Lift the Skirt

Adolescence marks the onset of another of our most powerful driving forces brought in with the raging hormones of puberty. If you are lucky a few dry matter of fact explanations are on hand to help understand these experiences felt but not recognised. Except the huge curiosity generated by these hormones into everything sexual are fuelled by widely available, indeed inescapable, provocative sexually charged raunchy images. Used to sell anything as only virtual erotic images can.  Images that promise and tease yet are governed to reveal nothing. An implicitly sexually charged forethought expressed in a straitjacket of prudish conformity. So where do our adolescence go to get see and imagine what this burgeoning sexuality means to them? As Society deems they are too young to explore, naturally, amongst theirs peer group.

It is normal for youth to turn to their elders for guidance. We, the elders, have surrounded ourselves with sanctimonious prudery, false moral judgement strictures. We are unable to offer good wholesome, true to life presentation of our naked bodies, shorn of all exploitation, let alone that culmination of love and emotion expressed in the sexual act.

Bye the bye who is this person, that is so above moral corruption, that they can view material that I must be shielded from seeing because I am so more corruptable they they are. Material, not prurient nor voyeuristic, but carefully, thoughtfully crafted by another decent person who spent considerable time and effort to offer it for adult viewing for them to make judgement on its relevance.

No, the only alternative we leave our youth to explore their inevitable normal and natural curiosity is through the only freely accessible material left, pornography. Nasty, crude, totally false images of how humans relate. Even though we distant ourselves, and our youth, from this obscene unpleasant material, the crudity of its unreal images now feedback into our santisied morally correct depictions of sexual engagement, tastefully stripped of any explicitness. The self same pornographic cliques are now the soundbites norms used to signify 'intercourse', the lunge, the sucking of entrails and the pelvic ramming whilst tearing off of clothes. These are the images we give our adolescents to learn from about what their raging hormones are urging them to do. Unless of course you are of the old school brigade with a cold shower and total abstinence beliefs of cloud cuckoo land.

Time we all grew up and recognised that love, emotion, nakedness and sexual intimacy are powerful and natural forces capable of beautiful, wholesome and wonderful emotions and expressions.  Time we learnt to live with our sexuality, explore its complexities and celebrate in all its richness whilst helping our youth grow up surrounded by good example and natural normal outlets for their inevitable curiosity.

Drawing a line

Eddie Shah's plea of foul sounds hollow, just because he was caught doing what a lot of others were doing at the time does not absolve him for being responsible for his own action. He is right of course there is a distinction to be made between the actual act of violating another person against their wishes and a technical definition of a act against a minor.

An adult of course has an overiding duty and a responsibility to protect the innocence of youth, to understand their immaturity, their gush of unchannelled surging hormone and rising desires with their lack of perception of the realities against the fantasises in their so vivid minds. That is why we have the technical definition of rape with a minor, consummated or not, to protect our not yet adult and mature young. Fine.


If an innocent and naive pubescent youth decides to strip off their clothes and gyrate infront of a adult male to draw their attention to them and that that adult male decides to consumate their sexual arousal, it is not an unexpected consequence. Maybe the youth had no comprehension of what consequences might follow but they had put themselves in a very vulnerable and highly sexually charged position, not the best spot for cool dispassionate reflection. Still not right. The adult being the adult should control their desires even when provoked by a 'willing' minor clearly lacking in modesty or inhibition. Not right , not defensible but understandable perhaps in the circumstances.


What we, our society, has to ask are the harder questions. Why is a minor so free of all restaint or guardianship as to be alone with a unknown adult, so free as to be able to shed their clothes? How come our minors consumption of sexually provocative images and behaviours are so common place that they think it right or natural for them too to act that way? Why do our youth reject the counsel of older and closer family members and instead become fixated with illusions of celebrity razzmatazz. Why are our teens so resentful of authority and so willing to flout any self-control, getting so blinded out of their minds as to be incapable of making any judgement of their exposure to risk. We have a youth mentoring problem. This cult of the youth, this rapacious selling to the youth market, this capitulation to a youth driven agenda has supplanted the norms of restraint and caution. 

So clearly Eddie Shah was wrong to take advantage of a minor, offering what a minor should never ever have been in a position to offer, but we too are to blame for allowing our minor's to get so beyond our reach that they feel no constraints on their actions. Our duty is to protect them in a safe enough environment until they have matured enough to make their own mistakes when they have some skills in realising the consequences. We, not just Eddie Shah, have failed them all.

