(1) Introduction - Back to the Future

Verwijzing naar Levin-Kilbourne (2008) en Sue Palmer (2009) over seksualisering door de media, naar de 'cultural panics' zoals de tentoonstelling van Bill Henson (met blote kinderen) waarin steeds de kinderlijke seksuele onschuld opgevoerd wordt.

"The presumptions beneath these conclusions are twofold: the domain of childhood cannot include sexuality; and in equal turn any young person who expresses sexuality is de facto outside the domain of childhood (Egan and Hawkes 2008a, 2008b; Hawkes and Egan 2008b)."(2)

"All too often, these pleas for social reformation are profoundly ahistorical, reactionary, visceral, and deeply unreflexive and it is for this reason that they come to operate as natural. We contend it is character of these cultural narratives that makes a critical deconstruction all the more important for scholars of childhood and sexuality. To this end, this campaign, as well as the others that have come before it, raise a critically important sociological question — what lies beneath these hegemonic proclamations and how did we get to this point? " [mijn nadruk] (3)

"Foucault’s work highlights how discourses of protection and social reform legitimated social intervention through the government of childhood sexuality in the form of discipline, surveillance, and scientific management. More importantly, it provides a window on to how discourses about childhood sexuality were, for the most part, not really about children; rather they were emblematic of the anxieties surrounding larger social instabilities and the need to bring them under control. Our analysis develops and extends the foundational points raised by Foucault (mentioned above), by analyzing a range of discursive domains to examine the connections between them. Analyzing the various sites of knowledge and power that fostered the production of scientific treatises, social reform movements and parental instruction provide a textured and rich account of the construction of the sexual child in modernity. In the following we analyze the foundational tenets at work in the attempts to make sense of childhood sexuality as well as the promotion of its normalization and regulation." [mijn nadruk] (6-8)

"As will become obvious, what is missing in most discourses on childhood sexuality are the voices of children themselves. We can gain little insight into the degree to which children participated in or made meaning of the activities discussed in these discourses. Given this absence, the analysis that follows is not a history of the sexual activities of children or a history of the impact of such ideas on children’s lives. Nor was it intended to be. Rather, it is an examination of adult constructions of the sexual child from a wide range of sources. More specifically, it is an exploration of how adults deployed the child and its sexuality in order to manage its individual manifestations and perceived social consequences. " [mijn nadruk] (8)

"As the history of sexuality illustrates, discourses on sexualities and the representations found therein hold tremendous social force (Luker 2007, 1998; Mort 2000; Weeks 2003, 1990; Porter and Hall 1995; Irvine 2002; Moran 2000; Hunt 1999; Porter and Hall 1995; Foucault (1984)."(8)

Volgt een overzicht van de inhoud van de verschillende hoofdstukken.

(13) Chapter One - Constructing the Modern Sexual Child

"Drawing on diaries, works of art, and family histories, historians have elucidated the change in affective responses to, and connection between, adult and child, especially in the family setting within these epochs (Hendrick 2003; Davin 1996; Pollack 1983; Stone 1977; McFarlane 1977; Shorter 1975; DeMause 1974; Aries 1962). Intellectually, socially, and morally the child was characterized as an “adult-in-development.” The emergence of this new category of personhood — the child — hierarchically ordered the relationship between adults and children, rendering the distinction absolute at the level of the physiological, the emotional, and the intellectual. One aspect that remains largely unexplored by historians of childhood is the construction of the sexual subjectivity of the “to-be-adult.” This omission by historians from an otherwise detailed program of pedagogy and development that began with the work of John Locke (1689) is particularly noteworthy if one considers how rapidly the figure of the masturbating child became a central focus in the management of populations during the nineteenth century (Foucault 1984).
This chapter examines two distinct discourses: eighteenth-century Enlightenment’s sensationism and nineteenth-century masturbation phobia." [mijn nadruk] (13-14)

Het Verlichtingsdenken gaf het kind 'agency', het kon goed of kwaad handelen, en dus was supervisie noodzakelijk, aldus Locke.

"The conviction that the child had no inherent ideas but must learn through sensual experience was tempered in its optimism by the possibility that this process might be distorted if unsupervised by adults.(...)
Children lacked inherent moral guidelines, for as camelions they were equally susceptible to all outside influences. It is here that we find the justification for monitoring the process of an education through the senses. The child must not be protected from sensual stimulation but be guided to seek proper stimulation." [mijn nadruk] (18)

Volgens Buffon zou het kind vanuit zichzelf zijn animale driften volgen:

" If the child were left in the condition in which it remained driven by its senses, it would become a slave to its passions and pursue a life of self-indulgent misery. Moreover, as the child matured, “the material principle [bodily sensuality] has more power than ever, for it not only effaces reason, but perverts it and uses it to its own gratification” (60). Buffon’s work was widely circulated and was very popular: it was, as philosopher and zoologist Ernst Mayr (1982) points out, read by almost all educated Europeans of his time (101). " [mijn nadruk] (20)

"Sensationists like Buffon and Condillac identified the process by which the sensual was linked with the rational. Despite their emphasis on the connections between sensory experience and rational thought, there were, nevertheless, some evident misgivings. For example, why if the child was an exemplar of nature could it not be trusted to raise itself? Moreover, why were mothers and other women in general cast under suspicion? The work of Locke, Buffon, and Condillac all identified the need for an external guiding force to monitor and direct the balance between passion and reason." [mijn nadruk] (21)

Deze Verlichtingsdenkers hadden niet zo veel oog voor wat wij nu 'seksualiteit' noemen, dus voor de seksuele ontwikkeling van het kind.

