Day 7 from the #UnashamedList series. Written to be a resource for any youth navigating issues like sexual integrity, porn addiction,..Ā Series intro here.
After reading Day 5, my husband dropped this:
“Op een oude fiets moet je het leren.”
Apparently it’s an old Dutch phrase meaning, literally: ‘You’ve got to learn it on an old bike.‘
The cultural meaning is: get your sexual practice with someone with experience.
Wow.
We live in a society where sex is seen more as a rite of passage, past time, or extracurricular activity, than amazing, intimate and deeply vulnerable act. (tweet)
I saw a ‘coming of age’ documentary once in which the custom of one culture was to take a boy (under 18) to a prostitute. Then he would officially become a “man.”
Heartbreak.
I thought it was culturally confined, but with my husband’s reference, and my own experience growing up in America, it seems a Way-of-this-World thing.
Various movies and media promote the forbidden hotness of a friends’ moms, or teachers, or the reverse: parents crushing on the friends of their kids (yikes!).
Words like Cougar, MIL*, TIL* are in our vocab.Ā
If we keep normalizing sexual relations with much older persons as OK or desirable, we put youth in danger. (tweet)
A FOX newscaster quipped that it was cool if your teacher or friend’s parent came on to you. This was during a story of a sexual abuse allegation against a woman by a young boy.
Male perp = “abuse” |Ā Female perp = “affair”?Ā Mind the gap…
How hard is it for someone to tell their truth if what happened is supposed to be seen as cool? And how much harder for boys to come out about anything– from unwanted touching to being forced? And if the perp was female?
Because aren’t all men supposed to want it?!
I know boys (now men) abused by young female babysitters, grandmothers, even moms. Now I’m hearing stories about female teachers making boy-toys of their students at a local school/College.
If 1 in 3 kids experience some form of sexual abuse, we’ve got to practically break culture.
A few years back, a friend/youth worker shared about a sensitive 10 year old who confided that his dad started showing him porn. Apparently he wasn’t very tough and this was to help him “Man Up.”
There’s so much mess and cultural lens making it hard to see straight when it comes to sex, relationships, gender, abuse and shame. We can’t snap our fingers like Thanos, but we can each individually do something.
Imagine if someone shares a story about a sexual escapade with an older person.
What if the listener responds: “that’s not cool.”
The ripple effect may be enormous.
And who knows if the person telling the story didn’t actually want the encounter in the first place?
Our reactions and words can make new ways, start new cultures… ā¤
Check back tomorrow for Day 8 in this #UnashamedList series.
-Series start and full days list here.
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Hey, I’m Jasmine, about to get some coffee, and wondering: is anything resonating? Post a comment or msg me. Pls also share this series further. So many people, especially young ones, can benefit from people talking about these things. ā¤
Related Posts
- If People are like Trees, Here’s to all the Weeping Willows (Sensitivity is Strength)
- #UnashamedList Series Intro: Good Lord, I’m Sharing this??
- Day 1: Porn is Crazy Addictive
- Day 2: More to Life than Sex & Filters
- Day 3: Money & Bling Ain’t No Thang
- Day 4: Smashing/Hook-ups, Practice Doesn’t not Make Perfect
- Day 5: The “Everything but Sex” Approach Doesn’t Work
- Day 6: Never Be Ashamed..
Image Credits:
-Cartoon of boy counting woman’s age – from WikiHow
-Thanos and the Infinity stone gauntlet -image from Avengers: Infinity Wars (2018)
*1 in 3 kids experience some form of sexual abuse (source: National Rapporteur Mensenhandel en Seksueel Geweld tegen KinderenĀ / National Reporter on Human trafficking and Sexual Violence Against Children, 2014).
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