Thank you for not paywalling this post Jenny. I hope it stimulates much discussion as I am curious about adult motives concerning children and exposing them to sexual concepts at younger and younger ages.
I am deeply perplexed by the sick need for so many adults to ensure that children should realize early on that sex is natural and they should acquire their sexual knowledge through public school teachers and administrators, drag queens reading to them in public libraries or watching a trans-man joyfully jiggle his naked artificial breasts before a US President on the Whitehouse lawn while broadcast casually on the nightly news.
I want to vomit at the thought of how a little innocent mind must be trying to comprehend as it is shocked with images and concepts never meant for such a little brain, heart and soul.
It is nothing but dark and evil to me to think that children should suffer this indoctrination at the hands of people who think it their virtue to enlighten our children and grandchildren.
I have found my voice and have lost friends and am left with a few fractured family relationships due to the child gender ideology. I refuse the pronouns, the mockery of nature’s gender biology, and guard my grandbabies like a night-watch woman. I don’t care what my fate becomes because of it. I pray (and I am religious) that droves of sensible adults will rise out of this infliction and find the guts to end it.
Responsible and mature adults know that sexual signals present on a timeline consistent with natural development. Why is it that some feel the need to bypass nature’s pathway and alter its outcome? The sinister participants in this game must be held responsible for their mischief thus far. We have come so far in exposing creepy pedophiles who dare to come near our children. But at the same time, we allow this carnival like array of sexual confusion creep into the daily peripheral of our vulnerable children. Every “little” soul deserves the advocacy of adults who realize this needs to stop.
1000 percent agree with every word of this. Every child deserves to be protected from exposure to inappropriate content that they do not understand how to process or make any sense of. What is wrong with all of these narcissistic adults who do not understand this basic concept? I just don’t get it. It is so incredibly disturbing on so many levels.
Sex has a biological purpose. That’s not it’s only virtue of course, but when that purpose is overlooked, demeaned, or even worse, forgotten, hell happens, as you have aptly described. “Sexual puritans” is language that tarnishes the social--or “sacred”--construct of marriage. And its sometimes fruit, children, ie the continuation of our species. When, not if, sex is reduced to orgasm by any means, it’s either extinction or “Brave New World” Aldous Huxley 1932.
A lot of suffering could be avoided for a lot of people (both adults and children) if people simply followed biblical morality. It may be countercultural these days, but it is still common sense as well as a biblically faithful thing to do to live a life of chastity before marriage and fidelity within marriage. And a healthy society does not allow goofy trendy social experiments to harm children. Jesus Christ said, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he was drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)
Bang-on, Jenny. As a recovering liberal, I still experience quivers of ignominy at the thought of having been aligned with the left for so long. I'm quite convinced Churchill had an orbuculum or was an accurate reader of tea leaves. 😂 I still remember---as a young kid in the UK---how the mainstream British media/gutter press/tabloids---especially the commie BBC---used to deride Mary Whitehouse's concern for child welfare and public decency. They all pooh-poohed her Christian, right-wing, prudish exhortations. (The TV programme "Spitting Image" springs to mind).
Based liberals have since acknowledged the error of their ways (thank G-d). It's time to make sex an intimate, private and undisclosed boudoir activity again. Also, the love that refuses to shut up needs to revert to "the love that dare not speak its name". What is now desanctified must be resanctified. Cleanse the pedagogical well, that poisoned us in the first place, and restore the West to a place of sanity and reality which, above all, safeguards its women and children.
Adam, I know exactly what you mean. When I think back on how contemptuously we laughed at the religious, how pridefully we scorned their concerns, I feel quite ashamed. My only defence is that I was young, and callow, and unwise. People's default setting is conservative, and in a healthy society that allows some space for the wayward types like myself. But it doesn't work the other way around, does it?
I personally find your paradigm incomplete. Freedom in any society brings with it its homely twin, Responsibility. First and foremost, my Freedom should not impinge anyone else's. If it does, my Freedom becomes License, and I licentious.
We see this in many things. Take “my body, my choice” for example. Women took the Freedom to make their reproductive decisions. Too many forgot that that also meant they took the Responsibility for those decisions. And, as Tim Carney has pointed out, in too many cases their male partners let them have their Freedom and decided to no longer be responsible for the consequences.