"Nevertheless, this evocative material from two centuries ago offers more subtle insights into the construction of the modern sexual child. First, there is a clear distinction made between adult and child, one that was acknowledged as politically and socially important. Second, the child was understood as in need of proper training to avoid undesirable outcomes. Third, the child was unequivocally a sensual child, and here sensuality was acknowledged as not just present but necessarily so for the attainment of reason and self-control. This same sensuality could lead to the development of bad habits, acquired not as a consequence of “original sin” and, therefore, inherent, but from unwanted outside influences. The centrality of the child in these pedagogic and philosophic discourses, and the focus on its susceptibility to both good and bad influences, contributed to the inclusion of the child in the growing phenomenon of masturbation phobia as it would erupt in full force in the nineteenth century. " [mijn nadruk] (23-24)

"Why was the child such a prominent figure in these discourses? It is certainly the case, as Foucault indicated in 1984, that the masturbating child was a “subject of power” in the management of populations. In addition, there was, from the beginnings of masturbation phobia, a clear recognition that the child was as equally susceptible to compulsive masturbation as the adult."(24)

[Volgt het inmiddels wel bekende verhaal van al die medici en kwakzalvers met hun negatieve oordelen over masturbatie. ]

"Male or female, the child’s body is characterized as passive and at all times able to be aroused."(28)

"Some of our sources identify the rare possibility of an inherent disposition to endogenous sexualization. Acton (1858) offers examples of precociously sexual children with no evidence of any external seduction or initiation; nevertheless such cases are at odds with his supposition that children are normatively asexual before puberty (157)."(29)

"The narrowness of the conceptualization of the “diagnosis and cure” so evident in masturbation phobia tacitly acknowledges an unaddressed possibility; that the child does possess a sexual subjectivity that cannot be acknowledged.(...) We argue that the intersection of childhood pedagogy and the material understanding of the volatile sexual body shaped the dominant ideological framework for the sexual child as it was emerging in modernity. In perpetuating these unresolved contradictions, the sexual propensities of “the modern child” were entrenched as unstable and as necessitating ongoing attention." [mijn nadruk] (32)

(33) Chapter Two - The Sexual Child and the Social Purity Movement

Over Richard Arthur.

"Innocence, within social purity discourses, was assumed to be an inherent quality of childhood as well as a virtue that must be taught. It was, in effect, there and not there — present and absent. A chameleonlike figure, the child shifted between a sentimental figure in need of protection to an object of suspicion and sexual prurience in need of control. As the works of James Kincaid, Gary Cross, and Philip Jenkins note, the connection between childhood and innocence has been a facet, and most often a paradoxical one, in discourses on the child since the modern inception of childhood (Cross 2004; Jenkins 2004; Kincaid 1998, 1992). However, it is the manner with which purity campaigners deployed sexual innocence in order to both legitimate the movement and transmit its vision into the society more broadly that marks its place within this history of ideas." [mijn nadruk] (34)

"Although sentimentalization [over kinderen - GdG] began in the bourgeois home, by the end of the nineteenth century this conception of the child and its sacrilized nature was projected onto children of the poor and working class. Given its emphasis on leisure, play, and freedom, it should come as no surprise that families who could not afford these luxuries were cast as suspicious, uncaring, and, at worst, unfit (Sanchez-Eppler 2005; Calvert 1992). As Hugh Cunningham (1991) reminds us, sentimentalization helped validate increasing surveillance of and intervention in working class and poor families by teachers, reformers, and medics under the guise of child “protection.”
In their progressive campaigns against sexual vice, social purity proponents attempted to negotiate this seemingly paradoxical construction of the sentimental and sexual child within the movement — with highly contradictory results." [mijn nadruk] (35)

"Early purity activists postulated that virtuous sexual behavior formed the cornerstone of all moral actions (Mort 2000; Porter and Hall 1995; Mason 1994; Pivar 1973). Unlike temperance activists, individuals involved in the social purity movement wanted to move beyond what they saw as “regressive” sexual ignorance and focus on pragmatic correctives such as sexual training and child-rearing advice. Fusing the ideas of public health with morality, campaigners joined with conservative members of the medical establishment to produce a message that equated physical and moral health to the social and cultural health of a Christian nation (Mort 2000)." [mijn nadruk] (35)

"Social purity sponsors were committed to the abolition of prostitution and pornography and collaborated with other groups to form organizations" [mijn nadruk] (36)

"Purity campaigners also joined forces with other progressive feminist organizations to demand an increase in the age of consent and to promote “responsible fatherhood” in Britain, Australia, and the United States (Driscoll 2006; Hunt 1999; Warne 1999; Walkowitz 1992; Burnham 1973)."(36)

"Purity reformers identified the “great mass of the urban workingclass as a major cultural threat” to the child as well as to society at large (Mort 2000, 47). Employing a rationale of environmental causality, purity discourses conceptualized vice as the result of contagion within the life of the child (Mort 2000; Jordan 1987; Gorham 1982). " [mijn nadruk] (38)

[Typisch ... ]

"Theories of transmission stressed the need for the creation of a separate sphere for the child, apart from the concerns, desires, and dangers found in the adult domain. If the construction of a moral sphere within the home was impossible, many reformers felt it would be best to remove a child altogether."(39)

[Uiteraard vooral wanneer het ging om arme arbeidersgezinnen.]

