Sex at Dawn

Adolescents all over the country are getting into serious trouble for sexting one another: snapping a risque photo of themselves with their cell phone and sending it to a friend. Turns out, in many states, these kids can be sent to prison (where sexual abuse is rampant) for photographing their own bodies (manufacturing child pornography) and sharing the photos (distributing child pornography). They’re being forced to register as sex offenders despite the fact that they themselves are the “victims” of their own “crimes.”⁸

Just Say What?

A 2005 survey of 12,000 adolescents found that those who had pledged to remain abstinent until marriage were more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens, less likely to use condoms, and just as likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases as their unapologetically nonabstinent peers. The study’s authors found that 88 percent of those who pledged abstinence admitted to failing to keep their pledge.⁹

If our distorted relationship with human sexuality is the source of much of this frustration, confusion, and ignorance, societies with less conflicted views should confirm the causal connection. Developmental neuropsychologist James Prescott found that bodily pleasure and violence seem to have an either/or relationship—the presence of one inhibits development of the other. In 1975, Prescott published a paper in which he argued that “certain sensory experiences during the formative periods of development will create a neuropsychological predisposition for either violence-seeking or pleasure-seeking behaviors later in life.” On the level of individual development, this finding seems obvious: adults who abuse children were almost always victims of childhood abuse themselves, and every junkyard owner knows that if you want a mean dog, beat the puppy.