Yes

by Christina Bernice Butler

Created on: October 06, 2009   Last Updated: October 28, 2009

Is there too much sex on TV? This should not even be a question. I don't even want there to be a television in my house when I get one for this reason, plus, the horrible language. From my perspective, this whole world is over-sexed. Television is just one medium through which media has been spreading it. I have very strong views on this subject matter. It has honestly gotten to the point of ridiculousness, which is what I say for anything that gets past a point of understanding.

Children cannot be children in this society. I was in kindergarten hearing about sex and my classmates had sex metaphors, such as sharpening a pencil or sticking a straw in an apple and juice coming out of it. Yes, kindergarten. I was in kindergarten in 1994 so this is no new thing, either. One of my sisters, who was sixteen at the time, went on a school trip with me as a chaperon when I was in kindergarten. One of my classmates asked her, "Are you a virgin?" She was shocked. I didn't even know what it was so I was just dumbfounded at the situation and my sister wouldn't tell me what the word meant. She just asked the girl if she knew what it meant and she said yes and repeatedly asked my sister if she was or not. Yet, with all of this sex-talk, I didn't LITERALLY know what sex was until I was eleven! Something's backwards.

Soap operas were always on in my house back then, too. I thought that you needed a man in your life to have some type of passionate romance. You're supposed to want to have sex with him and he's supposed to want to have sex with you. In real life, it's a dangerous thing to believe that a guy's supposed to want have sex with you, especially when, on the other hand, you really want a guy who loves you for you.

These days, I've chaperoned a school trip where the school bus drove past giant Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch advertisements that feature half-naked and fully-naked but angled and airbrushed and disguised people in raunchy poses. The kids saw these. They also saw people (of the same gender, might I add) making out on the sidewalk.

And forget Victoria's Secret. That Secret has been TOLD...over and over again, all over the world.

All of this prevents children from feeling comfortable in their own bodies. The average four-year-old does not know the names and functions of their reproductive and sexual organs but they hear them regularly and usually in a vulgar manner. What does that do for self-esteem, especially for the females?

I always pray for the children of the world. I can only imagine how it is for them because I know it's gotten worse since 1994! I have six nieces and nephews who I care for deeply; I hate that they have to deal with this kind of stuff. In fact, my five-year-old niece recently reported that a classmate of hers said, "I want to have sex with you in the gym." This truly disturbed her, myself and everybody who learned of it. Thankfully, she's transferred into a different school (that was just about the last straw); yet, children deal with this kind of thing just about everywhere!

On another note, letting go of the children for now, what about ME? Who says even I or any adult asked for that, really!? It seems hopeless at times which is why I am so extra-thankful for Christian networks. Why can't I have a normal conversation or see a normal movie without somebody's naked butt being present? Sure, we may have gotten here by somebody having sex but not everybody who is here has sex and I, for one, planned to wait for marriage. Yet, when sex is always in front of your eyes, it's always in the back of your head.

My mother says, "They're acting like it's something new. They're acting like animals. Sex isn't new. Everyone has a butt." She also says, "Why are the women always the ones in skimpy outfits when the men are all decked out in suits and hats and even over-dressed?" The world has found the solution to the objectification of women in the objectification of men. I'd choose to not let anybody be objectified because this, too, pours out into reality. Nobody can walk down the street peacefully because somebody has an opinion on their appearance and feels they have a right to that person's body, even grabbing them or brushing them provocatively and inappropriately. This may not be a thing that one person experiences regularly or that one neighborhood sees every week but there is no doubt that it is a common thing.

Sexual intercourse and surrounding topics and terms are the script, it seems, for most television shows. They say sex sells but why sell to those people? Why appeal to a perverted sense? Why not appeal to the finer things, things involving your brain and your heart and not just your eyes and genitals!? If we continue to let sex be so common in our media, entertainment and television viewing, whether it is to attract attention or to crack a joke at it, it only creates more of a drawback to our own selves and our culture.

If we put as much into sex-education as we put into sex-television, there'd be fewer children having children, maybe there'd even be more people waiting to have sex instead of starting at twelve. When you have a better example, you can see a better way much clearer. I'd like to see a very static view on most TV programs.

Sex is not just intercourse, either. Some things that are now common "public displays of affection'' are really foreplay! If they are PDA, of course, you can be sure they're also plastered all over the television screen. Seriously, how much kissing needs to happen per episode? That's cheap television. I want quality! I honestly don't even grasp how people are able to get away with making such things as that.

Even when they're not talking about sex or doing anything sexual, it's sexual. I've seen the side of a woman's pubic region in a televised movie. Ridiculousness.

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