= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
army1987 comments on LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance - LessWrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1254)
Why? I was under the impression that not telling children about sex was usually the result of an emotional hangup on the part of the parents and/or a culturally cached thought that originally arose from the “sex is dirty” meme from the medieval/early modern Christianity memeplex (possibly both things reinforcing one another), rather than a rational expectation that the child would be worse off if they knew about sex based on any kind of actual evidence. Am I wrong? (How common is that taboo among non-European-derived cultures?)
Telling children how sex works is important. You can do this when they ask about it or when they reach some level of sophistication that will let them understand the explanation you're ready to give. Telling anyone - especially your child - that you just had sex on the couch is a poor choice (outside of some plausible dynamics that consenting unrelated adults could set up). It's none of their business, and a psychologically typical child won't want it to be their business or will be embarrassed to have so wanted when they get older.
I looked up 'sex' in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
How old were you? Did it tell you anything that seemed useful, anything that in fact turned out to be useful? (Did you have a Britannica at home?)
Okay. For some reason I had focused on the "What's sex? Well..." (and assumed the dots stood for a truthful answer) rather than the "Your mom and I just had sex on the living room couch" part. (I'm reminded of parents customarily making shit up when asked what condoms are or how children are born -- even just saying "I'll tell you when you're older" would make more sense IMO.)
Sorry, that was partially my bad. The purpose of the "What's sex?" part was to illustrate that this was a younger child. (In my mind these were all preschoolers in the examples). I didn't consider that people might read that to mean that I don't think sex should be discussed truthfully with children. I do! But at a certain age, and in the right context (NOT in the context of parents discussing their own sexcapades.)
Why? Can you justify this without appealing to the traditions about sex and gender that you've just been arguing against?
IMO:
Traditions or not, the role of a child doesn't "by default" include any script for interaction, even as an unwilling observer, with the parents' sex life. A child simply wouldn't be sure how to process and break down something they see or hear from it.
People instinctively appear to see familial and sexual intimacy as two separate kinds of bonds, and the mind-screw that comes with mixing them might be one of the reasons for having incest fantasies. Such a mind-screw could easily be discomforting/unpleasant in everyday contexts!
Why should a child have a predefined role or script?
People also instinctively appear to see men and women as two different kinds of people.