring serious discussion
of unconventional sexual relationships does nothing to protect those who
might be exploited. To test, to contest, is the only way to reach forward
into understanding areas of human experience vulgarized by either taboo
or glorification. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>As a society we are so fearful of
sexual initiation we pretend that by ignoring it, it will not take place.
What we really want is not to know when or how it does. We no longer frighten
our children with threats of insanity and death as results of masturbation.
It is, instead, clumped with picking one's nose, belching, farting -- something
not to be done in public, by implication not to be done by nice people
at all -- but we give our children enough privacy so that the guilty pleasure
can be discovered and practiced not only alone but in the company of other
unsupervised children. Children caught may be shamed, the more sexually
aggressive children ostracized, but itis not, asit usedto be, a cause for
brutal retribution. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Our embarrassed liberality on this
matter does not extend to encounters between children and adults. Though
anyone who spends any time with very young children knows that they are
aggressively curious about bodies -- everyone's bodies -- apt to stick
a finger not only in another's eye or nose but to reach for a nipple or
penis, we pretend that these assaults have nothing to do with sex, are
only part of the random and innocent activity which can be ignored or distracted.
The adult who actively participates in sexual instruction of children --
whether the nurse who teaches a child masturbation as a sedative or the
adult male who complies with a four-year-old's demand, &quot;Show me your
penis&quot; -- is simply criminal. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Sexual education in this culture,
when undertaken at all, is presented impersonally in abstract diagrams,
unlike any other teaching of bodily function or domestic habit. Once the
breast is unavailable for nourishment and the lap outgrown, sexual pleasure
is presented as a far off and nearly mystical reward for years of asexual
(or at least secret) behaviour. If defecating and eating were left to the
same secrecy and chance we might face the same problems with basic sanitation
and nutrition that we do with sex. When the relatively simple task of teaching
table manners takes so many years, why do we assume that sexual manners
need not be taught at all? </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Formal sexual initiations in other
cultures may serve as bad examples of what we might teach if given permission:
the mutilation of female genitals and the equating of sexual gratification
with the kill in males. Both these puberty rituals express attitudes toward
sexuality in our own culture, and it is no wonder that we can therefore
be alarmed at exposing children to adult sexuality. If we viewed sex as
a basic appetite normally satisfied and gradually cultivated, we would
not need to keep our children isolated and in ignorance for so long, building
in them what we have ourselves experienced: intense fear and desire which,
so long uninstructed, produce dangerous stupidity. Of course we don't want
dangerously stupid adults initiating our children. Fear of that leaves
the children to themselves, not out of our conviction that children are,
in this matter, the best teachers, but by default. We have so little trust
in what we have to teach that we not only abdicate our responsibility but
label criminal any adult who might attempt instruction. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>There are adults who do sexually
exploit, damage and kill children. It makes no more sense to deal with
the question by taking them as the norm than it would to take rapists as
the norm for heterosexual relationships between adults. To say that any
sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of
the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that,
overall, relationships between adults and children are unequal. Why we
feel more concerned over children's sexual dependence than over their physical,
emotional, and intellectual dependence says more about us as sexual incompetents
than as responsible adults. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Children are at our mercy. They
are at each other's mercy as well. It makes about as much sense to leave
children's sexual nourishment to their peers as it would to assume that
the mud pies they make for each other are an adequate lunch. I use the
term &quot;sexual&quot; rather than &quot;sensual&quot; because it seems
to me that both our embarrassment about and focus on genitals make us the
inept sexual creatures most of us are. A child's need for physical contact
