It just so happens that almost all over the world there are laws, which sense I’m not going to discuss, that with incredible harshness prosecute any sexual and erotic contacts between adults and children. In Russia, we could be faced with a situation when a little girl draws a cat with thick and curved tail and this fact gives enough reason to throw her father in jail for long years with a lifelong stigma of “paedophile” which actually deprives him of the right to future life. Paedohysteria has reached unrealistic (as it seemed twenty years ago) level and covered the whole world like a pandemic, not going to stop there, getting more and more perverse and inconsistent with life.
Meanwhile, the irrefutable fact remains that children from a very young age are extremely in need of sexual and erotic feelings, sensations, experiences, contacts. Numerous descriptions can be easily found on the Internet where people share their memories of awakening sexuality at five, seven years of age. Personally, my sexuality began to wake up when I was three, and this is not a very rare case. But you just imagine – what a monstrous aggression would be poured on a boy and a girl of, say, seven or ten who dared to publicly kiss and caress each other! And what if they are a boy and a boy? A girl and a girl? Two boys and a girl? Imagined? Do you think it’s normal? But everyone has long got used to it and resigned. Yet have you ever seen children sexually fondling each other in public? Personally I haven’t, and never heard of those who saw. In fact, nobody saw. Yet have you ever seen children quarrelling with each other in public? Beating each other? A thousand times, probably. But these, too, are seemingly strongly censured manifestations. So, this means nothing but the fact that even the youngest children are already well aware that sexuality is not just a sin, but a heinous and unforgivable one, extremely nasty sin. And what do you think will grow from a man who had absorbed such beliefs from childhood?
Also undeniable is the fact that the repression of infantile sexuality leads to terrible mental disability, slowdown in mental and physical development. In fact, a common worldwide practice of child sexuality suppression produces monsters, which everyone has to fight with during the whole life. There are innumerable mental pathologies getting their roots from a child’s suppressed sexuality. The same can be said about the various social ills. Also, it’s hard to imagine that it might be any different, because the sexual instinct is the strongest instinct in nature. What wild, destructive forces must be born in a man, who believes his sexuality is obscene, who suppresses it, feels ashamed of it, hates himself for it, limiting it in countless ways! One of the basic, fundamental qualities of the human personality is the ability and the need to love and be loved, which is also quite closely connected with sexual and erotic perceptions (though not limited to them, of course). What kind of wild, destructive distortions in mind will occur to a man in whom all these erotic and sexual expressions and perceptions fall into the most obscene, indecent, shameful and disgusting things, going on so fiercely and ruthlessly for many years from the most tender age.
In the school of the future this problem must be solved somehow: if not completely eliminated, which is impossible, of course, as long as society has such amazing laws, then at least restrained and limited in its incredible destructiveness.
I believe that here it is necessary to adhere to the following principles and approaches:
1. Violations of laws should not be allowed, no matter how wild these laws may seem, otherwise everything is at risk. Therefore, as long as these laws work, any sexual contacts between adults and minors in schools should be excluded completely.
2. Crucial, vital information about sexuality should be conveyed to children in two ways:
a) by adults – in a very abstract form. I believe that even such abstract and formal participation of adults in sex education of their children is important. Children need to understand that sexuality is normal and natural, and there should be no gulf between adults and children in this side of life.
b) Teenagers and young people who, on the one hand, have the legal right to communicate sexually with adults, and on the other hand, have this right to communicate with children within certain limits. For example, if according to the law, children from the age of 16 are entitled to free sex and free sexual communication with adults, at the same time having the right to free sexual communication with children no more than 3 years younger than themselves, this means that 16-18-year-olds will be mentors and friends in the sexual area for 13-15-year-olds. Similarly, 13-15-year-olds will be mentors and friends in the sexual area for 10-12-year-olds.
3. Children should have the right to receive information about the sexual side of life just when they show interest in it – this also applies to any other area of human knowledge of the world and themselves. Becoming an unhappy victim of their own immaturity, ignorance and hypocrisy, sometimes breaking their whole life in its very beginning – is that something worth striving for? Or is it better to know about the conception and abortion, about undesirability of frequent orgasms and the art to stay on the verge of orgasm, about prevention of pregnancy and diseases? Is it better to be insensitive and inept, breaking close relationships, or to have some nice sexy and erotic experience, to know how to give pleasure to themselves and others?
4. Adults should not in any way interfere with sexual and erotic relationships between children, should respect their right to privacy, and only respond to violence or antisocial behavior.
5. Attempts to create in children a reflex of shame for their sexuality, as well as guilt, condemnation and other warped reactions must be considered a serious crime against the child’s personality, so public displays of hatred should not be tolerated, but public manifestations of love and tenderness should be supported, approved or, at most, may be ignored (mindful of the laws).
At the same time, of course, children should be informed about the hatred the society will pour upon them if they take their caresses outside the hostel – just as they need to be informed about other threats from the world around them.
PS: the reader should keep in mind that even the discussion of this topic itself will cause very strong reaction from the surrounding people, rising to the level of hate. For example, Russian philistines have long and firmly branded me a pedophile just for what I said and will say that children experience sexual perceptions, and there is nothing wrong with that, but many wonderful things instead. Personally, I don’t care a thing about this stigma, and more than that – I am even pleased with this confirmation of my steadiness in uttering what others are even afraid to think, and keep their mouths shut even if they agree with my thoughts.