How child sexual behavior became a problem.

A lot of laws are passing as of late, aiming to age-gate the Internet and online spaces. A lot of those measures have already been subverted by both children and adults. Nobody likes these new laws and, if everyone starts disrespecting them, soon there will be not enough jails in the world for so many offenders. It will be an unsustainable model. But have you wondered how did we get here? We know that these laws are being passed in the interest of protecting childhood innocence, right? Well… no, not really. But let us pretend they were. How did the concept of “innocence” came to be? The very idea that a child is innocent, or at least should be innocent, is only a few centuries old. Initially, this innocence had to be forced, and it was believed that such an attitude would be beneficial. To understand the reason behind such a recent prohibition, we must examine what life was like for vulnerable individuals around that time. In the past, vulnerable individuals were introduced to adult society early, participating in adult activities and frequenting places where adults gathered. Vulnerable individuals learned a profession in childhood and practiced it in adolescence, usually a time when they started families. This didn’t make them adults, but the fact is that the vulnerable person of that time participated in the adult world without being an adult, a world in which they were encouraged to participate. They were small, they were less capable, but they were by no means considered totally incapable because of their age. Their incapacity would be remedied by interaction with adults; that is, it wasn’t age that mattered, but experience, which can only be gained through life experience. With the Enlightenment, ideas such as “human beings are naturally good, but society corrupts them” and “the mind is a blank slate at the beginning of life” paved the way for the modern concept of innocence, which ultimately led to our concern about what we are teaching our children. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, the child had to be protected from sex, politics, and socialization with adults. The world of the adult and the world of the child were separated: before, there was only one world in which both beings participated. Sounds familiar? That’s one of the earliest forms of age-gating in history. But even after the concept of innocence appeared, sexual wisdom was still accepted if it came gradually. For example, the fact that innocence is a concept that emerged before the twentieth century did not eliminate marriage between teenagers and the pregnancies that could result from it. Childhood innocence was killed off by Freud, but its effect on the collective unconscious remains. In fact, even after Freud, sexuality was still seen as a risk, even for adolescents (Levine, 2002, pages xxix and xxx.). However, these separate worlds can reconnect: as Levine rightly observes, children are entering university, adults are returning to school, among other evidence showing that these worlds tend towards a natural reconciliation, despite child and adult being separate political categories, studied separately (Levine, 2002, page xxxi). The separation between these worlds is artificial. They are different concepts, but concrete subjects are not concepts. We live in the same world and age-gating actually harms both sides of the divide. The effective separation of the worlds of the adult and the child requires a key essential component: the age of consent, which has not always existed. We didn’t act this way before, making this kind of age separation. Looking at history, this concept is relatively recent. The first ages of consent were very low, being increased over the years by movements aimed at sexual purity (Levine, 2002, pages xxxi and xxxii). In England, the first law governing this matter appeared in 1548, and stipulated that no boy should be subjected to sodomy. Then, in 1576, another law was passed, condemning to death anyone who raped a girl under ten years old. Rape, here, should be understood as forced sex, not voluntary sex. Sex before the age of ten, if willingly engaged in, was just legally invalid, but it was not a crime, as forced sex was. The first age of consent as we know it today (that is, the act is a crime whether or not it is voluntary), at least in English territory, was ten years old for girls only. In 1800, in Italy, Germany, and France, the age requirement for a lawful relationship was puberty, when the subject was no longer considered a child, but an adult, gaining the right to participate in adult life. Only with the construction of youth as a distinct period of life, starting in the nineteenth century, were children and adolescents excluded from adult spheres of socialization to dedicate themselves exclusively to education (Killias, 1991, pages 41 a 44; Kilpatrick, 1992, chapter 1). So, yeah, things were not this restrictive. We are led to believe that there was never a time when such relationships were accepted. When historical sexuality is discussed, the focus is on the heterosexual adult couple. This repression is recent, even though the “discovery” of the child as a sexual being, who explores this facet with other children, is already more than a century old. Thus, the concept of the innocent child and that of the sexual child have coexisted and still coexist. But how did