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By AL BERRIOS
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"Loosen
up my buttons, baby!". Source: Starpulse.com
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1),
a sort of invisible field possessed by all living creatures that can artificially
block everything from pheromones to physical contact, manufactured, in this
observer's opinion, by a blend of socio-economic, religious, and cultural
programming, in spite of evolutionary biology.
On a recent trip to
Brazil - a country so diverse and rich in ethnicities, it actually doesn't
understand the meaning of "diversity" - seeing couples burst into
sporadic romantic embraces (with tongues!) was so common, I felt oddly out
of place with my tongue in my own mouth. In the U.S., an obsessive stare
(2),
a longer-than-normal handshake, or any such Brazilian-style public display
of affection is regarded as an impracticality (or worse), since these sort
of interactions can easily be misconstrued as cues that sex may be imminent.
Tangentially, "the"
evangelical recently confessed to having a drug-induced homosexual affair
with a male prostitute (despite his wife and 5 kids) and resigned all his
many influential posts in disgrace. In case you missed it, Catholic dioceses
are filing for bankruptcy all over the place because they can no longer
afford the legal costs of protecting their homosexual pedophile priests.
And in the last issue of National Geographic, homosexuality was revealed
to be a perfectly normal part of the animal kingdom (3).
Why do we as Americans try to prevent our natural inclinations, (straight or crooked), so hard? Maybe we're the ones who are dysfunctional products of a personal-space obsessed, sex-starved, abusively politically-correct culture, a culture that over-protects us from any and all conceivable risks (like letting another human being touch us) through a hyperactive legal system and itchy-trigger-finger accusations, fueled by advertising-dollar-junkie news outlets, that pump these accusations directly into our nervous-systems, transforming us into anxiety-filled and easy-lawsuit-filing viewers.
Huh? That doesn't sound right, does it? That every gesture is a harassing demand for sex? That touching is a cue for sex? That being gay is bad? But think of every time you've witnessed "PDA"; wasn't your first thought, "Get a room!" Think of the last time some random stranger displayed any awareness of you, accompanied by some altruistic gesture; was your first reaction then, "He must be a player"?; a thought which caused you to insincerely thank and dispatch the good Samaritan or worse, ignore or reject the gesture. (A "player", by the way, is a positive spin on "sexual predator", which doesn't typically come with the same bragging rights as "player". Some paranoids however, aren't fooled, which explains their brusque, or, in the words of chastened players, "funky", attitudes.)
We've even got our kids programmed to believe that every stranger's goodwill is an obvious ruse to deceive them into their basements to commit unspeakable horrors. We can't even trust female teachers anymore, as Bayonne, NJ's scandalous case of a serial pedophile teacher demonstrated.
In your perpetual profiling
of child-molesting prowlers, you probably missed the one about a nice 20-something
daughter of an influential Bayonne politician who became a counselor at
a local high school over the objections of other administrators who knew
of her unusually friendly attention to young boys. Predictably, she abused
her role as a counselor to arrange trysts with her students, one of which,
a minor, who became the father of her son. Sixteen years later, that love
child actually grows up to become "bait" for other 16 year olds
this counselor initiated trysts with. That's right, folks, she screwed her
son's friends! Does that make her a M.I.L.F.? If so, why do we even have
a word, (popularized by the comedy "American Pie" [4]),
for this sort of pedophile? What, you thought once your kid passed 10 years
of age, he or she would be free and clear? What's more, did you think that
every form of pedophilia was considered bad?
Pedophilia and sexual "deviance" has been rearing their heads (no pun intended) in these op-eds for months. They're a fascinating human behaviors since everyone seems to do it in one form or another (and has been for millennia), but everyone feels guilty about its existence. Blanket prohibition never seems to work, despite attempts by Protestants and Islam. And because it's characterized vaguely as an "illness", the professionals, not surprisingly, are at a total loss on how to address it. So, true to my character (or masochistic urge to argue about things I won't win), I'd like to explore it in greater depth by asking how a pedophile is created? Is it a genetic thing, like homosexuals claim their own preferences to be? Or is pedophilia the product of a society that permits their pre-teens to celebrate their promiscuity (Pussycat Dolls, Beyonce, and Madonna anyone?) while simultaneously denouncing the inevitable moral consequences of these liberties?
Sure, our kids think (or we expect them, too anyway), but how, when our schools are too busy grading students to actually teach them, (not to mention siphoning tax dollars to support politicians who send their own kids to private schools); we're too busy working (or looking for work), to parent effectively; and their (very influential) friends are all virtual avatars with hidden identities, webcams and creative imaginations?
Pedophilia, like homosexuality,
personal-space invasion, and masturbation and healthy sex between couples
before that (5),
are all apparently natural human behaviors. You may not enjoy getting "busy"
with your spouse or homos swapping spit in front of you, but using the law
to reign in natural human behaviors so it better meets your definition of
"normal" has actually turned society into an insurance salesman's
wet dream (assuming, of course, that you accept that having wet dreams are
just another normal human biological occurrence) and our culture into a
hypocritical butt of the world's jokes.
Footnotes
(1) Proxemics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics
(2) Weird Al Yankovic's new video on JibJab, "Do I Creep You Out": http://www.jibjab.com/weird_al/do_i_creep_you_out?jjeid=weirdal-awr
(3) National Geographic, Homosexuality In The Animal Kingdom, Nov 2006: http://www.alberrios.com/research/researchdata/external/NG_1106_Homosexuality_In_Animal_Kingdom
(4) American Pie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163651/
(5) Kinsey Reports:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports
Al Berrios is Managing Director of al berrios & co., a pure strategy consulting firm, specializing in advising organizations + entrepreneurs on managing their enterprises in a service economy. Write or Subscribe to Consumer Strategies Report.
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