Youth

No of course it is not because I having nothing to say, lots as always, it is just that I have not had the time! Lets get some strands together. No, our youth are not rioting, a riot has a purpose an intent and wish to get to some goal, pun intended. These youth are just rampaging. What we are witnessing is a new phenomena of our age, 'FlashMobbing' seems to be the parlance. Youth, with all their lack of doom, whipped up by the excitement of being part of something kicking off and with one2one messaging sucking them into the maelstrom.

So let us lay down the blame. Us. You and me are to blame. We have framed and allowed our society to drift down this path. We have watched indifferently as the political parties have corrupted our democratic processes, so we all end up dis-engaged. Look after number one and to hell with the rest of them is our culture. Even as we double talk about what a good idea the 'Big Society' is whilst inwardly shrugging that there is nothing you intend to do to make it work. That double speak, though silent is picked up by our youth and taken as gospel, not the mealy words of spoken agreement but the true unexpressed silent reaction of disdain and disinterest. They take that silence as the route map. So dont blame the youth for taking at face value the society you see, even if you double speak of another world you dont believe in.

Secondly we must blame the parents, for accepting too readily the easy option that single parents are an equal and okay alternative. For not insisting that the children forgo their own space and do join in and take part in family events from mealtimes to get togethers. For not requiring some account of their movements and friends. For allowing their children to develop in a culture where to want is to have without consequences and where authority can be safely ignored as it has no teeth. Where the sense of separateness of youth from the adult world they inhabit is endorsed and promulgated without challenge but actually cheered on as a sign of creative independence.

Thirdly we must blame ourselves for accepting as a norm the divisiveness of a rich get richer society. The quick abandonment of any social values in the hope that you too can get to inherit the riches not realising the chasm has grown enormously over the last decades. With us, the poor on one side gazing in wonderment at a life beyond grasp whilst the rich plunder the the poor, using their energies and desires to build the very barriers to keep the rich enclave for only the rich. All the while promoting the self-evident lie that all can partake of the riches is only you make sufficient effort. Little wonder if those without prospect of progress, yet daily buffeted with tangible emblems of rewards beyond their reach, despair or worse take what they cannot rightfully get. A divided nation is a grossly unfair nation. A divided nation ruled and controlled by the benefiters of that divide is obscene.

Nothing of course condones or mitigates in any way from actions against the very society you live within. Nothing justifies the trashing and looting our your neighbours just because, there is no excuse. We each have to be accountable for our own actions, within a raging mob or not. Accountable, well to our fellow citizens of course. So finally, much as we honest upright citizens are outraged by the sheer mindless stupidity and violence and want to exact retribution. Stop and pause. What we have are youth that are dis-engaged from their society. We urgently need to re-engage them, together with us along the way. So how is locking them up in prison going to help? Meting out stiff punishment leaves a glow of righteous indignation but these are youth who have never had it their way and expect to be pushed and bullied, if not plain ignored. What merit in taking away benefit when they are scudding along on the very bottom rungs already, kick them further down to do what? Again not a good way to go about getting engagement. Yes oh yes there has to be retribution. The consequence of their thoughtless and mindless act has to come well and truly home. How to do it in an upbeat progressive way that ends up with them tying back into our society is a huge challenge. Reward and punishment for failing to work at towards the reward has to be a way. That and working to repair the damage of their upbringing and building back self-respect and hope. Real gettable hope that can be actually grasped. Community work is an option, if they want to make amends but not if enforced against their will. Take away their right to messaging until their have earned its return seems fit for purpose. Take away their right to gather in groups of more than three again seems fit for purpose. Take away their right to walk free amongst us until they have accepted our rules of conduct. Intensive parenting classes and support for parents in standing up to their children again seems fit for purpose. Maybe, just maybe a boot camp experience for those wayward's that refuse to help themselves and are determined to turn their backs on the society that nutures them. But everything aimed at encouragement to join in with us and engage. Maybe we can then learn lessons from them!

Blinker our Children

The barmy army are at it again. Seems if we ban overtly sexual advertising outside of schools and have an age certificate on pop-promotion video's suddenly everything is going to be alright. Daft, not just plain daft but idiotically daft. Wake up and look around. Highly charged sexual images, innuendos, provocative gestures and posture, dress fashion, make-up, perfume advertising, the whole kerbang, permeates throughout our society. Like the lettering in the seaside rock, no matter how far down you go there it is, always there, no getting away from it. Sex is potent and powerful and sex sells like nothing else. Unfortunately we have a very puritanical, head in the sand, rather not know or think about sex attitude, which makes a mature response difficult to come by.

Fortunately I really do not think our children have any comprehension of sexuality or can respond in any meaningful way to it, until puberty kicks in and the hormones starting wreaking havoc. However it is these public images which now serve as role models for our young and that they will draw on to inform their own behavior in later adult life. So we do have to be aware, to be very aware and very concerned.