things work before these laws? Let’s look at the example of the Jews: the traditional Jewish interpretation of Numbers 31:18 states that God, in saying that the Israelites should keep the virgin girls (called “children” in some translations of Numbers 31:9, such as the Almeida 1819 translation) taken as spoils of war “for themselves,” but kill the boys and also adult women (according to Numbers 31:17), allowed the Israelites to use the captive girls for their sexual gratification as well. While this interpretation is disputed, it does not seem out of place considering that the historical context lacked laws regarding the age of consent, and these girls were Midianites, therefore from an enemy people. Plus, they were spoils of war. I do not think people would care about their consent. We read throughout the books of Kings and Chronicles that the Israelites had adopted practices condemned by God between their exodus from Egypt and the Babylonian exile. What were these practices? It is speculated that one of them was child prostitution, not because this specific type of prostitution was particularly wrong, but because all forms of prostitution were (Petersen, 1986). In an era without an age of consent, it is not strange to conclude that children and adolescents also engaged in prostitution, not that this was an acceptable practice according to the Mosaic or Christian code (Jeremiah 13:27, Ezekiel 43:9, Acts 15:20-29). But, outside the context of prostitution and within the context of marriage, such relationships were acceptable: the Hebrews, as described in the Talmud, could marry and have relations with girls as young as three years and one day old. In ancient Christian communities, the age for the same act was seven. Before that, if the subject had relations with someone before the age of three or seven (depending on the context), the sexual act would be null and void, and the marriage, if it had occurred, would also be null and void. Still on the subject of Christianity, the clergy historically abused their authority to obtain sex, and victims of forced sex were threatened with excommunication if they revealed what had happened (Kilpatrick, 1992, chapter 1). In other cultures, such as ancient Greece, boys were sexually initiated by adult men, in relationships considered pedagogical at the time. It was a task of the man to educate a local boy. This boy would then have this man as his mentor. From him, the boy was to learn masculine virtues, which would be taught through conversation and example. These teachers sometimes took on the role of lovers, and the boy’s sexual education was also the responsibility of this teacher and lover, who was usually a friend of the boy’s father (Petersen, 1986). It seems strange to today’s citizen that homosexuality was considered something “masculine” in distant times, but in Ancient Greece, it was seen by some as part of masculinity. Perhaps it was considered masculine not to need a woman. Something for MRM to think about. In Ancient Rome, boys and girls attended formal dinners wearing little or no clothing and had sexual encounters after the dinner ended (Petersen, 1986; Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, 1991, page 13). Kinsey witnessed similar lascivious events (but often motivated by financial difficulties) during his visit to Rome in the last century, although not as openly, since the times were already different (Wilson, 1981, chapter 7). In the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon to marry and have relationships at the age of eleven (Brongersma, 1986, volume 1, page 174). This is because, at that time, sexual relations that did not involve adultery, bigamy, or other practices unacceptable from a religious point of view (since what was a sin was often also a crime) were lawful. Precocious relationships did not necessarily fall into these categories, so they were not automatically prohibited, provided they were also voluntary. According to Petersen, sexuality becomes a moral problem with Christianity (Petersen, 1986). This is perhaps because, although the law of Moses, for example, did not prohibit sexual relations between two women, but only between man and man, man and animal, woman and animal (Leviticus 18:22-25), which suggests that sex and, therefore, sexual sin requires penetration to occur, Paul said that we should avoid “debauchery” (Galatians 5:19-21). This leaves ample room for speculation on which acts are moral and which are not. Because of this, the prohibitions extended beyond those explicitly written: what acts, besides those prohibited by Mosaic law, constitute debauchery? The use of terms like “debauchery” or “immorality” facilitates the segmentation of the Christian movement into different denominations: since these are terms that vary according to culture, that is, according to time and space, or even from person to person, it is unlikely that two Christians, even trying to follow the Holy Bible literally, will completely agree on what is and what is not sin. Morality changes: what is immoral today was not yesterday and may not be tomorrow (Brongersma, 1986, volume 1, page 19). And this has an effect on Christian morality and the type of church that is successful in this or that era. However, outside the church, scientific research was advancing: in the twentieth century, the work of Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues