Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots De seksuele ontwikkeling van jongeren Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Sex trafficking Prostitutie PornografieIncididunt nisi non nisi incididunt velit cillum magna commodo proident officia enim.
Kate GLEESON / Catharine LUMBY[De context van het boek is deze keer eens niet de VS, maar Australië.]
Nog tot aan het midden van de 90er jaren werd de toegang van jongeren tot informatie (boeken en tijdschriften, radio en tv) gereguleerd door ouders en instanties. Met de komst van het Internet is dat onmogelijk geworden.
"This unprecedented access to knowledge is producing anxieties around what children know and what they should be entitled to know. At the same time, a spotlight has been placed around the world on the institutionalised sexual and physical abuse of children in churches, schools, state-run care facilities and, to a growing degree, in families. The dawning recognition of the extent of adult predation has understandably only heightened concerns about the need to protect children from harm. In this book, the authors explore the contexts in which the abuse of children occurs and look at how enhancing children’s agency can play a preventative role." [mijn nadruk] (15)
"We tend to see childhood and adolescence as fixed states – as periods of life where there are necessary limits on rights, agency and access to knowledge. In fact, as historian. Philippe Ariès outlines in his seminal work Centuries of Childhood, how we define childhood is a cultural and historical phenomenon."(15)
[Hè hè, gelukkig wordt hier historisch gedacht.]
Pas met de Romantiek ontwikkelde zich het beeld van het onschuldige kind.
"We now extend this notion of childhood innocence, at least in the Western world, not only to children but to young teenagers. The younger children are, the stronger the impulse is to protect their innocence. The question is, how do we understand innocence and when are we protecting adults as opposed to children?
This book will challenge received mainstream and scholarly ideas about how and why child abuse occurs and offer fresh ideas about understanding how enhancing young people’s agency can make a difference to their lives and to ensuring they have an opportunity to grow up developing their own voices and identities, free from adult coercion.
The aim of this edited collection is to bring together interdisciplinary research around the high-profile subject of child sexual abuse and to look closely at why public concern and awareness is often diverted away from the real issues at stake. It challenges the notion that ‘sexting’ and online pornography are playing a key role in grooming young people for abuse. It also looks empirically at the evidence for the cycle-of-abuse theory, the agency that children and young people have in speaking out, and the role that legal and media discourses play in framing the way we understand child sexual abuse.
A dominant theme in many of these chapters is that discourses and practices of protection are, in fact, covert discourses and practices of control." [mijn nadruk] (16)
Volgt een overzicht van de inhoud van het boek.
"This book is, above all, a re-examination of the role of agency in the lives of our young people. It shows, through an historical lens, how legal, medical and social discourses have denied children agency when it came to reporting and even naming sexual abuse. It asks us to think about what is at stake when it comes to recognising and encouraging agency in young people. What can we do as adults to ensure they feel able to speak up and speak out?" [mijn nadruk] (30)
[Hm, dat belooft wat. Klinkt allemaal erg kritisch. Met als hoofdideeën onder andere dat veel 'beschermende' maatregelen vanuit de overheid / de wet allerlei negatieve gevolgen hebben voor jongeren en seksualiteit en dat veel volwassenen er heel verkeerde - bevooroordeelde - opvattingen op na houden over jongeren en seks. En de jongeren komen eindelijk eens zelf aan het woord.]
"It is now almost taken for granted that children have capacities to engage in everyday social relations, negotiate complex interactions and utilise a range of emotional, intellectual and material resources to effect change. Furthermore, this notion of agency is premised on capacities to exercise rational decision-making. This has been a central debate in discussions of children’s agency and has led several authors to argue that rationality is not an invariable quality of adults, or that children have a capability to exercise rationality but may require, as Biggeri and colleagues suggest, the assistance of others and specific social arrangements to enable this capacity." [mijn nadruk] (32)
Behalve als het over seksualiteit gaat. Het onderzoek naar 'agency' dat de auteurs hier presenteren leidt ook tot suggesties op dat vlak, ook al was het gericht op 'well-being' en niet direct op seksualiteit.
[Ik vraag me af of zo'n onderzoek hoe dan ook mogelijk zou zijn. Omdat het om kinderen tussen 8 en 15 jaar gaat moeten allerlei instanties (Ministerie, schoolhoofd) en de ouders de deelname van een kind goedkeuren. Ik durf te wedden dat die toestemming zelden verleend wordt.]
"In these debates, children’s own perspectives remain largely muted. Given this ambivalence around children’s agency, especially regarding sexuality and sexual identity, this chapter outlines children’s understandings and practices of agency, reconstructed from a study of children’s perceptions of well-being." [mijn nadruk] (33)
"Three key dimensions of agency are outlined which are relevant to our discussion – agency as the exercise of competence; agency as choice; and agency as freedom of action in everyday life."(34)
"Amongst a range of themes, two emerged that are especially salient for the topic of children, young people and sexual harms, which also demonstrate how children exercise agency. These are children’s discussions of privacy and health as important dimensions of their well-being. We discuss each in turn."(36)
Het thema 'privacy'.
