Talk:Child sexuality

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[edit] Early sex removed

Removed from "Legal aspects"

In other countries, for example, Australian children in some states are allowed to have sex starting from 10 to 12 years, as long as the age difference is less than two years.

This statement absolutely requires exact reference. No hearsay in legal issues, please. mikka (t) 07:20, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Your exact reference is Victoria's Crimes Act 1958, ss. 45-46. DrKinsey 16:02, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

OK so the reference has been given, now lets put it back! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.239.114.128 (talk) 04:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Masturbation in pre-adolescense

My uncle told me that when he was 10, he couldn't stop masturbating. It was like a disease. His mother asked him if he was reading Playboy, but he hadn't and he said he couldn't help it. He even did it in school and the kids started to laugh at him.

Apparently, pre-teens have dry orgams, which I think it's weird. I only remember I fell madly in love with this girl when I was 6 and couldn't stop thinking about her, but I forgot her when I was like 15 and joined the Basketball team.

I didn't have dry orgasms per-se, but I remember having orgasms with clear lubricant fluid only, which reminded me a lot of the texture and feel of "pre-cum". 68.184.84.146 23:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Remembering my own pre-teen years, I think child sexuality is just silly and fun for the most part. Even some mild sexual contact (mutual masturbation) I had with an adult (female) was something I remember fondly as a positive experience. I especially enjoyed all the hugs afterwards. Why there should be a taboo about child sexuality is beyond me, except to suggest it must be religious ideas about sin that must lead to it.
Religious and conservative hardliners draw the line at age, but methinks the more rational line to draw would be at coercion - i.e., a child exploring the world around them should never be discouraged or told that they're "bad" or "evil" for being curious; but coercing a child into sexual acts for the purpose of one's own gratification is far beyond wrong, both in moral terms and in scientific terms (skewing the kiddo's development, that is). Repression is almost as dangerous as having sexuality forced on you before you're ready. My two cents, anyhow. TKarrde 20:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
It's a taboo because it's a common view (and increasingly getting more popular) that sexuality is something solely for adults. The current fear of childhood sexuality I think is a remnant or result of the Victorian myth of childhood innocence. From this it's more of a social fear (the idea that children know or can they "shouldn't" be able to comprehend. Most often they're just not allowed to comprehend) than a religious construct to instill the fear of sin, although it can be used as such. 217.122.225.171 16:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I wish the world wasn't so cranky.
"This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject." Please keep to discussing the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.11.192.166 (talk) 15:56, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Intro

I qualified the intro a bit:

"child sexuality is frequently a controversial subject, and sexual acts among children and/or juveniles are sometimes seen as wrongful and responded to with therapy or detention."

I added this:

"Other views are that such therapy and punishment can itself cause harm."

Please don't remove the second without a solid reference for the first, preferably a reference that has opposing views taken into account, and please discuss politely before throwing any tantrums. --DanielCD 15:26, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References?

This page badly needs referencing! There are some links at the end, but virtually nothing is referenced in the text, even quotes. It needs referencing directly, as per WP:CITE 80.255.202.50 20:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Yup. --DanielCD 21:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Asexuality

If anyone disagrees with the "asexuality" segment I just added, please change it appropriately rather than delete it. As an asexual, the page seemed to me like a description of a different species than my own, we wouldn't want other asexuals to feel abnormal since they hardly fit the pattern described here. Just like the comment about gays above, we deserve recognition and respect as well, along with self confidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.64.223.115 (talk • contribs)

Ahem! There isn't exactly an encyclopedia on child sexuality. Is the true meaning of this question wisdom or logic? 21:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC) igo231

[edit] Geoff Birky

The article notes that the sections "Sexuality in different ages", "Sex play among siblings and older or younger children", "Cultural and historical variation," and "The United States today" are based on Geoff Birky's statements. However, those statements have not been published in a reliable source. They originate from his own Web site. Joey Q. McCartney 03:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I see there are online copies of the studies that Birky mentions. Those would probably be good sources. Sorry if it sounds like I'm just thinking out loud. Joey Q. McCartney 03:50, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Why should material that is copied here under public domain terms be re-attributed into a quotation, instead of being edited openly in the wiki way? Birky's text is a decent, well-sourced summary of the issue. By indenting it as a quote, you have made it essentially uneditable. I don't think that's a good idea at all.--Eloquence* 14:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
You raise several issues. How is Birky's summary public domain? Joey Q. McCartney 18:40, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Simple: I contacted Birky back then and asked him, and he responded: "Certainly, I intend everything at my site to be in the public domain, to be used freely by anyone else."--Eloquence* 20:53, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I reverted myself, but accidentally didn't leave an edit summary. Have Birky's sources been checked, as far as you know, that they say what he says they do? Joey Q. McCartney 00:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't know; I am, however, familiar with other sources such as Spitz and Kinsey which amount to the same conclusions. As with any contribution with sources, I think the onus is upon those who dispute the claims to verify the sources.--Eloquence* 18:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General restructuring needed

I think in the course of editing this article has kind of lost its structure over time and needs to be restructured. Here are some issues I see with this article:

  1. There needs to be a separation between describing child sexuality and describing research on child sexuality. Right now they are kind of mixed together, leading among other things to repetition.
  2. Generally polemeic. I don't need to guess the politics of the main editors of this article. That's never good.
  3. Broader research, as noted above.
  4. Bunch of other stuff, but more specific.

Basically what I propose to do is, first, a complete cut-and-paste of moving sections around, but changing as little as possible, only enough to make sections fit together. Then we can all take a look at what needs to be added, subtracted, combineed, and referenced. I won't do that in the main article space, I'll make a draft area, and I'll note when its done. Herostratus 22:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Also... do we need to be covering child and youth sexualility in this article? Youth/teen/adolescent sexuality is a whole huge subject, as is child (pre-teen) sexuality by itself. Understood that they run together somewhat, but so does most everything really, so I think that ought to be spun off into a seperate article, n'est-ce pas? Herostratus 22:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

OK. What I came up with was this structure:

  • Sexuality in early childhood (Ages 0 - 5)
  • Sexuality in middle childhood (ages 6 - 11)
  • Sexual issues and activities throughout childhood (ages 0 - 11)
    • (Basically a place to hang a few things that I couldn't immediately break out into one or the other of the above.)
  • Legal aspects
  • Asexuality
  • Cultural issues
  • Research issues

It's at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch/Child sexuality (draft), and I'll let it hang there a few days, subject as usual to editing and comments.

If there's no objection to the new structure I'll propose to make make minimal cleanups to make it public-ready and copy it over this existing article, OK? Herostratus 23:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Not having receive any objections or feedback, I'll now proceed. Herostratus 16:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly merging Sexualization_of_children into this article

I noticed the existence of the Sexualization_of_children, and put the merge tags on both articles. I'll leave it to you all to decide if these articles should be merged or not. If not merged, this article should at least mention the existence of the other one, I think. --Xyzzyplugh 23:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Right. I included that in the draft, and I think it should go in, although that article is a little loosey-goosey re sources. Herostratus 07:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major developmental edit (restructure + remove adolescents)

OK, I have pasted a new version into the article (per my proposal above). This edit -- which is referenced in the page history with the edit summary "RESTRUCTURING - SEE TALK" peforms these two (and only these two, unless I have erred) functions:

  • Move text around without adding or deleting any text (except for necessary minor changes such as new section titles and bridging text), solely to improve the logical structure of the material.
  • Remove matererial on adolescents, which is a whole nother topic (see my note in the talk page above). Per the article child - see also discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch/Nomenclature, we are using a working definition of "child" which extends through age 12, this of course being a general average.Herostratus 16:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problematic text 1

I have removed these two passages, at least for the time being:

  • From section "Sexuality in early childhood (Ages 0 - 5)", subsection "Peer groups":
  • From section "Sexuality in middle childhood (ages 6 - 11)", subsection "Sexual activities":
    • Sadistic and violent fantasies also occur: "The fantasy in connecting with masturbation, running from highly sadistic to just an ordinary sexual intercourse relationship, seemed to parallel the development of my sexual interest." A woman reported her fantasies as an 11-year-old girl about a quasi-rape by a number of men that she considered stimulating and masturbated while having these imaginations.

Here's my reasoning. For the first passage certainly, and probably the second (depending on age and how expressed), the behavior described would (I think) cause child welfare advocates to take an interest in what exactly is going in the child's environment. I'm certainly willing to be educated on this point, but I would like to see some very firm documentation on this. In the meantime, I'm not seeing that as material that should be included with the other activities described, recalling that this article is (at this time) primarily based on Western society. Herostratus 16:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


5-6 year olds will attempt intercourse, though. How do I know? The best example is that one of my cousins and the child of another cousin were BOTH caught in the act. Apparently my bloodline has some strong curiosity genes, as both kids were educated by older peers (who were the preferred time spending partners in both cases) and simply wanted to try out this new knowledge. The parents were then completely shocked, since they thought that their children were "normal". The more I learn of such cases, the more I think that normal is a good word to describe what happened and basing articles on some flaws in our Western society may not be the correct way to impart knowledge.

