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?

[monkeytrousers]

What if - here is a dangerous idea - a society that allows sexual expression actually appeared lowered sexual crime? And that pornography actually positivly contributed to that too? Forget the other factors for a moment.

Just 'what if'? Or is that a question that cannot be broached?

[scaryteacher]

He certainly does not repress his sexuality; I ensure I always knock before going into his bedroom now for obvious reasons.

Yes, he is aware that breasts can be sexual of course, but I would rather that he is focused on other things, like school, as he starts some GCSEs in September when he goes into Year 9. It is all very well being theoretical about it when they are younger, but is quite hard to deal with the burgeoning sexuality of your teenager when it is staring you in the face (hence the knocking at the door now!). I am open and honest with him about sex, but it is only one part of life after all and he is at the stage where he veers between part way to maturity and regressing to being childish again - the push pull stage of adolescence; so I try to keep it light and not frighten the horses too much.

[OrmIrian]

mt - I agree with you. Sex in society always strikes me as a stroppy teen who needs to shock. But once we've accepted the pierced lip, the jeans hanging round the arse, the bad language, the general oikishness maybe the need to shock will fade, and sex will become such a normal part of life it won't need to be in the forefront all the time.

[monkeytrousers]

I does think it needs to me monitored. Sex is about intimacy after all - there is a time and a place. Which is why I am glad there was a campaign to put mags like Nuts, etc on the top shelf. It's embarresing to some, and inapropriate to others. But in themselves they might be provoding a public service for the many men who only get to have sex with themselves. Channels it. That and footie.

It's just a hypothesis. Needs to be tested.

[OrmIrian]

Nuts and Loaded and their ilk will always and has always been there. The creeping (if not cantering!) sexualisation of society as a whole is the new development. And that is what needs to be got our of our system so to speak.

[MrsMerryHenry]

Dittany, the reason you come across as anti-male is the stark absence of positive statements about males and your unquestioningly positive statements about females. Would you now like to balance out your posts? Perhaps you could describe the positive ways in which males engage with women, with regard to sex and sexuality.

You have also completely ignored my repeated statements that girls' teasing is about dress and behaviour, apparently so as to confirm your own assumptions. And you've whitewashed over the fact that I have said both boys and girls can harm each other - or do you think it's only men who cause the ills of the world? You do come across as someone who has been harmed in some way by males and is still very bruised and hurting. If this is the case it's no wonder that your views on gender issues are so partisan, and I can only express my sympathy for any pain you may be suffering. However, to get back to the focus of this thread, once you allow yourself more open-minded thinking on sex and gender we can have a sensible discussion about it.

mt - I'm all for considering dangerous ideas! Do you have any further info about your theory - maybe a society you know of with this sort of relationship with sexuality?

I agree with scaryteacher that it's a good thing for a 13-year-old boy to see girls as people rather than exclusively as sex objects, especially when there's so much material available persuading him towards teh latter. The push-pull thing which you described is also true; it's like when teen boys have 'little kid' bodies but deep voices - they straddle manhood and boyhood concurrently for quite a while, don't they? I also agree that the 'turkey' comment is really not a big deal, and certainly not misogynist.

[hobbgoblin]

I love monkey's suggestion. This is mainly because I believe in fairly unfettered sexual expression with the obvious clause that other involved parties are consenting, unharmed, etc. etc.

I wonder whether porn, prostitution, and so on would lose any of its appeal if it became more accepted and less 'underground'...

Thinking about ABetaDad's questions on how to teach our sons respect for women and how that must make us consider how not to become too precious about doing so. I don't know how to achieve this. It isn't to desxualise one's thoughts regarding girls/women and it isn't to demand that our daughters watch how they dress so as not to give boys mixed messages.

We already see how the 'no means no' message is confused and sometimes exploited.

I still come back to my old argument about self esteem. If girls have low self esteem then you will sometimes see manipulation (of all sorts not just sexual) of men and likewise boys may respond to low self esteem issues with aggressive and dominating behaviours which can cross over to sexual behaviour.

