Parents Still Underestimate Risk of Kids’ Web Surfing

Re:Clueless Parents

If parents are clueless then how can they be expected to curb their children’s tastes for pornography.

Any “child” old enough to have “tastes for pornography” is not a child. Young adults are interested in sexuality, not children.

The problem with your philosophy, Eli, is that filter advocates do not properly define what constitutes a child (childhood ends at the onset of puberty, not some arbitrarily assigned number of years), or what constitutes pornography. A great deal of what is called porn is simply artistic, or is sexuality health-based information. And all too often it is simply material that is an accurate reflection of reality.

Re:Clueless Parents

LOL! I don’t know if you have kids, but you’ve got a lot to learn about children and sex.

I know enough about children to treat them with respect for their human dignity instead of treating them as if they were stupid chattels. The specious rationales used by the thought police in Canada and the U.S. are the same as those used to deny women the right to vote and to deny slaves their freedom.

I know that all the fearful proclamations of the ultra-self-righteous are merely projectings of their own shadows.

I know that children naturally seek out information that is appropriate to their individual emotional and intellectual development as a function of their innate curiosity; including information about sex.

I know that sexual awareness starts with “Where do babies come from” and that being sexually curious is not the same as being sexually active.

I also know what self-fulfilling prophecies are and how to spot one:

Prettying it up (adult attraction for 8-12 year olds whose bodies are going through hormonal changes but whose minds haven’t matured) with “artistic” nonsense and blather doesn’t change reality.

If the minds of children have not matured, it is because the political and religious right-wing has created conditions in which those minds cannot mature. When the mistreated children grow up to be immature adults, the right-wing then proclaims sanctimoniously: See! We were right!

The primary self-fulling prophecy in the U.S. today is Abstinence-only Ignorance. The ultra-conservatives are bitching and moaning about teenage pregnancy, Abstinence-only Ignorance is creating conditions in which the rate of teen pregnancies will sky-rocket, and the ultra-conservatives will use that increase to justify further Abstinence-only Ignorance.

Columbus Dispatch this week ran a story on child sex offenders/aggressors–i.e., children who were sexually abusing other children.

By children you mean the pre-pubescent, don’t you? Or do you actually mean legal minors, including those who are 17 years 364 days in age?

And what, exactly, were these so-called children doing? Playing “Doctor” and “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine”? Or trying to seduce each other at high school dances?

People are sexual creatures, and natural expressions of that sexuality does not in fact constitute sexual harrassment or abuse just because some up-tight ultra-conservative says so.

Is this the kind of sexual abuse they were talking about?

Artist: Jaqueline Mercado and Johnny Fernandez

Confronting Bodies: Richardson, Texas law enforcement

Date of Action: November 2002-April 2003

Specific Location: Richardson, Texas

Description of Artwork: Family photographs taken by Johnny Fernandez of his girlfriend, Jacqueline Mercado, and sons playing together. The children are depicted several times nude or half-clothed. The contested picture features Jacqueline Mercado breast-feeding the couple’s one year old son.

Description of Incident: When Johnny Fernandez reunited with his girlfriend, Jaqueline, after a year separation, while Johnny immigrated from their homeland, Lima, Peru, Jacqueline brought several rolls of film to a store for developement. When the film technician viewed the photos he called Richardson police who considered the pictures pornographic. Fernandez and Mercado’s children were taken into foster care and the couple was threatened with a second degree felony for, “sexual performance
of a child.”

Results of Incident: Mercado and Fernandez were released from prison and the charges against them were eventually dropped after action from their attorney, Andrew Chatham. The Texas court ruled, however, that they would not release their children until the couple agreed to take a lie detector test.

Breast-feeding as sexual abuse. Yeah, there are perverts in the U.S. alright, but most of them are of the “We Must Protect The Children” variety of lunatic. Here’s another case which is equally stupid even if it is legally valid.

Girl charged with posting nude photos on Internet
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_186625. html

By The Tribune-Review
Saturday, March 27, 2004

A 15-year-old Latrobe girl has been arrested for allegedly taking sexually explicit photos of herself and posting them on the Internet. State police at Greensburg said the girl took photos of herself in various states of undress and performed a variety of sexual acts. She then sent them to people she met in chat rooms on the Internet.

The computer was seized by police, who conducted a forensic investigation and found dozens of photographs of the juvenile stored on the hard drive. The investigation is continuing as state police try to identify all the people who received photos from the girl.

Police said the girl was charged with possession and dissemination of child pornography. A hearing date has not been set.

So, this young adult, who is of the age of consent in some jurisdictions, takes self-portraits and thereby sexually molests herself. This is part of what makes American anti-sexuality jurisprudence so abjectly stupid. She could go out and screw the high school football team en masse, but taking photographs of her own body to show the members of that team makes her a child molester.

Pfah!