# Quote — Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd

> A boy of ten or eleven has a few great sexual experiences—he thinks they’re great—but then he has the bad luck to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behavior is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. … The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the sexual experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. … The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. But if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. The sexual plight of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. … The question here is not whether the sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialog, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society.

- Author: [Paul Goodman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman.md)
- Book: [Growing Up Absurd](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd.md)
- Page: 38
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Goodman#Growing_Up_Absurd_(1956)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/a-boy-of-ten

## More from this book

> We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.

p. 94 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/we-certainly-have.md)

> The ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the could and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behavior of passengers who hardly look out the windows.

p. 144 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/the-ancient-dream.md)

> To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.

p. 153 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-goodman/growing-up-absurd/to-consider-powerful.md)