The immaturity of the erotic center of our brains may simply be due to the fact that it is more primitive than the parts that control higher level cognitive and emotional functions. But I believe it is also due to the fact that in our society that part of the brain doesn't get much opportunity to mature.

In article <camillaCqyIBt.6Mw@netcom.com> camilla@netcom.com (Camilla Cracchiolo) writes:
> .... The one thing [about sexual orientation] that does
> seem to be supported by the literature is that, regardless of
> orientation, it appears to be laid down very early in life and not
> amenable to change once this occurs. ....

Everything we know about developmental psychology indicates that our brains require learning in order to become functional in various ways. This learning occurs by observation, imitation, practice, and conditioning. I find it hard to believe that it is different for sexuality. I believe that the brain's sexual learning occurs in large part during what used to be called the "latency period" in childhood.

In my opinion, for this reason the attitude in our society that young children need to be kept completely isolated in a sort of non-sexual bubble is completely backwards. I cannot see how nature could have intended this. On the contrary, I think that nature intended for young children to have lots of opportunities to become comfortable with human bodies of both sexes and with the sexual act. Not that children should themselves be sexually active, of course, but I think that they were intended to have lots of opportunity to observe sexual behavior.

Until recently, this was the way the world was. We were simply not capable of building an environment that ensured complete privacy and totally prevented children from seeing nudity and sexuality. Furthermore, when children grew up in rural areas they learned about sex by observing animals, if no other way.

It is easy, of course, to romanticize the past and romanticize other cultures. We don't actually know whether sex abuse was a common problem centuries ago or whether the present range of paraphilias existed. However in authors such as Ovid and Boccaccio, who wrote quite a bit on erotic themes, we don't find many references to fetishes and odd paraphilias. (One thing we do notice in classical mythology is a fair amount of beastiality. One might conjecture that in classical times there was a certain fascination for the idea of women having intercourse with bulls, swans, and the like.) (And we do know that homosexuality or at least bisexuality has existed throughout history. As it does in the animal kingdom.)

In the gay male SM community, one finds a lot of fascination with playing with the genitals, tying them and manipulating them in various ways (both pleasurably and painfully), prominently displaying them, piercing them, squeezing and pulling on the testicles, even inflating the scrotum with water so that it swells up to several times normal size. (I believe that there are some pictures of this in Brenda Love's book Encyclopedia of Unusual Sexual Practices.) My conjecture is that this sort of playing with one's own and others' genitals is a developmental stage that all male children are intended to go through.

> ... I have also heard it suggested
> that a mechanism similar to that regulating imprinting in birds
> is involved: that is, that our early childhoods determine what gets
> imprinted, but that once this occurs, it's a biologic condition, set
> for life. Again, this is a theory only.

I believe that imprinting will occur in a certain age range in childhood. If children are isolated from nudity and sexuality, then this imprinting may occur in somewhat strange, fetishistic ways. Furthermore, the erotic center of the brain will not have a chance to mature and when it does later become active, or when the person is confronted with erotic stimuli, the person is likely to be very uncomfortable, perhaps disturbingly so.

I believe that if children were brought up learning that sexuality is a natural part of the world, then non-violent "abuse" would not create major psychological problems and might in some cases no longer even be seen as abuse, but simply as one of the many injustices which have always existed in relationships between children and adults. I further believe that in such a world, sex abuse would be much less common.