Sex (including masturbation) is a social act, i.e., other people are involved. I have a Responsibility to my partner when engaging in the act – do no harm, first and foremost. I am also Responsible for raising my children to become adults. If my sexual "Freedom" impedes my (or my partner's) children's journey to adulthood, then I am not being Responsible.
While I am not religious (spiritual sometimes, tho), I recognize that this concept of Responsibility is embedded in almost all major religions. As so many have fallen away from Religion and religious experiences, they have lost sight of Responsibility. Responsibility lies at the heart of our culture wars. "Wokeness" is inherently irresponsible – no fixed boundaries, only those imposed by what is popular in the moment. Conversely, the foundation of "Anti-wokeness" is the Responsibility of the individual to the rest of their society to practice their freedoms without harming others.
John, I actually agree with you that my formulation is incomplete -- you are on target when you say that responsibility is the forgotten piece. I have actually written another piece saying something along those lines...Must publish it one of these days.
I'm both optimistic and pessimistic. Make sex private again would be great, but with the incessant spit-swapping and humping on the screen, the "family friendly" drag shows and story time, the garbage pushed in many public schools, I don't have high hope. I am no prude and was quite wild in the 70's and early 80's, but it never occurred to me to drag children into that scene. While I understand the power of the sex drive (just look at the world population), an unhinged public free-for-all leads to a dark place. I made many stupid choices along with the sexual revolution, but I believe I would never have left stupid behind if it hadn't been for having a childhood free of adult perversions in my face at school, in the library, on the TV and on the White House lawn. Swinging the pendulum 180 in the opposite direction will also not help. The health classes at schools are, hopefully, following biological science to teach students about their bodies. I believe parents would be helped by providing materials to use to talk to their children about sex, choices and consequences. Something else that, imo, is contributing to the societal mania on sex is the later age that many people marry today. According to statista, in 1970, the average age of marriage for women was 21 and for men it was 23. Compare that to 2023 where for women it was 28 and for men it was 30. Make partner selection and earlier commitment great again. https://www.statista.com/chart/7031/americans-are-tying-the-knot-older-than-ever/
I had the same idea but ideas don't come about in a vacuum. My father divorced my mother and left her with 5 children to start over and raise with middling child support. I saw the choices and difficulties she had to face. The reason we weren't in the poor house is because our mother moved us to her hometown where they both grew up and she had help from our blue-collar grandparents while she went back to school. I was terrified of ever being in that situation. Ironically, probably the best marriage in our neighborhood was a couple that had married at 18 and 16. There's something very romantic about committing to another person while still young and building a history together. I never encouraged our children to put off marriage until later, although I did encourage my daughters to develop marketable skills. The younger daughter, now 34, has finally married after 7 years with her now husband. There's too much worry and focus, imo, from her generation wanting to have everything lined up perfectly before marriage and children. I'm reminded of a young woman writing about this and how she and her husband were in a small apartment, and they turned a tiny closet into a nursery for their baby. She said their friends thought they were crazy and should have waited until more established financially and able to move into a bigger place. She had no regrets.
Sex has long been debated, written about, challenged, forbidden, celebrated, the list goes on. But, like everything else, this too is cyclical. The Romans were quite open about it and homosexuality and orgies were not uncommon. Then the Empire fell and there was peace, war, peace, etc. all the way into the late 1800s with the rise of the Victorians which included very strict sexual behavior and dress. Then came WWI. Not long after, the Roaring 20s were freeing everyone from these confines and homosexuality (particularly in Paris) as well as orgies became all the rage. Then came WWII. Restraint followed until the Vietnam War and the Sexual Revolution in the late 60s and early 70s. The "World as a whole" has been at peace now since 1945 with only smaller wars in distant lands which don't effect day to day life back home. Essentially, it's been more than 79 years and with all this freedom the domestic agenda has lost its way. What I find most concerning now is the Winds of War generating around the World from Ukraine/Russia to China to North Korea to the Middle East. The reality of WWIII building up is sobering and though most US citizens seem oblivious to this, there will likely come a point where arguing over gender friendly bathrooms will cease and downright survival will catapult the population forward. Watch how quickly people change their concerns when food, water and safety grow scarce. This will likely be the "reset" that the human race is long overdue for. So sad it takes a war to wake people up.
