Are adults sacrificing the innocence of children in order to justify their disinhibited sex lives?
“It seems to me that our assertion that sex can ever be inconsequential is the cradle of our problem, one we have attempted to surmount by deconsecrating childhood, rather than the re-sanctifying adulthood. Rather than admit to our personal sense of violation and loss, of being spoiled or unfaithful, our ambition has been turned towards deconstructing the virtues of abstinence, innocence, loyalty and chastity, and turning them into vices.”
But who does it suit — to underplay the significance of sex? My argument is everyone. It suits the girl who made a drunken error and it suits the boy denying his heartbreak. It suits the man who does not wish to raise the children he has fathered. It suits the wife who no longer feels attracted to her husband. Whether perpetrator or victim, it suits each and every one of us to divest sex of its intimacy and emotional significance.