Do you think our society is over-sexualised?

[MrsMerryHenry]

I have just been reading the chapter on sex in Steve Biddulph's 'Raising Boys', and it got me wondering about this question.

I noticed the stark difference between the UK and a place I've visited in rural Uganda, where there is little to no advertising, let alone magazines, TV, etc etc. I also felt that the people I encountered there had a purity about them, which was incredibly beautiful. In the UK I have only ever seen this in young children - it felt very much like we have lost something, rather than that they are missing out on something we have.

When I came back to London from a two-week jaunt in Uganda I was overwhelmed by how heavily all things sexual are promoted here. It was like being hit in the face time and time again, and then of course I became desensitised to it. But reading Biddulph's book has raised the issue again. I would love to have a thoughtful conversation here about these questions (and more - please do add more questions!):

1. Is our society oversexualised?
2. How does it really, truly benefit us to promote sexuality (a) in the way that we do; (b) as heavily as we do?
3. How does it disbenefit (for want of a better word) us - referring to (a) and (b) as above?
4. Is there a better alternative?

I detest R&B music videos for the above reasons.
I am surprised to see girls wearing clothing with the playboy logo on it. I wouldn't want my child wearing what is essentially porn clothing mainly for the negative connotations. I also wouldn't want my child to wear inappropriate clothing and think this does boil down to the parents. A lot of young women have a strange sense of style (I sound ancient now). What I mean is that you can look extremely hip/trendy/stylish/sexy without looking like a whore. A lot of women seem to miss this point. Advertising and the media are to blame too.I don't like the whole fake/porn star look but it is in the media an awful lot.

Susan, you've reminded me - I remember a friend's under-16 daughter wanting to go to a party where there was going to be pole-dancing. She thought it was fine - of course she did, she was too inexperienced to know better! But her parents stopped her going.

I also recall several articles in my formerly beloved Guardian in which the journos protested teens' absolute right, if not duty to explore sex as much as possible. All I remember of sex and school is my young friends saying they didn't enjoy it and only did it to keep their boyfriends. Is that the positive image of teenaged sexual liberation which The Guardian was trying to promote?

When sex is hidden away and regarded as shameful, there is as much if not more sexual abuse and misery. While there is a lot of sex on display in our current society, there is also recognition that men women and children have the right to say no to sex, to be heard and believed when they complain of abuse (whereas in former repressive times they were either disbelieved or told it was all their own fault). THere is also recognition that not everyone is heterosexual, and that not everyone wants to marry and/or reproduce.
All these things are good. sex is good when it;s consensual.

But SGB, there's a whole continuum between hiding the 'shame' of sexuality and shoving it in our faces everywhere we turn. Are you saying you think our society presents no problem for children and teenagers navigating their sexuality?

I think there are plenty of problems facing children/teens as they make their way to adulthood, but depictions of sex and sexuality are not the worst ones by a long way (and openness about sex is invariably better than repressiveness).
I think, for instance, that the message that you have to be thin and expensively dressed to have good sex is an unhealthy one but that particular message also gets tangled up with the one that you have to be thin and expensively dressed to have good anything

I wouldn't describe the way our society promotes sexuality at every opportunity as simple 'openness to sex', and I certainly wouldn't describe it as the ideal counter-response to repressiveness. Others have said it more eloquently than I have (and dittany's explaining the feminist angle better than I am), but, for example, using sexualised images of women to advertise everything from ice-cream and jeans is not what I would consider sexual openness; rather, it represents an immature approach to sexuality IMO.

And, as it's almost always women in these images (and, for example, in lads' mags, which are all about cheap titillation of young teen boys and not in the slightest concerned with their need to develop a healthy attitude towards sex and their own bodies), it's clearly very much a feminist issue.

I agree with you there. These girls whom I consider inappropriately dressed at the Youth Club are 12-13 and look much older. What concerns me is that they are doing this in front of younger children; some Mums have said their daughters don't want to come to the club because of the pressure put on them by the others to conform to this particular dress code; and some have said they don't send their sons because of the messages they perceive these girls to be putting out.

