By the time we’ve developed the ability to read, speak and differentiate between ourselves and others, culture has taken hold. That squishy grey mass in our brains drastically reshapes and remoulds its neural pathways quite drastically during our first decade. As machines who have evolved to learn, the environment that we find ourselves in shapes not only the information that we have access to, but the possible means by which we can encounter it. Knowing what we know now about cognitive development, it’s almost unbelievable that Freud could have had such insight with such little evidence (comparatively, of course): Freud’s Oedipus Complex is to cognitive studies what Copernicus’ heliocentrism was to Newton. We know now that the scope and possibilities available to us for the rest lives can be already predetermined to a large extent at a very early age.

The first episode of South Park’s 13th season not only acknowledges the implicit marketing strategies of so-called ‘tween’ culture, but subtly underlines the parasitic tendency of Christian culture to tap in to and appropriate our most general biologically motivated inclinations.

Sex sells. This is a well-worn advertiser’s slogan, the justification of many advertising campaigns across the ages. Only in recent decades, however, has it been increasingly popular to market sex to a presexual audience who are yet to understand such experiences. Sex does sell. But sex sells better when the target audience is already acquainted with the fundamentals of sexual desire by the time when their bodies are equipped to be influenced by such campaigns.

This understanding is taken (amongst many, many others.. *cough* Funtastic *cough) up by those who produce magazines like Australia’s Total Girl (and the American equivalent, Cosmo Girl) – and of course, as emphasised by the recent South Park, the wide-world of child entertainment embodied by Disney, including such teen icons as The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and the High School Musical franchise. According to the allusions of the South Park episode, the supposedly explicit message of sexual conservatism (falling alongside the joys of consumerism) is masking the implicit sexual undertones that permeate the plethora of dolls, songs and advertising campaigns marketed at these pre-pubescents. Selling the notion of sexual conservatism so thoroughly is getting these developing teens to think about and desire sexualisation, while avoiding the undertones of molestation that would otherwise be associated with an explicit marketing tactic (think, for example, of the outrage often caused by parents who deliberately dress their 10 year olds to look ‘sexy’).

Considering the ignorance at which many fundamentalist groups approach sexual education, the damage that such ignorance can cause to individuals and families is no surprise. One only has to think of abusive ministers and priests, or barbaric genital mutilations that can occur. But even the less extreme cases like Ted Haggard’s repressed homosexuality lead one to conclude that these sexual policies might be bit irresponsible.

But this implicit sexual advertising has been promoting the Christian faith from the very outset. In his thoroughly derisive book The Antichrist, Nietzsche pointed out that the very Christian tendency to deride bodily desires and functions as dangerous has been (rather counter-intuitively) one of the reasons that the religion has spread so prominently. The in-your-face anti-sexuality campaigns involved in conservative religious preaching produces even greater sexual desires. Denying our basic functions instead of harnessing them, Christianity has produced beings who build up such a resistance against their bodies that these thoughts are always eating away at their minds – more so than a healthy teenager who isn’t scared to jack it a few times a week – thus reinforcing the belief that such thoughts are dangerous and reinforcing allegiance to the religion.

At one point, the ‘Christian Union’ at my university put up posters with ‘SEX’ written in large bold letters, across half the page. Apparently, they were advertising a campaign to get people to think responsibly about sex. It wasn’t the first thought that came to the minds of people walking past. Not all publicity is good publicity. The so-called ‘new atheist’ movement (Dawkins et al) has also been criticised of throwing believers into a position of either/or: deny any shred of religious experience until it becomes verifiably credible, or recognize the supposed arational nature of their beliefs and move closer to the fundamentalist way of thinking about these things.

Not everyone can be sceptics. Foster doubt where you can. There is no point having expectations that will never be achieved – or worse, lead some to the opposite of what you aim.