I need to say more but have baguettes burnign in oven...

[scaryteacher]

I was talking to my ds about this thread tonight and trying to explain the potential minefield that awaits on the 'does no mean no?' debate. We've decided that the safest way to play it (for when he is older) is that no always means no. We then had the, 'but does no always mean no when it's you and Dad?' Trying to explain the subtle nuances of a 23 year old marriage whilst chomping on garlic bread before going back to marking GCSEs was challenging!

[ABetaDad]

Just come back from a whole day out and glad and grateful that everyone is still chewing over these questions - and garlic bread.

I'm still reading with interest and may well post later when I have had a good think.

[OrmIrian]

" wonder whether porn, prostitution, and so on would lose any of its appeal if it became more accepted and less 'underground'..."

yes hobb. I beleive (and hope) it would.

[monkeytrousers]

MrsHernry - "mt - I'm all for considering dangerous ideas! Do you have any further info about your theory - maybe a society you know of with this sort of relationship with sexuality?"

The only info I am going on are broad stats across Europe as opposed to Africa. Rape is a huge problem in Africa - the stats are turly obscene really. In the middle east it's difficut to gather reliable stats as marital rape isn't classed as a crime so isn't recorded. In areas of poverty or recent disaster rape stats shoot up too. As unsatisfactory as our stats are in the west, they are pretty good in comparision to the rest of the world.

I just wondered if a fairly liberal attitude to sex was a significant corrolate. But like I say would have to test it. I haven't a clue so it would be v intersting to see what the results were.

[monkeytrousers]

"" wonder whether porn, prostitution, and so on would lose any of its appeal if it became more accepted and less 'underground'..."

I don't think it would actually. I suspect it functions on its over level of equilibrium, but that the mean is pretty close to what we see. Prostitution rates don't go down when it's legalised fror instance.

[SenoraPostrophe]

"" wonder whether porn, prostitution, and so on would lose any of its appeal if it became more accepted and less 'underground'..."

eh? I thought it was quite widely accepted. and indeed, the accessibility of soft porn featuring abnormally-proportioned models is something that I am worried about.

But that is a very separate thing from young girls wearing short skirts - I will not call it "dressing provocatively" because that description in itself seems to imply that dressing this way is to deliberately invite rape, which is ridiculous. I do not accept the earlier suggestions that men have a kind of natural instinct in that direction. but everyone just ignores me anyway...

[monkeytrousers]

I think it terms were a bit confusing - wasn't it somehting like 'do men have a stronger sex drive' which is different (IMO) to 'do men want sex more often with different partners'. What we know about this is that men say they certainly fantisise abnout having more anonymous sex than women do, and that they are the major consumers of prostitutes and porn, which lets them live that fantasy.

[monkeytrousers]

rather than them actually havbing more sex, IYSWIM. There are a lot of men who get nada. More men than women certainly.

[MrsMerryHenry]

Senora: "I do not accept the earlier suggestions that men have a kind of natural instinct in that direction" - I hope you're not referring to my posts here. If so, you've misunderstood them. If not...as you were!

mt - I still disagree that rape is a viable comparison to make in this discussion as it's an extreme expression of violence. I may be wrong here, but as I see it, it's a bit like saying gambling is wrong because it's addictive. We know that in fact a person who has an inclination towards addictive behaviour will express that behaviour through any of an infinite number of channels: alcohol, gambling, sex, shopping, etc etc. As far as I can see, rape is the same - a person who has an inclination towards violent behaviour will express that behaviour through any of an infinite number of channels, including, sadly, sex. The causes rape are not simply a society's attitudes to sex; it's far more complex than that.

I'm prepared to be proven wrong on this, though!

[monkeytrousers]

I'm not sure what you mean by a viable comparison. You mean the rape stats as compared to ?

Rape is very often not violent in technical terms though MMH. That makes it even harder for a woman to get justice if it is catogorised as 'an extreme expression of violence'. The violence is predominely psychological not physical.

