Severe repression leads to perversion of what would otherwise be a natural impulse. I don't think the Victorian influence is behind us either. In the marketplace, they cater to every kind of sexual perversion and promiscuity. It is out there, everywhere, to the point that it cannot be hidden from children. At the same time there is a great obsession with sex crimes to the point where a nineteen year old can be labeled a sex offender for cavorting with a 17 year old girl. There is no more school boy's dream either because society has become ultra-dogmatic about the issue of age and don't seem to realize (as they used to) that an older man and an underage girl is generally exploitation whereas an older woman and an underage male is, well, a school boy's dream. So much (most certainly not all!) sex offender dogma seems like a disingenuous attempt to protect children whilst letting the media run rampant with a hyper-sexualization that is bound to impact children and young people in a negative, innocence destroying way.

Another Victorian hypocrisy is alive and well in the non-legal status of prostitution. It's society's way of saying even thought we call it the oldest profession in the world for good reason, such women will be judged and condemned by not affording them the benefit of police protection and access to the courts in cases of abuse and hardcore exploitation by their clients and handlers. It's an oversexed, hypocritical society's way of saying, "You are a bad girl and therefore, you deserve every and any bad thing that happens to you." And, if caught, you will be pinned with one of the three violations that will not be sealed (in NY state at least), and the man goes free.

Attitudes toward sex in the Victorian Age are more or less the culmination of attitudes that began with the Protestant Reformation. And in tragic ballads prior to the PR which address themselves to sexual morality (like the Cruel Mother), there would be more pathos and less condemnation prior to the PR, more empathy and compassion for a desperate woman. Look at your laws.