"By the early 1870s, instruction on the pedagogy of children’s purity proliferated in publications for bourgeois mothers and children in the United States, England, and Australia. During the mid- to late Victorian period, motherhood came under the scrutiny of experts in domestic management and child rearing; the social purity movement was one among attempting to training women to be better mothers (Gorham 1982)."(40)

"Social purity literature emphasized a mother’s moral duty to talk to their children about sex. If left ignorant in the home children would seek an education in the street. In their agenda to foster sound sexual education, the social purity movement recast childhood innocence by uncoupling it from sexual ignorance. Ignorance was considered dangerous due to its unguided and incendiary potential. Within purity reform, the child could be both sexually educated and sexually innocent simultaneously — the result of which was, as Welsh noted, “enlightened innocence” (ibid.). " [mijn nadruk] (41-42)

[Hier zie je al dat patroon dat je ook vandaag de dag zo vaak ziet: kinderen mogen wel geïnformeerd zijn over seks en dingen weten, maar kinderen mogen niets doen.]

"Maternal attitudes were a crucial element in the eradication of ignorance and in the cultivation of enlightened innocence."(43)

[Dat maakte vrouwen dus ook verantwoordelijk voor de (seksuele) opvoeding, terwijl mannen konden doen wat ze wilden.]

"Both motherhood and childhood are denaturalized within the discourse of social purity, and both required expert intervention — a recurring theme, as we illuminate, in most of the advice on the sexual child taking place at the turn of the century. Sound maternal instruction for purity reformers was no more intrinsic to women than purity and self-control was for the child." [mijn nadruk] (43)

"The extent to which masturbation could be detoured, much less “cured,” is deeply contradictory in the literature produced by purity reformers. The ambivalent nature of the sexual child (as educable and as autoerotic) within reform materials renders the endeavors of the purity movement inherently unstable at best. (...)
This contradiction illuminates an irresolvable tension underpinning the social purity movement — a controlled and thus dormant sexual instinct in the child placed alongside an equally unquenchable and unyielding sexual instinct that is ungovernable and dangerous. The incongruity of the present and absent nature of childhood sexuality is not a problem unique to purity reform — it is a tension that underlies this entire history of ideas, albeit in different ways." [mijn nadruk] (45)

"Pure children were assumed to be de facto asexual. However, if sexual curiosity or worse still precocious activity was present in a formerly innocent child, its manifestation was the result of a deviant outside influence. Sexual innocence was assured because its lack was found in another — the corrupt companion. " [mijn nadruk] (45)

"Most often corrupt instruction was learned from other children in predominantly child-only spaces such as the back alley, school yard, or public park."(46)

"The corrupt companion was the antagonist of the purity reformers narrative, their sexual precocity a contagion penetrating the barriers of idealized innocence. Dangerous and duplicitous, all children needed to be watched in order to prevent the spread of the sexual child’s knowing influence. Catalyzing the sexual imagination of the child, the sexual and corrupt companion fostered prurient thoughts that later promoted precocious sexual action." [mijn nadruk] (47)

" Corrupt children taught a corrupt, distorted, and unregulated idea of sex — and in so doing provided a warped form of sex education that triggered the body and its instincts. "(48)

[Met andere woorden: er valt ook nog wat af te dingen op het standpunt dat het goed is om kinderen te informeren over seks. Alleen bepaalde informatie is goed, die het doen niet stimuleert, zou je kunnen zeggen.]

" Imagination, for purity reformers, was dangerous and could easily morph from innocent concerns to sexual curiosity and thence to sexual expression — particularly when a child’s imagination was stimulated by the persuasion of others. As we discussed earlier, the influence of the mind over the body was a central epistemological tenet of purity reform. To this end, purity reformers believed that rational will could provide a barrier to unrestrained instinct. However, the power of moral suasion and rational will was belied in discussions of corrupt companionship. A corrupt sexual education was particularly dangerous and deeply influential in its ability to fracture the rational and moral boundaries created by purity instruction." [mijn nadruk] (48)

"Although purity campaigners portrayed masturbation as ubiquitous, enlightened innocence was both plausible and possible because the child who masturbated was an other child — knowing, corrupt, and thoroughly corporeal. Operating as the scapegoat against which innocence was defined and defended, the sexually corrupt child made enlightened innocence plausible. Threatening the sanctity of purity, the body of the sexual child offered a figure to fight against, a menace that could be assessed and contained."(48)

[En natuurlijk vonden de hervormers dat de gecorrumpeerde kinderen vooral te vinden waren in de arme arbeidersgezinnen.]

"The sexual child, within purity narratives, also relied upon a second social construction that made it more palatable — the working-class family as dirty, bawdy, and sexually suspect (Mort 2000; Luker 1998; Cunningham 1991; Pivar 1973)." [mijn nadruk] (48-49)

"This construction of the sexual child, taken to its logical end, provides the conceptual foreshadowing of the social hygiene movement, the topic of our next chapter, which sought to transform the working class through hygienic instruction, sex training, and habituation. "(50)

(51) Chapter Three - Sexual Hygiene and the Habituation of Childhood Sexuality

Thomas Galloway en zijn ideeën.

