Children can't process sex, what does that mean?

I see a lot of stuff that says the harm done by pedophiles is because "children can't process sex." What does this mean?

What is the ability to process sex?

Are there post-pubescent adults who cannot process sex, because they never learned how for some reason, and how does this interact with an adult libido and adult hormones?

I think I may have been screwed up by premature exposure to sex...I didn't mind any of it, nobody violated my consent or performed sexual acts involving any genital contact, but I don't get what it is to properly emotionally process sex, or what that would even be.

My first thoughts are, "What is there to process? You do things to your body and your body does things, and it's sort of weird, and it doesn't make any sense. It is what it is. End of story...right?" Sex doesn't seem like a thing distinct from any other kind of physical intimacy or physical risk-taking. The thing where stupid kids taze each other on a dare, crossed with cuddling a pet, except it involves the parts people urinate or defecate out of. That's where my mental/emotional understanding of sex ends.

And this is not supposed to be normal "processing of sex," I guess.

I don't get it.

I pretty much agree with you. To me sex is foremost a physical action with the purpose to a) physically pleasure oneself and others and b) to reproduce.

The connotations of sexuality within a culture or to an individual are social constructions or are in any case subjective. Many people like to associate sex with other things and assimilate it into a paradigm hence the supposed need to "process" it. Sexuality naturally scares a lot of people, possibly because it of the fear of loosing control over one's thoughts as well as to cultural conditioning.

I can see that sex is something one must do responsibly like gambling or drinking alcohol. But having said that the horror with which folks react to statutory rape with ideas like children being "incapable of consent" seems a bit disproportionate to me.

Some people insist that sex is all about expressing "love" in front of "god" and therefore a person shouldn't be doing it too early since people change and may indeed regret giving away their virginity in our hymen fetishist culture.

Traditionally people regard sex as a corruptive influence (as all physical pleasure is) and I suppose people also naturally like to think of children of innocence doomed to inevitable corruption from the world so people feel pressure to protect the only true "pure" innocence in the world.

Also they may find it icky and this just the apologetics.

If anyone can ever get someone to give them a straight answer to the title question, please let me know. I certainly never have.

YouthRightsRadical wrote:If anyone can ever get someone to give them a straight answer to the title question, please let me know. I certainly never have.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean any harm

I'll take that on board as you're the person I most respect on this forum.

Wait, what? That wasn't directed at you, Maligan12. Sorry if it looked that way.

I meant that the sort of people who claim "children can't process sex" have never, in my experience, been able to articulate what "process sex" means, nor can they ever provide evidence that children cannot manage to do so.

Your explaination looks about right in terms of what the real answer is, but you'll never get an answer even a quarter as honest from the people actually advancing such a position.

*Sigh* *Prays that this thread remains civil and polite*

Xren wrote:I see a lot of stuff that says the harm done by pedophiles is because "children can't process sex." What does this mean?

What is the ability to process sex?

Are there post-pubescent adults who cannot process sex, because they never learned how for some reason, and how does this interact with an adult libido and adult hormones?

I think I may have been screwed up by premature exposure to sex...I didn't mind any of it, nobody violated my consent or performed sexual acts involving any genital contact, but I don't get what it is to properly emotionally process sex, or what that would even be.

My first thoughts are, "What is there to process? You do things to your body and your body does things, and it's sort of weird, and it doesn't make any sense. It is what it is. End of story...right?" Sex doesn't seem like a thing distinct from any other kind of physical intimacy or physical risk-taking. The thing where stupid kids taze each other on a dare, crossed with cuddling a pet, except it involves the parts people urinate or defecate out of. That's where my mental/emotional understanding of sex ends.

And this is not supposed to be normal "processing of sex," I guess.

I don't get it.

Well, masturbation is sex and even infants seem to do that or process that. I think that people are referring to cultural standards regarding sex. Cultural standards are complex and a child can't process/understand them easily yet. For example, it's a cultural standard that children should NOT enjoy sex with adults. If a child doesn't know about this cultural standard, she may accidentally enjoy sex with an adult before she's smart enough to realize that it's bad.

So I started having sex with adult men at 13. I more than likely must have found it pleasurable at the time because I kept doing it. That is not to say that I understood what I was doing or the consequences. I became depressed and withdrawn but I had no way to conceptualize why that was. Several different teachers, social workers, education welfare psychologists – the lot tried to get at me, but I did not know why I was having the troubles I was having. The effects were lasting and seem to have devastated my life for the past 20 years. You might be capable of deriving physical and biological pleasure from sex as a child, but it is the emotional and psychological damage (which can be outright trauma, or more subtle) that I think they are talking about when they say children cannot “process” sex.

It's basically an admission that children might agree to and even enjoy sex, but that they haven't learned of the stigma associated with sex present throughout most of human society. Let's face it, many people have very negative attitudes towards sexuality, specifically towards those that fall outside the norm. We are a species full of homophobes, pedophobes, and slut shamers obsessed with the power aspect of sex as opposed to the love and tenderness aspects. That goes for both the whiny feminists and the macho male types.

Whether you like it or agree with it, this forum is anti sex with children so should this become yet another thread promoting this in some way it will be locked. Also please keep things civil thank you

Cracked