Top Stories Wednesday 11 Dec
Antidotal on the weird American attitude towards sex and violence:
I’ve always had a hard time figuring out why Americans find sex so taboo. Conservative cultural critics argue that we need to restrict and restrain sexual imagery and references so as to protect our children. But I think that this is just silly. Children don’t need to be shielded from sex; they need to learn to treat sex with respect and a degree of caution. You can’t inculcate a mature attitude toward sex in our youth by dishonestly preaching that sex is indecent, or evil, or intrinsically harmful, or that it doesn’t exist for people until they’re over 21. By the time children reach the age at which they curious and interested enough to ask questions in sex, they’re probably mature enough to begin learning what it’s really all about.The American attitude toward sex seems particularly weird when one considers that U.S. TV isn’t nearly as restrained when it comes to violence. Aside from the news, between CSI, Law and Order, 24, and the gobs of action flicks that are always on, you can always catch depictions of people being maimed, murdered, or gloriously killed by the Good Guy at almost any hour of the day, and these depictions are treated as relatively unproblematic.