It can as no surprise to us. We know that our young teens are the idolising fans of all the latest pop-stars. We know that they are the market for all the music put out. We know all about the videos that sell and promote the latest pop one day wonder. So why the shock. Do we live two separate entirely compartmentalised distinct lives? One as adults willingly taking in all the blatant raunchiness on offer and then this other detached sweetpie person that is parent and is cooingly concerned about exposing our children to the reality that we , in our other persona , are more than willing to accommodate. Yes of course double standards.

Forget age certificates, forget purity police to monitor what our children are exposed to. Wake up for goodness sake. Our young are more skilled, faster in leaning, passing on information between themselves and unlocking whatever child locks we care to invent. They live comfortably and serenely in this totally connected world and can access sites you never dreamt existed. Putting blinkers on our children to shield them from the adult world they are passing through is nonsense. Our world is their world too and that is the issue we have to grasp.We, the adults have the choices, what kind of world do we want to occupy. We could turn our back on this blatant sexuality, this in your face raunchiness, this promotion of sex just as a means to get what you want. A regressive and fierce-some puritanism is one option. Or we face the world we actually live in and start talking openly. About sex, about copulation and about the deep emotions it generates and how these emotions are the things that tie us together. See also my Self Image Not a wham bang, done that on to the next thing. But perhaps the height of all possible human emotions and therefore something to be revered and given some respect. Lets all grow-up!

Self Image

Yet another chorus calling for government controls! The adverts, leisurewear, music videos and playstation games are all too sexually extreme for our children and we need some morale-master to control, restrict and limit what our children can have access too. First things first, parents bring up their children, it is upto them to set the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable for their children. In our complex society they may have to have some dialogue with the schools but essentially the buck stops with them. It is a cop-out to say the Government must. The Government has no idea what is best for you, your community, its children and how you relate to it with your child.

The commercial world has gotten very clever in plucking our deep, sub-conscious, basic instincts and responses to sell its wares. It knows exactly what works and how to play it to get the maximum effect that suits its purpose, to sell. It is time we grew up, too stock of ourselves and managed these gut basic instincts more maturely and not just accept being manipulated by others.

For girls it has been about appearance, just look "good" and people will like you and want to be friends with you. Stop presenting yourself and your daughters on such a crude and simplistic ideological model. It is really not what they look like but how they respond that matters, respond to dialogue and respond to companionship. Yes first impression do matter, and a lot, but that is not the end of the story, only the start. So throw away lipstick, hair-do's and sensuous clothes and just present yourself well that others might think you have something (other than sex) to offer but only so you can begin to engage but not by aping some idealised sexual desire phantom. Really the answer is that simple, ladies stop presenting yourself as a sexual desire object and start to value yourself. Present what you have to offer as a person not an object. Then your daughters will pick up on your clues and follow suit. And never, never ever project your failed aspirations of sexual allure onto your daughter, she can do without that guilt trip. Chances are in your new asexual look the males around you won't pick up on your underlying sensuality, probability is that they will no matter what.

For the boys it is a similar story but from that other dynamic. The perception is that to be 'attractive' to women, you have to be to seen to display wealth images and be assertive so others defer to you. Simple, crude and basic but denies the real story. You actually have to present yourself as someone worth engaging with, with something to say and with a confidence to manoeuvre your way around this challenging society.

Conduct yourself from these mature perspectives and the commercial world will follow you, giving up on those previously so successful gut reactions.

We do have to grow up as a society and begin to deal maturely with all those fraught aspects of sexuality. It is not about sticking the plumbing bits together. It is not about the momentary high following on from an ejaculation or orgasms but about nurturing the companionship that follows in the slow after glow. It is about building a relationship that will survive and gather strength through life's lows.

We also have to stop treating teenagers as adults able to handle complex inter-sex relationships, they simply cant. Their minds have not matured and they don't have enough experience to cope with the challenges and they still haven't found how to manage their hormonal responses to sexual arousal. We, the adults in society, have to tell them square on to grow-up and ensure offers of guidance are not brushed aside as an irrelevance. We adults have to re-discover our confidence and not be over-whelmed by their exuberance.

With the surge of hormone that the teens brings on and the weirdness of frequent sexual response daily encountered, we as a society to have to think how we suggest they handle it. We need to face up to the problems of life and not try to hide, restrict or control them . Maybe we as a society have to start and talk openly without embarrassment of distraction, relief, or even masturbation as a way of gaining control over those so urgent teen physical responses until the emotional control over relationship evolves and matures.

Better that than surrender to some arbitrary morale judge with a limited agenda deining for each every varied one of us what we can or cannot see, at what times, in which places.