Photo by Flickr user SunriseOn7. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Lilith of Evil Slutopia fingers the bullshit double standard that's significantly not on display regarding Vanity Fair's overwhelmingly sexualizing cover and photo spread on 16-year-old Justin Bieber. (The photos, which I'm obviously too polite to repost here, show Bieber covered with lipstick, with 10 different women's disembodied hands pawing him, shown in vaseline-softened-lens focus with his shirt unbuttoned, etc.)

If Miley Cyrus had, at age 16, posed for similar photographs there would have been a huge scandal, everyone from the ladies of the View to Bill O'Reilly would be talking about it, Vanity Fair would be accused of oversexualizing teenagers, Miley would be called a slut, and she would be forced to issue an apology about how sorry and embarrassed she was. (There might even be an action alert from the One Million Moms.)

Source: Evil Slutopia

I think that's about right. By 16 many children, both boys and girls, are perfectly capable of sexual feelings, and are already often in the midst of sexual exploration. With each other! And to a point in development terms it's perfectly natural, normal, and healthy. Again, with each other!

What's going on here, with the considerable adult sexualization of Bieber, is neither normal, natural, or healthy!

Since haven't historically placed a property-value premium on boy's virginity we tend not to see anything wrong with precocious sexualization or adult predation. Especially when the sexualization is heterosexual. But adult sexual intervention in child sexual development still fucks them up.

Bieber, like Cyrus, like all children, is not an adult plaything. Sexualizing him is not ok for him. It might seem funny to adults but it's not a joke. It's not that he's a boy, it's not that Cyrus was a girl. It's that in cognitive and social (if not physical) terms they're still children!

One of the things that basically characterizes an adult is that two or four years isn't all that long. But for children the period from roughly 14 to 18 is really, really critical. In two years Bieber will almost certainly have completed his psychological and social maturation and will thus be prepared for all the real adult sex and sexuality he wants. If he doesn't get it then like waaaaaay too many others before him he's likely to retain a very juvenile and also likely dysfunctional approach to sex. For the remaining 60-80 odd years he's an adult. Why short-circuit all that for a few titillating shits and giggles now?

Sweet mother of pearl!

Update: In comments an anonymous poster pointed out Amelia McDonell-Parry's shameful deplorable sexualization of then-minors Nick Jonas and Taylor Lautner in a Frisky post called "21 Guys We’re Ashamed To Say We’d Totally Screw."

If Anonymous is seriously concerned about the issue of sexual predation on adolescent boys as well as girls, and not (as I sort of get the impression) just pointing out equivalences in order to excuse doing nothing about male predation on girls, he might want to take a look at Lil Wayne and the Problem of Confusing Sexual Assault Victims With Male Sexual Role Models as well. In that case Wayne's male mentor ordered him to accept a blowjob he'd ordered a teenage girl to perform.  Which, when you think about it... as Wayne himself has... is doubly screwed up.

Ok gang, this is really, really important. Rev. Debra Haffner of Sexuality and Religion, who’s been instrumental in the development and promotion of the excellent Unitarian-Universalist sex-ed curriculum, says the perpetual wildfire stories about rampant sex by pre-teens verge on fantasy. Sex fantasies. Sex fantasies of adults. More specifically, fevered fantasies of very young girls tossing around unreciprocated blowjobs to cluelessly privileged young boys are similarly problematic. Here’s Deb. I want to really emphasize the last sentence in my excerpt because it’s got very large, very real consequences for young people. (Emphais mine)

I’ve long argued in my books… that oral sex in the middle school is largely NOT happening. I’ve said that I can remember the name of the girl in the eighth grade who was offering oral sex, and that perhaps today there might be a few more, but my sense from working with teens around the country is that most middle schoolers are still worrying about kissing and that oral sex scandals in middle schools is largely a media myth.

There’s new national probability data from Indiana University that backs that up. The new IU study finds that only 13% of 14 and 15 year old boys had received oral sex, matching pretty closely the 12% of girls those ages who say they offer it. One in ten girls that age say that they have received oral sex, also challenging the myth that girls are always the ones performing, boys receiving.

The numbers jump once teens are juniors and seniors in high school, but still only a minority of teens ages 16 and 17 have had oral sex ever. One third of the boys and 23% of the girls had received oral sex; one quarter of the girls and 20% of the boys had offered it. Few had had same sex partners. Teenagers are just not as sexually experienced as most adults believe.

