On sex and education

 There was something I wrote about on social media years ago that was clumsily worded and has been greatly distorted since.

The book Clan of the Cave Bear is a fiction that described life among early hominids and made me think about how human sexuality evolved.

In the book, children grew up seeing adults have sex. Sometimes the younger children would pretend to have sex, but if penetration accidentally happened, they became embarrassed and quickly separated. Children became adults in their society when puberty hit, and became available for sex at that time. I think this is a reasonably accurate historic model.

I think the age of consent should be lowered, because it would give young people better access to resources they might need and treats them as competent. In addition to that, comprehensive sexual education needs to be available, and teens should be encouraged to postpone sex, anyway. 

Masturbation should be encouraged as a healthy part of life. Teens should be encouraged to figure out what their personal sexual proclivities are, and taught how to look for compatible partners rather than being thrown into the current trial-and-error dating culture. 

I do think that it's good to normalize nudity. Kids should know what real bodies look like so they don't become ashamed of their own. I think kids should be told what sex is when they're old enough to ask where babies come from. I think that kids should be introduced to concepts around sex as they start showing an interest in them. Preserve most of the mystery until they hit adolescence, then initiate them with a rite of passage and give them a full education. (Rites of passage are incredibly important in societies; the lack of them in our current culture has contributed to an extended adolescent mindset among Millennials. This and helicopter parents are socially engineered phenomena.)

I don't encourage people having sex in front of kids; kids shouldn't be allowed in strip clubs. I do think that our society should be ready for teens who start looking for pornography by providing access to content that teaches consent culture, safe sex practices, and how to have mutually enjoyable sex.

Young people should be discouraged from engaging in sexual relationships with significantly older people, but not forbidden. The younger person should be the one who initiates in these scenarios. Recognize that the younger person might not be getting their needs met from their peers. Our country has not invested enough in social infrastructure that could help us through scenarios like this.

I think prostitution should be legalized and hookers unionize. There should be brothels to keep hookers safe and rules to protect them from being exploited by the brothels. Having prostitutes available takes social pressure off other women.

Purity culture causes a lot of real world problems, which is completely at odds with how Jesus preached love and non-judgement. He didn't preach about sexual morality. It's time to get over these outdated ideas that are about control, not about spirituality. 

One note about the Sermon on the Mount; I suspect the section on adultery was inaccurately remembered at the time when it was written down sometime later. The context, which implies the traditional ban on adultry, is incongruous to the parable. What Jesus says is that anyone who ever looked at another person lustfully is guilty of adultery- meaning that it's a pretty easy mistake to make. Then Jesus says, "If your eye causes you to stumble, you gouge it out!" I interpret this as being tongue-in-cheek; everyone has misjudged a step in their life (once again, an easy mistake to make if you're not paying close attention), and it would be a horrendous overreaction to gouge out an eye over this. Likewise, Jesus is saying the punishment for adultery is a horrendous overreaction. My interpretation is backed up by how Jesus saved a woman from being stoned. 

(So I guess I worded things poorly a couple times when I've said Jesus doesn't preach about sexual morality, but that's a nitpicky thing for people to jump on me about because I'm right where it matters: Jesus didn't denounce homosexuality, and the Bible seems to attempt to cover up that Jesus didn't denounce adultry, either.)

(Notice that there has never been a pope who gouged out his own eyes after stumbling, so they clearly didn't think the parable is serious.)