It's all very well to talk about this as sexual openness/repression etc, but I find it revolting that a 12 year old is running around looking like Britney Spears in the 'Hit me baby one more time' video and is not aware of the possible consequences; not only from the teenage boys, but from some of the very weird individuals around; and before you all scream I'm paranoid, there was an incident near the school which entirely supports this.

I also think it is very sad when the girls are obviously taking on board the message that it is the size of your embonpoint that is important and not the size of your brain.

Is our society oversexualised?

not more thsn it ever was throughout the ages - i think since victorian times we seen to have forgotten that society was always sexualised - the victorians just were good at hiding it

2. How does it really, truly benefit us to promote sexuality (

a) in the way that we do; (b) as heavily as we do?

what way is that? i don't think it is out of proportion.

the promotion of sex has ever been thus hasn't it - now we can do it quicker and perhaps bolder but i think we have this strange hangover from the victorian era - that we should uphold certain morals and values - juxtapose with how the human race has ever been leaves us in a flux

3. How does it disbenefit (for want of a better word) us - referring to (a) and (b) as above?

i dont know what this means

4. Is there a better alternative? to sex? to what?

the reasons the girls at the youth club are allowed to dress as they are is because the parents allow them to

lif society is in this state of flux, then if the agreed norm is that prepubescent or early pubescent children should not imitate society, then someone needs to reinforce this as a norm

to reinforce this norm the govt should introduce parenting classes to uphold what society feels should be the norms and values

this would take real massive infvestment in the infrastructure of a whole new way of working which the govt is not prepared to do.

instead they drip feed these values through schools

healthy eating
citizenship

are just two examples of messages resented through schools - the schools parenting and reinforcing norms and cvalues to the children.

in itself, the reinforcing of right and wrong and morals, belief systems and values should be passed on through parenting.

instead of investing in the parenting, the govt bolts these agendas ( reinforcing certain values) onto an already overstretched system that is probably ailing exactly the same children ironically who it wants to get the messages.

i would assert the notion that these norms and values - these standards by which we wish to hold society are predominantly thevalues of the middle and ruling classes.

in itself a child wearing tracksuit bottoms with inappropriate language on the posterior is not an indication of how good or bad or intelligent that child is or indeed how that childs parent is.

therefore if we want the standards set by the middle and ruling classes to be moral virtuous standard by which we live we need to exert this moral code to working class people and the underclass.

that means allowing the education system to educate our children in a traditional way and not to use an already overstretched system to accomodate the govt agenda.

we need parenting classes for all, there is no class better than the other - there are different values that each holds - if as a society we want to uphold these values across the spectrum we need mass indoctrination education and investment in such across the board

Don't you think though that if we lived in an age of sexual empowerment for both genders then we could dress like Britney and there would be no consequences to worry about?

I don't believe it is the degree to which sex is used in society to promote consumerism, to entertain or to promote positive self identity, it is the imbalance that we see in each of these situations that is the problem.

If a woman feels good because she has large breasts and is unconcerned about her level of intellect, fine. If a man feels better for having a sizeable penis versus his intellectual capabilities, fine again. This isn't what happens though. Women are demanding breast implants because society tells them that bodily perfection is important. Society also sneers at the beautiful but assumed unintelligent woman for having nothing more than her breasts with which to impress, and again at the dowdy but smart woman who is presumed either frigid or a man eater.

Men don't suffer these presumptions, at least not to the extent that women do. Men do not face the moveable goal posts of societal validation in the same way that women do. Men, by and large, can just be and that is good enough.

Every time we make these judgements about women we support the notion that it is a woman's responsibility to entice or impress men or to control their predatory sexual tendencies. No. It is a man's responsibility as an individual to control his behaviour and a woman's responsibility as an individual to feel good about herself regardless of what anybody else says. The way we learn this is from our parents.

So, back to Biddulph...there is a bit in his book about play fighting and how the boy needs to experience this as a valuable lesson in learning self control.

We should focus on this if raising boys, and if raising girls (though clearly applicable to boys too) we should place emphasis on raising self esteem in our daughters. This is paramount against a backdrop of male biased culture that says no matter which way you do things it isn't smart or pretty enough when you are a woman.

