Um... maybe I'm not as smart as all of you

But I do believe there is a childhood, or childlike, 'innocence'.

Innocence is not knowing that evil/wrongdoings exist, or at least happen all the time.

Once you know it's there you can't undo it.

It's why kids believe in Santa and once you realize santa's not real it's gone.

The reason people talk about a child losing their innocence is that if a child is raped (lets go with REAL rape here) they realize that people do horrible things for no reason. Or they blame themselves because there MUST be something wrong with them for it to happen. Bad things don't happen to good people right?

If an adult and child had sexual relations, but it was nice and everyone trusted one another, with no force etc. innocence wouldn't be broken. Until of course they are older and realize, oops, I shouldn't have been doing that, other kids my age don't do that, why? Society makes them feel manipulated, but until that point they may not have realized that their 'innocence' was supposed to be lost.

I guess to me knowledge of sex doesn't define a loss of innocence like it does 'regular' people. I mean there are 18 year olds who I would consider to be 'innocent' in some manners.

I don't know, I think children can be niave and innocent, and knowledgeable in other areas, or exposed to negative things in other areas. Just like adults can be innocent in some areas and not in others. The older we get the more experience we have the more we realize the good and the bad situations that come up.

It's why you tell your son or daughter don't leave your drink unattended at a party, because they are 'innocent' in not realizing that someone might slip them something and have sex with their limp body. They were niave and innocent in that respect.

Children can be innocent, and they can lose some of that innocence. Does being knowledgeable about sex mean their innocence is lost? To societies who are uptight about that type of stuff, to THEM yes. But I think we all slowly lose our innocence. Kids get bullied and realize that other kids aren't always nice, people or pets they know die and they realize everything isn't always there, we work hard all the time and some idiot still manages to have more than we do.

We all slowly lose it, and sometimes it pops up when least expected. I can't get into detail, but I was hired by some people to do something, thought I had a sweet job ahead but they wanted me to do some part-time stuff for them, I thought ok sure just until the full-time stuff comes up. Then before the full-time opportunity emerged, they said they wouldn't need me because of blahblahblah. I was shocked, did they do that on purpose? Who DOES that? No way. Of course a close friend of mine called it from the start, said it was to good to be true, but I thought no, people don't do that type of thing. Right?

Was it niavity or innocence? Possibly both. I was innocenct to the fact that nice people will use you to get what they want and screw you over. Would anyone with any experience have seen it? From a mile away. And once you realize it you don't unrealize it.

Children are innocent and they lose it just like all of us did.

Plus c'mon, you can't tell me part of you doesn't LOVE part of the innocence of being with a child. That trust they have that life is awesome, that the good guys always win.

The point is loss of innocence doesn't equate to knowledge of sex. It equates to knowledge that bad things happen to good people. It's where you haven't yet realized all of that, or aspects of that. I like children in part because a lot of them haven't figured out that life can shit on you for no reason other then you were there.