"Sexual hygiene’s mission to “adjust” the child’s sexuality in order to ensure its healthy “relationship to [the] community” and its commitment to “the responsibilities and obligations” of adulthood has strong connections to the medico-moral project of social purity, albeit through different methods and in less overtly moral language (Gruenberg 1948, xi). Advocates working in the sexual hygiene movement attempted to shape the sexual instinct of the child in order to deliver socially beneficial results through rational medical means (ibid.). As a result, childhood sexuality was constructed as a site in need of precautionary intervention and as a justification for wider social reform." [mijn nadruk] (52)

"Hygiene reformers validated their entrée into this domain of knowledge through their training as “medical” and “scientific” experts that, ideally, provided both an accurate and objective lens. As we illustrate in the following chapters, in this respect, sexology, psychoanalysis, and theorists of child development employed similar claims of scientific legitimacy. Sexual hygiene furthered not only the normalization of the child’s sexuality (a project repeated in psychoanalysis and development, although through different means), but extended their aims beyond the other discourses explored in this book with their attempts to create a predictive and pronatalist model that could ensure heterosexual marriage and fit offspring for a more eugenic future.
As we discussed in chapter two, social purity campaigns sought to curb sexual vice and moral turpitude more generally through the abolition of obscene materials and the teaching of proper child-rearing practices. In this regard, purity campaigners focused their energy on the moral education of parents. However, as public support for the overly moral tone of social purity and their calls for abstinence waned and medical treatment for social ills became more culturally palatable, social hygiene eclipsed social purity as a movement to cure the problems of prostitution, venereal disease, and degeneracy." [mijn nadruk] (52-53)

"This chapter analyzes the ways in which the project of sexual hygiene sought to habituate the sexual child in order to create and ensure bourgeois gender norms and a reproductive heterosexual outcome. In so doing, sexual hygienists used the body of the child to validate broader intervention into working class and poor families under the guise of prevention. " [mijn nadruk] (53)

"At the turn of the twentieth century, discourses on sexuality shifted away from overtly moral tenets and environmental theories toward more medical conceptions of health and scientific efficiency. As a result, a more subtle and nuanced management of the body as both an individual and as a member of the broader population, what Foucault (1984) has termed biopower, took shape within discourses on sexuality." [mijn nadruk] (55)

[Maar die medische-wetenschappelijke benadering was natuurlijk evengoed gestoeld op normatieve uitgangspunten. Maar nu werd dat meer gemasakeerd onder een mom van objectiviteit. ]

"The primacy placed on scientific expertise in sex instruction further authorized sexual hygiene’s foray into this sensitive domain. By locating instructional capability in scientific and medical proficiency, as opposed to enlightened moral instruction, the parents’ position was demoted from its former place of supremacy within the purity movement." [mijn nadruk] (59)

"Within sexual hygiene reform, danger to children was equated with a particular social condition: urban poverty. To this end, poor and working-class children were viewed as especially in need of intervention and protection. Hugh Cunningham’s (1991) work highlights how at the turn of the century the movement “to rescue the children of the ‘English savage,’. . . and penetrate the homes of the poor in order to expose instances of cruelty” was widespread and functioned as a dominant discourse within reform narratives more generally (133). Karen Sanchez-Eppler (2005), Alan Hunt (1999), and Warwick Anderson (2003) have also noted a similar historical trend in reform discourses from the United States and Australia, which fostered increasing suspicion of poor families and their abilities to protect and care for their children. " [mijn nadruk] (62)

"Sexual hygiene discourses naturalized bourgeois conceptions of the child and in so doing warranted social intervention into lives of the poor through the “protection” of their children. Supervising the sexual impulses of children afforded hygienists the opportunity to shape and manage the poor and working class. To this end, sexual hygiene promised something that had hitherto been elusive — a rational method to curb the child’s sexual impulse as the means through which to achieve eugenic ends." [mijn nadruk] (62)

"The foundational quality of socially sanctioned femininity was, for hygiene reformers, virtue. This quality guaranteed pathway to the successful transition away from girlhood crushes to future monogamous motherhood."(70)

"Seemingly nurturing, but nevertheless in need of management, a girl’s sexual instinct was conceptualized as unpredictable and endangered. Outwardly, sexual hygiene literature argued that feminine desire was the desire for affection and love, not sex. However, the perceived danger of leaving girls untrained belies this contention and reveals a larger anxiety — promiscuity. In the eyes of reformers, the drive toward affect was risky because, if left to their own devices, girls could end up with an unfit male as easily as a more suitable one and thus compromise the whole eugenic project. Hygienic intervention promised to direct instinctual aim toward a safe and socially prescriptive end — motherhood and the rearing of fit children. In this regard, sexual hygiene narratives attempted to desexualize girlhood, by linking instinct to affect as opposed to the desire for intercourse. The successful transition of working-class girls into habituated bourgeois femininity was realized in the production of nurturance and respectable motherhood in the future. " [mijn nadruk] (70)

"In this manner, sexual hygiene goes beyond both the psychoanalytic and developmental discourses we discuss in the following chapters, which attempted to ensure heterosexuality, but were less concerned with “acceptable mate selection” and a pronatalist agenda."(72)

(75) Chapter Four - Sexology and the New Normality

"Uninterested in contemporaneous projects of moral reform, their commitments were more intellectually driven and centered on the production of knowl- edge about a topic that had hitherto only been addressed in relation to disease and pathology — sexual behavior. Unlike social purity and sexual hygiene promoters, early sexologists did not seek out the sexual child within their work. Rather it was in the course of exploring the sexual lives of adults and more specifically their erotic biographies that the sexual child first appeared within this emerging paradigm. "(75)

"Driven by an overt commitment to empiricism rather than moral reform, sexologists classified information, gained from direct or indirect observation, into categories of normal and abnormal. "(76)

Sexologie kwam op in het laatste kwart van de 19e eeuw. Darwin was een inspiratiebron. Het was inmiddels ook wel duidelijk dat al het angstaanjagen door medici niet werkt. Wetenschap moest de feiten over seks geven, niet meer en niet minder. Het gaat om mensen als Iwan Bloch, Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld.

"To this end, science opened the door, albeit unintentionally, to the exploration of the sexual life of the child in unprecedented detail."(77)

"In retrospect, one of the most striking aspects of the early science of sex was the unapologetic manner in which sexologists detailed a wide range of sexual practices in meticulous detail. Such explicitness is especially noteworthy because its mouthpiece was that of science, not pornography. Despite their individualistic approaches, these writers shared a common conviction: that ignorance posed the greatest threat to the well-being of humankind. Scientific inquiry offered the means and the ideological justifications with which to confront and eradicate misconceptions that were restrictive and damaging in both individual and social life. It was this consensus that encapsulated the radical nature of sexology." [mijn nadruk] (77)

"By drawing on multidisciplinary sources the limited boundaries of normality that characterized the body-centered model of medicine was rewritten with reference to the social as well as physical dimensions of sex. The methods of sexology thus made possible an unprecedented recognition of sexual manifestations that would include, but not necessarily unconditionally endorse, that of the child. " [mijn nadruk] (79)

"That children were capable of autoerotic activity was never in doubt among nineteenth-century sexologists; however, recognition was not the same as acceptance. The work of these pioneers in the creation of sexual knowledge differed in this regard."(79)

" By demonstrating the ubiquity of autoeroticism across species, cultures, and history, Ellis confronted and rendered problematic the normative binary that defined the medical model.(...)
Ellis was surprisingly half-hearted in his positive acknowledgment of childhood masturbation."(82)

" It is in the Appendices in Studies in Psychology of Sex that Ellis provides details of a wide range of childish erotic activity far beyond that of masturbation. These stories illustrate inventiveness, initiative, and especially the presences of erotic subjectivity in the child."(82-83)

"These recollections paint a picture of sexually curious and inventive children, who had a clear understanding of how their actions transgressed adult rules ..."(83)

"Neither Ellis nor Hirschfeld state an intention to provide primary evidence for a distinctive childhood sexuality. Nevertheless, both employ methods underpinned by specific assumptions that extend the normal erotic range in both adult and child, and their work illuminates what had once been hidden in the darkness of assumed pathology. Through the commitment of these first sexologists to a scientific presentation of “facts,” the consciously erotic child, rather than the compulsive unconscious masturbator, was incorporated into the pantheon of a new normality. "(86-87)

" Specifically Moll sought to isolate the topic of the sexual life of the child from earlier accounts that have addressed the issue only through the lens of adult experience and perception (8). Moll’s project was to demonstrate the existence of a sexual life of the child and to offer a detailed and empirically supported account of the subjective components of this life. To assume that the sexual life of the child begins with the external physical manifestations of puberty is, according to Moll, a “disastrous error.” It is essential for “the scientific investigator, the physician, the schoolmaster and the parents” to appreciate the importance of eradicating this idea (111). Addressing the forensic significance of his enquiry, Moll notes that the official acceptance of a conscious sexual life of the child would also help judges and jurists pronounce on the validity of sexual abuse claims by children (206–207)." [mijn nadruk] (89)

"Moll does insist that while there is a complexity and a consciousness to the sexual life of the child, the experience differs qualitatively from that between adults in its physical and/or emotional manifestations."(92)

" In his contention that prepubertal children were not just capable of, but habitually engaged in, conscious sexual expression without any physical or psychological harm offered a final death knell to masturbation phobia. Moll’s approach to the topic of the sexual life of the child is both distinctive and challenging despite his more general political conservatism. "(93)

"The significance of Moll’s work lies in his enquiry of “the sexual life of the child” (emphasis added) and it was this that marks the originality and impact of his work. This focus allowed him to offer the justification and evidence for a unique recognition of a sexually agentic child, in a study that was scientifically based. It was an empirically supported account of childhood sexuality that was not dependent on adult definitions for either its meaning or its legitimacy. It is, therefore, of interest that of all the sexologists, Moll’s work, and its implications for a more systematic formulation of childhood sexuality, has remained largely on the margins, eclipsed by the more familiar work of Freud. " [mijn nadruk] (93)

"Certainly what was written about the sexual child in any of the texts examined in this chapter received less attention than the work of the famous contemporary and fellow scientist Sigmund Freud. It is ironic that the two authors whose work presents the most complete and challenging picture of the sexual life of the child — Ellis and Moll — are arguably the most and least well known of these pioneers of sexual science. "(94)

(97) Chapter Five - Freud and the Cartography of Infantile Sexuality

"Given his position in the modern assemblage of knowledge production, it should come as no surprise that within our history of ideas the work of Sigmund Freud is the most famous, but, ironically, is also all too often under read and thus misunderstood in our contemporary culture. Freud is commonly credited with “inventing” childhood sexuality; however, as we have shown in our analysis thus far, he was by no means alone in his preoccupations or concerns. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny that Freud’s theories of infantile sexuality transformed the conceptual landscape of ideas on the child and its sexuality and have remained in the public consciousness and popular culture ever since. " [mijn nadruk] (98)

[Ja, en sterker nog, als Freud beter gelezen werd zou de wereld niet zo onder de indruk zijn van zijn theorietjes. ]

"It is our contention that Freudian psychoanalytic discourse functioned as a conceptual transition point between the reform movements already discussed and the later developmental models featured in chapter six."(99)

"Freud’s construction of the sexual child was provocative in its acknowledgment that all children were inherently sexual, pleasure seeking, desirous as well as sadistic and masochistic in the quest to fulfil their libidinous drives. However, this recognition must be placed alongside his theory of latency, which as James Kincaid, Arnold Davidson, and others have argued, allowed Freud to transport the child’s sexuality back into an absent and unconscious space until its more socially acceptable expression later during puberty (Egan and Hawkes 2008a; Romesberg 2008; Kincaid 1992; Davidson 1987). Equally important, the potential of Freud’s more radical thinking on childhood sexuality was derailed by his turn toward Oedipus, identification, and castration." [mijn nadruk] (99)

[Goed geformuleerd. Die hele latentieperiode heeft niets met een natuurlijke biologische ontwikkeling van kinderen te maken, maar is een culturele constructie. En al die andere verzinsels als het Oedipoescomplex slaan al helemaal nergens op.]

"His theories illustrate the Janus face of “the seraphic child” by shedding light on its sexual or corrupt complement. As different sides to the same coin, the child within both of these conceptions shares certain epistemological assumptions; namely that the child is an incomplete being on its way to becoming fully human in adulthood and thus is devoid of reason and rationality. Due to its position within the hierarchy of cognition, the child is also conceptualized as in need of outside intervention. "(102)

"While Freud believed that seduction could have “lasting consequences,” he also emphasized that it should not be constructed as the only causal factor for the expression of infantile sexuality. To this end, Freud’s contention that seduction does not necessary produce long-lasting damage to the child or the adult is distinct and exceptional. "(106)

"As we suggested earlier, the voice of the child within Freudian psychoanalysis is marginal at best. Freud noted in 1933 that children have little to no understanding of their “sexual wishes,” much less the ability to bring them “to preconscious expression” or even “communicate [them] at all” (150). To this end, the sexual child within Freudian psychoanalytic discourse is present in the abstract, but absent in the material. " [mijn nadruk] (117)

"While the voice of the child within Freudian psychoanalysis occupied a deeply ambivalent place from the start, it is our contention that the construction of the sexual child within his theories became more abstracted, prescribed, and constricted as time progressed. Freud’s early writings on the sexual child provided a framework for recognizing the complex sexual subjectivity of children. However, his turn toward the Oedipus complex ultimately undermined this potential. Although infantile sexuality comprised a key tenet within Freud’s psychoanalytic paradigm, the place of the child and the complexity of its sexual subjectivity became increasingly marginalized and silenced. " [mijn nadruk] (123)

(125) Chapter Six - Developing the Sexual Child

"During the interwar years, the issue of the sexual child moved from the domain of the experts into the sitting rooms of ordinary parents via child-rearing texts. As the quote from Renz and Renz illustrates, “sexual interest and experiences” of the child are recast in a positive light. This conceptualization of the sexual child reflects a distinctive cultural shift in attitudes amongst child-rearing experts, namely that sexual subjectivity is normal and, especially, healthy. Such a shift appears taken for granted, for there is no sense that this statement should cause any disquiet among the readership. Despite the contingent idea of “control” there is an effort to downgrade the “specialness” of the child’s sexuality. Most strikingly, the two components of sexual subjectivity — childish imagination and activity — are represented as no more worthy of anxiety than any other aspect of the child’s growth and development. " [mijn nadruk] (125)

"It also illustrates a continuity of themes across our larger story: the recognition of the sexual instinct, a claim for expertise to be granted legitimate entry into the domain of childhood sexuality, and the underlying conviction that the sexual instinct of the child requires supervision and regulation."(126)

[Ja, maar waar is het verschil met de 19e eeuw bijvoorbeeld? Ook toen 1/ de constatering voor de seksualiteit van kinderen, ook toen 2/ allerlei experts die zich daarmee meenden te moeten bemoeien, ook toen 3/ het idee dat die kinderlijke seksualiteit gereguleerd moet worden. Het verschil zit hem misschien in hoeverre 1/ erkend werd, en wie zich bij 2/ meenden te bemoeien, en 3/ hoe vergaand er gereguleerd moest worden en misschien ook in een meer positieve benadering van die kinderlijke seksualiteit? Maar waarom is daar na WO2 zo weinig van overgebleven dan?]

"The significance of the environment for social reform was not unique to this period; however, there were features of this project that distinguished it from both the social purity and the sexual hygiene movements. Modern child rearing did not involve amateur philanthropy or politico-moral reform, but the intervention of professionals who applied scientific principles to the management of amateur child rearing. Moreover, this was not a discourse between experts as was the social hygiene movement. The objective now was the parent, seen as problem (because of their amateur status) and solution (because of their emotional commitment to “do the right thing”) as mothers. Stearns (2003) and Hulbert (2004) have both identified faith in scientific management as the driving rationale for this detailed intrusion into the mother-child relationship, and Hulbert (2004) especially points to the combination of the moral and social in the emerging “child-rearing science” (106). " [mijn nadruk] (129)

"Despite the less than subtle suggestions about maternal inabilities and shortcomings, the intrusion of such expertise found a ready audience in those to whom the advice was directed. In part, as Kereen Reiger (1985) has argued, this is because these texts spoke the same class language, “some evidence does suggest that middle class women were more likely to respond favorably to new styles of infant care, partly because they have much in common in terms of attitudes and values with the scientific, professionally orientated experts” (149)." [mijn nadruk] (129)

"This contextualization has been necessary to provide a foundation for our argument about the construction of the sexual child in this epoch. However, what constituted this process now needs to be explicated, for it involved a representation of childish sexuality that was neither linear nor uncomplicated. The complexity was due to two identifying features of the discourse of development: the reduction of “sexuality” to reproductive function and the conflicting but equally influential concepts of John Watson and Sigmund Freud." [mijn nadruk] (131)

Eerst volgt een bespreking van de behavioristische bandering van John Watson die opvoeden in lijn zag met het scientific management in de industrie in die tijd. Kinderen waren tabula rasa:

"Since the child has no inborn equipment, it presents a clean sheet on which to inscribe good habits and this must be done without the distortion of emotional attachment or physical intimacy. Such limitations were considered essential to the successful raising of the child and for the formation of a healthy adult. " [mijn nadruk] (131)

"Mothers were directed to avoid physical expressions of affection, especially cuddling, and to place their children either in the care of a nurse, or “in the back yard for a large part of the day” (Watson 1978, 84). But this was not a punitive regime, for the key to effective training lay in positive rather than negative encouragement. As American sex educationalist Frances Bruce Strain (1934) insisted, good habits must be encouraged rather than bad habits punished.
There is a distinction here between the training of the Watsonian child and earlier notions discussed in chapters two and three. This is not about the protection of innocence nor does it rely on a sentimentalized vision of childhood."(132)

"In order for the production of good habits to happen effectively, and in the interests of attaining the required levels of independence, the child must be left to its own devices. Knowledge of bodily functions including excretion and sexual arousal are acquired through observation rather than direct experience. From the outset, correct terms must be used for bodily parts, and parents must, as American academics and educators Thomas Wood, Marian Lerrigo, and Thurman Rice (1937) point out, “treat naked bodies as a matter of course in bathing, dressing and other natural intimacies of family life” (8). Peer experiences are equally important and help reinforce emotional distance between parent and child. Children, Watson advised, should play together unsupervised by adults for an hour a day. Ideally this interaction would take place in the backyard, with siblings who, weather permitting, would be naked (125–126). There should be no inhibitions about nudity between sexes, either with child or adult. For example, Watson encourages parental nudity with the child, but discourages mother and child sharing a bath. The child should not be kept in sexual ignorance, and especially it should not be mislead into thinking that there is something special about sex. Rather the child must be encouraged to understand the functions of sexual organs and feelings in ways that will immune it to any distorting influences it may encounter. Parents should be open and honest, but also vigilant about curbing bad habits, such as masturbation and thumb sucking. These activities are not serious, just something that must be handled properly. " [mijn nadruk] (133-134)

[Een hoop tegenstrijdigheden. Uiteindelijk is dit toch weer negatief over als kind van je lijf genieten of van iemand anders lijf genieten.]

Daarna volgt een bespreking van de psychoanalytische kijk op dit soort zaken, uitgaand van een seksueel instinct bij kinderen.

"Nevertheless, training the instinct requires a delicate balance between direction and free will. Leaving the instinct untamed is not an option, either for the present or for the future. This raised the question of what manifestations of the instinct were acceptable and how parents were to make such decisions. While the training manuals were authored by the professionals, the delicate balancing act fell to the parents, the final line of proper socialization."(136)

"In all that has been said so far, the actual child is barely evident; it is characterized as the passive recipient of directions from its parents and their expert advisors. The logic of these elaborate strategies for instruction was that the child would respond in the desired manner. But the texts also addressed a phenomenon that was simultaneously welcomed as a natural phenomenon and viewed with some misgiving about its possible misuse. " [mijn nadruk] (137)

Dat fenomeen was de kinderlijke nieuwsgierigheid zoals die zich uit in hun spel of in de vragen die kinderen over allerlei zaken stellen die voor volwassenen op het vlak van de seksualiteit liggen.

"The level of tolerance about sex play is more evident in the Freudian texts, but for behaviorists as well, trivialization of sex play is a key component in instilling the right knowledge." [mijn nadruk] (142)

[Je mag kinderen over seksuele zaken geen angst aanjagen in deze stromingen, maar je mag seks ook niet belangrijk maken, zo is daar het idee. Maar hoe positief is dat trivialiseren dan? In feite is dat juist een negatieve aanpak, zeker bij kinderen die in hun ontdekkingstocht alles natuurlijk superbelangrijk vinden: hun enthousiasme voor seksuele zaken wordt niet bepaald gewaardeerd en dat voelen ze. Dus gaan ze dingen in het verborgene doen en dan zeggen de ontwikkelingspsychologen dat er sprake is van een latentieperiode. Omdat al die volwassenen het seksuele kind onzichtbaar hebben gemaakt ... ]

"Regardless of its perceived origins, childish sexual potentiality with all its perils was effectively defused and rewritten through a range of strategies that assiduously avoided any negative constructions of sexuality from whatever source. Despite, or perhaps because of, the commitment to scientific training of the child and the translation of professional advice into parental practice, the child was marginalized — acknowledged only as the passive receptor, not the active agent." [mijn nadruk] (144)

"We have used the term desexualization above, yet the texts would appear to contradict our claim. They all insisted on the need to inculcate a positive and comfortable relationship between the child and its body, a relationship that included but did not prioritize its sexuality. However, the sex that was spoken of was mechanical. Like the underlying dominant framework of modernity, this was a sex that was rationalized and ordered — a process that appeared parallel in significance to a balanced diet. It was a “sex” with a purpose but without erotic presence; a sex that was serious but at the same time trivialized. “Developing the sexual child” was, in retrospect, a profoundly frustrating methodology and philosophy. There was sexual enthusiasm evident, for sexual prudery was backward and damaging, and excessive constraint would distort the child’s social development. Yet, ultimately, the possibilities this ideological shift offered were sacrificed at the altar of purpose and outcome." [mijn nadruk] (145)

[Zo is het. ]

(147) Concluding Thoughts and Potentials for Future Thinking

"As we have already illustrated in the introduction, the recent phenomenon of sexualization phobia provides an excellent example of all that is irrational and ahistorical about the sexual child in our contemporary culture. "(147)

"What is worthy of note, however, is that through our use of close textual analysis of a range of divergent sources we found that there were recurrent themes between discourses that signal a deeper ideological continuity. "(148)

Volgt nogmaals een korte beschrijving van de verschillende benaderingen.

"While the term normalization is not used specifically in the sources drawn upon in this study, normalization is nevertheless a shadowy presence in every discourse."(149)

"These characterizations are especially evident in the three case studies of the practical application of these interlocking but distinct constructions — purity, hygiene, and development. In all, the only evidence of agency permissible was that which demonstrated conformity with the prevailing adult values." [mijn nadruk] (150-151)

"Despite the best attempts to normalize the child’s sexuality over the nearly past two centuries, this topic continues to evoke high levels of anxiety. We might speculate that persistence of this response in our contemporary culture is precisely because of the ease with which it becomes a metaphorical repository for the expression of wider social anxieties. If so, we contend, perhaps it is time for a different way of thinking, one that is directed toward a positive and affirming recognition of the sexual subjectivity of the child on its own terms." [mijn nadruk] (151)

De benadering van Judith Butler wordt besproken als een betere aanpak van het thema. Kinderen zelf moeten ook een rol spelen in de 'onderhandelingen' over hun seksueel gedrag.

"Recognizing the sexual subjectivity of children requires the creation of a cultural context that acknowledges them as socially viable sexual subjects and affirms their agency as such. A child’s sexuality, like all sexuality, is situated at the intersection of culture, the body and individual biography —as something that is shaped by the social and open to refutation and resistance. In this regard, discussions on children’s sexuality should no longer be the sole domain of parents, policymakers, professionals, or even children. Instead, the sexual rights of children should be part of a larger collective and collaborative endeavor to create a social setting that promotes children’s self-determination and the exercise of sexual agency. Both children and adults should be recognized as subjects who are mutually engaged, as agents, in questions of sexual rights and sexual citizenship."\ [mijn nadruk] (153)

De auteurs geven vier punten van aandacht voor het realiseren van deze benadering:

"First, recognizing the sexual subjectivity of children should highlight the mutual codependence of children and adults. Children should not be constructed as lower in the hierarchy of cognition or as in the process of becoming adult. Both of these positions render children illegitimate as social subjects. Recognition takes children seriously as valid and socially legitimate subjects entitled to sexual agency."(153)

"Second, we need to conceptually uncouple children’s sexual agency from that of adults: children’s sexuality should not be constructed as a mirror to or prefix of adult sexuality."(154)

"Third, we need to take sexual difference and multiplicity seriously. A culture that supports the sexual agency of children must acknowledge a multiplicity of sexualities and sexual expressions. Sexuality is shaped at the nexus of personal biography and our relation to social norms — thus it is constructed within a sociological context. It is never simply our own nor is it only a reflection of dominant culture — it is an amalgamation of culture, biography, and experience (Weeks 2003)"(154-155)

"The final paradigm shift would require that we stop using the protection of children to legitimate surveillance and social control more broadly. As we have illustrated throughout this history, discourses on childhood sexuality were rarely about children themselves. Instead, childhood sexuality and the desire to bring it under control provided an avenue for addressing other cultural anxieties (e.g., racial purity, affirming the institution of marriage, and constructing more rigid gender boundaries). Consequently, discourses on childhood sexuality served to legitimate social interventions that obliterated the agency inherent in the bodies and pleasures of children themselves."(155)