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Deciphering the Ambiguous Menace of Sexuality for the Innocence of Childhood
This article examines how late modern Western society/culture deals with the utterly despised phenomenon of paedophilia. It will be argued there are ambiguous factors and forces, which are an inherent part of mainstream culture and the wider social fabric, that make an unequivocal stand against sexuality interfering with children somewhat hypocritical. The zealous efforts in battling sexual child molesters as the primordial danger for the innocence of childhood are seen as a strategy for overt redemption. A hidden agenda is detected by recovering complicit support from a diverse range of adjacent sources that defies the genuineness of guarding the sexual innocence of children.
The perversions that command the greatest attention and/or intensity of response are those whose incomprehensibility is lessened by a diminishing of differences that certify their very status as perversion. In other words, attention is paid to those perversions that begin to appear on the shadowy borders of plausibility and, as a result, where the increased scrutiny for signs of such taint in others occasions a similar scrutiny of the self.
This article examines how late modern Western society/culture deals with the utterly despised phenomenon of paedophilia. It will be argued there are ambiguous factors and forces, which are an inherent part of mainstream culture and the wider social fabric, that make an unequivocal stand against sexuality interfering with children somewhat hypocritical. The zealous efforts in battling sexual child molesters as the primordial danger for the innocence of childhood are seen as a strategy for overt redemption. A hidden agenda is detected by recovering complicit support from a diverse range of adjacent sources that defies the genuineness of guarding the sexual innocence of children.
The perversions that command the greatest attention and/or intensity of response are those whose incomprehensibility is lessened by a diminishing of differences that certify their very status as perversion. In other words, attention is paid to those perversions that begin to appear on the shadowy borders of plausibility and, as a result, where the increased scrutiny for signs of such taint in others occasions a similar scrutiny of the self.
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Don't 'be alone with other people's children';
Daily Times,
Dec 07 2008
Many youth-based organizations have taken preventative measures to avoid situations in which sex abuse could occur, requiring youth workers to attend mandatory training sessions and submit to criminal background checks.
As a protective measure for both adults and youths, the Boy Scouts has turned such precautions into mandatory policies, said Jennifer Wright, marketing director for the Delmar chapter of the organization.
"No adult can be alone with boys."
Workers are cautioned to keep close tabs on their emotions. "Don't get caught up in the feeling that someone needs you or someone loves you."
Many youth-based organizations have taken preventative measures to avoid situations in which sex abuse could occur, requiring youth workers to attend mandatory training sessions and submit to criminal background checks.
As a protective measure for both adults and youths, the Boy Scouts has turned such precautions into mandatory policies, said Jennifer Wright, marketing director for the Delmar chapter of the organization.
"No adult can be alone with boys."
Workers are cautioned to keep close tabs on their emotions. "Don't get caught up in the feeling that someone needs you or someone loves you."
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Interrogating the Essential: Moral Baselines on Adult-Child Sex;
Thymos;
4(2), 149-167 ,
Oct 01 2010
In this paper I emphasize the multiple ways dominant moral and essentialist understandings feed into the wider regulatory norms and conventional thinking governing adult-child sexual relations. Clearly, researchers are not immune from the ascendant material and symbolic hegemony enjoyed by child sexual abuse (CSA) paradigms. Indeed the experience of the seven critical writers and researchers cited in the paper, coupled with the author's own experiences carrying out PhD research in this area, clearly reinforce this point. I contend that sociological and Foucauldian insights on age and sexual categorization can offer a helpful tool-kit for unpacking the contested claims from CSA survivors, child liber ationists, and the specific case of one respondent who resists victimological labelling of his sexual experiences with adults.
In this paper I emphasize the multiple ways dominant moral and essentialist understandings feed into the wider regulatory norms and conventional thinking governing adult-child sexual relations. Clearly, researchers are not immune from the ascendant material and symbolic hegemony enjoyed by child sexual abuse (CSA) paradigms. Indeed the experience of the seven critical writers and researchers cited in the paper, coupled with the author's own experiences carrying out PhD research in this area, clearly reinforce this point. I contend that sociological and Foucauldian insights on age and sexual categorization can offer a helpful tool-kit for unpacking the contested claims from CSA survivors, child liber ationists, and the specific case of one respondent who resists victimological labelling of his sexual experiences with adults.
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Sex and the age of consent : the ethical issues;
Social Analysis;
39, 27-55,
Apr 01 1996
Based on the authors’ dissertation work, Leahy discusses common arguments against intergenerational intimacy and contrasts them with the interviewees’ interpretations of their experiences.
Based on the authors’ dissertation work, Leahy discusses common arguments against intergenerational intimacy and contrasts them with the interviewees’ interpretations of their experiences.
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(Self-)abusive prophecies, rigorous science, and discursive templates: commentary on Malón (2009);
Archives of Sexual Behavior;
39, 213-215
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Child sexual abuse : Purity and danger in an age of anxiety;
Crime, Law & Social Change;
43, 263-287
This paper examines the emergence and development of child sexual abuse (CSA) as a social problem in the main English-speaking societies in the post-1970s period. In contrast to prevailing explanations in moral panic and feminist literature, it illustrates how this problem has become knowable and understandable to us as a new kind of risk. This is the result of the positioning of child sexual abuse between the tensions, uncertainties, and anxieties characteristic of ‘the age of anxiety’ on the one hand, and the cultural understandings that have come to be associated with purity and danger in this period on the other. [A]
This paper examines the emergence and development of child sexual abuse (CSA) as a social problem in the main English-speaking societies in the post-1970s period. In contrast to prevailing explanations in moral panic and feminist literature, it illustrates how this problem has become knowable and understandable to us as a new kind of risk. This is the result of the positioning of child sexual abuse between the tensions, uncertainties, and anxieties characteristic of ‘the age of anxiety’ on the one hand, and the cultural understandings that have come to be associated with purity and danger in this period on the other. [A]
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Schweigende Lämmer und reißende Wölfe, moralische Helden und coole Zyniker : zum öffentlichen Diskurs über „sexuellen Kindesmißbrauch“ in Deutschland;
Pädagogik und Sozialwissenschaften;
12, 492 pp. 21 cm.