Yes, puritans are never right. But I thionk where the problem lies in this debate is that in modern society the radicals are the puritans.
A piritan is a person who is a self-righteous follower of an ideology. In the past, as Chritianity was the only game in town, puritans were going to be the hardcore protestants who saw themselves required to mind the morals of everyone in society. They were always radicals. Seeking to subvert the old order and replace it with something they condiered to be purer.
In today's society, puritanism has been taken up by a new breeed of zealot, who has replaced religion with political extremism. These zealots are the new puritans. They wish to scrub society clean of the imagined evils of discrimination and bigotry. Part of that is being doctrinnaire sexual radicals.
So it is not the middle versus the puritans to the right and the radical to the left, but the middle with the puritans to the left and the conservatives to the right.
"Puritan" is a word that evokes different things to different people. For some, it evokes images of prim, proper, humorless unpleasant people. For others, it simply evokes images of faithful Christians. Both images have some historical truth to them. Puritans at their best were simply faithful Christians, but they were not always at their best. None of us are.
This quote makes me think of themes you write about:
Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less there is within, the more there must be without.
Edmund Burke
If one has a conspiracy theory oriented mindset this is fuel for that lol
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,
- in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, - in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, -in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.
Thank you for not paywalling this post Jenny. I hope it stimulates much discussion as I am curious about adult motives concerning children and exposing them to sexual concepts at younger and younger ages.
I am deeply perplexed by the sick need for so many adults to ensure that children should realize early on that sex is natural and they should acquire their sexual knowledge through public school teachers and administrators, drag queens reading to them in public libraries or watching a trans-man joyfully jiggle his naked artificial breasts before a US President on the Whitehouse lawn while broadcast casually on the nightly news.
I want to vomit at the thought of how a little innocent mind must be trying to comprehend as it is shocked with images and concepts never meant for such a little brain, heart and soul.
It is nothing but dark and evil to me to think that children should suffer this indoctrination at the hands of people who think it their virtue to enlighten our children and grandchildren.
I have found my voice and have lost friends and am left with a few fractured family relationships due to the child gender ideology. I refuse the pronouns, the mockery of nature’s gender biology, and guard my grandbabies like a night-watch woman. I don’t care what my fate becomes because of it. I pray (and I am religious) that droves of sensible adults will rise out of this infliction and find the guts to end it.
Responsible and mature adults know that sexual signals present on a timeline consistent with natural development. Why is it that some feel the need to bypass nature’s pathway and alter its outcome? The sinister participants in this game must be held responsible for their mischief thus far. We have come so far in exposing creepy pedophiles who dare to come near our children. But at the same time, we allow this carnival like array of sexual confusion creep into the daily peripheral of our vulnerable children. Every “little” soul deserves the advocacy of adults who realize this needs to stop.
I really, really, love this. Thank you, night-watch woman!
1000 percent agree with every word of this. Every child deserves to be protected from exposure to inappropriate content that they do not understand how to process or make any sense of. What is wrong with all of these narcissistic adults who do not understand this basic concept? I just don’t get it. It is so incredibly disturbing on so many levels.
Sex has a biological purpose. That’s not it’s only virtue of course, but when that purpose is overlooked, demeaned, or even worse, forgotten, hell happens, as you have aptly described. “Sexual puritans” is language that tarnishes the social--or “sacred”--construct of marriage. And its sometimes fruit, children, ie the continuation of our species. When, not if, sex is reduced to orgasm by any means, it’s either extinction or “Brave New World” Aldous Huxley 1932.
A lot of suffering could be avoided for a lot of people (both adults and children) if people simply followed biblical morality. It may be countercultural these days, but it is still common sense as well as a biblically faithful thing to do to live a life of chastity before marriage and fidelity within marriage. And a healthy society does not allow goofy trendy social experiments to harm children. Jesus Christ said, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he was drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)
Bang-on, Jenny. As a recovering liberal, I still experience quivers of ignominy at the thought of having been aligned with the left for so long. I'm quite convinced Churchill had an orbuculum or was an accurate reader of tea leaves. 😂 I still remember---as a young kid in the UK---how the mainstream British media/gutter press/tabloids---especially the commie BBC---used to deride Mary Whitehouse's concern for child welfare and public decency. They all pooh-poohed her Christian, right-wing, prudish exhortations. (The TV programme "Spitting Image" springs to mind).
