Friday 5 April 2002

Pic of the day: Over the years, the gender balance tends to shift somewhat. Here, a female Sim is trying to have her way with the poor male on the kitchen floor. Or so it would seem, in a rare screenshot of spontaneous Sim combustion of the heart. (Fittingly, this is from The Sims: Hot Date - though the game isn't nearly all like that!)

Youthful lust?

I have been thinking about teenagers and sex lately. No, not about having sex with teenagers! I wouldn't do that even if I could. Not just because many teenage girls still look and move like boys with oranges on their chest. (Not that I see a lot of boys with oranges on their chest, but you get imagine. Not that I imagine that a lot either, but ... I'm just saying that becoming a woman often is a gradual process, OK? So is becoming a man, probably.) Even when the body assumes its adult form early, as sometimes happens, the mind still tends to need some time. Actually, this is part of what I want to talk about.

I have felt for years that we, as a society, are making a horrible mistake when it comes to young people and sexuality. But I am also well aware that there is very little any one of us can do about it. It is really a maze of dangers. I will elaborate a little more than I did last night, though.

I think it is grossly unfair to demand that people shall spend like 10 years without any sexual activity. It is fine that some people want to be celibate. But at some point during those years, most people don't want that. And, actually, at some point most of them stop being that. Would it not be better to acknowledge the categorical imperative of the genes and try to channel it in a socially acceptable way? Instead of pretending that God created all of the human body except the gonads, which were added by Satan?

On the other hand, as long as we treat teenagers like children, can we expect them to behave responsibly? If we extend childhood the way we do, can we avoid that they just play with each other's genitals rather than connect on a deeper level? It makes sense to wait with sex until your mind has grown up as well as your body - but it is a horribly long time for someone raised in our culture.

***

Apart from meeting these topics among my online friends, I have been thinking about teenagers and sex also while writing my latest serial novel. In a way, it is connected. I usually write for myself only, but this story I have laid out on the web and linked to it from a forum where many of my young online friends hang out.

As the characters in my story are mostly young people, and actual young people (like the supposed readers) think about sex every few minutes, I feel that it would make no sense to ignore that part in the story. That's certainly not to say that I'm trying my hand at writing pr0n. So basically I try to imply that there is a lot of lust, but I don't want to be explicit about it. And frankly I don't know quite how far to go with it.

The characters in my fiction are not really avatars of me. And they are certainly not pious 43-year old Christian mystics. And even if they were, they would not by default be free of lust, I can say that much. As it is, the male characters at least should probably be horny as goats in heat. Have I told you how, as a child, I observed the goats in heat and wondered if adult humans felt the same? The poor creatures were chained with metal chains around their neck, which effectively kept them from doing what was natural to them. I later realized that in humans the chains are much more subtle.

I also realized that in many humans, sex is not just a question of doing something about the itch. It can also be an expression of love. Frankly I did not realize the real depth of this until long, long after my teen years. Not until it was basically too late. But as I said, my characters are not me. Then again, I'm not sure how many others discover that in time either. And I am definitely not sure I'm the one to tell them.