childhood sex

[Glorious Amok]

is all childhood sexual activity considered abuse? with an adult, of course i think it is. but what about among children? if children get curious and get to undressing and playing and tinkering, is it still abuse? of the older child on the younger child? of the tinker-er on the tinker-ee? the tinker-ee might be willing, or unwilling. or willing but unknowing.

i ask because i had a memory last night of being caught in the basement with two slightly older boys who lived at the end of the block. i remember that my mother was very, very pissed off and upset. i remember laying on the floor and seeing her screem when she opened the door at the top of the stairs. but i don't remember if i was a willing participant or not. and i don't remember what they were doing, just that whatever it was, it was between my legs. and actually, i don't remember ever seeing those boys again after that. they were brothers, and their father was a sewing machine repairman. they lived in an A-frame house.

i can't tell by the nature of my memories the level of my involvement. we moved out of that house when i was 7 so i must have been younger than that. and i'm just trying to determine the seriousness of this episode.

[judih]

curiousity is curiousity
abuse is abuse - involving force and discomfort (of conscience or body)

lots of kids play doctor
lots of kids kiss and touch

abuse is not that.

[Lightning Rod]

My first act of childhood sex occurred when I was four. I enjoyed the dominant
role since I was male and a whole six months older than my little partner. We
were both in full pee-pee awareness mode. I can't remember her name but she was
the daughter of one of my mother's chums and she enjoyed munching cigarette
butts. I do remember her little pussy. This delight she displayed to me under
my sister's baby crib. It was hairless as a peach and resembled a miniature
hieney, I thought. As she demonstrated the marvels of this novel equipment she
pulled her tiny lips apart. My nose was two inches away from her little clit
which looked like a minnow. Some atavistic urge told me to touch it with my
tongue. It would be another twelve or fifteen years before the word cunnilingus
entered my vocabulary. Yet, this is one of my childhood's most delicious
memories. I can still smell the tobacco on her fingertips. I guess it's no wonder I
love pussy and cigarettes. Infant sexual imprinting. If this innocent
exploration had happened these days I would probably be tried as an adult and given
the
lethal injection in the flip side of my peter.

[Glorious Amok]

curious concept ... i wonder how i was imprinted...

[abcrystcats]

Playing sex games is no more unusual for children than playing dolls or dressups.

People used to believe that children had no sexual awareness at all, and that any precocious manifestation of sexual awareness was abnormal, sinful and impure. Thus, children used to be told not to masturbate and elaborate precautions were taken to prevent children from touching themselves sexually. We now know that children --MOST children (if not all)-- have sexual feelings from a very early age. Naturally they're curious and want to find out what it's all about. Seeing adults engaging in sexual activities inspires children to act out the same things.

It's not abuse, it's practice for the real world.

Abuse occurs when a person in power (an adult) seduces or coerces a child into engaging in sexual activities they are not ready to experience.

There is, IMO, proportionally about as much difference between the adult experience of sexuality and the childhood experience of sexuality as there is between the adult experience of driving a truck and the childhood experience of pretending to drive a truck.

Just because a child pretends to drive a truck -- and even if a child tells you he would like to drive a truck -- it doesn't mean he's ready for the real thing.

[mtmynd]

well put analogy at the end, cat.

[izeveryboyin]

i lost my virginity when i was a little under 14 to a 17 year old who played the piano like a king. We had sex on the beanbags i kept on the floor. I felt stupid after... and we kept doing it. until we broke up of course a year later, b/c i simply wasn't ready to grow up like he was. was it abuse? probably, but for whom?
--k

[abcrystcats]

This word "abuse" ... we throw it around a lot. What do we mean by it?

The law says the cut off point between adulthood and childhood is 18. People over 18 have rights and privileges and responsibilities that people under 18 do not have.

Call me conservative, but I am not comfortable with blurring the definition of "abuse" to extend it to include things that occur between two consenting minors.

I think we've got a basic prudery about sex in this culture that tempts us into these judgements. I don't look at sex as an act that generally includes victims and perpetrators. Rape and the sexual abuse of children are two exceptions. Any blurring of the lines outside of those contexts starts to look to me like a witch hunt.

[knip]

the laws in different countries concerning legal ages for sex, and what the age differences must be are quite different...and i'm not just talking about developing countries, either...i'm most notably talking about europe...not surprisingly, europe's laws are much more lax

i can't quote any figures, but can recall an essay i read on the topic a number of years ago...the gist was that americans and canadians had very restrictive laws compared to most other developed countries, and that there was no correlation between the laws and figures on abuse, etc...laws seem to be rooted in the foothold religion has in affairs of the state...the pilgrims were puritans, right? and early canadian elites were british, right?

no big surprise there


the notion that here, in canada, a 15-year old boy having sex with a 15-year old girl can be charged with statutory rape bewilders me

[judih]

cat, i agree.
it seems there's a lot of 'hind-sighting' going on these days - re-defining the past through eyes wearing other spectacles.

What was, was.
Can we not continue through life, learning through past mistakes, and allowing ourselves to accept our youthful experiments?

sex between boyfriend/girlfriend can be considered simply sex.


j

[abcrystcats]

, in canada, a 15-year old boy having sex with a 15-year old girl can be charged with statutory rape bewilders me

Wahhhh???

that is a weird one.

Can you explain this?

We had a heated discussion of legal ages on another website and perhaps the Canadian logic will shed some light for me on the topic. Makes no sense whatsoever to me that two people of the same age could experiment with sex, and one, by virtue (it seems) of his sex alone, could be accused of an illegal activity. TOO weird.

[Lightning Rod]

Kayla,


The term "lost my virginity" has always puzzled me.

could you please explain why that same experience

couldn't be better expressed as:

"gaining my womanhood?"

[knip]

my wife was a born-again virgin when i met her

so apparently, once lost, it can be found again