[edit] Edits to section "Sexuality in early childhood (Ages 0 - 5)"

  • Moved the bulleted list to the top. It is general, while the original opening paras (begins "According to Alfred Kinsey's examinations...") is more specifically about masturbation and orgasamn. Moved, on the principle of going from the general to the specific.
  • Removed an entire long passage taken directly from Kinsey. First of all, is this copyvio? Fair use does not, I think, cover the lifting of entire long passages in this manner. Secondly, This is too high a level of detail for a encyclopedia article, especially since we want to make room for more material on non-Western cultures and other material. The sentence which immediately precedes the Kinsey quote ("Children are not necessarily restricted to direct manipulation of their genitals to reach orgasm, but can actually achieve it via rhythmic movements or compression of the thighs.") is sufficient. Certainly a reference to the Kinsey material can and perhaps should be added. The removed material is:
    • Kinsey described the behaviour that he observed on a three-year-old girl: [indent here, in original text] Lying face down on the bed, with her knees drawn up, she started rhythmic pelvic thrusts, about one second or less apart. The thrusts were primarily pelvic, with the legs tensed in a fixed position. The forward components of the thrust were in a smooth and perfect rhythm which was unbroken except for momentarily pauses during which the genitalia were readjusted against the doll on which they were pressed; the return from each thrust was convulsive, jerky. There were 44 thrusts in unbroken rhythm, a slight momentary pause, 87 thrusts followed by a slight momentary pause, then 10 thrusts, and then a cessation of all movement. There was marked concentration and intense breathing with abrupt jerks as orgasm approached. She was completely oblivious to everything during these later stages of the activity. Her eyes were glassy and fixed in a vacant stare. There was noticeable relief and relaxation after orgasm. A second series of reactions began two minutes later with series of 48, 18, and 57 thrusts, with slight momentary pauses between each series. With the mounting tensions there were audible gasps but immediately following the cessation of pelvic thrusts, there was complete relaxation and only desultory movements thereafter.
  • From the "Peer groups" subsection, removed the two ending clauses from the final sentence. The original sentence read:
    • Additionally about half of the observed sexual activities involve a partner of the same sex (In this context Freud speaks of the polymorph pervert nature of appetite of children) and thus do not have solely explorative motivations.
    • The edited sentence reads:
      • Additionally about half of the observed sexual activities involve a partner of the same sex.
    • Reasoning: is Freud considered a vaild reference much nowadays? I'm a bit unsure of that. At any rate his work is about a century old and I'm a little leery of using him much... but in this case its just a general quote, so it would be OK. My main objection is that the phrase contains the word "pervert"... this is a highly loaded word which is likely to not be enlightening to the typical user; surely some other phrase can be found which uses terms of more understood precision. As to "...thus do not have solely explorative motivations.", this seems almost a non-sequiter. The editor seems to be saying that touching among same-sex children is not (solely) exploratory, while touuching among different-sex children is or might be? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me... again, willing to be educated on the matter, but would need good refernces there.
  • Also put citation tags in a couple of places. Herostratus 17:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to section "Sexual issues and activities throughout childhood (ages 0 - 11)"

  • Removed the entire subsection "Sexual fantasies". The text was:
    • Sexual fantasies were observed starting at the age of three. It is unclear in how many children sexual fantasies occur. Fantasies often play a role in masturbation of children. They widely vary.
  • Reasoning: Sexual fantasies can (I would think) only be "observed" in three ways that I can think of: 1) Interviews with children, 2) Interviews with adults remembering childhood, or 3) Inference from observation of behavior, e.g. if a person masturbating is observed to be murmering "Fuck me Pikachu, fuck me hard" or whatever. (Also, brain activity can be monitored with EKGs etc., but not to level of detail of determining of the person is having a sexual fantasy, I don't think.) Interviews with children would be problematic as to veracity, I guess. Interviews with adults could also be problematic as to veracity, depending on how far back you are asking the person to remember and other factors. Inference from observation would be best, providing proper controls etc. are in place. Anyway, willing to instructed on the matter, but would need good references describing in more detail how sexual fantasies are observed.
  • Renamed subsection "Sexual development" to "Childhood sexual environment and violenc", since it is one para and addresses only that issue, not sexual development in general. Although that's not a great name, but just what I can think of for now.Also moved it to the bottom of the section as it is more specific than the other material. I think this material needs to be somewhere else, perhaps a seperate section, but its OK here for now.
  • Added some citation tags.Herostratus 17:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some notes on the "Cultural issues" section

  • I think we want to make a strong a clear distinction between intra-Western differences (e.g., differences between the USA and Sweden etc) and global differences (e.g., differences between the West and (say) East Asia, or the Middle East, etc.; and/or differences between the West and more traditional societies; and/or differences between the developed world in general and more traditional societies. We need to be clear when we are talking about cultural differences which kind we are talking about. Also, I think that intra-West differences need to be sorted out from differences between the West and more traditional societies.
  • In general, at this time article is based on research, observations, and practices in the West. There are reasons for this - as far as I know, available research is mostly on Western societies, and so forth. Anyway - as has been alread tagged in at least one place - we need to continue to ensure that readers understand that we are talking (basically) about the modern West except when we aren't.
  • This is kind of an opinion, but it seems fairly unexceptionalbe to me. The West -- really the developed world in general -- has undergone some fairly major sea changes in sexual attitudes and mores over the last half-century. This has been termed the "Sexual Revolution". Perhaps you noticed it? Anyway, some of the material in this section seems to kind of take the slant that the West is this horrible place where children are unconscionably repressed -- the beginning of the section intro, for instance ends During the Victorian era, the cultural belief that childhood was free of sexual knowledge, interest, and behavior coexisted with constant adult surveillance of children's sexuality. This produced a pervasive negative preoccupation with sexuality and a category of emotional disorders labeled "psychosexual." and leaves us there, basically in the Victorian era -- when to my mind there has been considerable change over the last decades.
  • Anyway, the whole section needs to be cleaned up of some kind of loose language, and tagged where necessary. Herostratus 18:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added "Sexualization of children" subsection to "Culural Issues" section

I added this section, merged in from the article "Sexualizattion of children" (fairly severely redacted, though). I'm not nuts about this section for several reasons, but it can be cleaned up. Herostratus 19:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major edits to section "Research issues" (renamed to just "Research")

  • Added material on Freud and Kinsey. Contradiciting my earlier comment, I think it worthwhile to add considerable material on Freud, while of course noting that he's old hat.
  • Condensed the rest of the section, mainly taking out interpretations (just the facts, please; let the reader make up his own mind).
  • Added citation tags to everything that wasn't pinned down. Later I (or someone) will go back and pin these down or remove them.

[edit] Major edits to section "Cultural issues", subsection "Cultural & historical variation"

I have some problems with the tone of the first paragraph and am removing it for the time being, although most or all it needs to go back in (with some editing and verification), but I'm not exactly sure where yet, perhaps more toward the end of the subsection. The passage is:

  • In many European countries, notably the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, child sexuality is often viewed as normal and harmless, and caretakers take a relaxed approach to it. In other western countries, child sexuality is frequently a controversial subject, and sexual acts among children and/or juveniles are sometimes seen as wrong and responded to with therapy or detention. [citation needed] Other views are that such therapy and punishment can itself cause harm. [citation needed]

For the rest of the section, I'll explain my edits word-by-word:

  • Childhood sexual development and expression is dependant partly on innate human nature and partly on the child's larger culture, in a mix that may vary between and indeed within cultures.
    • NOTE: added, by me (Herostratus) based on no research, but just stating the obvious as an opener.
  • The extent of children's sexual activity depends on the way they have been brought up and how knowledgeable they are.
    • NOTE: Retained, with {{Fact}} added, although I'm not entirely happy with the assumption that activity is the main focus.
  • In different communities and socioeconomic groups, stages of sexual development occur at different times and last longer or shorter depending on the permissiveness of adults and the interactions with peers.
    • NOTE: Retained. Changed "permissiveness of adults" to more neutral "attitude of adult culture", and "support of peers" to more neutral "interactions with peers". No tag needed as seems fairly incontrovertible.
  • Children in sexually permissive or supportive cultures (those which permit or encourage early sexual expression) display a developmental pattern that is not apparent in sexually restrictive societies. In early childhood, masturbation alone and in groups leads to exploration and experimentation among children of the same and the opposite sex. Mutual masturbation, oral stimulation of the genitals, and intercourse take place between children anywhere between ages five and twelve. Late childhood (prepubescence) is characterized by heterosexual role modeling and attempted intercourse; girls may begin having regular intercourse with older boys. In pubescence, adult-like heterosexual patterns replace earlier ones.
    • NOTE: Collapsed first sentence to read "Children in cultures which permit or encourage early sexual expression display a developmental pattern different from more sexually restrained societies " The rest I left alone except to put a {{Fact}} tag on each bullet point. But didn't we already say this somewhere else? Will check. I'm eager to see the research on this.
  • Sexual attitudes in Western society have also changed over time. Sexual exploitation of children was freely indulged in until the latter half of the 18th century, when it was repudiated. Then parents began to discipline children for their sexual curiosity and activity. During the Victorian era, the cultural belief that childhood was free of sexual knowledge, interest, and behavior coexisted with constant adult surveillance of children's sexuality. This produced a pervasive negative preoccupation with sexuality and a category of emotional disorders labeled psychosexual.((fact}}
    • NOTE: Left as is except for very minor workding edits, but tagged each statement. I think this is something where it would be kind of hard to know how people actually thought and behaved, especially regarding the proletariat and peasantry. And though the last sentence may well be so, I think it will need expanding on. Herostratus

[edit] Edits to section "Cultural Issues", subsection "conclusions"

It is apparent that large numbers of children at almost all ages may engage in more extensive behaviors with each other than many adults realize, including adult-like behaviors such as genital and oral contact, and sometimes even intercourse.

    • Removed, we already said that, and needs citation anyway (although earlier it was said to be true in permissive societies, here it is a blanket statement.) The rest of the sections seems OK.Herostratus 01:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subsection "Development of violence" removed

The contents of the sections was this:

  • There is a dependency between intensive physical affection during childhood and violent behaviour as grown-ups. James W. Prescott showed in a study on 400 primitive peoples that in those peoples who give children only little physical affection or who were sexually restrictive, acts of violence were much more prevalent than in peoples who showed physical affection to children.[citation needed] Surveys in western cultures show that a high percentage of violent criminals and sexual murderers grew up in a sexually repressive environment.[citation needed]

Problems with this section: first, I read Prescott's seminal paper and the other material in the external links section of James W. Prescott, and his stuff is not directly about child sexuality. He writes about child pain and pleasure (punishment, cuddling) and about about adult sexuality (sexually frustrated person=violent). I mean sure you could stretch it to say he's writing about childhood sexuality, but that's really pushing it IMO. There's a huge difference between the child sexuality that the rest of this article is about and the non-sexual cuddling and stuff that Prescott is talking about. Second, Prescott is just one guy, he wrote decades ago, I'm not saying he's not right (he probably is) but enh I don't want to pick and choose individual researchers and highlight them.Herostratus 01:54, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

This seems like valuable material. I hope you will not take it as my volunteering you if I ask you to find room for it in an appropriate article. Haiduc 03:17, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
OK. Yes, Haiduc, I read the material (a bit) and found it very interesting and worthwhile. I did not want to delete it, because I agree with the thesis, and (in my brief review) did not see any reason to suspect the rigor of the analysis. It is unfortunate that it's just off-topic for this article. I do promise to try to find one (or more) articles in which to replace it (that is one reason I saved the text here on this talk page). Any suggestions would be welcome. Herostratus 04:09, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another restructuring

I'm proposing to almost reverse the main sections of this article - Putting "Research" at or near the top, and the detailed description of behavior by age more toward the botton, reasons being:

  • Follows the principle of general-to-specific
  • Thinking about the purpose of the article... while its impossible to know, what are some of the likely reasons people would visit this article? To learn specifically about what behaviors occur and at what ages, or to learn what people have to say about child sexuality and sexual development in general... I would guess the latter is more likely. Herostratus 07:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with the section, which treats as same-age relations: "In Germany, twenty cases of abortion for ten year old girls were reported in the year 2002." Haiduc 14:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Use of article - people looking to find out about the sexual lives of children. Both what is observed and what is theorized, in that order. Haiduc 14:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Right... about that sentence you removed, I have had my eye on that one two... it seems to possibly be an out-of-place non-sequiter, but in any case it needs more context. Another editor put it back, so enh, I don't see it as worth warring about, but it will be moved/expanded/deleted in coming days, so be patient.
OK, appreciate your input re restructuring... point taken... I'll hold off on that.Herostratus 15:23, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bold suggestion

I think the article should be blanked and started over from scratch.

