HOW TO BE A BODY: A Look at Rape Culture, Puberty, and Parenting

Part of health is sexual health. It’s amazing so many people — including, for too long, myself — fail to grasp this deep, obvious truth. We cannot be our best selves, and certainly cannot have our best relationships, as long as we enable sexual dysfunction.

Denying that fact denies a huge part of what it is to be human, including our greatest power and vulnerability. While there’s no one right way to express sexuality, it’s the seat of our creative power, and creativity is what allows our species to problem-solve and thrive in a world of shifting circumstance.

Here, “sexual dysfunction” doesn’t only refer to certain organs failing to cooperate. Sexuality can be hurtful, manipulative, predatory — collectively, what’s called rape culture, a term describing societies like ours where rape is prevalent.

Really, it means anywhere sexuality is weaponized as part of a quest for power. Rape is the obvious symptom, but not the only problem. People of any sex, gender or orientation perpetuate rape culture when they use sexuality to control or exploit others.

Why do campus workshops on consent fail to solve the problem? By the time kids raised in rape cultures reach college age, the violence is already done. It’s subtle, accidental — but the damage is real, an injury to the child’s sense of value as an embodied being.

Modern American childhood.

Schools are phasing out recess, administering more tests, assigning more homework. The desire to move, play, and touch are treated as “inappropriate” signs of “restlessness.” Set schedules make it impossible for kids to honor (or even notice) their own bodily rhythms.

The message? Bodies are irrelevant.

Well-meaning parents, teachers, and coaches fail to realize it’s impossible to help kids grow into healthy, functional adults while forcing them to halt or ignore involuntary physical developments and normal markers of maturation, like social and sexual curiosity. This generates shame — and teenage angst.

Stigmatized, repressed sexual energy can’t fully bloom — it comes out warped, politicized, embarrassed. Likewise, when intellectual reasoning is coerced prematurely, it’s not balanced with empathy and receptivity. This combination turns adolescence into a landmine of mixed signals about how — and even whether — to grow up.

It’s no wonder, upon graduating from an artificially dictated puberty, we get adults that aren’t very mature.

They’re out of sync with their own bodies, dulling their empathy for other bodies and the emotions bodies generate. Their concept of “other” remains an intellectual abstraction, something subject to mind games and rationalizations — the forerunners of physical violence.

These pseudo adults linger in a self-centered identity, never initiated into a collective one. Lacking security to communicate honestly, they depend on alcohol and other gimmicks to navigate social risk.

How can we support kids in developing full health, including sexual and psycho-emotional health? Consider three ways to tweak your influence on kids’ developing sense of embodiment:

· Don’t shame discovery. It’s hard for adults to let kids take the lead on anything, but when it comes to their own bodies, we need to back off. You can still wipe boogers and tell them to take their hands out of their pants, but without humiliation or disgust. Teach them hygiene and manners without making them feel bad about asking questions or comparing parts.

· Have “the talk” a lot. Don’t wait until your kid’s hormonal to have one big, awkward conversation. Take opportunities as they arise to explain consent, respect, privacy, and personal taste — topics that come up through play and daily life, presenting the concept of boundaries well before sexual development begins.

· Don’t cut the cord. Mother Earth is our greater body, tying all bodies together. Don’t sever kids from the nature. Let them get dirty, explore, feel at home in their habitat, and they’ll feel at home in their bodies.

None of this will work without addressing your own hang-ups.

Ask how you belittle embodiment. Eating things that make you unwell? Bad-talking your figure, hiding from cameras? Critiquing others for their weight, dating habits, cosmetic choices? Children notice these things, and consciously or not they learn physical selfhood is secondary at best, shameful at worst.

Find ways to be better to yourself, and those lessons will speak for themselves.

A version of this article will appear in the September 2016 issue of Austin All Natural Magazine.

Zaeli is a relationship coach specializing in non-monogamy, here to help you bring consciousness and intention to your romantic life. Learn more at www.ZAELI.net.