In the broader culture, more than three decades after my own
"Debbie B." debacle, I stumbled across what I found to
be a rather shocking example, and in a rather unexpected
place, of the continuing minefield of potential
trauma that anything related to sex can be for kids (and
not just because sex is, in itself, a powerful biological
urge). In the 90s there was a TV show called "Loveline" that
grew out of a radio show of the same name.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveline )
It was presumably a more conventional and more
heterosexually-oriented version of what Dan Savage
does these days with his "Savage Love" podcast.
It was hosted by a macho, wisecracking (and somewhat
leering and obnoxious) comic named
Adam Carolla (later host of "The Man Show") together
with a pale-faced, tight-lipped, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing
"serious" psychiatrist named Dr. Drew Pinsky (who
today counsels celebrities on TV about their addictions,
or something). So people would call in about their
relationship (and, gasp, tee-hee, sex!) problems, and Carolla
would vet the callers and dismiss (with comic abuse)
the ones he didn't deem serious enough for extended attention,
and turn the "serious" cases over to "Dr. Drew" for
a psychiatrist's "serious" advice.
So there was this one "Loveline" caller --
a mother -- who had burst into her young son's
bedroom (whether he was prepubescent or postpubescent
I do not recall) who was having a circle-jerk with his
little buddies. They all had their dicks out, and fully
erect, and were masturbating with gusto. I can't
remember whether they were watching
porn as well, or were just providing each other with
visual stimulation. So mom shrieks a little, and drops
the pizza she's carrying, and rushes out of the bedroom. And now
she wants to know, from the "Loveline" experts, what, if anything,
she should do about it. So Dr. Drew takes up this case
with great seriousness, and replies that yes indeed
she must do something. She must find the **ringleader** --
find out who instigated this outrage against morality
and propriety -- and see to it that he is punished
and that her son severs all ties with him! I couldn't
believe what I was hearing from this guy. Remembering
my own neighborhood scandal over the little girl and the
science book, I heard "Dr. Drew" advising this mother
to 1) Grill her own son on the facts. Which would presumably
go something like this: "Who was the first boy
to start talking dirty? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy
to get an erection? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy
to start rubbing his erection through his pants? Was
it **you**? Who was the first boy to take his penis
out of his pants? Was it **you**? Who was the boy
who suggested that everybody else do the same
thing? Was it **you**? Who was the boy who brought
over the porn tape (if there was one)? Did **you** supply
the pornography?" And then 2) after subjecting her own
son to detailed interrogation (assuming she had the stomach
for it, after shrieking and dropping the pizza), she's supposed
to call up the parents of her son's friends and
have similar conversations with each of them. "My son
Johnny says your son Bobby took his erect penis
out of his pants last night in Johnny's bedroom in
front of Johnny and the other boys gathered there,
and starting masturbating." Etc. And this is
going to "get to the bottom of it" and she, and the
parents of all her kid's friends, are thereby
going to regain control of their kids' sexual
morality. And there's not going to be any shouting,
or hung-up telephones, or legal threats, among
the parents. And people are going to be perfectly
friendly with each other in the years to come when
they pass each other in the supermarket. And
there's not going to be any bullying or other
humiliating fallout for little Johnny and his little
friends at school or church or elsewhere in the
neighborhood. Riiiight! My God, and this guy's
supposed to be a professional counsellor! And he's
not even a Mormon -- Wikipedia calls him a "nonobservant
Jew" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Pinsky ).
I was more than a little nonplussed that nothing seemed to have
changed in more than thirty years, and that having
an M.D. degree and training as a psychiatrist from the mid-80s
and later apparently gives some adults no more insight into
handling a situation involving kids and sex than
my (non-college-educated) parents and Debbie B.'s
parents had in the early 60s.
It's also the case, unfortunately, in today's atmosphere of
near-hysteria about the potential for child abuse (and particularly child
**sexual** abuse) that even enlightened adults can be walking
a minefield if they dare to broach the subject of sex with
children, even their own children. I suspect that in my
own parents' generation, the inhibition was mostly due
to their own hang-ups and embarrassment about the subject.
But these days, an enlightened parent giving his own child
clear information about the facts of life in all their
variety -- clear information about masturbation or homosexuality,
let's say -- might thereby incur a nontrivial risk of
hearing from the local Child Welfare department if the
kid passes on the information (and the identity of its
source) to another child (and through that child to a
paranoid adult, parent or otherwise) or directly to a paranoid adult
(a teacher, a psychologist, a minister, a guidance counsellor,
a pediatrician, or whoever). There's a good movie from the
80s about such a situation spinning out of control:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Mother_(1988_film)
There's a cute YouTube video -- apparently an excerpt from
an episode of an adult-themed cable-TV comedy called
_Weeds_:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeds_(TV_series) --
in which "Uncle Andy" gives his (13-year-old?) nephew
"Shane" a no-holds-barred stand-up-comic style lecture
about masturbation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWzOQTFwRBEIt's very entertaining, but in real life, in some
areas of the country (or in some families)
Uncle Andy could get in a lot of trouble for a
frank talk like that.