Reasons
  1. Too much unsourced material. Looking for sources after the fact for material is not the best way to write an article.
  2. Need to have a clear idea about topics to be included before the article is started.
  3. This article needs to be based on mainstream reliable sources.
  4. For controversial topics, it is better to have no article than one with unverified material and few mainstream reliable sources.

This article still needs a signifcant amount of work despite the effort of a large number of experienced editors. The problem can't be the editors, so it must be the material. : ) FloNight talk 12:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that blanking is a good sugestion for any article. I'd recommend to try to start smth. new at Child sexuality/temp. Later we could compare and may be replace an old version. Some of those citation needed tags seem to me excesive. material cannot be problem anyway ;) --tasc 13:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
btw, there is some work going Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch/Child sexuality (draft) --tasc 13:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I know, that was the reason for my comment. I'm part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch and seeing that draft spurred my suggestion to do something more drastic. FloNight talk 13:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, you could smth. drastic with the draft first ;) --tasc 13:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Erm, no. A valid suggestion, but... patience. The draft was created purely as re-arrangement of existing material, the current article is an improvement over that. I've been (slowly) identifying sources, removing some unsourced material, and adding sourced material. With every step explained in detail to give anyone watching the article the opportunity to respond and argue (so far no one has), hopefully pre-empting any later arguments over the material. Popping in a brand-new article at once might lead people to be like Yeah but you didn't consider Study X and Theory Y etc and so I'm putting that in, and so on. Actually I'm going to do some more of that now... let patience be a watchword! Herostratus 15:46, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article needs reviewing

Quite frankly, this article wanted to make me puke. I didn't even know what sex was at 5, nor did I know what masturbation was. I also don't believe that all 2-year-olds fondle themselves, nor do I believe that mutual masturbation and fondling is as common as this article seems to portray. TheRaven7 20:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Scientific evidence does appear to support the idea that most 2-year olds fondle themselves to some degree and that mutual masturbation and fondling are more common then you seem to think. Obviously proving that EVERY 2-year old fondles themselves would be difficult if not impossible. Individual experiences can be different then the average experience. Also, knowing what masturbation is and doing it do not need to go hand in hand. One can engage in masturbation without knowing that what they are doing is called masturbation. --Cab88 21:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok, but I don't know of any 5-year-olds that have sex as often as this article states, regardless of whether they know what it's called. TheRaven7 20:10, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Err, I have a half-finished draft which presents this material with more citations an in a better way and all... I promise to finish is this week. Herostratus 02:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
That would be excellent. It looks like a [citation needed] bomb exploded on this article. -kotra 10:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs alterations. The first thing that struck me was how dangerously leaned towards being very America-centric. The majority of the points solely give reference to American studies, or for example " 1943 study of primarily white, middle and upper-middle class Midwestern urban boys found that 16% had had intercourse by age 8." could be changed slightly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.112.224 (talk • contribs)

The problem is most of the research has been done in the U.S. Everything here has to be backed up with published sources, and if the research hasn't been done in other parts of the world, there's nothing we can do about it. Pais 20:53, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Or most recent you know about has been done in the U.S.? I've come across much research outside the U.S., but most of it was poorly translated :-/ 68.184.85.78 02:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone know what is available on other language Wikipedias? Sadly, I don't read any language but English well enough to find this out myself. :-{ FloNight talk 21:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Human Sexuality in a World of Diversity

"Ohio_girl_lover" transcribed this from Human Sexuality in a World of Diversity (by Spencer A. Rathus, Jeffrey S. Nevid, and Lois Fichner-Rathus), in case anyone is looking for sources. (I don't want to touch this mess.) It does not completely match up with our article. JayW 19:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doing good but enough tags

This article, especially the first half, does an admirable job of taking a neutral tone and delivering well-sourced information on such a controversial topic. Reading between the lines though, I can see the editors' conflict between those who want to show child sexuality as being something natural and those who want to advocate the Victorian view that these experiences are largely negative or exploitative. In particular, I don't disagree that more references are needed, but do we really need a "citation needed" tag every two feet? It's really not going to get you references any faster - it seems like they're only there to call into doubt the immediately preceding fact. Deco 08:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's not well-sourced if it doesn't have a references. Due to the supposedly controversial nature of the material, every statement needs to be sourced. The ((fact)) tags were added as in invitation to either source the statement or delete it. But right, they've been around to long enough. Time to fish or cut bait, there.
As the other... I don't see any researchers or editors here who think that normative childhood sexual behavior such as exploring one's genitals and so forth as negative or exploitive. Also, Victoria died over a hundred years ago. We have been in the Second Elizibethian Era for about fifty years now, I don't see much left of the Victorian-era legacy vis-a-vis sexuality much of anywhere anymore. Herostratus 07:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Maybe some of these statements should be moved to the talk page. Deco 14:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another significant edit underway

Ok, I'm going thru another significant edit of this article (as promised weeks ago). Anything that needs to be discarded I'll try to post here for historical purposes. Basically, anything that has been ((fact))-tagged for several weeks and hasn't gotten a citation is up for possible deletion. Herostratus 08:31, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Sexual curiosity, arousal, and behavior are spontaneously expressed unless the child is taught to inhibit them.[citation needed]
    • No citation, I am replacing this with a similar statement, but cited. But the "is taught to" is problematic. If this refers to specific formal teaching, no. Inhibition may arise from a combination of ad-hoc admonitions, peer-group normalizing, brain development, and whatever else, and I don't know what the mix is, and I'm not sure if anyone does.
  • * A few begin masturbating before age 2, but many begin at age 2 or 3 as they have developed sufficient muscle coordination.[citation needed]
    • I haven't been able to find anything on the muscle-coordination thing, although it makes sense.
  • In an Israeli kevutza, one researcher found play among two year olds sometimes included kissing each other, and touching each others' genitals.
    • I'm not sure what to make of this. It's so specific that it must have a reference, and yet it contradicts the research I have found, which puts this sort of activity at a significantly older age. My main sources are Swedish and European. Maybe it's different in Israel, I don't know.
  • Doctor/nurse/patient games and similar forms of play become common. They may involve examining, touching, and manipulating others' genitals. Sex play is spontaneous, light-hearted, and exploratory rather than goal oriented.
  • Again, Per Gil etc., I'm finding this at an older age. Kids below age four are not that peer-oriented. I dunno. I have to go with the sources I have, and so I'm move (the equivilant of) this statement to the next older group.
  • If left unsupervised, play among 2- or 3-year olds can be sexual, although interest in sex play is not dominant.[citation needed]
    • Hmmm. Two-year-olds can barely walk and are hardly able to even play with other children in nearly as meaningful a way as they can later. As above, I'm going with the sourced material that puts this activity mostly at a somewhat older age.
  • 4- or 5- year olds like to talk about objects and activities that they sense adults consider dirty or taboo, including those that refer to body parts and sexual functions. They may use them to shock or challenge adults or to tease peers.
    • While I wouldn't be surprised if the first part is true, I'd want a source. The latter part contradicts the sourced material that I have, which states that sexual references are rare, although elimination-oriented talk is common.

More to follow... For most of these, I am not so muce eliminating them as replacing them with sourced statements. Herostratus 08:31, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Entire section "==Asexuality==": Children who will grow up to be asexual often do not experience most of the feelings and do not show the behaviors that were described above. Some may feel aroused, but usually not while specifically thinking of a peer or any other person. Some may feel ashamed, not aware of their situation, and try to force themselves into imitating their peers, yet mostly they will just try to avoid sexual activity altogether.
    • This was added by or at the best of an editor who was all "What about us asexuals". Fine, but need sources please. Herostratus 02:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Children who will grow up to be asexual often do not experience most of the feelings and do not show the behaviors that were described above. Some may feel aroused, but usually not while specifically thinking of a peer or any other person. Some may feel ashamed, not aware of their situation, and try to force themselves into imitating their peers, yet mostly they will just try to avoid sexual activity altogether.

  • At the ages five to seven years observations of sexual interactions become more infrequent. This is often ascribed to sexual latency. However, it is unclear, whether the observation is caused by feelings of shame that develop during the same age interval, or whether the activities continue in secrecy.
    • The first sentence is incontravertibly true, and retained. The rest is an unsourced mishmash of speculation and bias. Looking at in detail:
      • This is often ascribed to sexual latency. However, it is unclear...
        • TRANSLATION: "This is often ascribed to sexual latency. However, this is wrong." (Subtext: most ascribers are idiots.)
      • ...feelings of shame...
        • SUBTEXT: Children are wrongfully made to feel bad about themselves. (Although the word "shame" here is actually technically correct, so is "modesty" -- and hella less charged, also more accurate for the lay person; sexual shame does not involve feeling bad about oneself and is not congruent with the common use of the word "shame".)
      • ...the activities continue in secrecy.
        • SUBTEXT: Children's normal and healthy expressions are driven underground. (How about "privacy" instead of "secrecy", eh?)
  • However, boy-girl genital fondling is not a universal experience in the United States.
    • Heh, I gotta find the editor who did this and congratulate them. "Kitten-huffing is not a universal practice." "Serial killing is not a universal activity among American males aged 30-45". I think this sentence, present as it is with no other context, parodies itself. I didn't ((fact))-tag this, I just removed it.
  • In Germany, twenty cases of abortion for ten year old girls were reported in the year 2002.
    • Why not "In Germany, twenty cases of abortion for ten year old girls were reported in the year 2002, and Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in batting in 1963." Problems with this sentence include but are not necessarily limited to: No citation; small sample; low signal-to-noise (is 20 a low number or high? Who knows? What about other countries?); little or no stated relation to subject (were these girls raped by adults? And if so, what has that got to do with child sexuality?). The only value of this is that shows that at menarche begins at or before age ten for at least some girls in Germany... but does that 20 represent .001% of such girls or .1%, or what? Besides which it is completely out of context, and we are not even covering physical development in this article.

