Children perceive sex as excremental dirtiness that adults scandalously embrace

Evidence

The physical nature of pregnancy and childbirth suggests as well that “something physical” takes place between the spouses. The often-encountered word “blood” in expressions like “same-blood children,” “pure blood,” and “mixed blood” sometimes orients the childish imagination; it is supposed that marriage is accompanied by some solemn transfusion. But more often the “physical thing” seems to be linked to the urinary and excremental systems; in particular, children think that the man urinates into the woman. This sexual operation is thought of as dirty. This is what overwhelms the child for whom “dirty” things have been rife with the strictest taboos: How, then, can it be that they are integrated into adults’ lives? The child is first of all protected from scandal by the very absurdity he discovers: he finds there is no sense to what he hears around him, what he reads, what he writes; everything seems unreal to him. … In Carson McCullers’s charming book The Member of the Wedding, the young heroine surprises two neighbors in bed nude; the very anomaly of the story keeps her from giving it too much importance: … It was a summer Sunday and the hall door of the Marlowes’ room was open. She could see only a portion of the room, part of the dresser and only the footpiece of the bed with Mrs. Marlowe’s corset on it. But there was a sound in the quiet room she could not place, and when she stepped over the threshold she was startled by a sight that, after a single glance, sent her running to the kitchen, crying: Mr. Marlowe is having a fit! Berenice had hurried through the hall, but when she looked into the front room, she merely bunched her lips and banged the door … Frankie had tried to question Berenice and find out what was the matter. But Berenice had only said that they were common people and added that with a certain party in the house they ought at least to know enough to shut a door. Though Frankie knew she was the certain party, still she did not understand. What kind of a fit was it? she asked. But Berenice would only answer: Baby, just a common fit. And Frankie knew from the voice’s tones that there was more to it than she was told. Later she only remembered the Marlowes as common people. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 718

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretizes how the child’s understanding of sexuality is shaped by the already-established taboo on the dirty, grounding Beauvoir’s causal account of how disgust attaches to the sexual body.
• XREF: Plausibly connects to Freud’s infantile sexual theories and to McCullers’s own treatment of adolescent awakening; the child’s reading of sex as urination/defecation parallels classic psychoanalytic accounts. — connects to: Learning the truth of sex transforms the child into another being marked by shame — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 728; Learning one’s own parents engage in sex triggers horror and repudiation; Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239

Broader Connections

• Learning the truth of sex transforms the child into another being marked by shame #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 728
• Learning one’s own parents engage in sex triggers horror and repudiation #exemplifies (0.80)
• Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239