It’s a great disservice to talk or write about sex half-assedly. You need to talk about the entire ass, and all the other parts that go along with it.

Maybe that one will end up on one of those little desk calendars someday…

Some of the topics we’re most uncomfortable addressing are those that involve both kids and sexuality. This includes interactions among children, as well as prevention of inappropriate interactions between adults and children. This discomfort is particularly unfortunate, given the combination of exceptional sexual energy and need for guidance at the adolescent stage. Kids are feeling various social pressures combined with physiological urges, and at the same time lack the wisdom of a more experienced adult. And from a sustainability perspective, more open sex education might help to curb overpopulation.

While entire books could be written on this topic, we’ll launch right into a basic but often-ignored concept that I believe stands in the way of more honest discussion. The simple fact is that from a purely biological perspective, once a human hits puberty and their sexual and reproductive features fully develop, they are naturally going to be sexually attractive to other humans with a sex drive. This often happens well before they reach “legal” age, and some research suggests that the rate of early-onset puberty is increasing, at least in girls. It’s hard pinpoint the exact culprit–some point to factors such as childhood obesity, while others point out growth hormones used to ramp up milk production in cows, egg and meat production in chickens, and so on.

Now, it makes most parents anxious enough that their teenage daughter or son may be attractive to others their age. What makes us even more anxious is the fact that they can appear sexually attractive to older adults as well.

I’ll bear the burden of being uncomfortably honest here, since my hope is that you and other readers will do the same. In the years since I turned 18, I’m fairly certain that at least some proportion of physically developed females who have triggered the “she’s kind of hot” thought in the back of my mind were probably not quite 18 yet. Similarly, I suspect there are some middle-aged heterosexual women or gay men out there who secretly have sparks upon seeing a still-minor Justin Bieber.

Aaaaack. Creepy middle aged man alert! Scenes from American Beauty may come to mind. Well, if you can watch popular music videos, clothing ads, and television shows like “Glee” without feeling even the tiniest spark, then perhaps you’re an exception. But even if you do, fret not. Like me, you would never consider acting on it. Because a second or two after that initial impulse, the higher-level thinking portions of our brains kick in, moderating our thoughts and behavior.

We recognize that engaging in sex with someone who is too young and relatively emotionally immature could negatively impact them in a number of ways. We realize that if we were that person’s parent, we probably wouldn’t want someone our age hitting on them. And we recognize that even if it were acceptable, there probably wouldn’t be much substance to the relationship anyway, like common interests and discussion topics.

Okay, maybe that last one isn’t that important to everyone.

The key is that we must honestly accept the existence of certain animalistic impulses as part of our human nature, recognizing that they themselves do not define our sexual ethics or make us “bad” in any way. It’s largely how we choose to behave that defines us.*

Why is this distinction so incredibly important? Because if this part of our nature freaks us out too much and leads us to judge ourselves and others, we may overreact in our attempts to deny it altogether. This overreaction may include a denial that adolescents can be sexual beings at all. If we’re involved in a public policy, educational, or leadership position, this may result in highly ineffective policies related to sexuality. Any attempts to get really honest when talking about sexuality at this level will make us too anxious, so we’ll deal with the topic only superficially. It’s easier just to skim over things and move onto more comfortable topics.

This can result in blanket policies and punishments that don’t always account for variability in individual circumstances, whether they pertain to controversial issues like sexting, sex between a minor and a non-minor who’s close in age, and so on. As a result, youth can end up with records that haunt them for many years, impacting their ability to be productive citizens. And even if they did something that was particularly foolish, that behavior may not have any short- or long-term reflection on their character in other domains of their life.

The same thing can and does happen to adults. In the introduction to this series, I shared that someone I care about nearly went to prison because policy makers misunderstood the relationship between their disabilities and sexuality. For confidentiality reasons I can’t share details, other than saying that their condition impacts social development and interaction in profound ways, and that there is no evidence to suggest they would ever approach a minor in a sexual fashion. Nonetheless, they must carry a sex offender label for the rest of their lives, which continues to impact them and their family in very profound ways.