Using a sociology-of-knowledge approach, this book critically examines the German discourse on the ‘sexual abuse of children’ in the 1990s when it was already an emotionally highly charged subject. The author first identifies four concepts and illustrates each of them with a representative monograph: the ‘pedophile’ (Bernard, 1982); the feminist (Kavemann/Lohstöter, 1984); the incest theoretical (Hirsch, 1987); and the critical (Rutschky, 1992). A fifth variant, the child molester discourse, with its connotations of violence, death, and conspiracies, is found later to dominate the popular press to the near-exclusion of all others. On the basis of these concepts she then analyses both professional (articles and monographs) and popular (newspapers and weeklies) media. It was the feminist point of view that was found to be dominant, even penetrating the pedophile discourse, except in the popular press as previously mentioned.
The second part puts these results in wider contexts. The newer German feminism is examined first. It is shown how sexual abuse became the rallying point of this movement, how it served its interests, and how it transformed it. Only by adopting the child-saving rhetoric could feminism occupy its current influential position, ironically replacing in the process its original emancipatory, anti-patriarchal stance with a stout reliance on the state, the quintessential patriarchal power.
The discourse on children and childhood comes next. The connections between the child-saving and feminist movements, both in Germany and the USA, are discussed as well as the idealization of children in much of contemporary culture. The books by Ariès, de Mause, and Postman are cited as evidence for conflicting views currently held about childhood. Often childhood is elevated to a utopian ideal and associated with myths and felt to be endangered by reality and myths likewise.
The author next turns to the discourse on sexuality. Rousseau here has stressed the innocence of children, simultaneously seen as naturally given and extremely endangered. With the repudiation of Freud's insight into the essential psychic predisposition of trauma, the sexual life of children was also negated, and the aetiology of trauma became the subject of an extreme reductionism. The political right has had a field day here with the resurrection of sexual repression and censorship. The author turns to Foucault for insight into the historical interplay between politics and sexuality. If the person of the confessor has changed, she notes, the practice of (public) confession has regained prominence.
Violence and crime are the leading ideas of the discourse which is examined next. The almost universally negative appreciation of intergenerational sexuality (which, as she notes, ignores the voices of many children themselves) is not founded in reality or argument but grounded in a constant appeal to demagoguery and emotion. The law creates the very myth it defends.
The last discussion returns to the sociological vantage point and traces the career of intergenerational sexuality as a social problem. Like the deficient child or dangerous (male) sexuality, it is a myth (Barthes) which serves symbolic politics.
Using a sociology-of-knowledge approach, this book critically examines the German discourse on the ‘sexual abuse of children’ in the 1990s when it was already an emotionally highly charged subject. The author first identifies four concepts and illustrates each of them with a representative monograph: the ‘pedophile’ (Bernard, 1982); the feminist (Kavemann/Lohstöter, 1984); the incest theoretical (Hirsch, 1987); and the critical (Rutschky, 1992). A fifth variant, the child molester discourse, with its connotations of violence, death, and conspiracies, is found later to dominate the popular press to the near-exclusion of all others. On the basis of these concepts she then analyses both professional (articles and monographs) and popular (newspapers and weeklies) media. It was the feminist point of view that was found to be dominant, even penetrating the pedophile discourse, except in the popular press as previously mentioned.
The second part puts these results in wider contexts. The newer German feminism is examined first. It is shown how sexual abuse became the rallying point of this movement, how it served its interests, and how it transformed it. Only by adopting the child-saving rhetoric could feminism occupy its current influential position, ironically replacing in the process its original emancipatory, anti-patriarchal stance with a stout reliance on the state, the quintessential patriarchal power.
The discourse on children and childhood comes next. The connections between the child-saving and feminist movements, both in Germany and the USA, are discussed as well as the idealization of children in much of contemporary culture. The books by Ariès, de Mause, and Postman are cited as evidence for conflicting views currently held about childhood. Often childhood is elevated to a utopian ideal and associated with myths and felt to be endangered by reality and myths likewise.
The author next turns to the discourse on sexuality. Rousseau here has stressed the innocence of children, simultaneously seen as naturally given and extremely endangered. With the repudiation of Freud's insight into the essential psychic predisposition of trauma, the sexual life of children was also negated, and the aetiology of trauma became the subject of an extreme reductionism. The political right has had a field day here with the resurrection of sexual repression and censorship. The author turns to Foucault for insight into the historical interplay between politics and sexuality. If the person of the confessor has changed, she notes, the practice of (public) confession has regained prominence.
Violence and crime are the leading ideas of the discourse which is examined next. The almost universally negative appreciation of intergenerational sexuality (which, as she notes, ignores the voices of many children themselves) is not founded in reality or argument but grounded in a constant appeal to demagoguery and emotion. The law creates the very myth it defends.
The last discussion returns to the sociological vantage point and traces the career of intergenerational sexuality as a social problem. Like the deficient child or dangerous (male) sexuality, it is a myth (Barthes) which serves symbolic politics.