From: chapin@cbnewsc.cb.att.com ( Tom Chapin )
Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Re: Adults, Children and sex
Date: 30 Aug 92 14:25:13 GMT
Organization: AT&T

ljf writes:
>There's a lot of shame and confusion involved in molestation.  It
>seems reasonable that most children keep quiet about it.

There is just as much shame and confusion involved in consensual
sexual activities when one is a child, so that children are just
as likely to keep quiet about them.  In fact, I would guess that
children would be more likely to choose not to divulge details of
consensual activities because they suffered no trauma from the acts
themselves, but would suffer great emotional trauma if they spoke of
them at the hands of those who would try to coerce them into seeing
the acts as horrifying.  On the other hand, those abused by
molestation would be at least somewhat more likely to reveal it
because children are trained to reveal pain and that would work against
those forces working to hide it.

There are still many adults who will perpetrate acts of emotional and
even physical abuse on a child discovered masturbating.  Far greater
abuses will be heaped on children involved in mutual sexual
exploration, and the abuses of a child involved with consensual
sexual acts with an adult could easily be too horrible for the child
to even contemplate and could very easily scar the child for life.
I can easily see why a child would be unlikely to volunteer for
abuse by revealing sexual activities, and the more desired the
activity, the less likely they would be to risk losing it.

>>Both persons who asked me for sexual activities were at the time
>>in a caretaking role.  
>
>What sort of caretaking role, if you don't mind my asking?  

As long as there is little likelihood of them being abused by my
answering...  One was acting as babysitter, child of a long-term
babysitter, the other a camp counselor.  No, they were not parents.

>I may
>have been able to say no to a babysitter I scarcely knew.  I wasn't to
>a man I loved like a father.

I know what it means to be physically and emotionally abused
long-term by a beloved family member.  Although the abuse was
not sexual, I still feel it was analogous enough for me to
understand the complex emotional interplays.  I would not want my
abuser to suffer abuse, even in retaliation for my own.

>Nowhere have I said that sexuality is inherently abusive.  But I have
>met enough people who were sexually abused as children whose lives and
>sexualities have been scarred to know how terrible sexual abuse can be.

If those who were not scarred were to give up sex, would that heal
those who were scarred?  If men who are not rapists were to give up
sex with women, would their sacrifice protect women from rape?  No,
because the problem is not the sexual activity, but the coercion
used to get it.  Which is why women say rape is an act of violence,
not one of sex.  Asking people to give up desired acts will not
protect them from coercion.  Only direct work against coercion will.

>Remember too, that it's easy for you whose right to say no was
>respected to label those of us who weren't respected as stereotyping
>sexual abuse.  You saw the good side of adults asking children for
>sex, we saw the bad.  Whose experiences are the stereotypes?

Stereotyping is s superstitious activity.  When an event occurs with
very powerful consequences, we tend to universalize the event and
turn it into a stereotype.  If we are stung by a wasp, we tend to
fear all flying insects, even those which are harmless.  Traumatic
events create stereotypes, while innocuous events do not.

-- 
	     tom chapin                tjc@hrcce.att.com