@ANef_is_Enuf I think you’re right. It’s all mixed up. Some bits of knowledge, but mostly meanness and prurience and trying to figure out how to get one foot up over everyone else in this race for status that they are just starting to become aware of.
They know sex is powerful, even if they don’t know what it really is. Although, it’s not clear to me what we mean when we say “know.” If you haven’t had intercourse, does that mean you can’t know what it is? Or does know a penis goes inside a vagina count as far as knowing what sex is?
Because a boy up the street from me informed me that was what sex is when I was 9. I didn’t believe him. Then he wanted to bet me. If he was right, he would get to fuck my sister, and if I was right…. well, the point was moot. I didn’t take the bet because my sister wasn’t mine to bet (and I wondered how he could think his was).
So, as of then, I officially “knew” what sex was. But of course there was so much more to know. And still, I already knew the power of it. I already understood sexual dynamics. I was already a feminist. I already had my opinion about how boys and girls (or men and women) should relate to each other.
Now I was a very naive person. I grew up so slowly compared to most. My sexual initiations came much later than most people’s. Yet, I understood intuitively some things about right and wrong with regard to relations between the sexes. I did not need to believe the technical definition of sexual intercourse (and of course, even though it shocked me, I knew it had to be right) in order to understand human interactions.
Kids these days know this stuff sooner than in my day (the sixties). Our children know. They don’t need to have an in depth understanding to know that for women, having too much to do with sex in the wrong way is going to kill your reputation. We are tribal creatures. We pick that stuff up out of the air. You hear the word “slut” and you know how to use it almost instantly. You don’t have to understand the specifics. All you have to get is that you can push someone else down and if you’re lucky, you’ll push yourself up over everyone else in the process.