is as sexual as our own. It takes as little imagination to know that a
child's sexual appetite is different from an adult's as it does to figure
out that a newborn baby can't eat an apple or a steak. We don't therefore
refuse to feed an infant. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>If children's sexual independence
were as thoughtfully taught as their ability to feed themselves, masturbation
would become the satisfying accomplishment that it should be. Being able
to gratify oneself provides an autonomy that is basic to self-respect and
therefore respect for others. Sexual play based on the understanding of
pleasure can have associated with it as many small courtesies as eating
with other people, as much ritual wonder as the most sacred of games. Just
as children gradually learn greater autonomy and responsibility in all
other aspects of living, so their development in sexuality should be gradual
until they come to the choices of commitment in relationships, in parenting,
not as sex-starved barbarians willing to barter anything for the experience
so long forbidden, not as infantile, gluttonous, guilty and dangerously
stupid, but as warm, sexually intelligent human beings. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Until we have a responsible view
of our own sexuality, we will go on shirking our responsibilty to our children.
We live in so homophobic a society that most adults are terrified of expressing
any affection with children of their own sex, and even discourage those
friendships often most meaningful among children. Mothers can be jealous
of, rather than delighted in, their daughters' sexuality, so ambivalent
about themselves as women that they don't know what sort of victimization
to recommend. Fathers compete with sons, warning them off the lotus land
of sexual pleasure which will only deter them from the conquest of whatever
world has been chosen for them, be it military service or medical school.
For every child traumatized by overt and brutal sekual treatment, there
are many, many more suffering the damage of ignorance and repression which
makes masochistic women and sadistic men the norms of our society. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>The choice is not really between
child-rape and chastity into late adolescence, nor is it between perversion
and orthodox heterosexuality. We do have the further option of accepting
our own sexuality and therefore that of our children as a complex blessing
which we and they must learn neither to exploit nor deny but to enjoy with
sensitivity and intelligence. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Such a change in attitude doesn't
come-quickly or easily. It will not come at all unless we are willing to
address the question seriously and openly. Police who use violence and
intimidation to silence such discussion, who seein every adult interested
in the sexuality of children a molester and murderer, are themselves victims
as well as perpetuators of oursexual sickness. If we discover through reading
&quot;Men loving boys loving men&quot; that we question the motives of
the men involved, we must as certainly question our own in allowing our
children to choose such experiments while pretending not to. We must also
examine the motives of all interaction between adults and children (how
much has ever been done &quot;for their own good,&quot; how much we simply
reinforce our own values) before we are too purely suspicious of anything
but disinterested altruism in adults who relate to children. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>More important than judging the
quality of other people's experience and relationships is the exercise
of our own memories. Certainly my own initiation came long before I was
legally adult. Though a number of males around my age offered to participate,
a woman ten years my senior was &quot;responsible,&quot; at my invitation
and encouragement. The only fault I find with that part of my sexual education
was the limit her guilt and fear put on our pleasure, the heterosexual
pressure even she felt required to put on me. What she did &quot;for my
own good&quot; caused both of us pain. If I were to improve on that experience
now, it would not be to protect children from adult seduction but to make
adults easier to seduce, less burdened with fear or guilt, less defended
by hypocrisy. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>If we accepted sexual behaviour
between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children
from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell
us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening
to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful
terror. There are a thousand specific questions, all hard to answer, but
we can't begin dealing with them until our basic attitude changes. </FONT></FONT></P>

