My elderly mother is a good example of someone who makes no secret of her sexceptionalist perspective. She does assert that sexuality is fundamentally unlike other social interactions, and must be addressed in a unique way. I'll try to do justice to her views here, although I'm very much playing the Devil's advocate. I'm curious to see the responses I'll get from you guys, so I won't include my own at first.Bookshelf wrote: Mon Mar 24, 2025 10:04 am Why is an experience gap necessarily a bad thing? It's quite a sexceptionalist point of view to imply that sex is harmful if two people have different levels of experience.
For starters, she opposes the idea that sexuality is primarily a "skill" you learn like other skills. In her view, the core of sexuality is intimate self-knowledge and self-discovery, and it's deeply subjective, not really something that someone else can "teach" you. She acknowledges that there is a core of basic information that's crucial, such as regarding STDs and contraception, but she adds that there is no reason for the teaching of such facts to involve the practice of sexuality, which in her understanding is a whole different matter. (In fact, she strongly supports sex education from an early age.)
She argues that one should have reached a certain degree of understanding of one's own subjective feelings and desires before engaging in any sexual contact at all with another person. She claims that it is very risky/harmful for another person with a higher degree of self-knowledge to push (or much worse, force) someone with less self-knowledge to fast-track their own inner development. While admitting herself that the comparisons are far from perfect (as sexuality is truly unique), she says that one shouldn't run before being confident standing up, and one shouldn't be French kissing before knowing romantic love. Yes, she does say that this applies at any age, but while some adults have yet to reach that level, virtually all children haven't. She admits that some exceptions exist, but she counters that they are so rare, and the risks of harm so great, that no adult should take the risk of being mistaken.
Furthermore, she doesn't think that the main problem in sexual contact between adults and children is the differing levels of sexual self-knowledge and development specifically, but rather the fact that the partners are generally at vastly different levels of life experience and personal development. In her opinion, sexual intimacy isn't "merely having fun". It is never trivial nor simple. It's about opening up your heart to another person, and about surrendering your body to someone you trust (she speaks from the female perspective, of course, but I think this can apply to boys too).
She argues that any kind of intimacy between two people with vastly different levels of development and self-knowledge should be approached with great caution due to the inherent risk of the older partner's personality and desires overriding those of the younger partner. When children are involved, she explains, the danger lies in the fact that the child is likely to have complete trust in the adult and to depend on him or her in a way that no fellow adult ever will. Accordingly, her point of view is essentially that virtually all sexual intimacy between an adult and a child will involve abuse of power, whether the adult wants it or not. The adult's powerful desires, as they encounter the child's naive trust (and utterly asymmetrical feelings), will nigh inevitably take over the sexual relationship. Even in a best-case scenario, where she admits a few rare children might not be harmed, the child will be used by the adult.
In such a context, the slightest misunderstanding by the adult of the child's boundaries is likely to cause disproportionate harm. This is what is meant by the child's "vulnerability", and it's something she definitely emphasizes in her analysis, although she seldom uses the word.
Finally, I'd add that the driving analogy is appropriate in one sense: there are good reasons teenagers can't drive before a certain age, often 16. That is because they haven't reached a level of intellectual and emotional development to be considered sufficiently responsible to put themselves and others at risk in that way.