by Dr. Caelus » Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:31 pm
Lets talk about "sexualization of minors".
When I was very, very small, I proposed marriage to our pastor's daughter during our Sunday school class. I promised she would have apple pies and a mustang convertible (someday). She declined my proposal and I accepted that. No one ever really questioned, though, where a small boy had learned the concept of courtship (however clumsy or transactionary it might have been).
When I was a little older, I was drafted to serve as a ringbearer in my uncle's wedding. They dressed me in a little tux, just like the men in the wedding party, and people raved over how 'handsome' I was. I don't really recall anyone pointing out that a wedding is a tradition celebrating a sexual union between two people, and that I'd been costumed up for the ceremony to look like a miniature copy of the groom.
My favorite movies in elementary school were Robin Hood and Three Musketeers. I remember reading the slow-pitch junior novelizations of them. I loved the romance as well as the action, and dreamed of being the debonaire swashbuckler sweeping damsels off their feet. I even dressed up as D'artagnan for Halloween in fifth grade, hoping the person I had a crush on would be impressed. They were not, but I also don't remember anyone objected to a minor admiring a romantic hero.
Morgana Macawber, Tenel Ka, and Blackarachnia. Enough said, I think.
When I got older, I read Shadows of the Empire, Courtship of Princess Leia, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Glory Road. Very little objection to the content in those books.
And throughout there were Valentine's Day parties, dances, etc., where everyone was supposed to be preoccupied with who liked who and who was going where with whom.
And the transition to actual dating was sort of especially memorable for me because the day in seventh grade that I got an official girlfriend was the day all of those totally innocent and 'unsexualized' minors stopped calling me a 'fag' (or other permutations thereof). Of course, no one had ever been overly bothered that the other kids knew that word or wondered where they had heard it.
This is to say nothing of the incessant reminders that I was a boy and the extensive instruction from society in general on what expectations that entailed at that time and what it would entail in the future.
So, between the deep-baked traditions of Christian America, the movies based on centuries old romance stories, the cartoons with their comical will-they-or-won't-theys, the geeky scifi novels, the school dances, and the stupid candy hearts no one should ever actually eat, I feel like I was pretty thoroughly 'sexualized' by my 18th birthday.
But somehow, that sort of indoctrination, that pervasive, nonstop, in-your-face reinforcement of 'this is what we do' never really raises any concerns, except among - maybe - those parents who are trying to raise their chidren with no knowledge of sex beyond, 'The wife submits to her husband.'
Instead, people lose their minds over a grown man wearing a rainbow shirt or a cartoon character not identifying with either of the two most popular genders, because they believe that simple awareness of the lack of universal condemnation of same sex marriage, trans* people, or nonbinary individuals will suddenly 'sexualize' their children.
)
And it's that prejudice, among other things, we keep on fighting.
Say it with me! 