[edit] re: Globablization tag

An editor moved the Globalization tag from the talk page to the article page, which I guess is fair enough, although I think its probably going to sit there for an indefinite time, given the lack of research outside of the West. But it does give fair warning. But I would like to suggest to editors working on globalizing the article that:

  • Data on non-Western cultures such as China, India, etc. would be welcome but IMO should be in separate sections for those cultures, to avoid a mishmash of data from different cultures being all mushed together, given that cultural normalization is the main yardstick used for what is and is not normal.
  • I would be leery of including much info on non-Major or past cultures. Info on child sexuality among Baffin Islanders is kind of tangential to what we are doing here, ditto info on inhabitants of the Twelvth Century. Info in that area should perhaps go into the articles on those subject. Herostratus 13:50, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Loretta Haroian

I changed the section titled "The United States today" to "Loretta Haroian", pending a further review of the section and investigation of Haroian's writings, since the section is based entirely on her work.

Removed first sentence "There is little agreement in US society about what is age-appropriate sexual behavior for children, except that it must not be abusive." as uncited and overly vague. The rest of the section seems OK and I will try to find precise cites. Herostratus 23:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to modern research sections

  • I combined sections "Methodology of research" and "Modern research" into one section, "Current methodlogies of research. Actually I only retained the last sentence from "Modern research", for the reasons given below.
  • Removed this sentence, because it seems untrue, as I am seeing a lot of sources from the 1990's and some from the 1980's:
    "Additionally, research about child sexuality nearly stopped during the 1980s and 1990s.[citation needed]"
  • Removed this sentece because I find to be basically misleading. Since most research is based on normative and non-normative behavior, and most researchers come from the same culture of the children being studied (or, if not, presumably take the culturarl differences into consideration, there is no reason that significant bias should be introduced, and I have not found it, at least not more than any other social science research:
    "Thus study and interpretation of child sexuality depends especially on the observer and it is likely that cultural biases affect that interpretation."
  • Removed this following sentece for same reasons, also sentence does not seem to hang together logically:
  • "Layers of indirection and bias in study leave conclusions to be as inexact as the method of observation."..
  • This removed sentence seems quite odd and quite untrue, if it is about researchers. If about laymen it might be more true. Anyway, child sexual activity is physical exploration to a certain extent, and not goal-driven like adult sexuality:
    "Further difficulty in this field of study is that child sexuality often is not recognized or is reinterpreted as infant play or just physical exploration.[citation needed]"
  • This removed sentence also seems essentially untrue. For instance, if I do a study of 100 8-year-olds and find that over 50% engage in public masturbation, I can readily refer to existing studies and discover that this is an anamoly:
    "It is also unknown what child sexual behaviour is consistent with a statistical norm.[citation needed]"
  • This removed sentence seems odd, apparantly implying that discovering statistical norms (within that culture) for childhood sexual behavior is not possible due to individual variations. But the whole point of statistics is to achive generalizations, smoothing out individual variations by using a large sample size, and so forth. I find no evidence that childhood sexual behavior is especially different from other behavior in this regard:
    "However even a statistical norm would not be significant, because the variety of human sexual behaviour does not fit into a single norm.[citation needed]"
  • The next sentence, also removed, suffers from the same problem:
    "Researchers also note[citation needed] that studies giving frequencies of various childhood sexual behaviors are unreliable since behavior varies among different groups of people, and among different youth due to variation in the strength of their sexual feelings and variation in their development."
  • This sentence -- the only one retained from the section "Modern research",,, I edited to make it fit logically with the preceding material, but didn't change the sense. It seems likely that it might be true, but then again maybe not if the sample size is large enough and if controls are put in to account for the problem of lost or mistake memory, if such controls are possible. It might be true, hut we need a reference, so I ((fact))-tagged it:
    "Researchers also note[citation needed] that studies giving frequencies of various childhood sexual behaviors are unreliable since behavior varies among different groups of people, and among different youth due to variation in the strength of their sexual feelings and variation in their development."

[edit] "Sexual activity" subsection in "Middle childhood" section

I ((fact)-tagged the entire section, but didn't remove much material. But I'm wondering if some later childhood material got misplaced into the later childhood section? Middle childhood is about ages 6 through 9. There is a lot of material on mutal masturbation, and it seems to be (just off the top of my head) that this would be more typical of older children and even early adolescence than 6-to-9 year olds. I don't know, but would like to some citations on that. If I or somebody can't come up with proper citations, eventually this section will have to be severe;y redacted, I'm afraid. Herostratus 17:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Ditto "Later childhood" section, replace scattering if ((fact)) tags with one tag for entire section. Most of the material is probably true, some of it looks a little fishy to me, but in ancy case need citations. Herostratus 17:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References Need Fixing

20 through 26 don't seem to lead anywhere. --Phoenix Hacker 06:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Correction. A lot more sources than I thought aren't working. --Phoenix Hacker 06:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted

"---About non-stereotyped gender roles, and that sexual identity includes sexual orientation (lesbian, gay, straight, or bisexual)---

Taught nowhere (or one school in a thousand) in this age group (Early childhood) in the US, and you WILL be on the sidewalk looking for a job if you phrase it the way it is above. (If you want to move this to later childhood, junior high or high school, make d.... sure you check even then with you district superintendent (me) first.)

  • Uh, that's from Planned Parenthood USA; I'd say that's a pretty good source. None of the material in this article describes what schools should or should not do. I guess the assumption is that parents mostly do this kind of education. However, it's not even true that diversity education for elementary school children doesn't include diverse families, at least in some school districts. That's for USA, and the article states that it refers to the USA only. Herostratus 20:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Why do you say that Planned Parenthood is a pretty good source for general American prescriptions? It seems that according to the Wikipedia article on abortion in the US their views on that issue at least differ from the majority of Americans. Generalvostok 07:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fine Art illustration as "child sexuality"?

I'm inclined to cut the art and here's why: depiction of kids having sex in fine art by and for adults is not an example of child sexuality: it's an example of the adult aestheticization of child sexuality--pretty much the furthest thing possible from a child's experience. So, I'm'a cut it. DanB DanD 17:35, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi folks. The anon who made the change I suggested was of course me not logged in. DanB DanD 17:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I dunno. I kind of liked it. It's art. No are can really reflect reality, I guess. Anyway it's a adult encyclopedia written by and for adults, so. I mean, what do you put in its place? A child's drawing? Herostratus 03:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kinsey on childhood

Right now, we have the sentence "According to Alfred Kinsey's examinations in the 1950s, children are capable of experiencing orgasm from the age of five months."

I'm pretty sure it's only Kinsey's most vitriolic slanderers who baselessly allege that he physically examined infants to see whether or not they could have orgasms. His data on infant response was, as I understand it, taken from notebooks a convicted pedophile made about his sex with children. As such, Kinsey looks like a nicer person, but the claim looks less reliable. Cut/reword/find another source? DanB DanD 22:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure you examine people to see if they are had an orgasm; I suppose the best method is to ask them, but you can't do that with children, so the next-best method would be to observe, I reckon. This block of text, which was deleted from the article for various reasons, indicates that this is indeed what he did:
"Kinsey described the behaviour that he observed on a three-year-old girl: Lying face down on the bed, with her knees drawn up, she started rhythmic pelvic thrusts, about one second or less apart. The thrusts were primarily pelvic, with the legs tensed in a fixed position. The forward components of the thrust were in a smooth and perfect rhythm which was unbroken except for momentarily pauses during which the genitalia were readjusted against the doll on which they were pressed; the return from each thrust was convulsive, jerky. There were 44 thrusts in unbroken rhythm, a slight momentary pause, 87 thrusts followed by a slight momentary pause, then 10 thrusts, and then a cessation of all movement. There was marked concentration and intense breathing with abrupt jerks as orgasm approached. She was completely oblivious to everything during these later stages of the activity. Her eyes were glassy and fixed in a vacant stare. There was noticeable relief and relaxation after orgasm. A second series of reactions began two minutes later with series of 48, 18, and 57 thrusts, with slight momentary pauses between each series. With the mounting tensions there were audible gasps but immediately following the cessation of pelvic thrusts, there was complete relaxation and only desultory movements thereafter." Herostratus 03:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[1] -Unknown

[edit] Sex vs. Sex Play

What is the definitive difference between "sex" and "sex play"? Is it the assumption that one is to be taken more seriously than the other? Social class? Is it the lack of informed knowledge given to children? I believe that term needs to be defined with clear citations as to why when children engage in sexual activity, it is not simply called "sex". --Rookiee Revolyob 01:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Well, I'm no expert, but I expect it's something along these lines: adult sex is basically goal-driven, with the goal being to give and receive sexual pleasure, behind which is the larger goal of procreation. Regardless of how divergent from procreation a given adult sexual activity might seem, the desire to swap genetic material is ultimately driving it, somewhere back there. Children don't have a procreative drive, and so childish sex play is a lot more random. Children's activities in general differ from adult activities in this way, as a general proposition. Most of what kids do (when they're not being forced to work, in school or otherwise) is play. Whether it's playing house or playing pirates or whatever, it's just a whole different mindset. Play is children's work, so to speak. The "purpose" of play is basically to learn, to practice being a person, although of course a child doesn't know this and wouldn't put it in those terms. So it's not lack of informed knowledge or social class (?) but level of mental, psychological, and physical development (including hormones or lack thereof) that makes the difference. Herostratus 04:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I disagree. I believe sex play is no different for adults and children, and the only differences is the perceived consequences in most cases 68.184.85.78 02:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I beleive that sex and sex play are different from each other. One can be just for romance, and the other romace and more interaction. Such as restrains, or S & M (which is wierd) or "wild" oral, usage of sex toys. But I dont think a child would use such things or ways. blackbox13000

[edit] Scorched earth

This article has had way too many unreferenced statements and sections hanging around for way too long. I'm confident that the great majority of the statements are true, but that's not the issue here. This article has to be heavily referenced with verifiable, neutral, scholarly, notable, and ideally peer-reviewed citations, preferably from respected academic sources when possible. Better to have blank space then unreferenced material. So, time to scorch the earth and begin again. It's much easier to make new statements when you have the references handy then finding a reference for a particular statement. So I'm going to go through here and delete all or almost all the unreferenced statements. If that leaves the section empty, I'll delete that too. It can all be rebuilt from scratch, with good references. K? Herostratus 05:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Personal POV

The earliest I personally can remember masturbating was about 6, while my first sexual contact happened around the age of 8 with a neighbor girl, and again at 8ish in a sort of game with my cousin. I wouldn't put it past 3-4 year olds to be doing this sort of thing and I feel no ill effects from it nor do I bear anyone ill will due to the fact that it was consentual and for the most part fun/funny.

