Two whole books on human sexuality aren’t enough (one and two) merely to introduce how utterly freakish Westerners, particularly mainstream Western Christians, are about human sexuality. The just don’t have a clue. Discussing what the Bible considers normal in this realm immediately makes us space aliens to everyone in the West. I put it off all day thinking about it and dreading the necessity of discussing it again.
If you aren’t aware of the current soap opera regarding a certain family named Duggar and how one of their 19 kids recently came under embarrassing attention for something Western Christians regard as scandalous, then never mind; maybe it’s better you don’t bother with it. Look them up if you are curious. In essence, the Duggars had a TV series showcasing their standard American right-wing evangelical Christian religion. This is the Bible-thumper homeschool type family. I was once immersed in that American subculture, so I know all about it.
One of their sons got a job with an appropriately political active right-wing evangelical organization. It made headlines among such folks, and got the attention of their political and philosophical opponents. Then someone leaked records an investigation into how this famous son had admitted fondling little girls in their privates. Some of his victims were his own sisters. Cue the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Cue the snarky outpouring from those who hate such people.
Both sides are full of crap. So is the rest of the Western Civilization entirely.
Nobody is interested in what the Ancient Hebrews thought of such things, and you’ll see an endless supply of reading their freakish values back into the Bible. This is part of why the Hebrews were so very harsh about keeping the sexes apart from a rather young age. Notwithstanding the peccadilloes of certain ancient royalty who did not live by quite the same social restrictions for a lot of good reasons (again, no one seems to care why), the average Hebrew family watched their kids like a hawk.
And does it occur to no one a fellow’s little sisters might be altogether willing victims of such “abuse”? All the more reason to keep them away from each other most of the time. We can dispute and debate all day long at what point someone can validly volunteer for such behavior. However, I can assure you Hebrew parents didn’t panic when the kids were caught examining each other’s privates. They were utterly lacking in our pseudo-Victorian freaky prissiness about such things. They also didn’t suffer from the moral depravity half of Americans refuse to admit is inherent in Western mythology.
Children touching each other doesn’t mean the kids are evil, just fallen. To the Hebrews, it also meant the parents needed to pray and consider ways to stop it from happening again. It wasn’t a question of whom to blame and publicly castigate, just a matter of pursuing moral justice within the context. The question in biblical morality is: What do we do now, Lord? There was no deep angst over such horrifying loss, because they wouldn’t think of it in those terms. They didn’t exacerbate things by shrieking in terror at the permanent emotional scars because that’s not how they viewed reality.
Don’t buy into the false dichotomy offered by the current popular blather on this. That’s the real horror here.
One other thing to think about is that kids in agrarian societies were somewhat exposed to sex through the raising of animals. They would have to have some idea of what it entailed because they would’ve been taught how to breed animals, though they couldn’t “know it” in the way functional adults could.
Precisely. Even those in noble and royal households were expected to gain first hand knowledge of such things.