just the slightest bit disturbing (rant)

I went to the Museum of Sex the other day. Yes. I know. I'm a man about town. Indeed. Its quite an interesting place and one of the few places in NYC where you can look at a magazine with "dirty pictures" or as Helms and Strom would say "filth masquerading as art" without someone over your shoulder disgusted with you. Indeed.

((*note: of course Helms and Strom means Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. Although it does sound like a great name for a Modern Conservative Vaudeville Team...
HELMS: What do you call an elephant that's late for a job interview?

STROM: I don't know, but I sure hate Niggers! (roaring laughter)

HELMS: Me too, me too...I mean seriously, they haven't been useful since the good ol' cotton picking days! (Strom starts barking and foaming from the mouth) Oops! I forgot references to those days make you rabid!

BOTH: Ha Cha Cha Cha!))

I was at the museum looking at the Stag Film exhibit. It was a historical recount of how porn films came to be. Back in the day, there were low grade movies of hardcore sex (dating back to 1915) and groups of men would get together to watch them while they drank and had a good time. The Stag Party was born.

They had the screens on the ground and the projectors on the ceiling. You had to walk around this dark room and look down over the action. If you looked around, you could see groups of people gathered around the screens with the light of the film just barely illuminating their faces. It felt gross.

As the day went on, it got more and more crowded and that's when I noticed a woman pushing a baby in a carriage. WHAT THE...? A baby, surrounded by hardcore sex films. I mean yeah, that's how the baby got here, but still. Then I had a strange sense of relief. I knew the baby couldn't see. Everything was blurry to it and even if not, it didn't know what was going on. For some reason, that gave me closure.

Still I'm not saying let's sit every baby in front of a porn movie, but we can't hide these facts from them forever. We kind of treat children like they're little retarded time bombs that have no way of comprehending the things they see. If we're not their to sheild them, their precious little heads explode and we have to clean it up. Here's my thing. Its seems when we sheild them, it create a taboo. Taboo creates curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat. Or made the kid grow up to try something they don't really know about because their parents were too scared to say something which results in some sort of horrible horrible tragedy usually a lot worse than whatever was being kept from them. Sorry, to get after school special on yo ass, but seriously folks.

So maybe that woman will let their baby grow up to see porn. And the kid will be like "what's that?" And the mother will actually sit down and talk to him/her about it. And (god forbid) be frank and answer questions about this thing the kid won't be able to stop thinking about when puberty comes. Perhaps it'll demystify some things. And maybe just maybe a functional relationship might blossom between child and parent. And when the kid is a teen maybe just maybe s/he'll trust (god forbid) that parent. Cynics?