When you made the comment above, you deleted the notice of a major edit to the page. Also, the purpose of talk pages is discuss possible changes tot he article - general discussion is out of place.
DanB†DanD 22:22, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable statements about relevance of child sexual abuse

The article currently says that if children engage in imitation of adult sexual activity such as penetration and oral-genital sex this tends to indicate sexual abuse. However, this is contradicted by studies of cultures where young children 'routinely' engage in such practices, without (so far as we know) having been 'sexually abused'. So I'd like the current text replaced by something along those lines. I may attempt this myself when I have got other editors' reactions. (The Relativist 04:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC))

The information you want to replace is cited to an academic source, so I don't think removing it would be appropriate. You may wish to supplement it with other academic sources. However, you seem to be talking in terms of anthropological studies, rather than psychological ones. That distinction should be made clear -- an anthropological study of the frequency of a particular kind of sex behavior in various cultures doesn't really contradict or address in any way studies in another discipline about the psychological or sociological meaning of these behaviors as the presently cited Larsson report does. DanB†DanD 05:37, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I second Dan's comment. To develop it a bit more -- material on the sexual practices of (say) a hill tribe of New Guinea probably belongs in the article on that tribe, and not in this article. One reason for this is that anthropological studies use different methods, have different goals, and are untaken by people with different training than do psychological studies undertaken in the developed world. Another reason is that people searching and finding this article probably expect it to not include much anthropological material, and people looking for the sex practices of cultures outside of modern times and the developed world will be looking elsewhere, probably. Herostratus 05:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I disagree that information about child sexuality of "a hill tribe of New Guinea" doesn't belong in this article. Wikipedia is global in scope, and unless the article is narrower (e.g. Spanish politics don't belong in the Politics of India article) then it should prsent a worldwide view. Thryduulf 09:49, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Thryduulf is right. Furthermore, if A is present when B is absent, B is unlikely to be the cause of A, irrespective of whether you're doing psychology or anthropology.(The Relativist 12:30, 14 October 2006 (UTC))
No; since anthropology has no tools or langauge for measuring the psychological effects on individuals of the cultural practices it documents, the fact that an anthropological study does not report any psychological effect on individuals means exactly nothing.
Of course a "hill tribe in New Guinea" has the same degree of relevance to the article as a Beverly Hills tribe. However, cherry-picking obscure cases (whether Western or not) to support a particular POV does not really make the article's perspective more global. DanB†DanD 15:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
Who's 'cherry-picking obscure cases'? A hill tribe in New Guinea is just one of many examples that could be given.

The claim made in the article about the causes of certain kinds of sexual behaviour in children is, in my view, controversial and needs to be balanced. Anthropology is one source of useful information. I'm not suggesting that it's decisive, but I can't see how it isn't relevant.(The Relativist 04:56, 15 October 2006 (UTC))

Well, you have a point. Some issues, though. For one thing, Wikipedia articles have to be fairly short. Granted the article is quite short now, but it'll get filled up again (I for one will be working on the article in a bit), and it easily get filled to full size and more with just a summary covering the developed world or the West or whatever. Certainly articles on "Child Sexuality in XYZ" would be useful companion articles. Another thing, we just don't have a lot of data outside of the west. Where is the Kinsey of China? Have there been any significant studies of child sexuality done in China, translated to English, and published? I'd guess probably not. I would welcome information from other developed societies such as China, India, Argentina, and what have you, if you can get it. Third, for primitive societies, we have the problem of context. I don't think that you can lump in info on child sexuality of the XYZ tribe (if you can get it) without including a fair amount of context on the broader culture of the XYZ tribe, which is getting too far outside the scope of the article (again, this is why child sexuality of the XYZ tribe should in my opinion be better placed in the XYZ Tribe article, where the context exists). Herostratus 06:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
The reason for looking at a primitive society like, say, the Trobriand Islanders, is that at least until recently, such societies have not been influenced by what one might call 'Western' ideas. They therefore provide a good opportunity to look at how child sexuality can develop in the absence of such ideas. I take the point that context is important. Precisely for that reason, I would not choose a culture in which practices relating to child sexuality appear to have been influenced by particular cultural assumptions (e.g. institutionalised pederasy based on misogyny), but would prefer ones in which child sex practices seem to be largely independent of heavy cultural baggage. The reference could be quite brief, not adding too much to the length of the article. A final point: psychology has a fundamental limitiation as a revealer of the truth in this area. For ethical reasons, you cannot do controlled experiments relating to child sexual development. Certain anthropological studies might be the closest thing we have to a reliable means of finding out how child sexuality develops in the absence of certain conditions.(The Relativist 10:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC))
I've now made a brief change along the lines indicated.(The Relativist 05:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC))

Hi, the Relativist. I'm sorry if my reverts seem obstructionist. But it just won't fly to present a study and then draw your own conclusions about what it "seems to suggest" because of what the study doesn't say. That's OR. And, as I said above, it's muddled to draw psychological conclusions from an anthropological survey.

By the way, I've just looked a little more closely at the source you linked. It includes this footnote:

Herman-Giddens et al. (1988) suggested that sexual abuse of children caused a protraction of sexual maturity, because of an inspecific stress reaction. See Herman-Giddens, M. E., Sandler, A. D. & Friedman, N. E. (1988) Sexual precocity in girls. An association with sexual abuse? Am J Dis Child 142,4:431-3

So...um, the very source you quote does suggest that early sex is harmful, causing an "unspecified stress reaction." DanB†DanD 05:19, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Random editing break

I moved the sentence on Tahiti into its own subsection under Culture Issues. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the best thing to do, but it seems reasonable. It seems better in its own section then mixed in with the main body. I called the subsection "Historical and tribal societies"; perhaps there's a better name. Perusing the reference a bit (not studying it in real detail) I note that some of the material goes back to Captain Cook, while one of Oliver's works cited is named "Ancient Tahitian Society", thus the use of "Historical". I think that this subsection could be expanded considerably - I know there's a lot more historical and anthropological material out there, it just isn't my particular interest. If this expansion occurs, it might be possible to eventually divide the article into two grand divisions, Modern Developed Societies and Other, or something like that. Herostratus 04:48, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a good idea. The link about Tahiti is to a site that treats many cultures and seems pretty well sourced, so we could probably steal a whole bunch of information. My only doubt is that designating some contemporary cultures as "modern" and others not may be a bit ethnocentric. Why not just divide it up by region and then by country (basically copying the structure of the source site)? DanB†DanD 00:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My experience

I started getting sexual thoughts about girls my age when I was around 6-7. I started looking at porn (and liking it) from a stash my friend had in our fort when I was 9. I started masturbating at 10, which after talking about it with my brothers, found out they had started when they were younger. When I was an adolescent, there were a couple girls that showed sexual interest in me (impromptu touching, trying to get me to touch them, etc..) without me doing anything to encourage it when one was around 6 and the other around 9. All my friends were interested in porn when I was an adolescent, and we even tried one time to talk some adults walking into a convenience store into buying us some mags. Some kids even sold porn mags they stole from their parents in school. :-) Not much time had passed before we had gotten bored of the mags but still talked about sex a lot. Therefore, I don't think it's abnormal based on my own experience. 68.184.85.78 05:52, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WTF?

Anyone else find this article immensly disturbing? (especially the first few sentences of the comment above o_O)

Not when it's about a normal part of a normal person's life. —  $PЯINGrαgђ  20:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I discovered my sexual feelings when about 13 and attracted to a friend in school although never got the opportunity or just the circumstances didn't happen to make things go any further. Another attraction was strangely my own elder brother, and when 14, once he caught hold of me and we indulged in slight sexual play or flirtation like touching and watching each other's genitals as they twitched in excitement, ultimately it culminated in intercourse at the age of 16, which was more than enough to take us both above ninth moon. maybe the reason lay somewhere in our thinking towards each other, maybe he also felt just as much attracted towards me as myself, but one thing is for sure, we never felt odd or anything dirty about it although our "relationship" continued for quite some time till about the age of 19. I think there was nothing bad about it, rather it is a part of our most intimate and beautiful memories. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Surpreet kaur (talk • contribs) 17:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC) ummmmmmmmm Not really. The first time I looked at porn was when I was 8, and I had sex for the first time when I was 13. so? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.205.40.187 (talk) 20:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WTF!

I find the comment above more disturbing than the one prececding it. I'm sorry if the tone of this comment might be vitriolic at times (and I ask any editors/moderators to please bear with me, I know this forum isn't for general discussions, but I have an important point to make), but the "WTF?" comment really hit a nerve with me, so much so that I've decided to open my mouth about child sexuality, even though the subject is a major minefield.

As to the "My experience" poster, I do not find your childhood and adolescence experiences disturbing, although I would appreciate a clarification on the statement

... there were a couple girls that showed sexual interest in me (impromptu touching, trying to get me to touch them, etc..) without me doing anything to encourage it when one was around 6 and the other around 9 ...

as it might have been one of the things the "WTF?" poster reacted on. What was the age difference between you and the girls?

