Cartoon Sex

Discussing the Sex Life of Children's Cartoon Characters as a way of Talking to Children About Real Sex

The vexed question of sex

Between two cartoon characters

Should not be avoided simply because it is complex.

To begin with you have to decide

Whether you want your child 

To grow up to be a rational human being,

Who values logic, or a woman.

First one must define terms:

A woman in the context

Of imagined cartoon sex

Is a figure who wears clothes 

Which hang in such a way as to suggest

The secondary sexual organs,

And a small waist.

Her proportions vary with time and taste,

She is warm and kind with a certain fragility.

She has a name typically associated with females.

Because she is clad

We cannot determine if her given name

Is associated with her cisgender or transgender 

Version of reality.

Now let's look at her little, male friend:

("No, it's not her dad!")

A man in the context of potential sex

Between two cartoon characters

Is a figure whose clothes suggest 

An absence of breasts.

And the measurements of chest, waist, hip, 

Appear equal.  The presence of a zip

Might appear to indicate 

The presence of genitalia

But it would be a failure

Of logic to assume that lurking beneath

The drawing of trousers

Is a drawing of a penis and testes,

More so than an assumption of the existence of knees

Would be, since he can bend,

But it would be a lie

To say we have seen him undo his fly,

Unless he's Homer Simpson.

Because there is no concrete evidence

For the reproductive organs

One must logically conclude that sex is impossible.

But that is to reduce sex

Merely to an act,

It is to deal only with fact.

We know that it's much more than that.

"So, Mummy,

Is it necessary for the idea of sex

To have occurred in the imagination

Of the creator, before it can occur in

The brain of the beholder?

Are we complicit in the sexual act,

In so far as it cannot exist

Unless we are present

To retrieve it from the mind of the cartoons maker

By observing the desire for it between

The characters and making it real in our head?"

Oh, go to bed!

We'll talk about that when you're older.