AVI has been thinking about the effect of the abstraction of social media on children. First thoughts, "Is development missing something?", and Grim's thoughts on disembodied sex. Perhaps the physical environment isn't that attractive.
Puberty is confusing enough when there are clear sex roles ("What do I say?"), but without them, and with the understanding that there's no reason not to have sex--isn't the pressure and confusion going to be even higher? We have little lectures now and then about "your right to say no" but I don't think those make much headway against fashion.
If I try to imagine myself as a teen girl (it takes some doing, obviously), I think I can see the interest in declaring for a new gender variety that can turn off the pressure, and for hanging out electronically.
For a boy, maybe porn is a big deal. Real people don't seem to act much like the porn actors. If the boy is young enough, will he recognize himself in the male actors in the ubiquitous porn, or will the action seem alien and arbitrary? "If that's what a man wants and I don't, maybe I'm something different." Even boys can be put off by the expectation for sex. And some find the physical environment hostile--because they don't quite fit or because ideological parents or other kin disdain boys, or some such. I'd guess the pressure is worse for girls, but I can imagine boys getting confused too.
Clearly this confusion is new--suicide rates are up, not down with greater acceptance of "gender diversity." If this was something that had haunted humanity since forever, and only our wonderful enlightenment had discovered the truth, you'd expect the reverse.
1 comment:
I hadn't thought much about the secondary gains of reducing social pressure by parking yourself in a side street. We have been looking at such things as a means of getting attention, but there may be just as many who use these new definitions in order to be left alone.
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