  • They showed an interest in me from when I was a teenager to early twenties until I moved away. I'm not sure why they had a crush on me except that I'm a kind person that treated them with respect and wasn't condescending like most people were, because I remembered what it was like to be talked down to when I was younger. I made sure I didn't encourage them and resisted if necessary if they were pushy (pushy in a playful sort of way), but I also didn't respond harshly and instead I gave reasons like "I could get put in jail" or "I would get in trouble" instead of "you're too young" or "it's not normal" or other things that I believe are insensitive statements. I also didn't distance myself because I thought that could send the wrong message, since they were people I was around quite often because they were friends of the family. I think one may have taken it as rejection (I could see signs of frustration), and I felt bad if it was taken that way, but what choice did I have but to resist? 68.184.85.78 02:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Not that I find it unusual, I've personally experienced both sexual curiosity (I find the word interest a little off the mark) from girls younger than me and towards girls older than me, but to spare you my autobiography, I'd summarize it as it as and "on and off" sort of thing during the period of my life spanning from roughly 6 to 12 years. My hunch is that the curiosity has to do with personal development (Note: Something for the researchers in this field to sink their teeth into (and maybe post a line or two about)).

As to the pornography: Again, it was an on again, off again thing for me, but my experience is roughly the same as "My experience"s , although I'd like to add that what aroused my curisosity in porn was at first (6..7 years old) what females looked like, until something like a year before I hit puberty, when it became more about sexual activity. And yes, the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Although I never went as far as asking adults to buy me porn mags.

And now for my beef with "WTF?":

Please think before you make a comment like you just did. Because of the moral and ethical issues involved, personal memories are one of a few sources of research data availbale for those who reasearch childrens sexualities, and your knee-jerk response, although (hopefully) well-intended on your part only make the research in this field that more difficult, because you (advertently or not) shame people into silence, not only the "My experience" poster but also those readers that could be potential contributors.

And I believe research into this subject is important, because the more we learn about it, the more tools we have against pedophiles, who not only at times use children's sexuality as a propaganda tool, but also take advantage of children's natural curiosity about things (including sexual matters). Not to mention the sexuality-related problems in society today, some of which probably can be traced back to well-meant but not very carefully thought-through responses to childhood sexuality, which is why I've chosen to make this lengthy response.

"WTF?"s comment really hit a nerve with me, because I have personally experienced how parents who only wished the best for their children made my own childhood a living hell. From the ripe old age of six (6 (sic!)) years, I've heard girls tell me that they're not going to bed with me in just about every imaginable way, heard them tell that their mom and/or dad has told them that they're not allowed to play with me, or that they may not be alone with me, seen them scolded or beat up because they disobeyed their parents, and on one occation, had a mom take a choke-hold on me and in no uncertain terms tell me not to have sex with her daughter. And I've lost count of all the times girls ran away from me in fear, or all the times their big brothers played with me only to keep them "safe", making sure I always got hurt in the process. Or the times I protested my innocence to no avail.

What was my offence, you ask? When I was six, a couple of girls and me got into a sexual kind of play on a handful of occations, and we got caught. From that point onward, I was stuck with the reputation of being overly sexually interested in girls, when that really wasn't the case. Yes, I did see girls in a different way than other boys in my age, but only as potential friends and playmates (I never developed the "allergy" to the opposite sex that most children around me did). And once I had digested the experience (which was a couple of years after the events), the worst that could happen to a girl around me was a friendly hug or kiss (never uninvited).

My point is that you should be very careful with how you respond to expressions of child sexuality and the suggestions on responses you make in the encyclopedic section, and make the fact that adult and child sexuality are different in nature very clear. Having read a bit on both psychology and child sexuality, I've come to the realization that much of my hell was caused by the assumption that childrens and adults sexualities are the same (which they aren't) and the projection (see "psychological defence mechanisms") of the parents sexualities onto me.

To the other contributors: Keep up the good work! It's needed!

For the researchers in the field reading this: If there's interest, I might consider being a source of research data (serious requests only, please). 9P7N2 00:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

  • 9P7N2, by "pedophile", do you mean "sexual predator" as the media often means when they say "pedophile" or the definition of pedophile as someone sexually attracted to "children" (whatever age people can consider someone a "child")? I also agree -- people are generally too tight-lipped out of fear or shame. 68.184.85.78 02:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

By "pedophile", I mean someone who is sexually attracted to children and who either toes the line of behaving like a sexual predator (e.g. "grooming" and/or actual sexual abuse) or has crossed that line, or tries to justify his/her attraction. I don't know if it is technincally correct to call other perpetrators of sexual crimes against children pedophiles, as sex crimes can also be about power, and because some producers of child pornography are in it for the money involved.

As to what can be considered a child, I myself try to use the word when the person hasn't hit puberty, and use "adolescent" or "child who has hit/reached puberty" when the person has, to avoid ambiguous meaning. As to the sexuality aspect, it's as much about chronological age as it is about physical and psychological development (going solely by age is wrong IMHO).

As to how you handled the girls crushes, I would like to add that saying "you're too young" wouldn't be that insensitive if one also explains (as well as you can to a child that age) that when it comes to that particular issue, you have a lot to learn and never quite stop learning, and that it is one of the ways that you might get into trouble (i.e. not only with the law, but by going ahead too fast). I think that if you take the time and have the patience to explain things to a child, they'll understand, if not entirely, at least well enough not to feel too bad, and get hangups later in life because of the perceived rejection. BTW, was it the 9 year old who seemed to feel rejected?

BTW, sorry for my first response, but I got a tad ticked off by "WTF?"s comment. Not only because of my personal experiences, but also because by keeping child sexuality as such a politically incorrect issue we do children a great disservice (see my comment below). Work in this field really needs to be done, for a variety of issues. 9P7N2 10:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

As for your demand for valid research data to draw upon, you might intend to have a look at these two sources:
The second source (dating 1985/88) might be not too good a translation from the German original made by Dr. Hubert Kennedy (and in fact quite flawedly OCR-scanned), however its author PhD, MA Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg is not unknown in German and internaional homophobia research, gender and queer studies, among other fields in sexuology, psychology, sociology, ethnology/cultural anthropology, religious studies and Indo-European studies (see for example Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists Newsletter, October 1991, Vol. 13, No. 3: pp. 43-75, where the international significance and relevance of her research is emphasized due to one mere other article she published in English, that is one on paederasty in ancient Greece and that hardly reaches the scientific niveau and relevance of her other works), and she also worked for the German parliament in these fields. Currently, even the Austrian Government as well as the publicly funded Ärztekammer (General Medical Council) of Baden-Württemberg/Germany openly and officially support her observations, conclusions, and theories laid out in the above source, as you can see here (official educational brochure issued by Austrian Federal Ministry of Social/Domestic Security and Baden-Württemberg's General Medical Council, to be distributed as teaching aid to elementary schools, in German). --Tlatosmd 05:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
In what way is the translation inadequete? Jillium 00:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Mostly grammar issues: Many false friends as I see it (for instance, Pseudopädophilie or pseudo-paedophilia is unknown in English while it's the common German term for situational offense in this context), beside that the translator regarded many regular German standing expressions or common ways of sentence construction in German as particularly the original author's individual features of writing style so he translated them literally. Furthermore Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's Leibfeindlichkeit can hardly be translated as mere "hatred of the body", considering that her socio-cultural as well as socio-historical and socio-religious idea of Leibfeindlichkeit as outlined in depth in two major works by her (dating 1978 and 1989)
  • a.) ties in with socio-psychological theories and studies concerning the formation of the sado-masochist authoritarian personality type as fabricated by societies influenced by or centered around Leibfeindlichkeit as a dominant social paradigm, and
  • b.) holds connotations of, and ties to, (Frankfurt School) Critical Theory's iconophobia (i. e. a basic cultural trend to abstractness in verbal as well as non-verbal communication and representation due to basic, irrational fear of seduction/temptation by sensual clarity of, or faithfulness to, all nature and all desires, as the underlying irrational fear particularly of sexuality is obscured by psychological repression due to the dominant socio-cultural paradigm)
which is why "asceticism" is probably a better translation for her Leibfeindlichkeit. See also the article Níð for a basic concept from her 1978 work on the historical and pre-historical origins and genesis of homophobia and Leibfeindlichkeit in all Indo-European (i. e. Western) cultures until the present day. I bet you'll find many parallels to modern-day stereotypes concerning, and attitudes towards, sexual "predators" such as general lechereousness, untrustworthiness, malevolence and cruelty, dehumanizing denotations, ritual abuse (if you're familiar with modern Recovered Memory Therapy, that is, whose authors regard the same allegations by Medieval Inquisition upon satanic "witch sects" as direct evidence for the existence of ritual abuse and satanism, ignorant that the historical witch-hunts were based primarily upon the ancient nithing myth still prevalent during the Middle Ages), among others. --Tlatosmd 06:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Avoiding bias?

How do you avoid bias in an article like this when most "mainstream" research in the Western world has come from the bias of Western Christian thought (like the WTF above)? For something to be accepted, it has to pass through the scrutiny of colleagues, many of which are also biased. I propose that, for instance, research showing the harmful results of child sexuality will far outnumber those to the contrary simply due to our social bias. My question is shouldn't we work to find a balance even if there's more "accepted research" for one thing than another, considering the controversial nature of this topic will give one point of view a much easier time in getting results accepted? e.g. 1 research paper that met a lot of social resistance carrying one POV should balance against four of another if the others come from a POV that meets less resistance? Research is rarely unbiased with subjects like these because the bias of the researcher carries through into their work, no matter how good they are.

An additional question is why this article focuses on sexuality (see beginning paragraph of article) as a "social construct" and not as "innate behavior" that's either encouraged or repressed by society? Why does it favor one line of research? 68.184.85.78 03:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I second the opinion. Researchers do tend to put at least a little of their own biases into their papers, and that we need to find some balance between POV's, even if some of them might make people feel uncomfortable.