Based liberals have since acknowledged the error of their ways (thank G-d). It's time to make sex an intimate, private and undisclosed boudoir activity again. Also, the love that refuses to shut up needs to revert to "the love that dare not speak its name". What is now desanctified must be resanctified. Cleanse the pedagogical well, that poisoned us in the first place, and restore the West to a place of sanity and reality which, above all, safeguards its women and children.
Adam, I know exactly what you mean. When I think back on how contemptuously we laughed at the religious, how pridefully we scorned their concerns, I feel quite ashamed. My only defence is that I was young, and callow, and unwise. People's default setting is conservative, and in a healthy society that allows some space for the wayward types like myself. But it doesn't work the other way around, does it?
"Make sex private again." I totally agree.
A green light to kink shaming perverts (men with paraphilias) who don't keep their kinks behind closed doors. That includes AGPs
I personally find your paradigm incomplete. Freedom in any society brings with it its homely twin, Responsibility. First and foremost, my Freedom should not impinge anyone else's. If it does, my Freedom becomes License, and I licentious.
We see this in many things. Take “my body, my choice” for example. Women took the Freedom to make their reproductive decisions. Too many forgot that that also meant they took the Responsibility for those decisions. And, as Tim Carney has pointed out, in too many cases their male partners let them have their Freedom and decided to no longer be responsible for the consequences.
Sex (including masturbation) is a social act, i.e., other people are involved. I have a Responsibility to my partner when engaging in the act – do no harm, first and foremost. I am also Responsible for raising my children to become adults. If my sexual "Freedom" impedes my (or my partner's) children's journey to adulthood, then I am not being Responsible.
While I am not religious (spiritual sometimes, tho), I recognize that this concept of Responsibility is embedded in almost all major religions. As so many have fallen away from Religion and religious experiences, they have lost sight of Responsibility. Responsibility lies at the heart of our culture wars. "Wokeness" is inherently irresponsible – no fixed boundaries, only those imposed by what is popular in the moment. Conversely, the foundation of "Anti-wokeness" is the Responsibility of the individual to the rest of their society to practice their freedoms without harming others.
John, I actually agree with you that my formulation is incomplete -- you are on target when you say that responsibility is the forgotten piece. I have actually written another piece saying something along those lines...Must publish it one of these days.
I'm both optimistic and pessimistic. Make sex private again would be great, but with the incessant spit-swapping and humping on the screen, the "family friendly" drag shows and story time, the garbage pushed in many public schools, I don't have high hope. I am no prude and was quite wild in the 70's and early 80's, but it never occurred to me to drag children into that scene. While I understand the power of the sex drive (just look at the world population), an unhinged public free-for-all leads to a dark place. I made many stupid choices along with the sexual revolution, but I believe I would never have left stupid behind if it hadn't been for having a childhood free of adult perversions in my face at school, in the library, on the TV and on the White House lawn. Swinging the pendulum 180 in the opposite direction will also not help. The health classes at schools are, hopefully, following biological science to teach students about their bodies. I believe parents would be helped by providing materials to use to talk to their children about sex, choices and consequences. Something else that, imo, is contributing to the societal mania on sex is the later age that many people marry today. According to statista, in 1970, the average age of marriage for women was 21 and for men it was 23. Compare that to 2023 where for women it was 28 and for men it was 30. Make partner selection and earlier commitment great again. https://www.statista.com/chart/7031/americans-are-tying-the-knot-older-than-ever/
When I was young, I got the idea that marrying young was a terrible idea. I have not (I hope) passed that idea onto my son. I see its value now.
I had the same idea but ideas don't come about in a vacuum. My father divorced my mother and left her with 5 children to start over and raise with middling child support. I saw the choices and difficulties she had to face. The reason we weren't in the poor house is because our mother moved us to her hometown where they both grew up and she had help from our blue-collar grandparents while she went back to school. I was terrified of ever being in that situation. Ironically, probably the best marriage in our neighborhood was a couple that had married at 18 and 16. There's something very romantic about committing to another person while still young and building a history together. I never encouraged our children to put off marriage until later, although I did encourage my daughters to develop marketable skills. The younger daughter, now 34, has finally married after 7 years with her now husband. There's too much worry and focus, imo, from her generation wanting to have everything lined up perfectly before marriage and children. I'm reminded of a young woman writing about this and how she and her husband were in a small apartment, and they turned a tiny closet into a nursery for their baby. She said their friends thought they were crazy and should have waited until more established financially and able to move into a bigger place. She had no regrets.
