Rising expectations? I doubt it.

People have been rising up against slavery since before Spartacus. Frequent "peasant rebellions" throughout the world protested unjust taxation, starvation and other injustices of feudalism. Complaints about sanitation are a constant throughout history. And even the "acceptable" subjugation of women has been protested and noted since long before Lysistrata.

Better still, modern archeology can shed light on bad conditions that might not've seemed to merit notice at the time. Those looking at remains can tell whether bones were reset from abuse or whether there was chronic malnutrition.

AND, we can also turn to anthropology to study those living in other cultures and conditions.

And yet, the silence of the evidence is staggering.

Contrast that with the evidence that our notions of child fragility and vulnerability are relatively recent, idiosyncratic and unsupportable.

Of course it should come as no surprise to us that Baldur says "children's sexuality" and you read into that "prostitution." It seems to be your idee fixe that everything descends towards child prostitution.

I suggest you try to restore the sodomy laws and homosexual discrimination; otherwise we will all be overrun by an epidemic of rent boys. :)

A better explanation of why our time and place have a problem that there was no trace of in the past is that our myths have changed.

The control of female sexuality seems to be a recurring theme throughout Western history. But it was largely focussed on adults ( albeit with different notions of what age qualified one for "adult" responsibility. ) There was a longstanding belief from St Augustine onward that female sexuality tended to be barely controllable and potentially poisonous.

There's no archeological evidence to support this myth. And anthropological evidence suggests that female sexuality wasn't an issue for those outside of the West who rejected this idee fixe.

The West eventually shifted to a predominantly protectionist mode; but it was still a "blame the victim one" where the man could control himself provided that "good girls" remained chaste and "bad girls" were punished and suppressed. It elevated the woman at the expense of the woman.

I'm not sure how or why the shift happened, but at some point the fear, hatred and need to control female sexuality shifted onto the newly invented social construct: the little girl.

Women's Lib still hasn't hit the girl. And the sort of madonna/whore dichotomy that leads folks to equate "child sexuality" with prostitution is used to slut-shame girls.

Its part of the cultural baggage. But its manufactured, as was the attack on female sexuality that preceded it. And like its immediate ancestor, it has the audacity to proclaim that those it punishes are the ones it protects ( from themselves. )

Myths never leave a trace in the records for archeology or anthropology except for the professions of belief and the punishment of unbelievers and scapegoats.

Dante