I think we need to stop being side tracked by the issue of over sexualisation of our society and realise that sex has been and always will be a huge part of who and what we are and the way that is expressed will change as our society becomes ever more sophisticated. The real issue is that in hundreds and hundreds of years, despite all manner of social evolutionary triumphs, we have not moved on from the most animalistic of patterns whereby men remain sexually powerful.

If we were cats or dogs that would be fine but we have evolved beyond eating, sleeping, and procreation and yet we still conform to stereotypes that disallow us from moving forwards to allow sexuality to positively influence our now highly sophisticated daily functioning.

What hobbgoblin said.

I just hadn't realised how intelligent hobbgoblin is...

< as you were >

Thank you, but please also note my large norks and fabulous dress sense...

Just to pick up on hobbgoblin's earlier point that young girls can be and often are provocative, deliberately, as they explore their sexuality and their identities - I was exactly like this as a teenager, testing my power over the opposite sex and feeling out (for want of a better phrase) the dynamics that exist between folk who are hot for each other. Not in the way I dressed, but with my behaviour. It was an important part of becoming who I am, very valuable, and fortunately for me largely positive. I say fortunate because there were a number of situations, one in particular, that could have gone very badly indeed for me if the other person involved had chosen to behave in a less honorable fashion.

Does this mean we should try and curb our children's efforts to explore who they are in relation to other people? No, but I completely agree that it is up to us as parents to equip them with the necessary tools for survival, by being honest and always willing to listen. I had no mum to talk to and there was no way my dad would have listened without hitting the roof, so I kept it all a secret and made my own way. If I hadn't been lucky things could have had a very different outcome.

Agree with Hobgobblin's brilliant post

To take up her point : there are many mixed messages out there about what it really is to be a "liberated" woman. If we (as adults) are confused, I fear for the pre-teens of today.

Madonna (to use an extreme example) has powered her way through to phenomenal success through her own hard work and efforts and yet she has marketed her body as a commodity in order to achieve it.

Is that true liberation or is that pandering to male stereotypes?

Is she a powerful role-model for women or has she betrayed her own gender? I personally think the latter is true but it's an extremely unfashionable view. Goodness knows what girls of 8 to 12 think about this. It's so depressing and I really fear for my daughter and her friends in 8 to 10 years time ....

I think all we can do is to emphasise more worthwhile values in the home, encourage them to question accepted viewpoints, challenge the endless marketing campaigns and propoganda to which they are subjected and to leave home with a healthy degree of scepticism and ever enquiring minds.

But I don't hold out much hope - looking out the window as I type this and can see a 7 year old girl wearing what can only be described as an s & m outfit (kind of tiny, definitely shiny, patent leather leidershosen) paired with a mauve bikini top ..

aargh - that should have read

prepare them to leave home with

But are they, though? What about all those dads who worry about their daughters? I agree that patriarchy has a lot to answer for, but men as a group are as heterogeneous as women. There are plenty of women who actively participate in the sexual oppression of women, depressingly enough, just as there are plenty of men who would prefer their daughters/sisters/friends not to be the constant target of cultural assumptions.

"What about all those dads who worry about their daughters? "

But why do they worry about their daughters though? For the sake of those girl children? Or for the sake of protecting 'their' property from predatory males. I think it is just as possible for fathers to suppress female sexuality unhealthily, as it is for other me to use it/promote it.

That is true...dads are not known for being comfortable with their little girls' burgeoning sexuality In fact this is one of the reasons I never felt able to discuss things with my dad when I was a teenager.

So perhaps it is a classic double standard - that the same dads who worry about their daughters are the ones happily buying into the Nuts culture, because they don't make any association between the women in the magazines and the women their daughters will grow up to be. Makes a nice pair with the women I used to work with, mums of young daughters, who spent a gossipy lunchbreak discussing how girls who go out 'dressed like that' were clearly 'asking for it' and deserving of everything they got

Indeed! DH is desperately fighting against the growing reality of DD's approaching puberty. He refuses to discuss it at all!

Dittany, you don't know my husband then (and many, many men like him)

In fact 90% of his peer group are nothing like the sad fucks you describe. My DH would be totally insulted by what you say, and rightly so.

TBH, attitudes like yours help to promote the culture you so despise, because you just won't shut up about it.