Outstanding. Precise. A powerful salvo.
Thank you Anna.
">Agape love is the highest and most noble form of love, characterized by selflessness and sacrifice.
>Eros love is passionate and intense, but can be fleeting and unreliable.
>Philia love is the love of friendship, based on mutual affection and loyalty.
>Storge love is the natural, instinctual love between family members.
Each of these loves has its own unique value and importance, and they often overlap and blend together in complex ways."
This is lovely, thank you for sharing.
Sex has long been debated, written about, challenged, forbidden, celebrated, the list goes on. But, like everything else, this too is cyclical. The Romans were quite open about it and homosexuality and orgies were not uncommon. Then the Empire fell and there was peace, war, peace, etc. all the way into the late 1800s with the rise of the Victorians which included very strict sexual behavior and dress. Then came WWI. Not long after, the Roaring 20s were freeing everyone from these confines and homosexuality (particularly in Paris) as well as orgies became all the rage. Then came WWII. Restraint followed until the Vietnam War and the Sexual Revolution in the late 60s and early 70s. The "World as a whole" has been at peace now since 1945 with only smaller wars in distant lands which don't effect day to day life back home. Essentially, it's been more than 79 years and with all this freedom the domestic agenda has lost its way. What I find most concerning now is the Winds of War generating around the World from Ukraine/Russia to China to North Korea to the Middle East. The reality of WWIII building up is sobering and though most US citizens seem oblivious to this, there will likely come a point where arguing over gender friendly bathrooms will cease and downright survival will catapult the population forward. Watch how quickly people change their concerns when food, water and safety grow scarce. This will likely be the "reset" that the human race is long overdue for. So sad it takes a war to wake people up.
A sobering thought Christine.
The sexual radicals are the inevitable result of what you call "sexual liberalism".
Honestly this piece sounds like you're desperately trying to avoid admitting that the puritans were right.
Frankly, the way out of this is for you to swallow your pride, admit you were wrong, and ask God for forgiveness.
Puritans are never right. They fail to incorporate the shadow.
I agree with you though that the radicals are the inevitable result of the liberals.
I most certainly admit that I was wrong.
Yes, puritans are never right. But I thionk where the problem lies in this debate is that in modern society the radicals are the puritans.
A piritan is a person who is a self-righteous follower of an ideology. In the past, as Chritianity was the only game in town, puritans were going to be the hardcore protestants who saw themselves required to mind the morals of everyone in society. They were always radicals. Seeking to subvert the old order and replace it with something they condiered to be purer.
In today's society, puritanism has been taken up by a new breeed of zealot, who has replaced religion with political extremism. These zealots are the new puritans. They wish to scrub society clean of the imagined evils of discrimination and bigotry. Part of that is being doctrinnaire sexual radicals.
So it is not the middle versus the puritans to the right and the radical to the left, but the middle with the puritans to the left and the conservatives to the right.
This is an excellent formulation!! Really well said.
> They fail to incorporate the shadow.
What does that even mean? It sounds like New Age wishy-washiness.
"Puritan" is a word that evokes different things to different people. For some, it evokes images of prim, proper, humorless unpleasant people. For others, it simply evokes images of faithful Christians. Both images have some historical truth to them. Puritans at their best were simply faithful Christians, but they were not always at their best. None of us are.
Making Sex Private Again is insufficient. It will only ensure that perverts go underground.
Good, but shallow. Vague, not very specific. What is right; and what is wrong? Situational? Transactional? Conditional?
Tolerance can kill. Guidance is good.
Naughtiness provides a fun adrenaline rush for many. Get rid of too many taboos and it becomes ever more difficult to be naughty.
Your parents' marriage was not typically "open". The reality was more nuanced than that.
This quote makes me think of themes you write about:
Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less there is within, the more there must be without.
Edmund Burke
If one has a conspiracy theory oriented mindset this is fuel for that lol
Edmund Burke seemed to understand:
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,
- in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, - in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, -in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.
Their passions forge their fetters.