That's why the law has changed whereby it is no longer necessary for a women to put up 'reasonable force' as many women were too petrified to fight back and even today have less chancve of being believd if they don't claim to fight to within an inch of their lives.

Rape isn't a pathlogy. It isn't purpetrated by only deviant men. If that were true we'd all be able to spot a rapist by daylight, never mind marrying one!

Rape is a sexual crime more often than it is a violent one. That makes it even more traumatic for the victim becasue it is less easy to understand. Trying to simplify it as a crime of violence and power - taking the sex out of it altogether - is oart of the problem I think. If we knew why women were so traumatised by rape, as opposed to other assaults for instance, what is it that is unique to women and their fear and palpable trauma after rape, rather than cancelling that question out as if it were meaningless. I think it is the crux. If we begin to appreciate rape in law from a woman's presepctive I mean, not from a male or gender free perspective, we might begin to get better justice for victims. That's my hope anyway.

[scaryteacher]

I would imagine that women are so traumatised by rape because it is an internal assault rather than an external one; because they are being forced to do something that perhaps normally they would share with a partner; because it will have a knock-on effect on their relationships/ marriages; because they could possibly get pregnant/ get AIDS/ get an STD from this which extends the trauma; because the rapist is unlikely to use a condom and will leave semen inside them; because it may cause internal damage; their choices are being removed from them; because it makes you vulnerable and leaves you feeling dirty.

[MrsMerryHenry]

mt, I think you've slightly misunderstood me - the word 'violence' in this context is confusing as it has two meanings. Words can be violent, even when spoken softly. When I describe rape as being violent I am not referring to acts that one would describe as 'a violent rape'. I am saying that rape in itself, no matter how aggressively it's committed, is an act of violence - emotional, physical, psychological, sexual, etc. As I said earlier, rape and the causes of it are complex.

When I said 'a viable comparison' I probably chose the wrong words. What I'm saying is that in the context of a discussion about how to help our children develop a healthy, considerate and positive attitude towards sexuality, rape is at the extreme - it's a bit like when some posters mentioned sexual repression, at the other extreme of the spectrum if you like. If someone came on here and said we should start promoting sexual absinence to our teens, I'd consider it an unhelpful contribution, as, I'm sure, would most posters. If one can say there's a spectrum of sexual behaviours, I'd put abstinence and rape at opposite ends. And again, I'm prepared to be proven wrong.

Having said that, dittany's article does show that committing rape is not out of bounds for teenagers....

[MrsMerryHenry]

"Rape isn't a pathlogy. It isn't purpetrated by only deviant men." - at the risk of courting controversy, I'm not sure that all non-sexual violence is perpetrated only by deviant men, either. Which brings us to the question: What is 'deviant'?

[hobbgoblin]

I've been reading up a bit on rape and the psychology behind it but can only find so far stuff on violence and rape. I was hoping to find some info on correlation between type of maternal and paternal relationships with perpetrator but have not been able to do so. Maybe I am looking for something that isn't there, but I doubt it.

[MrsMerryHenry]

Hobb, if my parenting counsellor friend gets a chance to look at this thread she might have some researched info on this. I agree with you that there must be a familial connection as well as other causes.

[MrsMerryHenry]

Oh, and I'm not ignoring your earlier posts - still considering your comments, aksherly.

[SenoraPostrophe]

MT - I wasn't referring to your posts, I was referring to posts by ABetaDad and scaryteacher (ABT said that all men are "naturally programmed" to respond to certain signals and that he worried about this for his sons, and st said lots of stuf about young teenage girls being deliberatley "provocative").

I do however disagree with your suggestion that rape is not committed by deviant men. you might not be able to spot them all, but you couldn't necessarily spot other kinds of sadists either. Or deviants, for that matter.

I also think that emphasising the gender aspect of rape is counter-productive. Men are raped, and I bet they are just as traumatised as women. If we characterise the argument as men v women, we risk alienating the very people who let so many rapists off the hook.

I agree with your comments about the trauma of rape though.

[MrsMerryHenry]

Umm...Senora, you said 'MT' but I think you meant me?