pynchme,

'So Antiseptic, Hume and Houellebecq are arguing in favour of the sexualization of youth.'

I must have missed that. Nope, sorry cant see that argument anywhere here.

I never knew the cultural belief of cricket players included honour killings.

BTW: Men get grass on the wicket as well you know. Growing pubic hair is a perfectly natural part of puberty for both sexes. Looks like pynchme never played catch and kiss.

PS: I do get it pynchme. You take a comment about pubic hair meaning physical sexual maturity (talking about a 14 and 12 year old pair), that was making a point about society's artificial overriding of natures signs of sexual readiness, then you equate to 6 year olds (a rare case indeed), then you mix in honour killings, and much older men misusing 6 year olds.

Nice work. Some of your best stuff.

Antiseptic: The point you choose to miss is that *sexualization* ( a transitive VERB) of youth (or people of any age) doesn't have much if anything to do with that person's inclination towards or readiness for sex. Sexualizing someone is something done TO them.

The American Psychological Society:

There are several components to sexualization, and these set it apart from healthy sexuality. Sexualization occurs when

* a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;

* a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

* a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or

* sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

All four conditions need not be present; any one is an indication of sexualization. The fourth condition (the inappropriate imposition of sexuality) is especially relevant to children. Anyone (girls, boys, men, women) can be sexualized. But when children are imbued with adult sexuality, it is often imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. Self-motivated sexual exploration, on the other hand, is not sexualization by our definition, nor is age-appropriate exposure to information about sexuality.

http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualizationsum.html

Houellebecq: Girls menstruating from age 10 is far from unusual and public hair appears up to two years before menstruation begins. I don't think you mean to encourage child abuse; but thoughtless comments ignore the way in which people who are child sex abusers rationalize their behaviour so that they can disregard the harm it causes to the individuals they misuse.

Pynchme:"Sexualizing someone is something done TO them."

And hence is meaningless, since people are inherently judgemental about the "attractiveness" of others, even children.

Exploiting that sexuality for commercial purposes may be undesirable, for all sorts of reasons, but it's not "sexualising" anybody.

As for "age-appropriate", who decides? Historcally, people lived in close quarters and children were exposed to sexual behaviour among adults from the word go. As I've said repeatedly, the current situation i the west is a temporary anomaly subsidised by cheap energy in a relatively unpopulated world. Those conditions are both soon to end.

pelican: "It is a real battle for parents to convince teens that they don't have to participate in risky sexual behaviours due to peer and media pressure."

Yet as a father watching his daughter progresses through life, I don't see "risky sexual behaviours" as a major threat. Being an analytical sort of guy, I break the problem down into concrete causes and outcomes. With sex, the outcome I want to see is my daughter have kids and raise them in a stable relationship. Looking at what could go wrong - teenage pregnancy, relationship breakdown, not finding the time for a family, or a complete disaster like drugs come to mind.

Teenage pregnancy isn't a concern. Despite the fact that she and her girlfriends became sexually active long, long before their grandmothers and many sampled more than a few boys, teenage pregnancy is at all time low. Unlike Clive Hamilton I don't attribute this change in behaviour to the media, or advertising, or their parents attitudes, or the internet. The cause, as we all know, is the pill.

Marriage breakups are a concern, but the primary driver for that seems to be the financial independence women have today. In countries where that independence is strongest - such as Cuba, divorce rate is at an all time high - 75%.

The biggest problem my daughter probably faces is forming a long term, stable relationship now rather than later. Doing it later risks all the good guys being taken by her more "sexually orientated" girlfriends. She doesn't see this of course, but daddy has watched bright, career orientated, tertiary educated girls of his own generation get married only after the biological clock got too loud to ignore - and then ended up raising the kids on their own.

After seeing a phallic wind chime from 100 AD in the British museum a couple of days ago, methinks you girls are well equiped to handle premature sexualisation. Financial independence, high career expectations, education - these are new. Balancing them against raising a family is proving much a trickier problem for you to handle.

rstuart - can you please explain the phallic windchime and what that has to do with the sexualization of youth.

Quote from suzeonline thursday 15/10/09 :- No peter,not capitalism, it was merely stone age paedophile men acting for their own sick gratification before society as a whole banned the practice. Unfortunately, some men today never evolved from these stone age practices.
Here we go again, in other threads much has been said about men GENDERCISING these issues, yet once again we have some one like suzeonline [presumably a female] being the FIRST to put all the blame on men and spew out her usual man hating rhetoric. I hope this has been noted by all posters on here, and that all can see who is REALLY starting most of the antagonism on these threads.