Another bias I've noted, not just here but generally as well, is that the emotional aspect of child sexuality tends to be forgotten, that because children are far more emotional than sexual beings, you might miss some aspects of the issue by failing to remember the link between love and sexuality just because it's about children. 9P7N2 11:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article trolled by pedophile activists

Child-rape activists have solicited help twisting this article to their POV: http://www.boychat.org/messages/1072044.htm XavierVE 20:56, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

There may be an underlying message, but they advocate NPOV and NOR, so we can't fault the site. It's possible that there is a difference between their words and their actions, but we should assume good faith. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.205.34.217 (talk) 05:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Intro too short

The introduction to this article is way too short. Usually with articles that suffer this problem the intro can be combined with the part or all of the first section. In this case I think the introduction needs to be more prosey than the first section (which works well as a first section). Thryduulf 01:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Marquesas Islands history and child sexuality

One user edited some history notes regarding "child sexuality" out of the Marquesas article (which is a good example of censorship), which I reverted because (A) That user had later been banned for something else and (B) There was no talk discussion added as to why it was removed. However, then I moved the content to the "Historical and tribal societies" section this article, since it's better to centralize it, and because it's extra fluff for the Marquesas article. 68.184.84.146 00:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification for editor

However, the concept of child sexuality is fundamentally different from goal-driven adult sexual behavior, and imitation of adult behaviors such as bodily penetration and oral-genital contact are very uncommon,[1]

The passage needs to make clear that child sexuality is a concept. Unless the source has shown that "child sexuality" (preteen or pre-18) is discontinuous with "adult sexuality" (post-teen or post-18), and that this is widely accepted in the medical community, the words "the concept of" must remain. Given that there are differing takes on this matter (including soc. constructionist), it is in no way weasly to firmly attribute such an opinion (be it one of discontinuum or even naturally grounded difference) to the source. The opening section of the article should point out so much. ●Farenhorst 13:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Come to think of it

This article is pretty atrocious; taking single sources, usually from victimologists and other prime outlets of the child abuse industry, and stating them as fact. Any help in the NPOV department would be appreciated. ●Farenhorst 13:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Feelings

The feelings must be sourced otr it is merely the OR of wikipedia editoprs which is unacceptable, see WP:RS and donmt tell me "how do I know that?" I dont, which is why unosurced the edit cannot remain, SqueakBox 16:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I meant how do you know that children are too young to have sexual feelings. What an insult! Children have feelings all right—I know that because I was legally one until just two years ago. They love and hate, feel exuberant and depressed, and have preferences…perhaps these emotions are not as well developed or felt as in adults, but you cannot convince me that sexual feelings are not felt by children. And if you have something to say to me, say it on my talk page; I rarely watch talk pages for responses to my edit summaries and as such may not see you comment(s), and go on my way. If you can't say it on my talk page to me, don't say it here. —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  20:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The study of sexual feeling and the development of sexual feeling in children is an integral part of scholarly work in child sexuality, dating way back to Freud. This does not require a citation because it's common knowledge and because it's in the lead. You say you're deleting it because it's uncited. Well, "development" is also uncited and so is "behavior" and I don't see you removing these. This is classical POV editing for which you are desperately scrambling to find a policy-based justification. Pascal.Tesson 17:45, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Commonn knowledge? I bet you dont have a source for that either, Pascal, and your own OR is not valid here at wikipedia. It is not common knowledge, that sounds like a get out clause to promote your own agenda., If it is so easy to source you can do so, I have fact tagged right now but if a practical solution is not found policy demands we remove it, ie it "says that any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source" and I have challenged this. I am not challengin behaviour or development and if anyone were to they would also need sourcing, RS says nothing about the lead and indeed if any material is diputed it shouldnt go in the opening full stop. But I am open to the solution Springer has suggested elsewhere as an alternative, see my talk page, SqueakBox 20:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah come on, stop being so stubborn. You can pick up your favorite book on the Oedipus complex, or any book on child sexuality for that matter. How does "Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia " sound as a good reference? [2] Or maybe the Journal of Pediatric Nursing? [3] Or maybe the journal of the Institute for Psychological Therapies? [4] The only reason you're challenging this is that you're freaked out by the very possibility that children may in fact have sexual feelings. That of course is entirely your prerogrative but don't force it upon the article. Pascal.Tesson 21:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Please dont assume what I think because based on your past comments you would be very wrong, you seem to have someidea of me that doesnt correalte to any reality. Thanks for the sources, I have now added them whicvh is allt hat was needed. And BTW I dont have mopre than a dozen books nor are there any for sale where I live other than catholic literature where I live so I'm limited to the internet for my own RS's, and the ones you gave seem fine to me, which is why I added them. As I said to Springer children clealry have sexual sensations but they dont clearly have the emotional maturity to have sexual relationships and the primary meaning of feelings relatesd to emotional content, SqueakBox 21:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Adding these as citations is still completely silly. I'm sorry you don't have a library that you can consult but every single book on child sexuality explores its emotional aspect and this doesn't require a citation, in the same way that you don't need a citation for "behavior" (and that would remain true even if someone came on the talk page and said "I challenge the idea that children can have sexual behavior"). Pascal.Tesson 22:15, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Being completely silly (by your definition) is not a reason to remove citations. Many articles have citations in the opening and your argument seems to be a version of IDONTLIKE. Why are you removinmg cited sources? And we are an encyclopedia and therefore we assume the people dont have these books. We are writing for the poor third world children, amongst others, and not just for privileged, educated westerners such as you and I, and they wont assume this or know it. And I dont lack for not having a paper library as I have the internet at my fingertips, SqueakBox 22:24, 18 September 2007 (UTC) SqueakBox 22:24, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm removing the sources because they are not primarily about the sexual feelings of children. I just cited them from the simplest of Google searches to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the study of the sexual feelings of children is part of scholarly work on child sexuality. Besides, the use of the term "feelings" is perfectly coherent with the rest of the article which is thoroughly cited, as well as with other articles on Wikipedia such as Psychosexual development. Pascal.Tesson 22:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Its fine to remove the sources if you think they arent good sources. I have restored the fact tag ans this is diputed. If this cant be resolved by anything I try I would suggest an Rfc on the article? as unsourced statementas that are contested simply have no place on wikipedia. if there are other sources int he article we can cite tehem in the opening but other articles are not Rs's and nor should we assume our uneducated readers will read them, SqueakBox 23:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Why are you being so stubborn? This is subject-specific common knowledge, it's in the lead which usually does not contain citations (in fact, these are often remove during the featured article process), it's supported by the rest of the article and by the articles that are linked to. Pascal.Tesson 23:09, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Give me a source that it is the subject of common knowledge, and amongst thirsd world children not merely educated westerners. I have offered several alternatives but you ignore 3rr to revert bacjk to the same unsourcded piece. If you can source please do so. I ma aware that FA status is policy, iof it is please let me know but challeneged unsourced opinion must be removed till it is sourced. I coyuld equally ask why are you being so stubborn? SqueakBox 23:26, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I provided sources above that clearly demonstrate that "sexual feelings" is part of the corpus of child sexuality. Open up any reference used in the article and you'll see that the emotional aspect of child sexuality is part of scholarly work on the subject. Pascal.Tesson 23:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
All I want is refs in the beginning so our readers can see them. Our readers may not even read the whole article and we should certainly not expect them to open up references later on in the article to confirm this contested statement in the opening. If you can reference it, go for it. Here Jimmy Wales is an example of a good article with 7 refs in its opening sentence/statement so this references in the opening is hardly prohibited by policy, SqueakBox 00:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A suggestion

Actually technically it is six, SqueakBox; the first is in the infobox. But that is still as good model. Here is a quote from User talk:SqueakBox which is my proposed solution to the problem.

“ Perhaps we should put a reference after the word "feelings" in the article (not a source, but a reference as you will see), which says something along the lines that feelings could mean several different things, and maybe try to clear that up. ”

Any questions or comments? I would welcome them. —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  01:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The idea is to cite facts. This is not a fact, it's a word. It's a word that explains what child sexuality is and nobody disputes the fact that emotions are part of child sexuality. This is what the article clearly demonstrates and the article is fairly soundly sourced. This is what the article about psychosexual development explains (though this one is not so good with references). What does the current {{fact}} tag accomplish? It's just confusing and seemingly points to a question mark about whether there is anything about child sexuality that relates to feelings. SqueakBox is worried about third-world children being confused when reading the article. Wait until they get to the sentence "Freud's basic thesis was that children's early sexuality is polymorphous and that strong incestual drives develop, and the child must harness or sublimate these to develop a healthy adult sexuality", they'll be really confused once they get there. The word is obviously not intended to be understood in Janet Jackson fashion. There's as much need for a citation of "feeling" than there is for the word "behavior". What if I came in and said "children don't have the maturity to exhibit sexual behavior"? We wouldn't start writing a footnote about the meaning of the word behavior in this context. This is what the article is supposed to do. Same is true of "feelings". Pascal.Tesson 23:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Please, I did not ask for seven (no exaggeration) reasons why it should or should not be there. By the way I am more confused after reading your post than I ever was after reading the article; I'm sorry but your post made no sense—to me at least. Please be reasonable about this; we can't get a solution when everyone is putting a concrete wall up about why it can't be done. We are trying to achieve a result that makes as many people happy as possible, and I would appreciate it if you could try and help instead of hinder that, OK? :) —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  05:05, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Again with Mohammed

What they hey is the deal with mohammed being included (again) in this article?

  1. I question the motivation. Although I don't know if its the same person, there was an editor a while back who had an agenda about tagging mohammed as a pedophile and was inserting info on this all around. I don't care if mohammed liked chickens, this article should not be inserting itself into this controversy.
  2. When you include a controversial celebrity such as mohammed, your noise-to-signal ration goes way way up. People have difficulty seeing past their existing opinions and notions about mohammed and islam and so can't take the info in a neutral framework. This is not helpful for the conveyance of encyclopedic information.
  3. This is way too much detail on one particular instance for a general survey article in a general encyclopedia, and gives undue weight to this one example. Sounds like this could maybe be a seperate article, and let people fight over it there.

