This is a fascinating perspective on the infamous Chris Brown. It turns out that Chris, at age 8, had already watched enough porn that he was “hot to trot” and (according to his own account) had sex for the first time. The girl in question was 14 or 15 which, as Olivia Cole (the author) points out, makes the encounter a rape. Cole then says she knows other men who have recounted similar stories, and then drops this pretty profound question:
We know some of the behavioral signals that occur when girls have been raped. Depression, promiscuity, unexplained anger, anxiety. These are words we use when we describe the ways victims behave. It’s interesting that I have seen these same symptoms in young boys—alongside me in class when I was a child, in boyfriends as I got older, in men beside me on the bus in Chicago—yet no one looks at male anger and male promiscuity as symptoms of anything. These are just classic male behaviors. “Boys will be boys,” and boys sleep around. Boys have bad tempers. Right?
Wrong.
What if we have been normalizing male rape victims’ symptoms for centuries?
What if, indeed. The one thing Cole doesn’t mention, that I think is important, is the role of pornography in this story. Would a young, 8-year old boy have been looking for sex without already having imbibed a dangerous amount of porn? Probably not. So I don’t think this is a problem that has been going on “for centuries.” It could be a new problem, however, and one that will only get worse as more and more young men have their minds and souls warped by early exposure to readily accessible porn.
Whether or not you believe the precise details, David Niven apparently had sex at the age of 14, that is, sometime in 1924. It was considered scandalous, not the norm, nor even a common occurence.
As a further example, consider Wilbur Smith’s 1964 novel, “When the Lion Feeds.” Yes, I am aware that it is an historical novel, but it is based on the stories and experiences of the Smith family, friends and acquaintances in the southern Africa of his childhood. It conveys historical attitudes rather well, and the novel’s frank treatment of sex was considered scandalous in the mid-sixties, one of the reasons for it having been banned in South Africa. The protagonist sleeps with a girl while both are still in their very early teens, and their volatile relationship sets the tragic, turbulent course of the novel in motion. In a clever device (the moment in the book that has actually stayed with me), Smith frames the protagonist’s behaviour- and two of the novel’s themes- against the mores and expectations of greater society.
” ‘In order to live a man must occasionally kill,’ said Waite, ‘but when he kills too young, he loses something… a respect for life: he makes it cheap. It is the same with a woman, a man should never have his first woman until he understands about it. Otherwise that too becomes cheap.’ ”
In the rough, harsh, frontier world of South Africa reflected in the novel there are many who do have sex (and drink, fight, steal, and yes, kill) at a very young age, but such is not condoned by society. It is considered bad behaviour, trouble in the offing.
Inappropriately early sexual experiences did occur, much like they do today, but they were generally considered abberations (though some of the upper classes did encourage their teenage sons to bed girls as soon as possible, the better to produce heirs later), even if people expected men to sow wild oats. Like you observed, the wide, easy, almost stigma-less availability of pornography is an element that changes things to the worse.