Bathorys Daughter wrote:But what IS "early?" I mean really. When people were lucky to make it to 30, marriage and breeding often started at 12 or 13. It had to. Those rites of passage, like bat mitzvah happen at 12 and 13 for a reason. The reason being that those were the ages of marriage eligibility way back when. The biology has not changed, it's only societies attitudes that have. Though in some places early teens is still the norm. Like it or not, girls are sexual creatures, and breedable even before teen years start. We simply allow them to be kids much longer nowadays. Anyway, my point is that these girls are only "kids" because we deem them to be so. Nature and biology say otherwise but we ignore it. Or we try to ignore it. It's a mistake to say these girls are too young to be "sexualized." They may act like giddy girls but, if they have menstruated, they are women. We just let them continue to be children. It's really just a game we play as a society. Unfortunately it messes with their minds quite a bit and makes them unsure of their place in the world. They have these very adult feelings and thoughts yet are treated as children. I know it messed with my mind. <steps off soapbox>
Sex and sexuality is a part of who we are and how we interact with other people. It's not going away any time soon. It has a biological instinctive basis with all of the associated hormones and everything, which influences us and that we can't really do a whole lot about. If a guy looks at a girl and thinks, “Whoa, she's
hot!”, there's not much that he can do about that reaction short of drastic surgery. We can't really control who we are and are not attracted to. It doesn't matter what their age is, or what their 23rd chromosome pair consists of, or anything else. If you're attracted to somebody, then you're attracted to them. If people are attracted to you, then they're attracted to you. There's nothing “right” or “wrong” about it, and judging people simply based on thoughts and emotions that they have no conscious control over seems to me to be not only pointless but also unfair.
For humans (and many paranormals, apparently), of course, there's also an emotional side to sex that goes along with the biological. That's what makes it more than a simple biological matter of procreation. It's also what makes things so very much more tricky. Sure, at some point a person will start to physically mature sexually, and at that point you can say that they are biologically sexual individuals and adults. They will (with the exception of asexuals) probably be wanting to have sex, even if it is only a sort of vague confused desire without any particular person in mind. Trying to hide the matter and convince them that they don't have any sexuality yet will likely cause any number of problems.
But just because their bodies have matured doesn't mean that they've settled down on the emotional aspects of sex. They can't simply add a whole new facet to their personality overnight. It usually takes people decades—at least--to develop the social skills necessary to navigate the emotional aspects of everyday social interactions well enough that they don't regularly horribly embarrass or shock or hurt themselves or those around them. That's a big part of what going to school is supposed to be about: helping to make sure that the kids grow healthy social and emotional tendencies. Once the sexual aspect of their lives is physiologically unlocked, it's going to take them a good long while to learn about how to cope with the psychological hurdles. Simply saying, “Hey, you can reproduce now, thus you're an adult,” doesn't mean that much. They will be sexualised, but things can go horribly if they're sexualised in the wrong ways. Trying to rush things can be as emotionally traumatising to them as can trying to pretend that sex isn't really something that happens. Just like when they were kids and acquired their initial social skills, they again need proper schooling if they're going to learn how to be sexual without being hurt or hurting others.
Which is an unfortunate thing, because the emotional side to sex has gotten society so tied up and convoluted that it's hard for anybody to get any such thing. Instead they have people telling them to pretend that they don't have any sexuality, people telling them that sexuality in general is fine but that their particular sexuality is wrong, people telling them that they need to have sex because otherwise they are horrible people or losers, people telling them that they need to shape their sexuality exclusively to that one other person's particular views or else they're abominations. . .all that mess. They end up feeling pressured to do things that they don't want to do, or to repress what they feel. They learn that they are “bad” or “ugly” for not living up to some other person's fantasies. And so on. That's where society needs to get its act together and be sure that we're working on not oversexualising these kids, or sexualising them in harmful ways.
I think that that may be of one of the general directions where Mr. Taylor is going with this comic. Not that sex is bad, or that looking at somebody and finding them attractive is wrong, or that we should try to hide the very notion of sex from children until they finally reach some socially-mandated age. Rather, it's that we should be sure that children grow into their sexuality in as comfortable and safe and healthy a way as possible, in a way that lets them keep their self-respect and in which we in turn respect them as individuals rather than as objects to be guarded or coveted. And that when they do hit the age where their sexuality becomes part of their lives, that we don't treat it as the defining trait that they should shape their whole self around. Atsali may be a character who is exaggeratedly built in a way that we are conditioned to think of as sexy, but if we see her wearing a particular outfit or sitting in a particular manner then we
ought to primarily be viewing her as just what she is: a kid of a very wide range of physical and mental attributes who happens to be wearing that outfit or sitting in that manner. The dissonance between how we know we ought to respond and how so much of media and social pressure tells us that we're supposed to respond is the whole point. It is unfair to everybody involved to let the latter viewpoints dominate and dictate what Atsali wears or what she does.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with any guy (or girl or critter) noticing Atsali standing around in her bikini and thinking about her in a sexual way.
To me, where the problems start is two-fold. First, it's when the guy seeing her
only thinks of her in a sexual way. He sees her mainly as a physical object to satisfy his urges on, and not really as a person with her own ideas and choices. Even worse is when the guy decides that for whatever reason (because of how she's shaped, because he's such a “nice guy”, whatever) he's
owed the gratification of his fantasies by her. That's when things can get really ugly.
The other part where things can go bad is when thoughts turn into actions. As far as I'm concerned, for a person to see Atsali at the pool and think, “I'd really like to grab what's under that bikini!” is perfectly fine. Even if the person knows that she's underaged, I see nothing wrong with simply
thinking that that would be a fun thing to do (I expect that most people have had at least passing thoughts of that nature about somebody legally under-aged more than once). If some guy suddenly walks up to her and tries actually doing it without even asking, or asks and is told no and still decides that he can do it, then things turn to the exact opposite of fine. Even if there is no physical contact involved, how a guy acts around her can be a problem. Harassment doesn't have to be a contact event, and words
can hurt quite badly. At that point, I have no problem whatsoever with casting judgments on that person and suitably punishing them. There are plenty of ways to try to turn desires into reality that are perfectly acceptable, such as politely going up to Atsali and asking her out, and then respecting that whether or not she has any sort of relationship of any type with you is partly her own choice. Assuming that somebody is obligated to fulfill your desires simply because you think that they are the sort of person who ought to is far from acceptable, as is teaching “that sort” or person that that is what they're supposed to be doing.