Dear Yvonne
yes.. what you said is wise. The main barrier to seeing the opposite sex in the wider context is that 'sex sells' and our free market system, and our lack of clearly defined lines of acceptable and unnacceptable provide a veritable freeway for those without scruples to exploit it for financial advantage.

For the record, I regard such unscrupulous people as the bacteria underneath the garbage on which bottom feeding fish survive.
It is abudantly clear, that legal freedom brings moral exploitation.
Moral exploitation brings social decay. Social decay brings social destruction...and the end of civilization.

I know of no history book which does not describe the 'Rise AND FALL' of great empires. In the Old Testament, there are enough thumbnail sketches of many many kings and summaries of their reigns and attitudes to draw serious conslusions about the end result of moral decay and loose living.

Recently on the news there has been some stories about the 'Sexualization of young girls' and the related issues of body image, depression, Anorexia, suicide and other.

There is little news about the sexualization of young boys.. why ? hmm well.. I think our make up is such that the 'drive' is more with boys for girls rather than vice versa, but the availability of contraception is feeding an emphasis on any boundary which previously existed such as that girls are not as promiscuous as boys.

I say "follow the money" to see who is behind this stuff. Then recognize it for what it is, and root it out as a social cancer of the most malignant kind. Robbie Swan .. r u listening ?

Then, recapture values which see the whole person rather than just their sex organs.

Yes, a Dutch friend of mine was saying they weren't afraid of body bits, with kids up to the age of 12 at junior school showering in mixed gender change rooms.

Where did the Anglos get their prudishness from? Are we no better than the Victorian age - covering the legs of their tables?

It's not "all the Anglos" who have a problem with the human body and its functions. But in Australia far more notice is taken of the wowser minority than is justified and so we get moralised at by hypocritical/uninformed politicians and bureaucrats etc.

I came here from England in 1962. My first wife looked great in a string bikini. She'd been wearing them at the Leeds City Council swimming pools without comment for a number of years, but a well meaning friend told me that she would be sent off the beach if she wore them in Perth. This never happened, perhaps the summer of 1962/63 was when Australia started to catch up with Europe in this respect.

There is more than enough evidence to support the Dutch style of sex education being standard in Australian schools, because this is the way to reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. But we don't have it, because the wowsers don't want it, despite the fact that preaching abstinence demonstrably doesn't work.

And Boas [and no doubt others too], you may find this hard to believe, but an easy way to get used to seeing the whole person and not just the sexual organs is to get accustomed to swimming at clothes optional beaches, where for the majority of users, mixed sex nudity is no big deal.

Incidentally, many European countries/areas, such as Holland, Germany and Scandinavia, where they have sensible sex education for children and reduced rates of sexual problems as a result, also have a much more enlightened attitude to nude swimming too, but that also usually falls on the deaf ears of the incompetent know-nothings who have the power to regulate for free beaches in Australia.

As a result, we also miss out on the tourism opportunities of nude resorts, such as have been both popular and profitable in countries such as France, Croatia and Spain, in some cases since before 1950.

No, it's not the Anglos as a whole who are responsible for this stupidity, but Australian officialdom's pronounced tendency to grovel to the wowser element.