<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Children are sexual, and it is up
to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited
and betrayed long enough by our silence. </FONT></FONT></P>

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<P><A HREF="index.htm"><IMG SRC="m0p7nau7.gif" HSPACE=3 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=100 WIDTH=100></A><FONT COLOR="#800000">Copyright
&copy; NAMBLA, 1998. All rights reserved. </FONT></P>

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	<H1 ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#0000FF">Teaching Sexuality</FONT></H1>

	<H3 ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><FONT SIZE=+2><B><I>by</I></B> Jane
	Rule</FONT></FONT><BR>
	</H3>

	<CENTER><P><IMG SRC="colorbar.gif" HEIGHT=3 WIDTH=900><BR>
	</P></CENTER>

	<P><BR>
	<FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>The furor created by <B><I>The Body
	Politic's </I></B>"Men loving boys loving men" posed hard political
	questions for me. On the one hand, I deplore repressive police action designed
	not only to stifle any discussion of the subject of sexual activity across
	generations, but also to intimidate anyone even so involved with the paper
	as to be a subscriber. On the other hand, I understand the rage against
	sexual exploitation by men not only of children of both sexes but of women
	and other men, the pleasures of which The Body Politic can sometimes be
	accused of advertising. I am convinced that censoring serious discussion
	of unconventional sexual relationships does nothing to protect those who
	might be exploited. To test, to contest, is the only way to reach forward
	into understanding areas of human experience vulgarized by either taboo
	or glorification. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>As a society we are so fearful of
	sexual initiation we pretend that by ignoring it, it will not take place.
	What we really want is not to know when or how it does. We no longer frighten
	our children with threats of insanity and death as results of masturbation.
	It is, instead, clumped with picking one's nose, belching, farting -- something
	not to be done in public, by implication not to be done by nice people
	at all -- but we give our children enough privacy so that the guilty pleasure
	can be discovered and practiced not only alone but in the company of other
	unsupervised children. Children caught may be shamed, the more sexually
	aggressive children ostracized, but itis not, asit usedto be, a cause for
	brutal retribution. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Our embarrassed liberality on this
	matter does not extend to encounters between children and adults. Though
	anyone who spends any time with very young children knows that they are
	aggressively curious about bodies -- everyone's bodies -- apt to stick
	a finger not only in another's eye or nose but to reach for a nipple or
	penis, we pretend that these assaults have nothing to do with sex, are
	only part of the random and innocent activity which can be ignored or distracted.
	The adult who actively participates in sexual instruction of children --
	whether the nurse who teaches a child masturbation as a sedative or the
	adult male who complies with a four-year-old's demand, "Show me your
	penis" -- is simply criminal. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Sexual education in this culture,
	when undertaken at all, is presented impersonally in abstract diagrams,
	unlike any other teaching of bodily function or domestic habit. Once the
	breast is unavailable for nourishment and the lap outgrown, sexual pleasure
	is presented as a far off and nearly mystical reward for years of asexual
	(or at least secret) behaviour. If defecating and eating were left to the
	same secrecy and chance we might face the same problems with basic sanitation
	and nutrition that we do with sex. When the relatively simple task of teaching
	table manners takes so many years, why do we assume that sexual manners
	need not be taught at all? </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Formal sexual initiations in other
	cultures may serve as bad examples of what we might teach if given permission:
	the mutilation of female genitals and the equating of sexual gratification
	with the kill in males. Both these puberty rituals express attitudes toward
	sexuality in our own culture, and it is no wonder that we can therefore
	be alarmed at exposing children to adult sexuality. If we viewed sex as
	a basic appetite normally satisfied and gradually cultivated, we would
	not need to keep our children isolated and in ignorance for so long, building
	in them what we have ourselves experienced: intense fear and desire which,
	so long uninstructed, produce dangerous stupidity. Of course we don't want
	dangerously stupid adults initiating our children. Fear of that leaves
	the children to themselves, not out of our conviction that children are,
	in this matter, the best teachers, but by default. We have so little trust
	in what we have to teach that we not only abdicate our responsibility but
	label criminal any adult who might attempt instruction. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>There are adults who do sexually
	exploit, damage and kill children. It makes no more sense to deal with
	the question by taking them as the norm than it would to take rapists as
	the norm for heterosexual relationships between adults. To say that any
	sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of
	the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that,
	overall, relationships between adults and children are unequal. Why we
	feel more concerned over children's sexual dependence than over their physical,
	emotional, and intellectual dependence says more about us as sexual incompetents
	than as responsible adults. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Children are at our mercy. They