Nevertheless, would-be censors (authors of the Child On-line
Protection Act and similar legislation) have been kept
at bay to the extent that all the information a kid needs
is available on-line nowadays, in as much detail as desired.
Including an ocean of free, high-quality pornography.
Even when I was in my 20s, newsstand magazines were still
tiptoeing at the edge of the envelope of what they could show without
having their product seized by the authorities.
Especially the homosexually-oriented magazines. In 1972
the newsstand magazines (like _After Dark_ and _Playgirl_ --
not the stuff you'd have to go to an adult bookstore
to find) could show naked men in speedos, but no genitalia.
Then a few years later, _Playgirl_ would show flaccid penises,
but no erections (maybe the occasional semi-erection).
Then came (by 1980) full erections, in a host of new titles:
_Mandate_, _Honcho_, and the rest. But
you still had to get the magazine past the store clerk,
and you still had to pay money for it. Now, if you
can get on Tumblr, you can get anything you'd care
to see (which may change, now that Yahoo has acquired it,
but that only means it'll go elsewhere).
This widespread exposure is deplored by the religious
right and other social conservatives. But I can't
help but think it's overall a good thing. And it
certainly ties into the Grero agenda -- widespread exposure,
for instance, to gay porn, is desensitizing -- it
makes people less likely to react with disgust to a
form of sex which the viewer might not necessarily want
to participate in himself, as well as, I would think,
making it somewhat more likely that a viewer might be
inclined to "sample the wares", so to speak, himself
(though this would itself be evidence, from the point of
view of the religious right, that pornography will
destroy the fabric of public morality ;-> ). I've
been both surprised and amused to see comments, on some
of the Tumblr blogs and elsewhere, along the lines of "I'm straight
and married and have kids, but I enjoy your blog. I have no
desire to have sex with a man, but I just love looking
at dicks!"
The very first pornography (not labelled as such) that I
reacted to **as pornography** was inadvertently supplied
to me by my father, in the form of a small collection of
bodybuilding magazines left over from before he was
married. Apparently he didn't think there was anything
particularly embarrassing or "dangerous" about these,
since he made no attempt to hide them, and in fact some
of them were in a pile of reading material at the bottom
of a bookcase in the living room. Though I found these within
easy reach, I nevertheless somehow knew I had to be circumspect
about looking at them. I'd wait until my parents were out
of the house, and then get them out and look at them.
I got very aroused looking at them, but I didn't yet know
how to masturbate, so I'd just enjoy the feeling of arousal
until it was time to hide the magazines again by putting them
back exactly where I'd found them. One cover was a
particular favorite:
http://muscletrek.com/60s/jamespark.jpgThe legs were a turn-on, and also something new --
that beautiful bulge in profile in the front of the
briefs (rather daringly prominent by the standards
of the time -- the reflection from the side of the
shiny posing trunks could have been air-brushed out, but in
this case it wasn't). The genital bulge became my primary
erotic fetish in male imagery -- even more than exposed genitalia,
the pouch of a speedo or jockstrap or tight underwear
became the focus of arousal for me. I did finally
learn to climax while looking at (or remembering) that
cover, many times.
It's interesting (and maybe a sign of the naivete of more
repressed times, when people just didn't think about such
possibilities) that those muscle magazines were treated so casually by
my father. As late as 1960, respectable college professors
could have their careers ruined as a result of the police
raiding their homes and finding magazines with images
not much different from those in my father's modest collection:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/greatpinkscare/And five years after that, decency crusaders were watching
the Charles Keating financed propaganda movie "Perversion
for Profit":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perversion_for_Profithttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_J55Fawfgkwhich rails against "physique" magazine as lures of
homosexuality. And as the film's narrator, George Putnam,
warns: "We know that once a person is perverted, it
is practically impossible for that person to adjust
to normal attitudes in regard to sex." But not
Grero attitudes, eh?
Nowadays, the magazines themselves are
collectors' items, and the images are freely available
on the Web. A plethora of riches! "But psychiatrists
believe that prolonged exposure of even the normal
male adult to this type of publication, though he
may not be aware of its true nature, will nevertheless
pervert. Think then of the consequences to the inexperienced
youth, who in purchasing and studying this material,
becomes a pawn for these misfits -- these homosexuals! --
who have a slogan that betrays the evil of the breed:
'Today's conquest, they say, is tomorrow's competition.'
See the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their
conquests. Look here at the young face and bright smile
which could be the hope of the world. But in the other
half of the picture is revealed the seduction of
the innocent."
;->
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