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Sexuality and Age

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18:32 / 10.06.02

rage - all kinds of women get raped. from little babies to 90 year olds. it happened to me and i spend half my life being called 'sir'. it's about power. so i think you're skating on thin ice there.

18:44 / 10.06.02

Overall, I get the impression that society as a whole is developing to a point where kids become more mature at a younger age. I'm researching this from a consumer angle at the moment, and I'm reaching the conclusion that children seem to be emulating the image they see their idols adopting. So with the under-14's of this area being fed a diet of Britney Spears-type pop stars and adverts that portray people who have a "great life" dressing provocatively, what can we expect? The problem is also that to attract the attention of the masses, the people that children will adopt as idols and examples are required to resort to ever more outrageous behaviour...what this can lead to is anyone's guess.

Never ever would I advocate blocking childrens' access to modern culture, but I wish there would be a more than half-hearted attempt to educate the children about the possible side-effects (if that is what you could term them) of their so-called maturity.

19:28 / 10.06.02

...but the sooner we get to grips with the fact that the more breeding we do, the more room we take up, the more of the planet's finite resources we use, the more other animals become extinct because of us getting to and using those resources etc, the better. –sfd

Hmmm...that is an interesting point, And I'm not so convinced that you're off topic (since "Sexuality and Age" is quite broad!). Toni Morrison makes a brief reference to 40-year-olds having children, and alas got a bit more in-depth:

...the economics of parenting for women has been determined on the basis of a career cycle defined by Western, capitalist, masculine assumptions. You get "established" financially first and then have children. So meanwhile we have 40 year old women desperate to have the child, jumping off the corporate ladder...

Interesting that the emphasis so far in this thread is on young women and not older women. Presumably alas' 40-year old corporate wannabe mom has had enough education, life-experience and awareness of world events to understand the environmental stresses overpopulation will wreak on the planet – but she still wants children. It's important to her. Why?

I'm really not convinced that women have a "biological urge" to breed children – I think that it's more of an internalized societal mandate that affects women of all ages.

19:47 / 10.06.02

I'd agree with the societal mandate to have children. And it swings both ways too...if I had a penny for every time my relatives ask when I intend to find a nice girl start a family, I'd have at least a couple of hundred quid more than I have now.

19:50 / 10.06.02

"I think that it's more of an internalized societal mandate that affects women of all ages."

I think you are partially right. as girls we are often raised with certain expectations on us, and even those of us who dont follow those paths still have some of those standards more or less embedded in our behaviors and desires.

however, I think there are other things that drive people to want to parent a child - some of them care crappy reasons, other arent so inherently bad. I do think that in some of us, there is a mothering drive. I personally feel it, to an extent, towards many people. Im not suggesting that this feeling in itself is sufficient reason to have a child, only that it does exist in some of us

20:41 / 10.06.02

1) It has been theorized that the physical maturation of children at younger ages correlates to the activation of puberty - development of secondary sexual characteristics - upon attaining a proportional body weight. Changes in nutrition have also been cited, but not within a consistent pattern...it may just mean that more calories equal faster attainment of body weight x. Of course, this generates a social problem given that we have a sense of when puberty and the budding of sexuality "should be."

2) In vein with the "should be" statement: I wonder to a certain degree how much the idea that pre-pubertal children are entirely non-sexual is in fact projection grounded in our morality. Equally I wonder how wise is the psychological approach that attempts to keep children ignorant of sex, sexuality, and reproduction until it pounces on them first-hand.

3) Oddly enough, preadolescents are not merely being sold sexiness or body-image: the fashion and cosmetic industry targetting pre-adolescents is also selling a physical facade of maturity...an outward manifestation of a supposed internal development. This is suggestive of the larger problem in popular thinking about adolescence...physiological development does not equal psychological or social maturation.

20:51 / 10.06.02

PS has anyone noticed that almost this whole thread has been devoted to the issue of when female sexuality initiates, and how and why? So what about males? Any differences?

I'd say the physiological runs equally un-smooth across gender, but that males face an entirely different set of social expectations (soon internalized into psychological processes and self-assessments)...I wouldn't say better, or worse, just different.

03:13 / 11.06.02

I think a lot of that has to do with the social role of the female human to wear the plumage to attract potential mates rather than the male. Its not that males don't deal with these issues too, its just more relevant for females, so that will tend to dominate the discussion.

Disco is My Class War

09:02 / 11.06.02

It's more relevant for females because they wear the PLUMAGE? What has HAPPENED to this place?

