Especially for Parents

News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
July 2005

The Shaping Of Desire

"In this country, we don't put people in jail for what they write, but we consistently manipulate what they think by controlling what they read," states the text of a June 2005 National Coalition Against Censorship fundraising appeal.

An interesting statement, considering today's near omnipresent media, the rapid merging of pornographic, popular and consumer cultures, and the ways in which media controls what we see and thus manipulates what we want. And, with a degree of pervasiveness and invasiveness that should make totalitarian regimes envious, for too many youth, it is the media and its influence on culture and society that reigns supreme in the shaping of desire.

The desires shaped by the far reaching influences of media and popular culture encompass much more than stoking the desire for unhealthy foods, the latest fashions or the acquisition of the most recent pricey gadget. As pornography and the most radical concepts of the sexual revolution increasingly infiltrate the content of mainstream media and culture, we witness the shaping of our youth's most intimate desires and their concepts of self and others. We see shifts in their psycho-sexual development. We see changes in their behavior. Indeed, even young teenage girls seem to desire to express the 'gift' of female liberation the sexual revolution has bestowed upon them. Discussed on daytime television talk shows and the subject of a recent novel marketed to teens age 14 and up, rainbow parties are one of many teen sexual practices that call to mind the radical feminist view of pornography. At a rainbow party, girls wear different shades of lipstick as they fellate the boy or boys present, leaving the male organ rainbow striped with their various lipstick shades.

The benefit of rainbow parties to these young liberated and sexually empowered females, it seems, is that they learn to perfect their technique of pleasing men while competing against each other to see who can best pleasure the male(s) and, as a bonus, they receive masculine approval for a job well done. Wow. We've come a long way, baby.

Now, a little investigation of social history makes it plain that the rainbow party method of interaction has not always been a part of adolescent sexual practice or desire. No, this is a shaped desire, and on Planned Parenthood's teenwire.com website, children can learn the mechanics of how to gratify a variety of shaped sexual desires, while reducing the real risk of physical harm.

Of course, as the influence of our hyper-sexualized media and the more radical element of the sexual revolution seep into mainstream society, there is the possibility that the teens participating in extreme sexual behavior may have gotten tips and pointers on such behavior in class.

In a May 20, 2005, column published on the Concerned Women For America web site, Janice Shaw Crouse discussed "the recommendation in the latest 'comprehensive' sex-education materials from Planned Parenthood that, for 'safe' sex, 8th graders should use Saran Wrap as 'protection' when engaging in oral and anal sex."

"How did we get to the point where it must be assumed that 8th graders are going to be 'performing' oral and anal sex and we have to equip them to do it 'safely'?" asked Crouse. She went on to make a powerful observation. "The FBI publishes A Parent's Guide to the Internet. Note well how it describes the modus operandi of pedophiles: 'These individuals attempt to gradually lower children's inhibitions by slowly introducing sexual context and content into their conversations.' And millions of parents are letting so-called sex-education experts do exactly this to their children in the classroom without raising any objection."

But, thankfully, there are parents that object to this type insanity, as Wendy McElroy pointed out in a June 23, 2005, column. Apparently, Massachusetts parent, Mark Fisher, had a problem with a school survey that wanted to know the last time his 12-year-old daughter had oral sex.

According to McElroy, when the concerned father complained to the Shrewsbury school, "the school authorities asserted their right to gather such information without his consent." Furthermore, McElroy wrote, "that Shrewsbury has refused to release its version of the questionnaire." Evidently, this is a national survey put together by the Centers For Disease Control, and although the basic template survey is posted on the CDC website, individual school districts can add or subtract questions as deemed necessary.

"My concern is that the whole survey is especially inappropriate for sixth- and eighth-graders as it implicitly endorses these behaviors. The survey seems to say it's OK to do this stuff, we just need to know how many times you do it and with whom," said Fisher, according to a June 14, 2005, World Net Daily article.

"It might be misinterpreted or misunderstood or they could use it to direct their children's responses,'' said school committee president Deborah Peeples, explaining why "parents were allowed to view the survey ahead of time, but were not able to take a copy home," according to World Net Daily. Peeples also said that the school district decided to reduce the number of oral sex questions for 11- and 12-year olds to just one.

The school bus is another site of concern. On July 1, 2005, the Akron Beacon Journal reported on a new lawsuit filed in Stark County Common Pleas Court. The suit alleges that "a Jackson local school bus driver allowed a student to repeatedly rape and sexually assault a mentally handicapped girl while he drove the students to and from school."

For more than a year, a 9-year-old mentally handicapped little girl was repeatedly sexually assaulted and raped on her school bus. According to the Akron Beacon Journal, the suit alleges that "the 9-year-old girl would be ordered to sit with several high school students in the back of the minivan" that served as their school bus. These types of incidents are not out of the ordinary. In fact, according to a June 14, 2005, Washington Post article, sexual assaults on school buses are increasing dramatically, and are "one of the fastest-growing forms of school violence."

Among the list of incidents cited in the Washington Post article was one that allegedly took place two months ago, in which "an 11-year-old girl was allegedly attacked by two girls and three boys during a bus ride home from her elementary school, south of Richmond. The group, the girl said, held her down, groped her and penetrated her with an object." The children who allegedly assaulted her ranged in age from 8 years old to 13 years old.

"The driver saw the incident," according to the newspaper report, "notified supervisors and the school, drove the child to her stop and told her mother. Police and the school coordinated investigations: Colonial Heights School Superintendent Joseph Cox told local media that he wanted "the maximum discipline available" for the children, who were placed on house arrest, with electronic monitoring. Within a week, police announced they were seeking charges ranging in severity from abduction to aggravated sexual battery."

In another incident mentioned in the article, suffered by another 11-year-old girl, "six older boys allegedly held her down on the bus floor, groped and lay on top of her. It wasn't until the next day, when she got on the bus and the boys threatened to "finish what they started," her mother said, that Ashley told an assistant principal what happened. The school called her mother, and her mother called police."

School buses are "more dangerous, in that society has become more sexualized and less civil," said Robert Shoop, a professor at Kansas State University, according to the Washington Post. "Now many more kids are saying, 'I don't want to ride the bus.' They're scared."

"I've never experienced the problems and the degenerate actions of kids as I have this past year," said bus driver Bob Baxley of Hagerstown, Md., who was driving during one of the school bus sexual assaults mentioned in the article. The Washington Post also reported "that Baxley saw middle school boys describe sex acts to first-graders and one boy try to shove a condom into another child's mouth." (I wonder if he got the condom at school.)

Nor is the sexual assault of young children by older schoolmates limited to the United States. A disturbing story reported in the British Times On Line on June 18, 2005, tells of an ugly incident, recorded by cell phone camera.

"A gang of teenage boys raped an 11-year-old girl and filmed the attack in the latest in a number of serious incidents involving video capture on mobile phone," said the report. "The video of the assault was circulated to pupils at the victim's school and had been seen by hundreds of children by the next day, according to reports." The child said that the older boys asked for group sex, and when she said no, the 14-year-olds raped her.

I wonder what those children who viewed the rape of their classmate via cell phone thought. Were they frightened? Amused? Indifferent?

Not too many decades ago, children at these tender ages lived different lives, it seems. Different lives in different times. Group sex binges were not common. Schools were places to learn reading, math, history and science, not anal and oral sex techniques. Children were not afraid of being raped and sexually assaulted on school buses. Booksellers and other industries were not marketing overtly sexual material to youth. Children were sheltered from adult materials and subjects. Why are these companies still raking in their profits? Why are there still children in these schools? Haven't we had enough yet?