was published, in which they discovered that sexual experiences before the age of thirteen are not uncommon. Not only that, but, subsequent to this study, the research team stated that the relationship between subjects of very different ages, even when the younger one is “immature,” is normal in other mammals. Sexual games among immature subjects are also pointed out by other research, even in birds. There’s a book about it called Biological Exuberance. Quite a wild book. So far, all of this shows that humans are the only mammals that make a fuss about this phenomenon, and did not do so before, it cannot be said that precocious relationships are abnormal (they are historically frequent and probably remain frequent, even if just online) or unnatural (they occur in nature). In the 1990s, some people began to question childhood innocence as a concept opportunistically applied exclusively to girls, so that the girl was deprived, even early on, of any means of developing self-determination (Jackson & Scott, 2015, pages 47, 48 and 50). The discourse of innocence, especially when applied only to girls, served to subjugate the future woman (Herriot & Hiseler, 2015, pages 293 and 294). This is especially valid because fighting for a girl’s virginity is admitting that she has an interest in losing that virginity, which ends up affirming that she is sexual and, because of this, must be tamed. There would be no need to fight so hard for this if adults were the only “threats” to the purity unwanted by the girl. In the case of homosexual or bisexual boys, Bruce Rind, in his study of the data obtained by Savin-Williams, found that most of the subjects in his sample already identified or suspected their homosexuality or bisexuality in childhood (Rind, 2001). To have that suspicion, you must be able to identify homosexual feelings and tell them apart from regular affection. By the way, this is true also for parents, who can also suspect very early in their child’s life that maybe that kid will grow up queer. They may try to close their eyes to it, but, even if their child coming out to them may be a disappointment (if the parents are conservative), would it really be a surprise? On the other hand, displays of sexualized behavior are not seen as problematic when the sexually active child is a presumably heterosexual boy. Sexuality is more often seen as a problem in female childhood, while the great problem of male childhood is violence, not that their sexuality is always considered healthy (Renold, 2005, pages 23 and 24). Despite the advancement of science, our sexual morality, according to which the “good” relationship is heterosexual, adult, monogamous, marital, and reproductive, still condemns childhood sexuality. Anything outside the norm is “bad” (Mulholland, 2015, page 322). If childhood sexuality doesn’t fit this model, it must be suppressed or, if that’s not possible, repressed. Thus, childhood innocence is not intrinsic, but comes from outside. And if it needs to be defended, it’s because it’s fragile, and it wouldn’t be fragile if it were part of the child’s nature. Innocence, or childhood in general, is an ideal, not the actual child. It is an ideological and educational model, therefore cultural and historical. The clear consequence of this is that self-determination, especially for girls, but also for boys, is denied (Mulholland, 2015, pages 322, 324 and 325). So, now you know what motivates all this over-protection, these new laws popping here and there, from the left and from the right: it is an effort to protect innocence. But from who? Chiefly from children themselves. BLEIBTREU-EHRENBERG, G. Pederasty among primitives: institutionalized initiation and cultic prostitution. In: SANDFORT, T. ; BRONGERSMA, E. ; van NAERSSEN, A. (editors). Male Intergenerational Intimacy: historical, socio-psychological and legal perspectives. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1991. Pages 13 a 30. BRONGERSMA, E. Loving boys: a multidisciplinary study of sexual relations between adult and minor males. Elmhurst: Global Academic Publishers, 1986. HERRIOT, L. ; HISELER, L. E. Documentaries on the sexualization of girls: examining slut-shaming, victim-blaming and what’s being left off-screen. In: RENOLD, E. ; RINGROSE, J. ; EGAN, R. D. (editors). Children, Sexuality and Sexualization. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pages 289 a 304. JACKSON, S. ; SCOTT, S. A sociological history of researching childhood and sexuality: continuities and discontinuities. In: RENOLD, E. ; RINGROSE, J. ; EGAN, R. D. (editors). Children, Sexuality and Sexualization. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pages 39 a 55. KILLIAS, M. 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Girls, boys and junior sexualities: exploring children’s gender and sexual relations in the primary school. New York: Routledge, 2005. RIND, B. Gay and bisexual adolescent boys’ sexual experiences with men: an empirical examination of psychological correlates in a nonclinical sample. Archives of Sexual Behavior, New York, volume 30, number 4. 2001. WILSON, P. The man they called a monster: sexual experiences between men and boys. Sidney: Cassel Australia Limited, 1981. (https site) https://miajrevajhoj.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/how-child-sexual-behavior-became-a-problem/ [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst]