(20) Introduction - Villains and Victims: Excavating the Moral Panics of Sexuality [Breanne Fahs, Mary L. Dudy, and Sarah Stage]

"One great irony of moral panic — witnessed in legal cases like the one mentioned above, the therapy office, in politics, in classrooms, in boardrooms, in relationships, and on television — is that it has an uncanny way of directing attention away from actual sources of danger. Once sexuality is thrown at something — whether to discredit, stigmatize, devalue, or heighten its sense of deviance — it deeply and profoundly affects how people see, read, and interpret the meaning of that thing. It becomes a thick tar that mars and distorts its target, cloaking it in shame, disgust, and misinformation and directing attention away from the real “boogey men.” The killer, it seems, too often goes free." [mijn nadruk] (22)

[Een waar woord.]

"The culture of panic — particularly surrounding issues of sexuality — has paramount importance in the composition of American culture today as it reinforces traditional moral codes and distracts from systematic forms of discrimination and violence against less powerful populations."(23)

[Dit is dus weer een boek met een VS-achtergrond. Dit soort soort morele paniekzaaierij beschrijven de auteurs ook als:]

"...the collective frenzy of self-defined “moralists” who incite the marginalization, suppression, and even violent expulsion of all forms of sexuality not considered “normal,” where normal is defined by the majority of practitioners (or those who pretend to practice).(...) driven by a normative teleology that is very often (though not exclusively) based in political hegemony and restrictive religious practices that distrust sexual impulses, condone sexual double standards between men and women, and despise same-sex relationships. As such, panic about sexuality gains its power through the often thoughtless adherence to symptomatic and ideological modes of thought that become ingrained and second-nature: in other words, if you’re panicking, you’re not thinking." [mijn nadruk] (24)

"As conservatives lose ground, lose elections, and lose sight of popular opinion, moral panics may step in as a proper solution to their waning popularity."(26)

"Those charged with deciding whose sexuality is met with disdain, suspicion, and revulsion are, not surprisingly, those with the most socially inscribed power. Even the study of sexuality itself is riddled with moral panics in its history" [mijn nadruk]

"Because the union between militaristic impulse and capitalistic greed often work together, sexuality has become the necessary scapegoat to “contain” the weight of the economic grievances that should be directed toward Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. When the government bans images of coffins and body bags returning from war and makes only half-hearted attempts at lessening poverty, blowjob scandals and “slutty” teenagers become apt attention-diverting replacements."(29)

" ... too often we forget that we have disproportionately saddled the weight of moral panics onto the bodies and sexualities of those marked as “Other,” particularly female, queer, colored, poor, fat, old, “foreign,” and disabled bodies. Never is there a more elegant fusion of oppressions than when U.S. culture seeks a target for its social and cultural anxieties — suddenly, marginalized bodies carry huge amounts of baggage as they become simultaneously sexualized and demeaned. In fact, the denigration of these “Othered” bodies is so closely linked to sexual panic that separating them is nearly impossible." [mijn nadruk] (29)

"Further, the bodies of privileged white heterosexual men — Wall Street tycoons, lawmakers, and even school shooters — continually evade such burdens, as their gender, race, sexual identity, and class simply disappear from the public radar."(30)

[Het is zeker tijd dat die groep mannen eens van hun gepriviligieerde status verlost wordt. Maar tegelijkertijd vind ik die indeling te gemakkelijk. We zouden moeten letten op normatief gedrag. Veel gekleurde mannen, veel vrouwen, veel ouderen - veel van elke maatschappelijke groep waarschijnlijk - gedragen zich net zo 'masculien' of associëren zich kritiekloos met mensen die zich 'masculien' gedragen. Dat je een vrouw, gekleurd, gehandicapt, oud, homoseksueel of wat ook bent maakt je normatief niet per se beter dan leden van die bevoorrechte witte-heteroseksuele-mannen-groep.]

In dat proces van morele paniekzaaierij zien we de hele tijd de omkering van 'villain' en 'victim', het ontstaan van nieuwe problemen, en het afleiden van de kwesties waar het werkelijk om gaat.

"The agitation surrounding teenage sexting and sex offending — namely that teenagers could earn the label of “sex offender” if they sent nude photos of their body parts to others at school — represents a clear example of this. Inciting parents everywhere to monitor and restrict their children’s texting behaviors, lest they become “sex offenders,” the mass hysteria surrounding sexting never tackled the absurdity of the forever-labeled-a-deviant term of “sex offender” while valiantly ensuring that parents had yet another excuse to attempt to control their children’s sexual behaviors and practices. While parents worry about their children sexting, they ignore the more pressing issues of sexual coercion in their own homes, let alone how to teach their children to negotiate sexual agency, fight against stereotypes, work toward sexual equality, and gauge their readiness to make informed and mature choices about sexual activity." [mijn nadruk] (37)

"While conservative culture and its particular brand of panicking about sexuality have not gone unnoticed, they certainly have been underanalyzed, undercritiqued, and under-commented-upon." [mijn nadruk] (38)

"Today’s culture of the moral panics of sexuality is burdened with a sort of “Stockholm Syndrome.” That is, people targeted by a culture of moral panics often accept, collude in, and promote those panics that restrict their freedoms and pleasures. Rather than fight back against sexualized language, for example, many young women will employ terms such as “slut,” “whore,” and “bitch” against others and, indeed, against themselves." [mijn nadruk] (39)

"To push this further, we might ask the question: why have women not better resisted the framing of birth control as a sign of their inherent “slutty” natures? Why have we not developed a more sophisticated way of addressing “age-appropriate” sex education? How have women stood by and allowed their menstrual cycles to become vessels of corporate shaming, product placement, and enforced secrecy? The moral panics of sexuality cause a sort of political resignation and progressive cannibalism where people believe that they lack the resources, ability, and collective culture to resist them."(40)

[Ook goed gezien. Waarom passen de 'slachtoffers' zich zo gemakkelijk aan aan die conservatieve druk? Onder andere omdat die groepen zichzelf zien en zijn gaan beschrijven als slachtoffers, lijkt mij. Die term wordt bij alles van stal gehaald. Zelfs bij zoiets als een #metoo-beweging zien die vrouwen zich als slachtoffer.]

"Resistance is necessary and must spring up from a multitude of sources; ideally, resistance should become the key framework we employ when turning on the television or engaging in any way with the moral panics of sexuality."(42);

"For example, the problem of female sexual agency often takes up the tone and qualities of moral panics, as female desire becomes a threat both within women themselves and within the cultural context that frames and punishes such desire. (...) desirous women are blamed for a range of social ills; women are dichotomized into virgins/sluts or “good”/“bad” ... (...) In sum, the whole notion of sexual agency, particularly for women, is packaged as so-called liberation, often by the very people seeking to remove and undermine actual sexual agency."(42-43)

"After analyzing some of the historical and contemporary shifts in the moral panics of sexuality in the introduction, the collection shifts its focus to four highly charged nodes in the tangled network that constitutes and is constituted by the moral panics of sexuality — female desire, creating norms, colonialism, and state power."(55)

Waarna een overzicht gegeven wordt van het boek.

(70) Part I - Female Desire

(70) 1 - Do I Have Something in My Teeth? Vagina Dentata and its Manifestations within Popular Culture [Michelle Ashley Gohr]

"While some historical anxieties, such as those about menstruation and sexual purity, are still overtly present in many forms and across many contemporary cultures, other anxieties remain more hidden or displaced. These latter anxieties are often displaced or appropriated through (sometimes subtle) retellings of myths, and, as such, infuse themselves into the cultural lexicon. One well known anxiety, the fear of female sexuality, signifies one such displaced anxiety that has taken a displaced form through the little known yet subtly prevalent myth of vagina dentata. While this myth or its basic retellings may not have an obvious place in everyday language or discourse (and few are aware of the myth’s manifestations in current U.S. culture), it nevertheless functions as a powerful force in contemporary conversations about women’s sexuality and the villainization of female desire."(72-73)

Die mythe is alomtegenwoordig, in allerlei culturen en culturele uitingen.

"As stated earlier, the retelling of the myth varies depending on the culture or society; however, the basic myth of vagina dentata almost always has at least three key elements: first, there must be a highly sought after, yet sexually independent (and oftentimes strong willed/defiant) woman; second, and most obvious, she possesses a secret vagina dentata that she often uses to devour men’s genitalia; and third, there must be a heroic male that comes to “rescue” and tame said woman, thereby stopping her violent, sex-crazed rampage." [mijn nadruk] (77)

"Though the vagina dentata myth can become significantly more violent, or even sometimes more mild and ambiguous, the desired effect generally is the same: we must fear a woman’s sexuality and power, and to solve this problem, we must kill her and remake her based on our own ideas surrounding gender roles, for she must be nothing more than a “non-threatening, procreative partner” (Raitt 1980, 418)." [mijn nadruk] (79)

"Again and again similar stories are manifested within the most patriarchal cultures across the world, all relating the same story of woman as dirty, sinful, demonic, devouring, vampiric, a temptress, a succubus, voracious, insatiable, and cold (Grosz 1995). Although the story varies from early and aboriginal myths, the entrance of sin and snake imagery pervades nearly every major patriarchal contemporary religion and has proven to be a powerful moral informant on matters regarding female sexuality and purity." [mijn nadruk] (82)

De auteur geeft allerlei voorbeelden.

"Basing degrading stereotypes on biology bolsters the power of social stigma by creating a façade backed by “objective” scientific data. Thus, because humans have learned that stigmatizing others maintains their power, males have stigmatized women’s biology; the subsequent domination of women has allowed males to define the terms of sexual relations and control the social contexts of reproduction (by defining, for instance, childbirth as a medical complication to be overseen and managed by male physicians)." [mijn nadruk] (98)

"Regardless of the presence/absence of the myth in every society or culture, the idea that patriarchy and religion perpetuate negative images of women that in turn degrade their status in society through villainous misrepresentation represents a crucial artifact of the vagina dentata myth."(102)

(107) 2 - Vampires, Border Crossing, and Panic in Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” [Ellen J. Stockstill]

Waarom al die vampierseries en -films, etc. etc.?

"Vampire stories, of course, are not new, but their recent spike in popularity begs the question: what is so intriguing about this toothy monster, and why has it grabbed our collective attention at this particular cultural moment?"(107)

['Our'? Gaan we weer. IK heb niets met vampiers en ook niet met de films en series.]

"In this chapter, I will show how a vampire story published over one hundred years ago embodies fears that still incite moral panic today."(109)

"Michael Mason has written against the one-sided perception of Victorian sexuality as prudish and repressive, claiming that we have ignored the progressive views and practices of many during the period (Mason 1994). Likewise, Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians brings to light a “sexual subculture” in order to supplement our traditional view of Victorians as pure prudes (Marcus 1964, xx). While they and others are right to expand and complicate this narrow view of Victorian sexuality, it is possible to go too far in this corrective vein and make too little of the fact that anxieties over sex do pervade the literature of the period, just as anxieties about sex pervade the literature of our own day. In looking back, then, and critiquing a depiction of transgressive sexuality in Victorian literature, I do not mean to take a stance of judgment towards the past, a stance of “look how far we have come,” but rather I mean to see what connections might lie between the anxieties of the late nineteenth century and those of today." [mijn nadruk] (110)

"The vampire’s history in the West is connected intimately with marginalized peoples and with anxieties about sex and sexuality."(110)

"Once the male protectors of patriarchy discover women like Carmilla, they rush to defend their at-risk women. In Le Fanu’s story, Carmilla’s vampiric nature is discovered by General Baron Spielsdorf, usually referred to as “the General” — a name appropriate for the man who will defend the heterosexist patriarchal social structure."(128)

"While we are now over one hundred years removed from Carmilla’s reign of terror, the moral panics of sexuality still erupt and push people to strengthen borders. While patriarchy has become significantly weakened in the last hundred years, it still works covertly to challenge women who commit sexual transgressions. Even the idea of sex for young women can be enough to create widespread panic." [mijn nadruk] (131)

(135) Part II - Creating Norms

(135) 3 - Bodies That Are Always Out of Line: A Closer Look at “Age Appropriate Sexuality” [Sara I. McClelland and L.E. Hunter]

"Moral panics draw a line in the sand: between threatening and non-threatening, normal and abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable."(136)

De kern van de zaak hier:

"In this chapter, we examine one rhetorical mechanism often used to determine threat in the public sphere — the category of “age appropriate.” Appropriateness in terms of age is important because this category is consistently used to distinguish who or what has become out of order, thereby marking the person or behavior as both un-ordered and un-natural. Taking this a step further, we examine one specific form of demarcating age appropriate: “age appropriate sexuality.” Within the sexuality domain, rules governing appropriateness actively manage which behaviors bodies can perform with whom, and at what age. We explore how “age appropriate sexuality” constrains considerations of which bodies are considered competent or capable (regardless of age) to be sexual, and, conversely, when bodies are considered “out of line.” Age appropriate sexuality demonstrates how certain bodies, and often female bodies, are the sites of emergent threat and thereby, often sites of moral panic." [mijn nadruk] (137)

" ... we forward a critique of the term “age appropriate sexuality” for its potential to constrict sexual expression for women at all ages. With this insight, we observe how the framework of “age appropriate sexuality” is deployed in such a way that there is never a time or place that female sexuality is “age appropriate.”" [vet mijn nadruk] (137)

"“Age appropriate” is a phrase that has circulated widely in contemporary cultural and political discourses for the last century. From political debates (Kolawole 2008), to sex education (Bradley et al. 2012), to movie and television programming (Zurbriggen et al. 2007), this term asks us to respect boundaries — most often around children — that presumably offer to protect individuals from materials, knowledge, and experiences that are beyond their capacity."(138)

[Ja, geweldig, dat is precies het punt in al die conservatieve opvattingen die groepen - vooral jongeren - willen beschermen tegen iets: het idee dat ze niet in staat zijn dat zelf te doen, dat ze niet handelingsbekwaam zijn, dat ze niet in staat zijn om zelf de juiste beslissingen te nemen voor zichzelf, dat ze altijd door anderen gedwongen en gemanipuleerd kunnen worden en zich niet kunnen verzetten. Het is de 'het is voor je eigen bestwil'-attitude en dat is een autoritaire, arrogante, betuttelende attitude. In plaats van die groepen weerbaarheid te leren, leren we ze afhankelijkheid en een slachtofferrol.]

"Kerry Robinson (2012) describes this urgency and panic as a quality of children’s “difficult citizenship.” Robinson argued that children are not regarded as full citizens, but citizens-in-development. Part of the panic around children’s sexuality is that this development could go wrong; if children gain access to the “wrong” kind of sexual knowledge or experience, they may not become the “good” kind of sexual citizen. In Anglophone countries in particular, “the ‘good’ normative adult citizenship subject … is white, middle-class, heterosexual and upholding Christian family morals and values” (Robinson 2012, 258; see also Berlant 2004). On the grounds of trying to prevent “corruption,” children are denied access to sexual knowledge ..." [mijn nadruk] (139)

[Prachtig.]

"What kinds of citizens will sexually knowledgeable children grow up to be? Though this question is rarely explicitly asked, the fear of the deviant sexual (adult) citizen underlies much of the panic around children’s sexuality. Children are therefore often denied access to information about sexuality, both to prevent deviant development, but also to prevent them from developing “too quickly.” Because sexuality is often used as a dividing line between adulthood and childhood, discourses of innocent children and protection of the vulnerable are used to reinforce these barriers to sexual information (Fine and McClelland 2007)." [mijn nadruk] (140)

"Appeals to appropriateness hold within them not only judgments, but also an implicit message that the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate is real, sturdy, and — most importantly — often beyond the scope of critique.
However, “age appropriate” is an empty signifier. It stands in for meaning, but remains inherently meaningless because its meaning is always in flux and at the whim of the speaker." [mijn nadruk] (141)

[Precies, het is totaal vaag, maar je mag er niet over praten, je moet het zonder meer geloven.]

"Deployments of age appropriateness obscure processes of history, politics, social construction, and personal opinion, and insert, instead, a common sense appeal for an agreed upon boundary that is created and maintained, but without structure and often without merit. Appropriateness, as an idea, assumes and pays homage to an omniscient arbiter of right and wrong — an arbiter who is nameless and formless, and as a result, even more powerful in its declarations of appropriate and inappropriate. For that reason, it is a powerful rhetorical device that deserves our closer attention."(142)

"It is this link between inappropriateness and danger that frequently defines childhood sexuality. As others have noted, this unbounded fear of how children encounter sexuality has made any talk of children and sex inherently suspect ..." [mijn nadruk] (143)

"Indeed, childhood sexuality is the site where discussions of appropriateness have been at their apex. Our analysis of the term “age appropriate sexuality” and its implicit demarcation of “enough” and “not too much,” offers a bridge to McClelland and Fine’s (2008) earlier theoretical work in which they analyzed the historical equation of young female sexuality with excess. The concept of “excess” draws our attention to the line between what is required and what is not required, but is there anyway. In their examination of excess, McClelland and Fine (2008) observed how excess is strategically attached to specific bodies, thoughts, and behaviors that are determined to be out of line and, as a result, positioned as (unproblematic) objects of surveillance. With examples drawn from focus groups, media analysis, and policy interventions, McClelland and Fine (2008) argued that young women’s bodies and sexualities, their reproductive capacities but also their desires (for sex, pleasure, freedom, same-sex relationships, masturbation), consistently emerge as a strategic platform for cultural anxieties. They found that young female sexuality is always imagined as too big, too much, and always out of line: “Young women are fundamentally and inherently sexually excessive. Their sexuality captures cultural attention and collected cultural (and feminist) anxieties” (89).
As the idea of excess effectively polices young female desiring bodies, it tightens its grip even further on young women of color, who are consistently imagined as (additionally) too big, too loud, too sexual, and wasteful of too many public resources (McClelland and Fine 2008; Fine 2012)." [mijn nadruk] (144-145)

"As determinations of excess mark what is too much, determinations of what is age appropriate mark certain bodies — often female and often African American — as threatening and requiring management and containment. This leads, as many have noted, to linking threatening bodies to danger, contagion, and subsequent moral panics about: (1) the sexual knowledge that children should be shielded from; and (2) those adults who are committed to providing sex education, who become positioned squarely as perverts who have an “unnatural” interest in children and sexuality (Davies and Robinson 2010). However, as the next part of this chapter shows, this has not always been the case." [mijn nadruk] (147)

De auteurs beschrijven kort de historische disciplinering van kinderlijke seksualiteit.

"So goes the double standard of children’s sex: if children deviate from the discourse of child sexlessness (for example, by masturbating or expressing sexual interest), and this deviance is also statistically normal, childhood sexuality is simultaneously “normal” and “deviant” (Foucault 1978; Robinson 2012)."150

"As seen in this brief outline of discourses surrounding childhood sexuality, there have been enormous changes in what is considered “age appropriate” over the past four centuries. Looking more carefully at contemporary discourses, there is one consistent finding: childhood sexuality is framed as both a danger from within (as seen in the anti-masturbation discourses) and from without (as seen in the framing of all childhood sexuality as rooted in abuse; see Tobin 2001). These frameworks justify adult intervention into children’s sexuality; educators, parents, and communities work with state vectors of power to create a network with the authority to regulate child and adolescent sexuality — from consent laws (Ehrlich 2009; Fischel 2010), to discourses surrounding childhood sexual abuse (Angelides 2004), as well as policies regulating the content of sex education in schools (Fine and McClelland 2006)." [mijn nadruk] (152)

"Excessive sexuality in women was considered suspect because of its potential to undermine patriarchy; it revealed that women did not depend on men for sexual release and that reproductive possibilities were not the only outcome of sexual activity." [mijn nadruk] (153)

"Mary Douglas (1966) and Elizabeth Grosz (1994) are just two authors to have warned about the costs of women becoming a social body — a body that is required to be clean, obedient, and law abiding. Bodies that fall outside of this definition are suspect as dirty, marginal, and problematic. In other words, inappropriate. Although some groups of adult women have made strides in refusing to be labeled as dirty or problematic (such as the recent grassroots organizing around SlutWalk; Ringrose and Renold 2012), young women often remain stuck with these words."(157)

En dit geldt dus ook voor oudere vrouwen, zieke en gehandicapte vrouwen.

"In the first example, a participant echoes a common theme throughout the interviews: not being provided with any information about how genitals, bodies, or experiences of sexual desire might change due to surgery and/or treatments such as chemotherapy."(161)

"Women in the study often described surprise about how little doctors and staff spoke about sex and potential sexual changes."(162)

[Ik denk dat dit ook van toepassing is op mannen. De voorbeelden zijn niet erg fair, vind ik, weer eens het gevolg van een insteek die het wil opnemen voor vrouwen. Als een vrouw haar borsten moet opgeven vanwege borstkanker is dat een verlies voor haar maar ook voor haar man / vrouw. Je zakt allebei door het normatieve patroon rondom een normaal lichaam heen en moet allebei een hoop moeite doen om dat nieuwe lichaam als het ware weer normaal te maken. En er zijn zowel vrouwen als mannen die dat niet klaarspelen, die begrijpelijkerwijs hangen aan hoe het vroeger was en er niet in slagen dat los te laten. Het omgekeerde speelt ook, bijvoorbeeld wanneer een man fysiek geen erectie meer kan krijgen. Dat door allerlei conservatieve groepen gevonden wordt dat seks bij dat soort lichamelijke beperkingen dan niet meer 'appropriate is' is een andere kwestie. En die kwestie wordt heel goed aangepakt in dit stuk.]

(175) 4 - Raising Bloody Hell: Inciting Menstrual Panics through Campus and Community Activism [Breanne Fahs]

"Women’s bodies in their “natural” state have long elicited particular disdain, as routine processes of the body — growing body hair, sweating during exercise, breast-feeding in public, having natural body odors, gaining weight, menstruating each month — have become more tightly controlled, monitored, and, in some cases, eliminated by the ever-narrowing cultural ideas of womanhood. Women routinely engage in a variety of normative body practices that manage and hide their “disgusting” bodies (Roberts and Goldenberg 2007), whether shaving or waxing their entire bodies (Fahs 2011a; Tiggemann and Lewis 2004), avoiding exercise altogether or wearing “sexy” exercise clothes, breast-feeding only in private and behind closed doors, using beauty products to mask their natural scents, or hiding tampons and pads. While women struggle in general with accepting their bodies as “leaky” and “viscous,” menstruation signifies a particularly painful union between cultural narratives of menstruation as shameful combined with women’s own experiences of menstruation as taboo (Mansfield and Stubbs 2007)."(177-178)

"Menstrual activists — first appearing in the second-wave and also known as “menarchists” — have responded to negative portrayals of menstruation by using media campaigns, consciousness-raising, educational campaigns, and assaults on mainstream representations of menstruation. In addition to depathologizing menstruation and fighting against PMS and PMDD (Chrisler 2007), they have fought against toxic menstrual products that use chemicals that harm the vaginal lining (Bobel 2006), brought a critical voice to the discussion of menstrual suppression products (Johnston-Robledo, Barnack, and Wares 2006), and encouraged women to develop more positive feelings about menstruation by seeing it as affirming womanhood, a sign of non-pregnancy, and a symbol of overall health and well-being (Bobel 2010; Kissling 2006; Stubbs and Costos 2004). Rather than seeing menstruation as something to keep hidden, menstrual activists advocate for more education about menses and more discussion and openness about menstruation in health settings, classrooms, and family life (Kissling 2006).

Most importantly, menstrual activists want both men and women to develop a stronger and more nuanced critical consciousness about the social context for menstruation, particularly the shame narratives directed at women’s bodies (Bobel 2008; Bobel 2010). Menstrual activists strive for more positive representations of menstruation along with safer products and more comprehensive, honest, and forthcoming dialogue about women’s menstruating bodies (Bobel 2010). From advocating herbal remedies for cramps (Blood Sisters 2010) to celebrating the power of the “cunt” (Carpenter 2009), to showcasing connections between the personal and the political (Society for Menstrual Cycle Research) to teaching women to track and understand their cycles in an irreverent and humorous way (Quint 2009), activists have made many meaningful and diverse interventions. As Chris Bobel (2010) wrote, “Menstrual activism rejects the construction of menstruation as a problem in need of a solution … The study of menstrual activism yields important insights into the evolution of social movements and feminist epistemology, a system of knowledges in constant flux” (7). More specifically, menstrual activists question why many women hate their periods more than their other bodily processes, and they interrogate the ways that culture, gender ideology, and consumerism have shaped these reactions (Bobel 2010)." [mijn nadruk] (182-183)

[Mooi overzicht. Terecht dat activisme. De auteur vertelt hierna helder over de activismeprojecten die ze als docent initieerde tijdens haar lessen 'Psychology of gender' aan de universiteit. Belachelijk hoe dat alles leidde tot een tegenreactie - een regelrechte 'moral panic' - vanuit het conservatieve kamp. En dat jongens die er aan meededen meteen denigrerend aangesproken werden op hun 'mannelijkheid'.]

(209) 5 - Scary Sex: The Moral Discourse of Glee [Sarah Prior]

[Mooi begincitaat: ]

"Curiously, in the U.S. education system seldom is it affirmed that the primary goal of sexuality education is the right of youth to know about human sexuality — nor is it understood as an inherent “right to know.” This inadequacy has historical roots in the long-standing attitude among adults that in setting educational objectives for youth concerning sexuality their primary responsibility, whether in their capacity as parent, teacher, or administrator, is to protect youth from potential harm as opposed to providing youth with appropriate services and sufficient information with which to make decisions and protect themselves. (Di Mauro and Joffe 2009, 74)"(209)

Wat gaat de auteur hier doen?

"This chapter explores a brief history of sex education in the United States, focusing specifically on the rise of Abstinence-Only Sexual Education (AOSE) as a moral panic about youth sexuality, followed by an analysis of media representations about adolescent sexual experiences presented in the popular television show Glee."(210)

"Using Glee, this chapter shows how moral panics about youth sexuality are still heavily problematic in American culture and demonstrates how popular television has the ability to both challenge and duplicate dangerous stereotypes about young people and sex."(211)

"Moral panics about youth sexuality have shaped youth experiences in a variety of ways, most notably by establishing their sexuality as inherently dangerous, deviant, and in need of regulation." [mijn nadruk] (212)

"Abstinence-only programs, on the other hand, promulgate the idea that sex should be confined strictly to a monogamous, heterosexual marriage, and that all other forms of sexual expression can cause serious psychological and physical harm (Guttmacher 2001; Fields 2008). These programs often depict the negative impact of sex before marriage, for example, showcasing the fail rates of condoms, over-exaggerating the spread of STIs, and not including a space for discussions about sexual orientation or LGBT identity and practices." [mijn nadruk] (216)

[Wat een achterlijk land, toch.]

"Glee has presented a variety of messages surrounding topics of adolescent sexuality including featuring gay cast members (Kurt, Blaine, and Santana), addressing issues of teen sex and virginity loss (Finn, Santana, Artie, Brittany, Rachel), and teen pregnancy (Quinn), as well as topics such as sexting, masturbation, and premature ejaculation."(221)

"As I argue, while the media and shows like Glee often provide a variety of images that distinctly contrast with AOSE, frequently the images presented reinforce the same negative imagery and misinformation as AOSE. Though the mass media provide far more sexually-explicit images, these mediated images rarely discuss the possible consequences of early, unprotected, or casual sexual encounters. Like AOSE programs, these images and representations do not generally teach young people to engage in sexual behavior as fully-educated sexual citizens." [mijn nadruk] (222)

[Tja, vrij logisch eigenlijk. Eén blote tepel of andere expliciete zaken en de serie wordt verboden en dan 'kunnen we onze investering niet terugverdienen' en zo verder.]

"As Glee has increased in popularity, a number of parents and several news outlets have expressed concern over the show’s overtly sexual content."(222)

[Uiteraard.]

"Abstinence-only programs also reinforce common notions of “appropriate” sexual behavior for girls, which perpetuates the sexual double standard that girls “gatekeep” sexuality. Girls continually learn to guard their sexuality from young boys, while young boys rarely learn more than the overly reductive “no means no” warning about sexual coercion. This, in turn, reinforces the concept that sexual expression, including touching, sexual intercourse initiation, and sex with multiple partners, is normal for young boys while young girls’ sexual expression deserves vigilant policing. More importantly, double standards between racial groups appear, as white girls’ sexuality is policed in order to “protect” them, while the sexual expression of girls of color gets policed because of their “inherent pathology” as hypersexual girls." [mijn nadruk] (229)

"Moral panics about youth sexuality have often revolved around youth of color, particularly young women of color. Frequently, young people of color symbolize hypersexual characters or, more depressingly, teen mothers who cannot provide for their children. While Glee frequently challenges the AOSE curriculum and the misinformation it provides to youth, it also often reinforces some of the very problematic images and ideas espoused in AOSE." [mijn nadruk] (244)

"As has been described by several recent authors (Fields 2008; Garcia 2009; Weis and Carbon-Medina 2000), the construction of “Other” sexuality, the sexuality of non-white, non-middle class, non-able bodied, non-heteronormative girls within sexual health education classrooms, as well as within the media, presents a problematic stereotype of young women as deviant and “at risk.” These depictions lack any kind of deconstruction into discussions of dangers and pleasure and reinforce problematic stereotypes of “appropriate” sexuality for young girls, often while also promoting racial biases about sexual appropriateness."(249)

"So, while Glee is transgressive in its construction of what students should and should not learn about sex, it leaves important topics left unattended, like consent, critical conversations about body image, and coercion, among others. To challenge this, we must expect not only better school-based sex education, but also increasingly complex media depictions of teenage sexuality today so that young people can learn to make decisions about their lives as fully educated sexual citizens."(252)

(256) Part III - Colonial Erotics

(256) 6 - Eating It Out: Cannibalism and Sexual Deviance in Nineteenth Century Travel Writing [Ayaan Agane]

"Nineteenth century travel writing, particularly about the South Seas, describes ambivalence toward native peoples. These accounts demonstrate how Western sexual propriety is measured against the deviant sexual practices of the Other. Regardless of how uncivilized native women appear, these wild, untamed beauties become, in the words of Edward Said, “creatures of male power-fantasy” (Edwards 2001, 24). Latent in these accounts of idyllic, virginal islands are opportunities for deviant sexual practices, often homosexual encounters. Subtle suggestion often masks these encounters even as it creates them. In the writings of Herman Melville and Charles Warren Stoddard, fear of cannibalism masks homoerotic desire." [mijn nadruk] (258)

[Het gaat hier helaas vooral over het laatste. Niet boeiend, vind ik.]

(291) 7 - Cyber Pinkwashing: Gay Rights under Occupation [Rachael Byrne]

"This chapter investigates how pinkwashing, or the use of gay rights as a signifier of human rights in representations of Israel/Palestine, projects the Israeli human rights violations made against Palestinians onto the written-as-homophobic Palestinian in order to legitimize the settler colonial state of Israel. Similar to the “great irony of panic” discussed in the Introduction to this volume, this panic “direct[s] attention away from actual sources of danger,” that of colonization and occupation. Pinkwashing disavows the moral panic of queerness by fetishizing the Palestinian queer, and through a savior narrative creates a colonial panic in place of the moral panic." [mijn nadruk] (293)

"Using multiculturalism and homonormativity as technologies of biopower, IISG’s pinkwashing sets up the intersecting roads to the ascendancy of whiteness and the ascendancy of gayness through Jewish-Israeli-sexual exceptionalism. In this chapter, I have demonstrated the interconnectedness between binary tropes of representation; Jewish, Israeli, and sexual exceptionalisms; and the biopolitics of multiculturalism and diversity, through which IISG positions Israel as the only legitimate, democratic, and gay-friendly state in SWANA."(320)

[Let op het verschrikkelijke taalgebruik. Als je dingen zo onhelder schrijft ben je geen knip voor de neus waard.]

(325) Part IV - Tactical Panics

(325) 8 - What “Good Girls” Do: Katharine Bement Davis and the Moral Panic of the First U.S. Sexual Survey [Sarah Stage]

[Davis was indertijd een van de eerste vrouwen met een opvallende belangrijke positie in het maatschappelijk leven.]

"Today Katharine Bement Davis is by no means a household name. Yet at the time Davis went to work at the Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH) in 1917 at the age of fifty-seven, she already had a long and successful career behind her."(326)

"Davis graduated from Vassar College (1892) and earned a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Chicago (1900), where Thorstein Veblen directed her dissertation. Her career led her from social work to penology and then to the scientific study of sexuality"(327)

"Davis came to the BSH as the hand-picked choice of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. In many senses they were strange bedfellows — Davis the open-minded social scientist; John D. Rockefeller, Jr. a notorious prude concerned with “social evils.” Davis and Rockefeller came together over the issue of commercialized vice and prostitution."(328)

"Davis’s letter reached Jr. at an auspicious moment. Jr. had determined that a permanent body was needed to continue research into social hygiene (the contemporary euphemism for prostitution and issues concerning sex). Together with his lawyer, Starr Murphy, and financier Paul M. Warburg, Rockefeller created the BSH in 1911 to study prostitution “from a scientific, coldblooded, practical point of view, entirely devoid of sentimentality and sensationalism.” Because of the nature of the Bureau’s work, Jr. wished to have a woman on its board. When he visited Bedford Hills Reformatory and met with KBD he came away convinced that her plan marked “the most important step in penology which has been contemplated in this country.” Davis was careful to link her pet project with Jr.’s concern for prostitution." [mijn nadruk] (330)

[Mannelijke medewerkers zonder Ph.D. proberen Davis meteen in diskrediet te brengen. Typisch.]

"Thus Davis came to head the BSH with Fosdick as a strong adversary and Flexner often taking his side."(334)

"Yet in the face of Davis’s academic qualifications and her insistence on scientific rigor, one can only conclude that to men like Fosdick and his sometimes ally Flexner, scientific professionalism was gendered male; no woman, whatever her credentials, could lay claim to being “scientific.” Despite Davis’s adherence to a male model of scientific rigor, her sex worked against her, unsuiting her in the eyes of her critics, for scientific research or claims to professional expertise. To Flexner and Fosdick the very fact that a woman headed the BSH called into question its scientific bona fides and therefore tainted their own work." [mijn nadruk] (336)

"Davis reached the conclusion that before work could be done on sex education, a project increasingly endorsed among both social hygiene and public health proponents; she needed to determine scientifically what sexual behavior was in fact “normal.” In 1920 she went to Jr. and requested $2,000 for a study of “normal married women and widows.” This study subsequently expanded to include a survey of married and unmarried women and launched Davis into the field of sexology, culminating with the publication of her book, Factors in the sex life of 2,000 women, published by Harper and Brothers under the auspices of the BSH in 1929." [mijn nadruk] (337)

[1929 is dus al vroeg in de geschiedenis van de sexologie. Flexner and Fosdick verzetten zich uiteraard tegen de enquête.]

"Hers was hardly a representative sample; the women were more educated, more middle class, and more white and native born than American society as a whole. But for those very reasons Davis judged them more “normal” and therefore better suited to her study. She clearly recognized that most of the work done on sex came from a population judged criminal or deviant and wished to have some greater knowledge of female sexuality than that gleaned by criminologists and psychiatrists. Just what did “good girls” do? This was the question Davis set out to answer. Recognizing that normal was hardly a scientific category, Davis defined the term as “the woman who was not pathological mentally or physically and who was capable of adjusting herself satisfactorily to her social group” (Davis 1929, 342).

“Will you permit us to take the liberty of asking your intelligent and sympathetic cooperation in a very important sociological study,” the letter of inquiry sent to 10,000 women began. Over 5,000 agreed and of those eventually 2,200 returned the questionnaires which asked for information ranging from age and education, health, and happiness in marriage to specifics about erotic practices — how many masturbated, how frequently they had intercourse, whether or not they used contraceptives, how many had premarital sex, how many experienced homosexual feelings, whether those feelings resulted in overt sexual practice. While not exhaustive, the questionnaire, which ran from 8–10 pages, asked probing questions given its time and elicited remarkably frank responses." [mijn nadruk] (339)

"Throughout the nineteenth century medical doctors, clergymen, and most Americans agreed that “natural” women felt no sexual desire whatsoever; thus prostitutes by definition fell into the category “unnatural women.” Men, it was agreed, felt lust and must be held in check; fortunately “true women” were up to the task because for them the desire for motherhood substituted for men’s “baser instincts.” While Havelock Ellis in the 1890s and Sigmund Freud in the early twentieth century refuted the passionless woman prototype, it proved remarkably durable in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Davis’s study of “good girls” set the entire moral universe of Victorian sexuality spinning. Factors in the Sex Life of 2,200 Women used its statistics to report that the majority of the married women surveyed experienced frequent and satisfactory sexual relations with their husbands (74 percent). The book also laid to rest some hoary myths of social hygiene: frequent intercourse did not, it turned out, lead to infertility, nor did contraception; more women who considered themselves homosexuals came from coeducational colleges than from women’s colleges; and women’s sexual drive, long doubted to exist at all, proved to be evident among the majority of her sample. Indeed a group Davis labeled “sexual athletes” (2 percent), routinely enjoyed intercourse more than twice a day over a ten-year period (Davis 1929, 25, 43, 21)." [mijn nadruk] (340)

"Most shocking seemed to be the number of women who responded that they masturbated regularly. Some fulminated that Davis had besmirched the reputations of well-bred college women. Davis’s survey, it seemed, pleased no one.

The controversy surrounding the survey gave Davis’s enemies at the BSH the ammunition they needed to end her career. In 1927, in the final stages of her research, KBD found herself and her project orphaned. Under increasing pressure to remove KBD from BSH, Jr. in 1927 asked her to retire, citing the original agreement that had called for her to serve a ten-year term. While Davis hoped to serve out an additional two years until her 70th birthday, she was given no choice. Jr. did promise to continue to back her sex survey and pay her a salary while she completed her work. The book thus, too, became an orphan, its findings perhaps too controversial to suit its patron."(343)

[Ook weer typisch.]

"After she left the BSH, the reorganization Fosdick desired soon took place. Davis and her leadership were thoroughly repudiated. The Bureau’s major focus shifted from research on women and sex to the field of criminology (sufficiently male) under leadership of its new (male) director, Lawrence B. Dunham. Durham tried to get Rockefeller to change the name to something presumably more masculine and less linked with sex and prostitution. In this he failed, but in all else the BSH was now gendered solidly male and its claim to scientific expertise presumably no longer in question. Its work, however, was largely over. Rockefeller closed down the Bureau in 1930. During its nineteen-year existence he had given it $5.8 million."(345)

"While there is a sad poignancy to the end of Davis’s career, more alarming is the way in which she has been erased in the historical record. Katharine Bement Davis died in 1935, eight years after her forced retirement. Rockefeller provided her with an adequate pension. But her work on female sexuality won little serious recognition."(349)

"So much for the woman judged one of the twelve greatest living American women in 1922; the woman who earned honorary degrees from Yale, Mount Holyoke, and Western Reserve; and the woman John D. Rockefeller, Jr. called “the cleverest” he had ever met. Today Katharine Bement Davis remains largely unknown outside of the coterie of women’s historians who have rediscovered her. There is perhaps some delayed justice in the fact that Davis merited inclusion in Oxford University Press’s 1999 American National Biography while Raymond Fosdick did not." [mijn nadruk] (350)

(353) 9 - Gay Republican in the American Culture War: Wisconsin Congressman Steve Gunderson, 1989–1996 [Jordan O’Connell]

"Just as we have seen with Katharine Bement Davis (Chapter 8), Gunderson was forced out of office and into the footnotes shortly thereafter."354

"Gunderson, the rural traditionalist, the devout Lutheran, has been forgotten because he was transgressive in the way that mattered most to American moralists. The resurrection of his deviant legacy confirms the political and personal consequences of moral panic on even the most popular, centrist, and vanilla of public servants."(354)

[Dat ligt voor de hand, zeker op het politieke vlak. Maar ik vind de Amerikaanse politiek niet interessant, zeker niet als het over een Republikeinse conservatief gaat.]

(388) 10 - Time to Panic! Disability Justice, Sex Surrogacy, and Sexual Freedom [Brooke Willock]

"Sex and disability provokes moral panic. This panic not only functions to delegitimize and stigmatize the sexual agency of people with disabilities, but also incites sexualized violence against women, men, and gender-variant individuals with disabilities."(388)

"Women of color, queer women, and gender-variant individuals are highly marginalized throughout female sexuality and disability discourse, and intersecting or confluent issues regarding race, ethnicity, and non-heteronormative sex are thus often left unconsidered."(389)

"In this chapter, I situate sex and disability in a Foucauldian framework and deconstruct the medicalization of sex and ability. Grounded in disabled gender-variant persons and women’s life and medical narratives, this work examines scenes of subjection, disruption, and reinvention within mainstream medicine and science; from here, I argue that co-thinking sexual identity and disability radically revises predominant notions of sex and ability, and has the potential to defamiliarize normalized modalities of valuation and regimes of (individual self) care, producing the conditions that make alternative imaginaries possible, and material."(392)

[Dat is ook wat mij betreft een duidelijke en bijzonder onwenselijke zaak. Maar ik ga niet iets lezen met dit soort vreselijk abstracte onheldere taalgebruik. Mensen die zich op Foucault baseren schrijven toch wel erg vaak totaal onbegrijpelijk. Niet goed.]

(439) 11 - No to the Flow: Rejecting Feminine Norms and the Reproductive Imperative Through Hormonal Menstrual Suppression [Bianca Jarvis]

"Pharmaceutical technology has made it possible for women to choose not to menstruate for a host of reasons, including menstruation-related medical conditions, gender dysphoria, and personal convenience. This practice has faced a great deal of opposition from factions of the feminist community, medical professionals, women’s health advocates, and others, for reasons often rooted in problematic notions of menstruation as essential to “natural” and “normal” womanhood. In Chapter 4 of this book, Fahs examined the moral panic that ensues when menstruation is exposed to the public eye through student activism. This chapter, by contrast, will demonstrate that the absence of menstruation can also prove panic-inducing. In essence, women’s bodies serve as a source of panic regardless of the choices they make regarding menstruation." [mijn nadruk] (440)

"This chapter will also examine menstrual suppression’s seldom-discussed potential as a culturally subversive practice that challenges the role of menstruation and reproductive availability in feminine identity, as well as offering a subtle form of hormonal transition for non-gender conforming individuals."(441)

[Het is meteen duidelijk waar de auteur voor staat. Maar, ja, menstruatie is natuurlijk en normaal voor vrouwen. En het onderdrukken ervan met allerlei hormoonproducten lijkt me niet bepaald gezond. Bovendien lijdt de motivatie voor die keuze aan dubbele bodems: vrouwen nemen misschien zonder dat ze het door hebben de negatieve beeldvorming rondom menstruatie (en vrouwen) van de door mannen gedomineerde cultuur over. Waarom zou je dat willen?]

"In response to these cultural stigmas, many feminists have chosen to radically reclaim menstruation as an empowering symbol of youth, fertility, femininity, and sisterhood (for example, Rako 2003; Chesler 2006). While this is generally a positive trend, these attitudes are sometimes accompanied by the shaming or stigmatization of women who choose menstrual suppression because they prefer not to menstruate for any number of reasons. There is a general consensus that continuous contraception is an acceptable choice for women already using OCPs as contraception, or when used to treat a menstrual disorder (for example, Rako 2003). However, controversy quickly arises when women choose continuous contraception for the express purpose of eliminating menstruation ..."(447)

"Many feminist scholars express legitimate concerns that women who choose menstrual suppression have internalized negative cultural attitudes towards menstruation (for example, Rako 2003). However, these concerns can feel patronizing, invalidating, and even transphobic (Smith 2011) or ableist when levied against individuals who choose menstrual suppression for reasons of so-called “convenience,” as articulated by Smith (2011). It is critical that feminist discussions of menstrual suppression acknowledge the misogynistic context of our society without policing bodies or making assumptions about the lives of women who have embraced continuous contraception as a personally beneficial therapeutic or lifestyle choice." [mijn nadruk] (448)

[Nou, dat lijkt me helemaal niet zo simpel als een algemeen principe, juist vanwege die mogelijke dubbele bodems. Het doet me denken aan de discussie over Islamitische vrouwen die 'bewust' een hoofddoek dragen, er 'zelf' en 'in alle vrijheid voor kiezen'. Dan heb je toch echt niet door hoe je door alle mogelijke zaken gedetermineerd bent.]

