I will not protect the fucking children. Fuck the fucking children. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Actually fucking them would be wrong. Not that fucking is wrong, or that children fucking is wrong, but adults fucking children is probably most certainly wrong. Adults shouldn't fuck children. But if children want to fuck other children, I say let them have at it.
This is one of those things that doesn't sit comfortably with me. I was never what could be called a sexually aware child, but I've known many who were. Not abused - sexually aware. If not aware of adult sexuality per se, at least aware of their own physicality.
Personally, I never looked at myself naked in the mirror or touched myself until I was a teenager (but still legally considered a child), and that already long after I was already having sex (with older men). However, I've since had enough conversations with both men and women to know that I'm probably somewhat abnormal in that regard.
I used to think my girlfriends were lying to me when they talked about masturbating at five years old. Or losing their virginity at ten. Or boys having sex at eight with the babysitter. All stories, I thought. But, ya know, after all these years, I'm starting to think the stories were true. There's just too many of them to be made up, especially when there is no incentive to lie. In fact, the reverse is much more likely to be true, and childhood sexual exploration is likely way underreported since children are encouraged to be pure at all costs, even if only in reputation versus deed. Especially girls.
Kids do have sex. With themselves. With each other. With adults. Pretending it doesn't happen does them a disservice. Pretending that sex doesn't exist and will never happen to them is downright criminal. Protecting them from the very idea of physical intimacy is pure vain folly.
Well informed kids make better choices. Poorly informed kids don't even know they have choices to make. Life just sort of inflicts itself upon them because they don't know any better.
Let's talk uninformed sex for a minute. It's personal story time, folks.
When I was twelve years old, I thought I lost my virginity because a boy stuck his hand down the front of my shirt and felt my brand new boobies. I knew this was a "bad" area and since he was touching me, it (my life, reputation, innocence, virginity, purity, etc.) was all over because of that Madonna song, you know - "touched for the very first time".
I was pretending to be drunk and asleep in his garage because me and my girlfriend had snuck out and had apparently committed ourselves to staying gone until morning for some reason. He gave us wine and I kept quiet because I wanted to see what would happen. First, I wanted to see what he would do. Second, I wanted to see if my "friend" would stop him. He stopped, she didn't. Some friend.
I didn't lose my actual virginity until a year or so later, and even then I wasn't sure it had happened. He was nineteen. I was thirteen. He made me be on top. It didn't really work. It lasted like two seconds and hurt like crazy. I was on my period and way too shy to say anything about anything. Especially not to him. He was my 8th grade crush. Tall, dark, and handsome - he rode a skateboard and had a mustache. He left immediately after and I never saw him again.
Later I asked my ten year old neighbor from across the street if she could tell me what happened when you lose your virginity. She said there was usually blood. Well, that didn't help much. I was already bleeding. Not until the next guy (a twenty three year old tattooed mexican american skinhead neonazi with a mohawk and prison record) did I finally learn what sex was, and what went where, for sure.
Did I mention the tampon up my ass when I was eleven story? I didn't know I had two holes down there so when I was stuck at summer camp without pads and had to borrow tampons, I used the only hole I'd ever felt. Or how about asking my mother what a "kent" was because some girl had called me a cunt at school and, after much prying, my mother finally told me it was "a part of the female anatomy". Yeah, that was helpful. Not. Or that a prostitute was a woman who had babies for men because their wives couldn't.
Didn't discover my clit until I was fifteen years old coming back from an Aerosmith concert. My twenty two year old boyfriend found it on accident diddling me while he was driving down the road. Took me two more years to realize I could use that spot to masturbate. Haven't looked back since.
Does anybody want to hazard a guess as to whether I EVER used safer sex methods in those years? It's a miracle I'm not some diseased drugged out crack whore with fifteen kids. It really, really is. I'm STILL not really sure if I got pregnant and miscarried at fourteen years old or if I merely had amenorrhea from living on the streets and not eating.
Because all I knew was that nice girls didn't do these sorts of things and that I was going to burn in hell for doing them. What's a little STD in comparison to hell? Surely if I deserved one, I deserved the other.
Children are protected by TEACHING them and giving them the tools they need to navigate life on their own, not by shutting them away from the world and hoping for the best. Because the world doesn't always come after you with its best. Sometimes it comes at you with its worst, and you have to be ready. You have to be prepared. Or you could just lie there and take it like a good girl or boy, just like mommy taught.
Oh, and parents? Just remember - if you don't teach your kids about sex, who will? In my case, there was no shortage of adult males lined up to do just that. Pity I couldn't see them coming.
--For more real life coming of age sex stories, check out this blog:
Beyond the Birds and the Bees
