From: chapin@cbnewsc.cb.att.com ( Tom Chapin )
Subject: Re: Adults, Children and sex
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 03:26:35 GMT

Dan O'Connell writes:

>  ljf wrote:
>  I don't agree with that.  If a 4 year old is asked (not
>  coerced) into fellating an adult man, no harm is done?
> 
> Tom Chapin replies:
> When I was sixteen or seventeen, a friend related that a few nights
> previously his brother, age 5 or so, came into his bed and performed
> fellatio on him.  He pretended to be asleep and did nothing.
> Did the older brother harm the younger brother by passively allowing
> his younger brother to perform incestuous fellatio on him?  Would

>Once again Mr. Chapin sidetracks the issue. The question asked
>remains unanswered. Mr. Chapin instead relates some other story.

(I had already answered the question when I had previously noted that
in any situation of clear power differential, the weaker party should
be the initiator.)

The given question was based on false assumptions.  My example was
meant to graphically show the weakness of those assumptions.  Among
the assumptions:  1) all sexuality with a large age differential is
inevitably harmful to the younger, 2) all sexuality with a large
age differential is instigated by the older party, 3) young children
are sexless creatures with no inherent interest in the subject.  The
example showed all three assumptions to be false.

Since you appear to strongly support those three false assumptions,
i wouldn't wonder that you would try to avoid its implications, and
try to sidestep it as being just "some other story."

>Also, assuming the story is true, one would have to wonder 
>WHERE the 5 year old LEARNED that behavior?

Why?  Is your mind preparing to eagerly leer, hoping to find some
smut to wallow in?  Maybe if you are really, really lucky you'll get
relish a tale of lurid pedophilia, all the while solemnly intoning,
"Oh, naughty, horror!"

Sorry, but if you had had a childhood, you would realize that such
questions have a rather boring answer.  Five year olds learn about
such things from seven year olds, who learn from eleven year olds,
who learn from sixteen year olds.  Usually through conversations
rather than practice, though sometimes through practice also.  I
grew up in a tiny town of less than a thousand people, on the edge
of farm country.  We were no different from any other small town
America.  I have vivid memories of six and seven year olds sledding
and having snowball fights and eagerly shouting, "Oh, go suck a wet
one!" at every possible opportunity and knowing exactly what was
meant..at least in an abstract sense.  Sexuality is a topic of
intense interest to young children, even if some of them repress
their memories later...I'll try not to speculate why...

> Just where was the harm located, and who harmed who?
>
>This ought to be obvious. The fact that it isn't means
>someone (and it ain't me) is in denial.

Uh, right.  So obvious that you couldn't be bothered to specify just
what the harm was.  Yeah, sure.  Denial is being presented with
examples contradicting your false assumptions, and adamantly refusing
to even acknowledge them...and you just provided a good example.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that none of these folks so
intensely interested in the horrors of sexual abuse managed to
comment on the fact that, since the older brother was asleep at the
beginning of the act and hence unable to give consent, he was,
technically speaking, raped by his much younger brother.  But
acknowledging that would require admitting that young children are
capable of sexual interest, and the hypocrisy would be intolerable,
since children can only be victims, by their definitions, and never
otherwise.  No, much better to keep on intoning the same old slogans.

-- 
	     tom chapin                tjc@hrcce.att.com
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women