I do think it's relevant for boys. It obviously is. I read through the thread wondering at the fixation of discourse on the female body too, and I think it's evidence of a certain anxiety about sexuality which tends to be displaced onto female bodies -- female autonomy, also, because we can't have young girls actually deciding what they want to wear, can we? Sexuality isn't really able to be controlled, which to me makes for an argument that people should be talking and educating their kids about what is possible and what is not, far more early than they do.

I'm being flip, apologies, the plumage comment just made me splutter. If it is relevant for boys, then how? The age of consent thing is interesting to me only because no matter what age you legislate for, kids will still have sex, with other kids and with adults.

09:14 / 11.06.02

having started this thread, i should point out that i focussed upon young women because i'd seen the three girls that i mentioned in my original post. young men/boys being sexually aware - as far as my experience goes - seems to take the form of language more than appearance. i may well be missing something as far as young men go, in which case, i'm happy for someone to fill me in on it.

15:50 / 11.06.02

I realized I was concentrating on females as well - but really, it isnt the same. we dont stage contests to see which little boy is the most attractive, manipulating his looks to make him appear more masculine and adult. there arent a lot of commercials on television specifically targeting young boys and their appearance...you cant go anywhere without seeing cosmetics and skin and hair care products geared quite blatantly towards young girls. advertising for boys consists mainly only of toys, and having fun.

Im aware that males arent exempt from eating disorders and other problems associated with body image. I just think theres a great deal more daily emphasis on girls looking "appealing", in a way that tends towards stressing their sexuality.

17:46 / 11.06.02

I was just thinking that the little boy equivalent of the little girl beauty pageant is little boy bodybuilding - which is a different sort of thing, isn't it. Not clothes and makeup, but something under the skin.

Looking around the newsroom, all the men and most of the women are wearing the same sorts of things an 8 year old boy could wear. But some of the women are dressed differently - low cut, sleeveless blouses, skirts, high heels, capri pants.

The little girls I know tend to get dressed in (and ask for) big pink dresses, which are distantly related to the blouses and skirts I see right now. I'm not sure what this means, other than that there seem to be two different fashion languages going on. Both signify things with clothes, but in different ways.

In the newsroom (which I'm mentioning because it's a larger visual sample than your average office), the non-boyish women seem to be emphasizing fat deposits - breasts and butts - that I suppose are secondary sex characteristics. Men seem to be dressed for durability and comfort (cotton knits, denim) while women are more dressed for pleasure and visual effects (satin/rayon blends and plush sweaters - the colors tend to be brighter as well). Male sexuality seems to be pushed to the background - both because men are dressed in less eye-catching clothes, and because they're wearing identical outfits to young, prepubescent boys.

Disco is My Class War

09:04 / 12.06.02

Okay, so there are definite arguments that 'female sexuality' (or what dominant culture constructs as the acceptable face of 'female sexuality') is visual. Bring on the feminist film theory, Mulvey et al, who argue that the woman is always 'looked at' and therefore her signification is always visual. But I would hardly call that 'sexuality', would you? I might only call it sexuality if the sexual were something that only signifies, or means, in a visual context. If the girls-wearing-flaunty-clothes argument is all we're going to do with this word 'sexuality', then why talk about sex at all? I don't even think that being sexually aware has much to with wearing flaunty clothes, necessarily: girls can surely imitate Britney Spears without 'getting it', because she is a pop icon and there to be imitated. Let's instead talk about popular culture and the image of femininity young girls are fed. And the ways you can feel comfortable with that, and express it, or not.

I'm trying to think of the ways young boys expressed their sexuality when I was growing up. Wanking. Shoplifting porn. Having wet dreams and getting mightily embarrassed about it. Dirty language, calling girls they had crushes on 'sluts', wanking with other boys (sometimes). Girls, too, wanked, touched each other, practiced kissing, stole porn to look at and be pleasurably (or not) disgusted by, snuck reads of porn novels or their parents sex books (the Kama Sutra, anyone? What about the Joy of Sex?) Girls had sexy dreams and were embarrassed about it.

One of the things I think is most important about young sexual stuff is that so much of it falls out of language; you're having all these feelings you can't explain, describe, and they're very intense (just like the rest of our lives, really.) It's all about experimentation; maybe the tragedy is that what begins as experimentation, short skirts, cleavagey tops when you don't have any cleavage, whatever, can end up locking girls into a particular gendered expression. But there is so much other sexual experience and need and experimentation and random feeling that happens when you're that age... Which interests me far more, really.