	are at each other's mercy as well. It makes about as much sense to leave
	children's sexual nourishment to their peers as it would to assume that
	the mud pies they make for each other are an adequate lunch. I use the
	term "sexual" rather than "sensual" because it seems
	to me that both our embarrassment about and focus on genitals make us the
	inept sexual creatures most of us are. A child's need for physical contact
	is as sexual as our own. It takes as little imagination to know that a
	child's sexual appetite is different from an adult's as it does to figure
	out that a newborn baby can't eat an apple or a steak. We don't therefore
	refuse to feed an infant. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>If children's sexual independence
	were as thoughtfully taught as their ability to feed themselves, masturbation
	would become the satisfying accomplishment that it should be. Being able
	to gratify oneself provides an autonomy that is basic to self-respect and
	therefore respect for others. Sexual play based on the understanding of
	pleasure can have associated with it as many small courtesies as eating
	with other people, as much ritual wonder as the most sacred of games. Just
	as children gradually learn greater autonomy and responsibility in all
	other aspects of living, so their development in sexuality should be gradual
	until they come to the choices of commitment in relationships, in parenting,
	not as sex-starved barbarians willing to barter anything for the experience
	so long forbidden, not as infantile, gluttonous, guilty and dangerously
	stupid, but as warm, sexually intelligent human beings. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Until we have a responsible view
	of our own sexuality, we will go on shirking our responsibilty to our children.
	We live in so homophobic a society that most adults are terrified of expressing
	any affection with children of their own sex, and even discourage those
	friendships often most meaningful among children. Mothers can be jealous
	of, rather than delighted in, their daughters' sexuality, so ambivalent
	about themselves as women that they don't know what sort of victimization
	to recommend. Fathers compete with sons, warning them off the lotus land
	of sexual pleasure which will only deter them from the conquest of whatever
	world has been chosen for them, be it military service or medical school.
	For every child traumatized by overt and brutal sekual treatment, there
	are many, many more suffering the damage of ignorance and repression which
	makes masochistic women and sadistic men the norms of our society. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>The choice is not really between
	child-rape and chastity into late adolescence, nor is it between perversion
	and orthodox heterosexuality. We do have the further option of accepting
	our own sexuality and therefore that of our children as a complex blessing
	which we and they must learn neither to exploit nor deny but to enjoy with
	sensitivity and intelligence. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Such a change in attitude doesn't
	come-quickly or easily. It will not come at all unless we are willing to
	address the question seriously and openly. Police who use violence and
	intimidation to silence such discussion, who seein every adult interested
	in the sexuality of children a molester and murderer, are themselves victims
	as well as perpetuators of oursexual sickness. If we discover through reading
	"Men loving boys loving men" that we question the motives of
	the men involved, we must as certainly question our own in allowing our
	children to choose such experiments while pretending not to. We must also
	examine the motives of all interaction between adults and children (how
	much has ever been done "for their own good," how much we simply
	reinforce our own values) before we are too purely suspicious of anything
	but disinterested altruism in adults who relate to children. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>More important than judging the
	quality of other people's experience and relationships is the exercise
	of our own memories. Certainly my own initiation came long before I was
	legally adult. Though a number of males around my age offered to participate,
	a woman ten years my senior was "responsible," at my invitation
	and encouragement. The only fault I find with that part of my sexual education
	was the limit her guilt and fear put on our pleasure, the heterosexual
	pressure even she felt required to put on me. What she did "for my
	own good" caused both of us pain. If I were to improve on that experience
	now, it would not be to protect children from adult seduction but to make
	adults easier to seduce, less burdened with fear or guilt, less defended
	by hypocrisy. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>If we accepted sexual behaviour
	between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children
	from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell
	us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening
	to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful
	terror. There are a thousand specific questions, all hard to answer, but
	we can't begin dealing with them until our basic attitude changes. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<P><FONT COLOR="#400000"><FONT SIZE=+1>Children are sexual, and it is up
	to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited
	and betrayed long enough by our silence. </FONT></FONT></P>

	<CENTER><P><IMG SRC="colorbar.gif" HEIGHT=3 WIDTH=900></P></CENTER>

	<P><A HREF="index.htm"><IMG SRC="m0p7nau7.gif" HSPACE=3 BORDER=0 HEIGHT=100 WIDTH=100></A><FONT COLOR="#800000">Copyright
	© NAMBLA, 1998. All rights reserved. </FONT></P>

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