Child sexual abuse, more than any other wrong, convinces me that Aristotle’s account of moral upbringing is so very much on target. It is next to impossible to imagine a child who has been raised in a loving parental environment turning out to be an adult who preys among children. The child sexual predator presupposes considerable distortion of the psychological self on so very many levels.
To state the obvious, part of what makes sex exciting is the simple fact that our sexual partner is suitably engaged and aroused by our sexual interaction with her or him. And precisely that sort of thing is unequivocally missing in adult-child sexual interaction. There is no room at all for the adult even to pretend that a child is animated in such a fashion. This holds whether an adult is into S & M or not.
Famously, Aristotle observed that we become just by doing just deeds as part of our upbringing. One very crucial step in that line of thought is that a child’s parents serve as the most substantive guide in the child’s life. The child learns how to engage in this or that behavior through experiencing the behavior of his parents. There is also verbal instruction, but as we shall see this is typically irrelevant with regard to the matter of sexual abuse.
When a child experiences the affection of his parents in the right way, that affection stands as one of the most profound forms of affirmation that a child could ever receive in her or his life. It is also the case that such affirmation is radically asexual. As I remarked in talking with Philosophy 191 students recently: No child would ever say “Mom, I have got a great song for you to hear” and then play Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It Own”. No child would do that not even as a joke.
No child would so behave though it would be absolutely stunning if this is because there had been a discussion between the parent and the child regarding the impropriety of sexual behavior on the part of a child towards her or his parent and vice versa. I have never met a student who is a decent person who has had such a discussion with her or his parents. The very need for such a discussion would already portent something radically wrong in the parent-child relationship.
No child would play “Let’s Get It On” for her or his parents because the very nature and expression of parental love is radically incompatible with sexual feelings, and so are radically inappropriate with having sexual desire for one’s parents and with one’s parents having sexual for one. And it is irrelevant whether one is gay or straight here. A moment’s reflection reveals this has to be true. Just as no child who is straight ever wants to have sex with the parent of the opposite sex, no child who is gay wants to have sex with the parent of the same sex.
This is all so truly profound when one thinks about it. We get a fundamental aspect of something as complex as sexual desire so tremendously right in terms of its expression simply in terms of how we are loved and loving treated by our parents and without ne’er a word regarding the matter ever being uttered.
Notice, too, that just as those with decent upbringing have never had a discussion about having sex with their parents, it is equally true that those with decent upbringing have never had a discussion about not having sex with a child. The very idea of such a discussion is ludicrous. Whatever “the birds and the bees” talk is about nowadays, it most certainly is not about teenage children refraining from having sex with little kids; for that is what a psychologically healthy teenage child is absolutely not into doing.
Let conclude this blog entry with a few remarks from a different direction. I hold that human beings are remarkably sensitive to the motives with which human beings behave. There is no doubt at all that a child would recognize soon enough when a parental kiss or hug was more than an expression of parental affection. But when parental love is as it should be, no child ever mistakes the sloppiest kiss from a mom as an expression of sexual interest. This truth tells us how subtle behavior can be and also how tremendously attuned we can be to it. Notice, also, the following interesting consequence: When parental love is as it should be, then one remarkable consequence of that reality is that we are very well attuned to the character of a very rich aspect of human behavior. For we have as a foundation, the basis for making a most fundamental contrast between mere expression of affection, on the one hand, and romantic affection, on the other. All of this flows simply from parental love at its best.
If the foregoing remarks are sound, then we have seen that Aristotle’s thought has a relevance that most would never attribute to him. This, I believe, is philosophy as it should be.
