Okay.
"Stop drawing fine distinctions," our questioners say: "Stop
the yammer, the ac-yak, the evasive action, the dodge into
abstractions -- and get to the point!" I am willing to get to the
point. Always am -- just ask anybody. I thought, though, that the point
was the child and its body, the way we formulate them, the way we look
at and are stirred by them.
Apparently not.
Apparently we are to talk about "the way sex is presented" with an
eye toward changing things so as to produce better citizens for the
future, scouring out "a better child-rearing environment."
Oh my.
Sex isn't "presented"; it circulates. It isn't crafted by somebody
else, and it's not an object that's displayed. It's not Keats's Urn. It's
more like everyone's perfume or communal smog. We produce it, all of
us; it isn't foisted on us.
So, babble about how we would change things encourages us to imagine
that all this is done by somebody else, that our culture is split
into the healthy and the ghastly and thank God I am one of the former and
haven't the slightest idea what motivates those freaks who find kids
alluring and things weren't like this when I was a boy and let's
just pass some more get-tough laws.
I don't think it's a question, you see, of "presenting sex," an
after-the-fact social gesture that will take care of itself. Hell with
that. Let's deal with what is closer to home, the eroticizing of
children. It's our favorite unacknowledged pastime.
What can we do? That's a fair question. And, bearing in mind that
we're told to be pithy, I'll be so pithy I'll just list things, like an
accountant of the arousing.
| 1. Acknowledge that the cultural "problems" we have are those we
want, that we construct "problems" in the form they are in because they do
something for us -- you and me. |
| 2. Acknowledge that it's not somebody else "presenting" sex;
directions on what to regard as sexual and what to do about it come as a
river we are all swimming in and generating. |
| 3. Stop treating our culture as if it were a Gothic novel, packed
with only the Virtuous and the Demonic. |
| 4. Stop pretending we can solve "the problem" by rounding up enough
pedophile monsters and caging or killing them. |
| 5. Stop titillating ourselves with endless talk of kids and sex,
displacing all of it onto Others at the same time. At least be honest. |
| 6. Focus on real problems kids have: emotional and physical
mistreatment, neglect, inadequate nutrition, housing, education, love,
hope. |
| 7. Stop countenancing/encouraging hitting any kid for any reason. |
| 8. Leave them alone. If we stop thinking of kids as extensions of
ourselves, or as "victims," we might allow them some substance and independence. |
| 9. Tell ourselves the truth: in our culture kids and the erotic are
overlapping categories and we cannot help but find kids erotic, which is
not so bad, considering that we find lots of things erotic without attacking them.
Most of us do not, for example, hump the legs of guests at parties. |
| 10. Change our paradigm: power is only a word; safety is not a
worthy Utopia; we can find finer things to do than "protecting." |
I'm really sorry this is ending. I have had great fun, will miss you
all, and really cannot understand why Nerve does not let us just maunder
on in perpetuity. I know I have ever so many opinions, on all sorts of
subjects. You too, I'll bet. Goodbye -- for now.
|
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
|
