Question 2:
Most of you seem to agree that child sexuality is natural and normal on its own, but becomes problematic in the context of our culture. Do late-twentieth-century images (e.g. Calvin Klein ads, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Barbie, etc.), books (most famously, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Forever and other books by Judy Blume), and films (Kids, the new Lolita, PG-rated movies with sex and nudity) involving child/adolescent sexuality promote or encourage kids to become sexually active before their time? Do they influence the rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, and the age at which kids lose their virginity today? Or, could it be argued that they promote positive sexual identities, comfort with one's own changing body, better gender/sexual relations and a freedom to ask questions?

Certainly we surround ourselves with images and stories of tantalizing and erotic kids. What would we do without them? To blame "the media," though, is one of the lamest and least imaginative bits

of pass-the-buck scapegoating one can indulge in. The media, books, movies are not an unmoved "cause," rather a part of an ecology of desire, a complex symbiotic system that circulates in and through us.
     We'd love to blame somebody else (Hollywood anyone?), but these pictures and tales amount to cultural scripts that have no single point of origin: they both answer to and direct our erotic energies. Of course these scripts are instructing kids on how to be seductive to adults, just as they are instructing adults on how to find kids sexy; but the images and pictures do not have a stable source -- not Hollywood, not TV, not the White House, not authors, not ads, not perverts. If we were to go after a source, we'd be better off looking at me and you -- especially you.
     For all our self-righteous fuming, we need both these images and the indignation. After all, they give us a chance to blame somebody else and thus let ourselves off the hook; we exercise a satisfying and gratuitous righteous indignation while assuring ourselves that these images and stories will keep coming to us in a steady supply. We wouldn't have this "problem" of sexy kids if it didn't do a lot for us.
     We even invent problems to exercise ourselves over: stranger abductions and "international child pornography rings" are notorious and never-fail sources for stories we batten on. In our own Question #2 is embedded another of these noxious energizers: this suggestion of increased teen pregnancy. Nonsense. Teens are getting pregnant at about the same rate they have all century long; we simply can't keep ourselves from shifting attention from real systemic problems (the way teens are treated) to, at best, symptoms (pregnancy). We rage about sexual abuse of children, a comparatively minor issue, and ignore the fact that children are, in horrifying numbers, beaten, ignored, abandoned and denied food and hope. This way we can babble on in our sneaky self-titillating way, keep our voyeuristic distance, and make sure nothing is done about the real problems coming down on kids.

Question 1
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Naomi Wolf

Question 2
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Naomi Wolf

Question 3
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Sally Mann

Question 4
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose