wholeness

I haven’t done a post on the whole Roman Polanski thing, and I probably won’t be doing any sort of in-depth post on the subject, namely because so many other great writers have already said it better, and because, if you follow me on Twitter, then you already know how I feel on the subject, which is basically that: 13 year olds can’t legally consent to sex with adults, ever.  People who are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs cannot consent to sex.  If you tell someone NO and beg them to stop, you are not consenting to sex.  And whether the victim had been 13 or 30, she was under the influence, and she begged him to stop.  He PLED GUILTY.  And then he committed the additional crime of fleeing the country.  He got what’s coming to him and I hope he receives a just sentence, and I am disgusted by his defenders.

ANYWAY.  The entire jist of this is to highlight Kate Harding’s latest post on the subject, in which she ties in another rape controversy involving an adolescent girl: the filming of the movie “Hound Dog” starring then 13 year old Dakota Fanning, who appeared (fully clothed) in a rape scene.  Harding interviewed the film’s director, who ended the interview with this:

“When you rape a girl, the problem is not that you’re taking away her purity — which is what gets religious right up in arms — it’s that you’re taking away her wholeness. And trying to keep her ‘pure,’ repressing her sexuality, silencing her voice, also takes away wholeness. It’s two sides of the same coin.

“I don’t want my daughter to grow up pure,” she said. “I want her to grow up whole.”

I’ve always been rather uncomfortable with the way “we” in a societal sense talk to kids about sex, particularly those of “us” (societally speaking) who support “just say no” abstinence-only messages.  Kampmeier’s quote sums up how I feel about most experiences, sexual or otherwise.  Does it make you feel more whole? More power to ya, I will cheer you on.  Does it make you or others involved in the experience feel less whole?  That’s not something I support.