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lotesse...How's that for a pretentious title? Okay, but seriously. Having finally got round to reading Lolita, I've found my thoughts on underage fic and pr0n much clearer. (Caveat: I'm not into chan. At all. Not against it; just not my bag.)
I was not disturbed by Lolita. And I don't see why children should be considered sexually non-existent. Of course, I recognize that Humbert damaged Lolita, and that actual sexual contact between an adult and a very young child is very rarely healthy in any describable way. But I don't see why it's not okay to be aware of the sexuality of a child.
Maybe this has something to do with me. I'm eighteen right now, and I started reading explicit slash when I was thirteen. I became sexually active when I was sixteen and "went all the way" a year and a half later. I was raised in a clothing-optional household, and I know that mother keeps a vibrator and a book of tantric sex in her sock drawer. My home doesn't have any doors, and I've been able to hear my parents having sex almost every night for my entire life.
Children are very sexy, but in a different way from adults. There's an awareness of their budding sexuality, a sense of powerful potential energy just waiting to explode into the realm of the kinetic. I think that we see this with the children acting in the HP films, especially because the media does play this up. Children touch, masturbate, suckle. And most kids have fooled around in some way by the time they reach their early teens.
I write a fair amount of "underage"--in that both the characters are under sixteen--in HP fandom. Naturally. Most of the main characters are under sixteen. I don't count this as chan, because I'm not at all interested in their bodies as somehow "childlike." I'm interested in the characters, and I know well enough that fifteen is a common enough age to be having sex or at least sexual thoughts by. The "firstness" of underage can be very exciting, the feeling of newly-discovered or unlocked passion, those first awkward, passionate, blinding fumblings towards what you think is love. It's a powerful thing to write about, as Shakespeare knew well.
I also feel that children and teens mature at different rates, and I think that this is an important thing to keep in mind. It's entirely possibly that Hermione or Harry could, at sixteen, be mature enough to enter into a full, consenting relationship with an adult. Or at fifteen. Or never. Who knows? (This is also the case, to touch on a tangential but related issue, with underage teens reading our pr0n. Some are never old enough for it, and some are, as I feel that I was, ready for it at a younger age. Certainly I don't feel that I was in any way damaged by being exposed to sexually explicit material. However, I did have the sense to not mention my age until I was fully legal. Because why on earth would I do something that pointlessly stupid?)
It's very strange to me that our culture so firmly categorizes any sexual contact had in the early teens as bad, bad, bad. It's also very strange to me that fandom feels the need to be so damn apologetic about it. I mean, I can see wanting to stay on the good side of the law, but a lot of people seem to talk about chan and underage as if they feel that they have to justify what they're doing to themselves and to each other.
So, to sum up, my positions are as follows: it is perfectly natural to find children sexy, children and young teens are sexual beings, they mature at different rates, some may be ready for adult relationships before others, it is possible to write about underage characters without bringing chan into it, and anything expressed in fantasy is okay. Kids are sexy and sexual and society needs to get over it, damn it!
There! I've gotten up off my lazy ass and produced something of some worth to the fandom. Maybe.
I was not disturbed by Lolita. And I don't see why children should be considered sexually non-existent. Of course, I recognize that Humbert damaged Lolita, and that actual sexual contact between an adult and a very young child is very rarely healthy in any describable way. But I don't see why it's not okay to be aware of the sexuality of a child.
Maybe this has something to do with me. I'm eighteen right now, and I started reading explicit slash when I was thirteen. I became sexually active when I was sixteen and "went all the way" a year and a half later. I was raised in a clothing-optional household, and I know that mother keeps a vibrator and a book of tantric sex in her sock drawer. My home doesn't have any doors, and I've been able to hear my parents having sex almost every night for my entire life.
Children are very sexy, but in a different way from adults. There's an awareness of their budding sexuality, a sense of powerful potential energy just waiting to explode into the realm of the kinetic. I think that we see this with the children acting in the HP films, especially because the media does play this up. Children touch, masturbate, suckle. And most kids have fooled around in some way by the time they reach their early teens.
I write a fair amount of "underage"--in that both the characters are under sixteen--in HP fandom. Naturally. Most of the main characters are under sixteen. I don't count this as chan, because I'm not at all interested in their bodies as somehow "childlike." I'm interested in the characters, and I know well enough that fifteen is a common enough age to be having sex or at least sexual thoughts by. The "firstness" of underage can be very exciting, the feeling of newly-discovered or unlocked passion, those first awkward, passionate, blinding fumblings towards what you think is love. It's a powerful thing to write about, as Shakespeare knew well.
I also feel that children and teens mature at different rates, and I think that this is an important thing to keep in mind. It's entirely possibly that Hermione or Harry could, at sixteen, be mature enough to enter into a full, consenting relationship with an adult. Or at fifteen. Or never. Who knows? (This is also the case, to touch on a tangential but related issue, with underage teens reading our pr0n. Some are never old enough for it, and some are, as I feel that I was, ready for it at a younger age. Certainly I don't feel that I was in any way damaged by being exposed to sexually explicit material. However, I did have the sense to not mention my age until I was fully legal. Because why on earth would I do something that pointlessly stupid?)
It's very strange to me that our culture so firmly categorizes any sexual contact had in the early teens as bad, bad, bad. It's also very strange to me that fandom feels the need to be so damn apologetic about it. I mean, I can see wanting to stay on the good side of the law, but a lot of people seem to talk about chan and underage as if they feel that they have to justify what they're doing to themselves and to each other.
So, to sum up, my positions are as follows: it is perfectly natural to find children sexy, children and young teens are sexual beings, they mature at different rates, some may be ready for adult relationships before others, it is possible to write about underage characters without bringing chan into it, and anything expressed in fantasy is okay. Kids are sexy and sexual and society needs to get over it, damn it!
There! I've gotten up off my lazy ass and produced something of some worth to the fandom. Maybe.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-22 02:58 am (UTC)O_o