And for a while, the “treatment” seemed to deny the individual’s right to have a sex drive at all. This stemmed from blanket policies that failed to allow for variation, and I believe that this stemmed from a fear of discussing sexuality policies in sufficient depth. Getting beyond black and white requires critical questioning, which can be uncomfortable for us. It requires courageous honesty.

A few years ago I attended a two-day training sponsored by the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, designed to make participants critically question our sexual attitudes. A highlight was the opportunity to hear from a panel of parents on sexuality-related challenges of child rearing. (Even the professionals face challenges!) An interesting point brought up was that many fathers, upon their daughters hitting puberty, struggled with how to show physical affection toward their daughters. While obviously certain boundaries need to be drawn, some fathers largely withdrew most forms of physical contact altogether. Apparently, their children’s sexual maturity made them pretty uncomfortable. A few of the participants then discussed the self-esteem issues and conflicted messages about love versus sex that many girls face as a result of such withdrawal. It seems that some of these issues could be avoided with more awareness and open conversation, even if it’s uncomfortable at first.

Another interesting thought: If adults were more comfortable and open about their sexuality around youth, then maybe kids wouldn’t feel quite so rushed about sex. The hormones provide plenty of push for that as it is; but when we look at movies, music videos, and commercials that have a sexy edge, they generally feature very young people. Part of this makes sense biologically, because they are in their sexual prime, but it also creates the paradoxical sense that a) youth can’t start having sex until they’re quite a bit older—perhaps even settled down with a family, and b) once they do reach that point, there’s not really that much time for sex, and they don’t really have long of a timeframe to enjoy sex because older people aren’t sexual.

Talk about a recipe for a sexually anxious youth, followed by a midlife crisis!

I also wonder how many sexual predator incidents could be avoided if we more openly acknowledged adolescents’ exceptionally strong hormonal motivations and discussed it with them. One example that comes to mind is that involving an 18-year-old who posed as an attractive girl on Facebook, persuading the girl’s minor male classmates to send him nude photos of themselves, and then using those photos to blackmail the boys into performing sex acts for him. The first thing that comes to mind is why the predator felt he had to resort to such nefarious means to obtain sex. Perhaps that piece could have been avoided, or at least recognized and addressed sooner, had he grown up in a more sex-positive culture. (“Sex-positive” includes open and intelligent discussion.)

But the second thing that comes to mind is the fact that he was able to use the boys’ nude photos to blackmail them. Granted, no matter how open-minded one’s parents and friends are, the risk of others seeing a sexually explicit picture of you is going to be embarrassing. When I was an adolescent, just the thought of one of my parents catching me masturbating was terrifying; it’s no accident that the topic was the primary focus of an entire Seinfeld episode, with the word itself not being uttered once. Nonetheless, in the blackmailing incident–and there have been others similar to this–it’s unfortunate that the boys’ perceived destructive capacity of those photos was so strong that they felt they had no other options. There was apparently no one or no place else they felt they could turn to, because the shame tied to sending sexually explicit photos would be so great. If we just accept as a given that adolescents are going to do risqué and impulsive things from time to time, and focus our preventive efforts in areas rather than trying to stop them altogether, where might that lead us?

I look forward to an increasingly fulfilling world where we’re all more capable of showing up more powerfully in our lives, and of fully enjoying one another’s presence. This includes our work-related talents, our thoughts, our hobbies, our artistic gifts, our physical presence, and yes, even our sexuality.

*As a sidenote, if you frequently fixate on underaged individuals or consider acting on such thoughts, then a candid conversation with a therapist may be useful. Also, if you’re a younger person reading this, I understand that some teenagers actually are more emotionally mature than some adults. But absent some type of reliable emotional maturity exam, biological age probably remains the best measure we currently have for establishing some sex-related guidelines.

Other Sex in a Sustainable World posts: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10

Dave Wheitner is a certified life, career, and transition coach based in Pittsburgh, PA who welcomes phone-based clients from around the world.