Sex and violence

Goduznt Xzst

Just a question maybe some of the posters here could help me understand. What is the current consensus on why we are more accepting to violence over sex, specifically in regards to children.

I mean, it's common to see children with play swords, guns. Toy soldiers, tanks, knights, robots with weapons... etc. Playing the act of taking the lives of other humans. Yet if you gave a child some dolls that where anatomically correct for the act of playing the act of sex it is abhorrent. Why?

You can watch people getting shot or murdered in the middle of the day, but anything more than a passing reference to sex and the show will get censored.

The act of sex is natural and beneficial. It is as needed as the oxygen we breath. I also find violence natural but non-beneficial. A point I think a lot would agree with.

Why does this imbalance in perception exist? Why is it ok for our children to play murder but not play mate?

*Simone*

Well I think the stigma around sex has still got a lot to do with the Catholic dominance in this country for many years, which is only starting to die out. As for the violence thing - I always thought it was bizzare that people found it acceptable to give children toys to simulate killing, I mean in that case why don't we give them toy needles and toy beer cans, sure it's only "playing" ?

As for why it's not acceptable for children to play "sex" - well, because they're not mentally/physically mature enough to understand what that means (I know the same could be said about violence) but there's just something quite disturbing about even posing that question. I suppose the argument could be that kids can play cops n robbers with toy guns and then think nothing more of it once it's over (for the majority anyway), but confusing them with ideas of sex which they can't fathom and is completely age innapropriate just isn't fair on them, and frankly is extremely irresponsible.

It was these sort of worrying practices that lead to the "Children of God" cult, which advocated 'free love' between children and adults, and subsequently led to a great number of suicides and very messed up adolescents.

Odysseus

Personally I think its quite a valid question, children are sexual creatures as as all humans. Merely from my viewpoint I think you make a valid point about how we accept significant levels of violence in TV, but humans by nature are quite prone to this too.

I'm not going to get into a theorectical debate here as different schools of human behaviour have different viewpoints on this. However, there are certain things that are considered to be age apporpriate and overt sexual behaviour is one of these things, even with what I have said above if I was seeing very overt sexual behaviour in a child it would raise significant concerns about the childs safety for me.

In my experience most children have formulated some concept of the sexual act, though it maybe quite an incorrect one. At the end of the day seeing a child make Ken kiss Barbie would not concern me seeing Ken perform coitis a tergo on Barbie would certainly raise an eyebrow.

So whilst saying that children are sexual beings, I do not mean this to equate with the world of adult sexuality. That is a different ball park we are talking about here, if you get my drift.