Source: Sexuality and Religion

On a personal note, since my children happen to be middle-school age and since I happen to be pretty deeply involved in school activities as a parent volunteer Haffner’s observations resonate pretty strongly. Are there sexual and sexualized antics? Yes. Are there very many? No. Are those antics met with more alarm or annoyance than admiration by their peers? Yes. Is it widespread? Bwahahaha… no, definitely not. Final question: is my school representative of all middle schools everywhere? No, not particularly, but in terms of both parent and student demographics and mores it is highly indicative. But I digress…

The next bit is going to sound like another digression. It’s not. There’s a wry joke in auto mechanic circles that there are two things every Volvo owner knows: first, that Volvos never have mechanical problems; second, that “mine’s the only exception.” Well, turns out there’s a similar meme that affects young people. For instance it’s pretty well known that about half of college students are still virgins in their sophomore year. But it’s also well known that if you ask college students what the percentage is they too know two things: first, that every college-age student has had sex; second, that “I’m the only exception.”

So here’s a fun question. At what age do most kids begin thinking “most people my age are already having sex?” Or at least “...are already giving and/or getting oral sex?” My guess is it begins as early as middle school.

Next question: Where do most kids who get that message? My guess would be that only a very small percentage are getting them from direct evidence from sexually precocious peers. Most, however, are getting them from second- or third-hand rumors, inferences, or false braggadocio. (As Haffner points out elsewhere in her post, this is no different than my or her own experiences in pre “sexual revolution” middle school.)

Last question: What impact do you think it has on children when adults go promoting absolutely wild projections narratives about child sexual behavior? Again, based on my own first-, second-, and third-hand experience both as a middle-schooler and now as a parent, is that such narratives reinforce a climate of peer pressure that leaves kids… and indeed people of all ages including adults… with a sense that if they’re not doing what, realistically, they really don’t yet feel ready for they’re “falling behind” or otherwise being “left out.” And gee, hmm, I wonder what impact feeling left out or falling behind has on people between the ages of, say, eleven and twenty one?

Word to the wise, m’kay? There’s probably no way, really, none, that we can stop asshole adults from spreading bullshit rumors about what they “know” school kids are doing these days. Asking a correspondent at a local news affiliate to refrain is about as unrealistic as trying to get dogs not to sniff each other’s butts. But there is something you can do: if you’ve got children in or approaching middle school age sit them down, tell them about the stories, and tell them that no matter what they hear it’s just not true. Let them know that a) you know they’ve probably already heard about it and that b) they probably already know it based on their own experience that it’s just not true. Extra credit: say the same thing to your high-school students. Say the same thing to your college-age friends, family, peers, and offspring. And, not to put too fine a point on it, say it to your 34-year-old “pickup artist” associates who grouse that they’ve “only” had an exact average number of partners instead of the mazillions of partners they think “everyone else” is having. Beyond-the-call-of-duty Credit: pass word along to any breathless news broadcasters, parenting magazine journalists, and rumor-mill passing Facebook buddies you might know as well.

—-

One last point: I just want to point out Haffner’s statistics that, contrary to highly-gendered narratives, at all ages when boys and girls begin offering each other oral sex they almost all offering each other oral sex. It’s not just girls giving blowjobs. It’s not just boys receiving. I’d also point out that her statistics are consistent with similar studies going back at least a decade (the earliest such I know of) and they’re also consistent with my own early experiences and those of most of my peers.

I think this is another instance where the reality (it’s pretty bilateral) goes against the message adults propagate (only gender “dominated” girls and maybe gay boys give, only gender “privileged” boys receive.)

As adults we’ve got a great deal of influence over the expectations that are set and delivered to young people. The first trick is not to fall victim to our own breathless myths and rumors.

Pulling together several themes from the last couple of days, here’s in interesting post from last month by Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper about a mediated sexual assault on rapper Lil Wayne when he was 11 years old. She’s quoting from a movie about him where he’s telling a protégé nicknamed “Twist” about an incident his own mentor, nicknamed “Baby,” instigated. (Emphasis hers.)

Wayne tells Twist that Baby, Wayne’s father figure, was one of the men encouraging the woman to perform oral sex on him. “I’m a do you like Baby and them did me,” Wayne informs him.

