Even though our attitudes towards sex and sexuality have become much more liberal and open in recent decades, they're still subjects that children and adolescents often find somewhat frightening and mysterious. One of the ways youngsters express those uncertain feelings towards sexual matters is by circulating stories involving sexual escapades which have a high "gross out" factor. Just as little boys and girls avoid dealing with each other by declaring the other gender to be uniformly "yucky," so older children keep the subject of sex at arm's length by associating it with "nasty," unsavory tales. Nearly all of these stories focus on genitalia and involve some combination of food (particularly rotting food placed in or on genitalia), insects and animals (who typically eat someone's genitalia), self-mutilation (of the genitalia), and masturbation, and they usually end with someone who has engaged in sex losing his either life or his genitalia.