"There is no doubt that the FDA’s almost fifty years overdue approval of on-label use of OCPs for menstrual suppression came about due to an increasing market demand for these drugs. Pharmaceutical company Wyeth’s research for continuous-use OCP Lybrel indicated that “two thirds of American women would like to have fewer periods, and one third would like to eliminate their periods entirely” (Saul 2007)."(454)

"This trendy marketing of OCPs as menstrual suppression drugs has resulted in a backlash from feminist scholars, women’s health advocates, clinicians, religious conservatives, and others. Some of this resistance is rooted in legitimate concerns regarding the social stigmas surrounding menstruation, but it is also important to consider how moral panic related to deeply-ingrained sociocultural expectations about femininity and fertility also informs these judgments. It is vital to acknowledge the ways that menstrual suppression rhetoric can be problematic, while at the same time keeping notions of menstrual essentialism in perspective."(456)

[De auteur vervalt in herhalingen, maar pakt het principiële probleem niet aan, vind ik.]

(482) 12 - Cumming to terms: Bareback Pornography, Homonormativity, and Queer Survival in the Time of HIV/AIDS [Michael McNamara]

[Het woord 'queer' komt in de eerste alinea's geloof ik al zo'n 20 keer voor. Iemand die er trots op is om dat te zijn, zeker. Een voorbeeld:]

"The nostalgia evoked in her reading stirred within me a yearning for these queer actions and analyses of yesteryears; simultaneously, Mattilda’s physical exodus from both San Francisco politics and the city’s queer artistic landscape served as a disheartening metaphor for what I perceived as the increasing exile status of radical queer politics in an urban locale with a rich history of queer critique of oppressive, exclusionary state practices."(483)

[En dan gaat het verder over 'barebacking', over onbeschermde anale seks. Niet zo handig, hè, in een tijd van HIV en AIDS. Geen wonder dat velen zich er zorgen over maken. Om dat dan vervolgens te beschrijven als een 'moral panic' slaat de plank toch wel vergaand mis. ]

"The brief and volatile moral panic concerning bareback pornography as well diverts intellectual and political energy away from issues concerning radical sexual politics in a somewhat more complicated fashion. To be discussed in further detail below, in my view, the bareback porn panic effectively singles out particular gay men and their practices to disable a radical critique of an assimilationist neoliberal gay and lesbian political agenda modeled on a politics of respectability. Rather than opening up a discussion of how barebacking and bareback pornography create dialogue about sexual freedom and the limits of sexual citizenship, the moralizing examples provided in this chapter demonstrate how the demonization of particular members of an already marginalized community serve to bolster the normative political agenda of their more respectable constituents as they fight for neoliberal inclusion in the normative national body." [mijn nadruk] (487)

[Nou, sorry hoor, maar de tijd dat 'alles moet kunnen' ligt ver achter ons. Er is ook nog zoiets als verantwoordelijkheid voor anderen. Maar dat zal wel ouderwets zijn ... En let weer even op het poststructuralistische taalgebruik in deze alinea. Dat zegt alles ... Weer zo'n groepje dat vindt dat het gediscrimneerd wordt, deze keer omdat 'safe sex' de norm is geworden.]

(523) Afterword - Insisting on “both/and”: Artifacts of Excavating the Moral Panics of Sexuality [Deborah Tolman]

"To end at the beginning, on the heels of this volume’s much-needed excavation of what lies beneath sexuality, or its deployment for nonsexual purposes, in sexual panics, I hope to repopulate this more complicated terrain with sex panics that actually are about teenage sexuality."(526)

"Aside from the insights that the volume offers for deepening an understanding of sex panics about adolescent girls’ sexuality and where and how new media can be leveraged to incite or interrupt these panics, a refocus on adolescent girls’ sexuality underscores how these panics are an especially virulent and viral form of surveillance of Gayle Rubin’s resiliently useful concept of “the charmed circle” and its regulatory power. As she defined it, the charmed circle of “good, normal, natural, blessed sexuality” contains within its confines sex that is “heterosexual, married, monogamous, in a relationship, procreative, private, bodies only (and ‘natural’ bodies), not pornographic, private, in pairs, noncommercial and vanilla” (Rubin 1984, 281). That is, what Fahs, Dudy, and Stage called “scary sex” is indeed anything sexual that challenges the charmed circle; even when sexualizing a nonsexual event, sex panics have to do with the regulation of sex itself as well as its displacement." [mijn nadruk] (528)

[Ook hier is het taalgebruik mateloos abstract en onhelder.]

"In part, this explains why adolescent girls constitute a special and frequent target of panic. The potential for them to violate the charmed circle is, in essence, endless: they are female, they are young, they are unmarried, they are increasingly sexually “fluid,” their bodies and sexual expressions are more and more public, they are unlikely to be procreating (on purpose), they are by law and technically not part of pornography or commercial sex even as their images infuse porn and commercial interests, they are promiscuous almost by definition, as adolescent girls’ relationships virtually always end. It is no surprise that we feel not only entitled but also morally obligated to contain and punish them (Tolman 2002) and now, perhaps more than ever, urgently so, as social media and new technologies give them more potent means for chafing against the containment that the charmed circle demands and produces."(530)

[Ja, maar dat weten we inmiddels wel.]

"I suggest it is worth pairing this moral panic about adolescent sexuality with the one about sexualization.(...) They are indeed joined at the proverbial hip, as sexualization informs sexting, and sexting can be seen as a form of sexualization. Both are potent examples of how the “either/or” thinking mandated and accelerated by moral panics keeps at bay the “both/and” recognition of the complexities and possibilities of negotiating sexuality in adolescence today."(535)

[Ook al zo'n open deur. ]