After the documentary was filmed, Lil’ Wayne spoke about his childhood sexual assault again, in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Kimmel goaded Wayne into talking about “losing his virginity” at the age of 11. Then, Kimmel—along with, oddly, Charlie Gibson, who was also a guest on the show that night—teamed up to tease Wayne over the incident, which they presented as an impressive display of Wayne’s manhood. Except that this time, Wayne was no longer up for joking about the matter, and he finally explained to Kimmel that the experience was a negative one. It was also revealed that the woman who was being encouraged to “suck little Wayne’s little dick” was 14 years old.

After the Kimmel segment aired, Cara at the Curvature wrote an excellent piece about the cultural tendency to respond to sexual assaults against males by recasting the assault as a positive sexual experience for the victim…

She said it here.

Quick note, Cara’s post at the Curvature really is a great one, as is a post from Sociological Images that inspired her.

Anyway, Hess concludes with

When sexual assault against males is excused as a joke or even held up as a badge of honor, that doesn’t just work to erase victims after the fact. This attitude directly causes sexual assaults. Twist is told he needs to have sex whether he wants to or not, just like Wayne did before him.

Yikes!

Here’s a handful of ideas we probably need to spend a little more time thinking about… and encouraging others to think about as well.

• sexual assault on male victims is not well-understood, and consequently not taken seriously
• male sexual awakening begins considerably later than most people seem to assume
• gendered allegations that it’s “natural” for boys to already be ready for sex are incorrect, and therefore if a boy ends up in a sexual situation at age 11 (as in Wayne’s case) or even 4 (as in mine) the presumption is that “he’s just getting an early start” is also (deeply) incorrect.
• Pressure to become precociously sexual has consequences on boys or, more subtly but no less incorrect…

• if the consequences for boys look different than the consequences for girls then they are thought to be of no consequences at all

and finally

• if boys are pressured and/or feel pressured to be precocious — either by their elders, other boys, or by girls who may already be beginning to feel sexual — they may try to fake their degree of knowledge and interest and may try to rely on social scripts from… less than ideal sources

Something else to consider: as adults it sure seems like a lot of us have a general sense of amnesia and/or avoidance of memories of that part our lives. Nevertheless it seems to be a pretty formative period where a huge number of general social assumptions are put into practice. Those of us with children, at least, and really I think everyone who plans to live among peers who are even slightly younger than we are need to reassess our own experiences and, where possible, see if we can provide more structure for children in, especially, their very early adolescence.

Photo by Flickr user Joan Thewlis. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Oof, here’s an interesting conceptual turnaround from Holly of The Pervocracy

It’s kinda funny to me when people talk about shaved pubes being suggestive of prepubescence, because I’ve shaved mine since about age 16. I was hairy when I was innocent and just growing into my womanhood, then as an adult I was bare.

I can’t help but associate childhood (well, jailbaithood, at least) with having pubes.

She said it here.

It’s kind of like, woah! Good point. I mean, being surrounded as I happen to be with children in the earliest throes of puberty it’s… pretty darn clear their bodies (9-12) begin to develop long before their autonomous, independent sexualities begin to (13-16.)

Which means if you think a boy or girl is ready for sex just because they’ve got pubic hair you’re… um… a sexualizer? Pedophile? Clueless moron who ought to refrain from expressing your opinions, let alone dispensing advice, in the presence of children under maybe age 18?

Oh, and just to be clear? Anyone who thinks a grown woman’s vulva, or man’s penis looks juvenile without pubic hair a) has never changed diapers and b) has very little experience with grown women’s vulvas or grown men’s penises. Because, hello? Adult genitals aren’t just children’s genitals slightly larger and with hair any more than adult’s faces are children’s faces after the tooth fairy gets done with them.

Please don’t take any of this to mean I think anybody ought to do anything with his or her pubic hair. At any age. Seriously, to dictate what anybody should do with the hair on their body would be as… as… stupid as telling them what to do with the hair on their heads. (And as far as I know the people who care most about the latter would be… oh, say… the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, for women, and the Taliban for men and women. Just to name two.)

But!

_hile I’m not saying what anyone should or shouldn’t do with their hair, pubic or otherwise, I am saying that Holly makes perfect sense: healthy, non-sexual, non-sexualized children are probably going to be way into puberty… and therfore have quite a lot of pubic hair… before they really decide what they want to do about it.