18:42 / 12.06.02

Sexual expression certainly goes far beyond the visual or even language, Disco, and the topic you're getting into may well deserve a topic of its own. This started around dress focusing on the visual, which is just one part, but seems such an important one for people. Why is that?

Studies have shown that males respond more to visual stimulation that females when it comes to sexual excitement. This gives a lot of insight into our basic wiring as humans, and harkens back to the plumage comment which Grant gave good example of. I like to use plumage because the example with birds is so obvious: In many species, the female is dull and unremarkable, while the male displays bright and obvious secondary sexual characteristics (plumage, usually) to attract potential mates. Humans do this too, only the emphasis is more on the female. Female have more visual secondary sexual characteristics than males, and this is further emphasized in social dress. The easiest example being traditional formal attire (of recent century, at least), where the ideal male dress is as unassuming as possible (black tie uniform tux) and the female is eye catching in variance of dress and color. This spills over into casual-wear, where still the tendency for originality and eye catching diversity is on female dress while male dress tends more towards the utilitarian or common. Females have the social burdon of being the one to be looked at, and this affects every aspect of social life.

The problem I have with it is, that it is so prevelant. Disco hit it here:

But I would hardly call that 'sexuality', would you? I might only call it sexuality if the sexual were something that only signifies, or means, in a visual context.

Why then does the basic mechanics of repruductions have such an impact on our social behavior? It would be easier to list the areas of life not affected by sex than those that are. So much seems to come back to sex on some level with us humans. We're obsessed with it, we're controlled by it, we color everything through it. You just can't get away from it.

To bring this back to topic, we start even with and as children with it, projecting it upon and expecting it from children before they are even able to understand what it means.

Disco is My Class War

04:29 / 13.06.02

Apologies for the inconvenience, my programming prevents me from engaging with anyone who uses the phrase 'Studies have shown' in a Barbelith post. See Haraway, Donna (1988) for a more detailed explanation.

(Oh but I can't leave it there. cusm, the one thing I'll say in reply to you is that for me, and many other people, sexuality has little or nothing to do with the 'basic mechanics of reproduction', and if all talk around the subject of sexuality (following Foucault, which actually produces what we know as 'sexuality') must revolve around figuring out rationales that explain those basic mechanics, then what I do with my body must be something else.)

What this thread is currently demonstrating to me is the discursive confusion between 'sexuality' and 'gender'; it seems that we're actually talking far more about gender or that gender constantly moves into the space that might be opened up by talking about sexuality. But anyhow. grant's example of body-building is a good one -- but isn't that visual, somehow? Muscles are visual, even if they reside under the skin or under the clothes. It's also a particular method of 'genderising', because doesn't body-building traditionally offer a way of being calm, focused, rational -- eating up wayward (sexual) energy, the 'excesses' of the 'growing boy'? (Violence, sex, etc.)

Please, children, let's play with this one... It seems far too interesting a topic to limit to an argument about the correct age that a person can start being explicitly sexual, or sexualising her appearance...

08:23 / 13.06.02

But isn't everyone concentrating on signifiers of sexuality rather than early sexuality itself? Admittedly these are based on highliting or enhancing signals or physical changes indicating the possibility of sexual activity, but if we concentrate on biological triggers aren't we being extremely reductive in defining sexuality? SFD initially seemed troubled by the (self)presentation of young girls as sexually available through their choice of dress, but are we talking about whether children of that age have or should express sexuality or are we worrying about the paucity of means of expression that are not loaded with sexual meaning? Was 'Minipops' a harmless example of kids dressing up and playing 'make-believe' or paedophile porn on day-time tv? Is an eight-year old who wants to dress like her pop idols or older sister innocent or aware of the 'message' she therefore projects and aren't we falling onto the trap of criticising a choice in a way that we wouldn't on an older woman? I.e. how can you accuse a young teen of 'asking for it' by dressing that way when you can't when she is older?

Apologies for continuing the thread's obsession with girls not boys, but isn't the reason for that the fact that society is (rightly or wrongly) squeamish about the premature expression of stereotypically female sexuality but positively encourages the expression of what it sees as male? Young boys are encouraged from an early age to train their bodies towards the culturaly desired through sport and to do so wearing clothes designed to enhance the display of the muscular body that they cannot develop yet. Aping the displays of their older role-models makes young boys neither threatened nor threatening. Their immaturity and lack of physical threat prevents them from adopting the worst elements of the predatory male sexual archetype whilst their play aggression means that they cannot be seen as potential victims. If we see eaerly female sexuality as a threat it is because of the ingrained victim status in simplistic Western stereotypes and constructs of female sexuality.

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