This is why I have removed this material. Herostratus (talk) 17:53, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Good work. You have my support here. I oppose any mention of Mohammed in this article. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
The other editor had a different motivation than me. I am trying to put in how the stuff was historically like thousands of years ago. Muhammed doesn't need to be mentioned, but historical examples do and he's easier to find information on. Your edit was basically vandalism because only part of that was Muhammed and the rest wasn't and you removed it all, which I spent about 6 hours total working on. William Ortiz (talk) 19:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Herostratus to a certain extent, this might be too much detail for this article. On the other hand, I definitely think that putting child sexuality in a historical context is important and the removed material would help to expand the other information under "Historical and tribal societies". Furthermore, I agree that Muhammad is a very controversial subject, but I don't know that William Ortiz added material with such a bias that it should be removed for that reason alone. I think a shortened version of the removed material could remain to show that instances of child sexuality were not necessarily detrimental. Breakyunit (talk) 21:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
The stuff I had about Mohammed showed the historical perspective on it as opposed to now people would freak and the girl would cut herself and be upset about it her whole life, none of that happened back then one bit and the girl even went on to say the guy was a pretty good guy. It would be really good to find about 20 other historical figures examples before the 20th century. Mohammed was just easy to find the info on. William Ortiz (talk) 02:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Mr. Ortiz, I can see that you put a lot of work into constructing and referencing your material, and I appreciate that, I just don't think it belongs here. It belongs either in the article on, or a sub-article of, Mohammed; or perhaps (or in addition) in an article on sexual practices in Islam, or in old Arabia, or whatever. Another alternative would be perhaps to create an article on child sex in traditional societies in general, although maintaining an article like that in encyclopedic order could be difficult; if such an article was to be created, this article could link to it as the main article at the top of the Historical and Tribal Societies section, say. Anyway, if you want help retrieving the material from the history, or in creating these articles, message me. (I realize I should have userfied rather than deleted the material - sorry. Again, thank you for your research. Herostratus (talk) 03:17, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the historical perspective should be in another article. The article right now is mainly centured around 20th century American views. It should explain how views changed from people getting married really really young to Chris Hansen. William Ortiz (talk) 02:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
It is not centered around 20th Century American views. It is centered around 20th - 21st century developed society norms. That is more than sufficient for a large and complete article. The article needs tons more depth, but within that context. Material about cultural norms in China and so forth would be most welcome (especially since it's very hard to get). I think a lot needs to be done on physiological elements. The "medical model" is mentioned but not really described. There could be more material on deviance. and so forth. I'm sure a lot is missing that I don't even know is missing. Plenty for a full article.
Historical material (and also anthropological as opposed to sociological material) doesn't fit in the article. Granted the article is short now, but that won't always be true.
Also, this article has been, and probably always will be, a locus for people using it for a soapbox. You yourself seem to wish to make a point, that we have descended from a golden past to a benighted present. This article is a magnet for that sort of thing, and we have to watch for that.
Also... the references you cite may (doubtfully) pass muster as historical sources but not as scientific sources (including the science of sociology). This is because it was so long ago and far away (besides being anecdotal). We can't really know what happened back then, or what went on inside Aisha bint Abi Bakr. She certainly had everything to gain (e.g., her life for starters) by playing ball with the patriarchy; plus she didn't know any different, etc. I don't think that at this remove anyone can state with certainty that she wasn't traumatized, not to the level of rigour that this article requires.
Anyway, there is an article Child marriage. You might want to see if you can you add a historical section there. (Don't expect a lot of sympathy from the editors of that article, though; if you read the article you'll see that child marriage in traditional societies is not such a day at the beach).
I've restored your contribution (I hope I got it all) to a subpage of your user page, User:William Ortiz/Aisha bint Abi Bakr, for your further use and development. And thank you for the delicious potato soup. Herostratus (talk) 06:54, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thumb sucking, anxiety and behavior section

I was considering adding some information about how thumb sucking relates to child sexuality. Perhaps similar to the information here though that stands to be more thoroughly developed. I was thinking that could be added under Normative Behavior-Early Childhood.

As far as anxiety, Freud says "anxiety among children is originally nothing but a manifestation of the fact that they miss a beloved person" and that they "behave as though their affection for their carers were the same as sexual love". Further, he says that in the case of infantile anxiety, the child behaves "like an adult in turning its libido into anxiety because it is unable to satisfy it". I think these are interesting points to bring up and somewhere in this article might be an appropriate place.

Finally, I'm confused about the organization of the "Behavior" section. Within that section it has a subsection called "normative and non-normative behaviors" but then the next section after "Behavior" is "Normative behavior". I think this should be restructured to have two sections(or more) under "Behavior", two being ""normative" and "non-normative behaviors".

What do you all think? I may wait a few days for feedback, then start making some changes. Breakyunit (talk) 06:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Imitating adult sexual behaviour

Intercourse in children should not be definitionally described as an "imitation of adult sexual behavior," because many children who engage in it have not been exposed to adult sexual behavior. Larrson's 2000 report, which also claims - without reference - that intercourse and oral-genital behavior are uncommon, says that "In one study games including scenes of intercourse were noted in among 2% to 6% of children who had not been sexually abused (Everson & Boat, 1991)." Larrson also cites an author who believes intercourse is normative behavior for 8 to 12 year olds: "The last group, children aged 8 to 12, is described on the basis of increased contact with friends, explorative interaction with other children and both inhibitions and uninhibitedness/openness. The behaviour may involve touching one’s own sexual organs, exhibitionist behaviour, asking out someone of the opposite sex, crushes, kisses, petting, touching the sexual organs of other children, imitating intercourse with clothes on and also proper intercourse."

While it is true that parentally-observed intercourse and oral-genital contact are rare (Friedrich et al., 1998), and self-reported intercourse (but not "pretended intercourse") is somewhat uncommon in some studies (in Larrson, 2001 only 7.1% of boys and 1.4% of girls reported vaginal intercourse), to say that this means intercourse is actually uncommon is interpretative and ethnocentric. Furthermore, Martinson (1973) cites two studies in which reported intercourse was very common:

"By twelve years of age, approximately one boy in every four or five has tried at least to copulate with a female and more than ten percent of preadolescent boys experience their first ejaculation in connection with heterosexual intercourse, according to Kinsey. Ramsey reported that about one-third of his sample of middle-class boys had attempted sexual intercourse."

--AnotherSolipsist (talk) 18:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

No matter whose take on this is closest to the majority authority opinion, all parties involved in the current edit war over terminology discussed in this section are urged to stop reverting each other. The point should be to communicate one's concerns on the Talk Page first and foremost, whenever an edit controversy of this nature occurs. Please reach consensus here, and only then edit this part of the article again. ~ Homologeo (talk) 19:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
First and foremost, discuss before you edit if have a reasonable belief that it will be contested, no matter how reasonable it may seem to you at the time.
To get to academics, Larrson (2000) is actually quoting a study 9 years prior (Everson & Boat, 1991) which asserts mimicking intercourse with anatomical dolls was evident in a small sample of non-sexually abused children. However, the design did not account for other forms in introduction to sex, i.e. pornography (whether deliberately shown or accidentally viewed) or witnessing intercourse of adults. There are clinicians who have recently argued that these are a form of abuse, but that distinction was not made back then. It also did not conclusively prove this small sample was not really abused, and asserts that doll play is not very accurate anyway, as Larrson points out.
Martinson's piece is not only 35 years old, but he offers little evidence to support his generality. It's a book written by a sociology professor.
"uncommon" is hardly an egregious and inflammatory adjective to describe what is supported by the other studies you quote. Even Martinson says 1 in 5.Legitimus (talk) 20:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
You're misplacing the burden of proof regarding "imitation." My revision makes no claim on the issue, whereas the revision before it states as a fact that the behavior is imitative. That could be put forward as an opinion, but it hasn't been established as a fact.
Martinson is "recognized as one of the world's authorities on child sexuality."[5] I don't see how being a sociology professor is a point against him. Also, the source currently cited (Larrson, 2000) offers no evidence for her 'generality.' --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 22:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not aware that there's evidence here one way or the other - but it certainly seems possible that a child could attempt intercourse based solely on verbal descriptions given by peers. There's no reason to assume that any act that looks like intercourse is (or is not) an "imitation". Dcoetzee 00:39, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not likely though from a biological stand-point, unless it was very gross and graphically described. It takes something that must be relatively overwhelming to the mind and senses to elicit this kind of thing.
On reading the study, I think Larrson's use of the word in this respect was meant to be casual, and to refer to sex-acts that are typically associated with adults, especially as outlined by laws regarding such things. This is as opposed to describing a list of sex-acts in detail, which she does later in the report.Legitimus (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Again with Martinson. The source for the paper is the IPCE website, IPCE being a pedophile activist entity and hardly a neutral source. Why is User:AnotherSolipsist digging up a paper, over a third of a century old, by a third-rate hack from a D-list college, hosted on a pedophile website? Because you have to dig that far to find this one piece of material that supports his point of view. A perusal of Martinson shows that his methods are not rigorous at all, rendering his conclusions practically useless from a scientific point of view. Larrson is far more reliable. Attempts to cite Martinson are never a good sign. Furthermore, accusations of "ethnocentricity" are unwarranted; we have included sources from Chinese etc. researchers in this article and would include more if we could get them. Herostratus (talk) 04:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

"Who is Martinson, anyone know?"[6]I lol'd.
To answer that, he's a Ph.D. pioneer in the field of child sexuality third-rate hack who was recognized for contributing more to that field than any other single person throughout his lifetime (e.g., by receiving the Kinsey Award in 1988) for his support of babyrape by a paedo org in 2000.
But the book's presence on Ipce is of little relevance. As their mirror notes, it was originally published by the Book Mark, which is probably not part of the Paedophile Conspiracy. Anyway, it's difficult to see how his 'methodology' in parroting the results of two other studies could possibly have been flawed. I was quoting a review, not a conclusion.
And you skipped over my main point: Whether intercourse and oral-genital contact are imitative is not objectively determinable. Larrson's opinion shouldn't get a free pass around WP:NPOV. Also, you mistakenly reverted my addition of a reply to Reisman. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 05:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I did feel quite nauseous reading some of the material. Good scientist or not, there wasn't much systemic data in his writings.Legitimus (talk) 14:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Phenomena

I am curious why the introduction to this article uses this term. Sexuality is never referenced as a phenomena in the human sexuality article. I am used to this term describing inexplicable things, it seems a bit extravagant to use here. While I can't think of a proper subsitute, I want to know if anyone else recognizes the need for a less packed term to be used and if there are any ideas on what it might be. Tyciol (talk) 03:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Squeakbox and Springeragh were insisting on a {{Fact}} tag after the opening phrase "Child sexuality refers to sexual feelings...". Why they did this I don't know, unless they were disputing that children have sexual feelings. Anyway seems silly to me. So fix it. Herostratus (talk) 03:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)