Taking Responsibility

The other day, I heard a man ask if men who seek children for sexual pleasure are called predators, what should a child who seeks adult parties be called?

At first, I thought I misheard, but then he went on to describe how he and friends threw a party to celebrate his divorce from his first wife when he was twenty three. He ended the evening in bed with a young woman with long red hair. Somehow, this young woman kept turning up at the place he lived and they would have sex. After a week or so, he began to ask who she was. It turned out that she was fifteen and the daughter of a preacher.

He then questioned what her parents were doing, letting her stay out all night. The man who told this tale was in his sixties.

There’s a lot that is not good or wholesome about this man’s story and his questions. It seems he was asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking why, at the age of 23 he was celebrating divorce and discovering that his sexual partner was a child, he was questioning the girl’s parents.

We will leave aside the girl and her parents and take a look at the narrator of the story. Even after decades, his world view has not changed. He displays no regret that he had had intercourse with a child, nor does he show any wishful thinking about being divorced at such a young age.

Marriage and sex, or sex and marriage, are issues we need to show some responsibility over. Neither should be done lightly or irresponsibly.

Sex is not an action equable to wearing jeans, or changing a shirt. It is a powerful force, and leaves a person changed.

Consider the energy involved during sex. That energy comes from somewhere and must go somewhere. Like atoms vibrating frantically, or two magnets that either cling or repel.

It’s a good idea to know the name of the person we have sex with. It is even better to know where they live and what they do. It’s really great to know how old they are and even know when their birthday is.

Sex is meaningful. It is an expression of love and trust. That is why consent is involved, and why there are laws to protect children. The man above was breaking the law unknowingly because he treated sex lightly and did not care about the girl enough to know her before having sex with her.

Think about life. We are not permitted to do certain things without the right requirements. That means we need to be responsible. Hopefully, our parents taught us to be responsible about driving, alcohol etc. We don’t kick a football in a glasshouse. We do not light a match in a petrol tank.

So it is with sex, whether it’s the man above or Mrs Robinson.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

***