"One of the touch points for expressions of ambivalence regarding children’s sexual agency is children’s privacy. This has materialised around discussions of children’s use of digital and social media, where children’s access to and competence with forms of social media have been constructed as problematic.(...) through which the boundary between the public and the private is transgressed and where, in its use, adult control of children’s behaviour is limited. This is expressed in concerns about how digital and social media allow children and young people to be exposed to and share sexual images of themselves and others, whether solicited or compelled." [mijn nadruk] (37)
"It is likely then that concerns about children’s use of digital technologies and social media are seen as problematic because they extend the realm of this private sphere for children in ways which largely bypass adult control." [mijn nadruk] (39)
"One response has been for adults to find ways to extend their supervision of children’s activities in their private spaces to protect children from, for example, online predators, commercial exploitation and cyberbullies. To a large extent, ‘good parenting’ is now associated with the degree to which parents can monitor their children’s activities, which discounts the need for children to experience privacy." [mijn nadruk] (39)
"So, what do children say about privacy? One aspect of what children emphasised was important to their well-being was the need for time to themselves and to be left alone when they desire this. In our discussions with children, being alone was important because it provided opportunities for them to undertake critical aspects of identity work, such as time for self-reflection and the space to work through the events of the day. This requires solitude, limiting the ways in which others can access you and control your time." [mijn nadruk] (40)
"Children’s responses regarding the need for privacy can also be interpreted as a desire to exercise control over how they share or disclose information about themselves to others ... " [mijn nadruk] (41)
"The private is therefore also a realm of sociability, often including peer networks, whether friends are physically or virtually present."(44)
"Because privacy involves a right not to share information or emotions, there is a deep connection between trust and privacy. By respecting an individual’s privacy, we also invest trust in them." [mijn nadruk] (45)
"This description resonates with children’s discussions elsewhere in our research of agency as freedom to make choices."(46)
Kinderen wijzen ook op de tegenstrijdige boodschappen die ze op zich af krijgen: van een kant 'eet gezond' en van de andere kant 'eet een Snicker of neem en hamburger'. Ze hebben die tegenstrijdigheid heel goed door.
"While their discussion is about healthy eating, we could make a similar point regarding children having to mediate between discourses in the public sphere that are highly sexualised and those that deny their sexuality. (...) The extent to which they are expected to mediate between these discourses, largely as consumers, stands in contrast with how they are positioned as having limited agency regarding their own health." [mijn nadruk] (50)
"Children’s discussions of health, as a dimension of their overall sense of well-being, are replete with images of the performing body, the body in motion and the body imbued with sensory experience. Their discussions emphasise how the body relates functionally to its surroundings and engages in social interaction, rather than something described through diagnostic signs, such as muscle mass or the absence of illness."(55)
"There are several implications we can draw from these findings that are pertinent to issues regarding children, young people and perceptions of sexual harm.
First, the intersection between the public and private provides an important context for recognising the need for children’s privacy and for relationships that can mediate risk. Public discourses regarding children and sexuality have been framed by an intersection of contemporary ideas about childhood, and contemporary notions of risk. Childhood is constructed as a time of innocence, vulnerability and dependence, and sexuality is often posed as a risk to these qualities of childhood. This provides a powerful justification for monitoring children in their private spaces, evident in popular concerns regarding children’s use of digital and social media. Hence, the kinds of risks which children are exposed to are quite particular, centering on risks to transgressing a specific concept of childhood innocence. These risks are deemed to be located principally in the public sphere, conceptualised as the invasion of images or behaviours produced or that exist elsewhere upon the privacy of the child and his or her family. Consequently, the protection of children is seen not only to involve regulating children’s participation in public life, but also regulating the intermediate zone of the public within the private – what children watch, with whom, and for what purpose – thus justifying an increasing surveillance of children’s private spaces. This is closely connected with more traditional ideas that children as a social group are unable to manage risks generally. In this respect, the protection of children is also a source of control over children." [mijn nadruk] (56)
"Secondly, our findings suggest the importance of moderated risk, which recognises the realities of children’s physical and social vulnerability. Public discussions about children’s health emphasise individual-parental responsibility, through which children’s bodies become the site of social anxieties regarding sexual and moral norms. However, children’s discussions of health are replete with images of the body as both sensual and vulnerable, as having a capacity to experience pleasure as well as pain, as both risk-taking and risk-averse. This openness of the body to the world is also highlighted in children’s discussion of agency as practical enactments in everyday life and, like discussions of privacy, suggests the importance of allowing moderated forms of risk." [mijn nadruk] (58)
"One implication of this is that policy should not aim to eliminate all danger or risk, which are facts of social life, but instead establish conditions through which citizens can mediate or meaningfully engage with risk."(59)
[Dit is voor het grootste deel een historisch overzicht van hoe verschillende instanties en groepen in de samenleving - m.n. NSWales in Australië - omgingen met seksueel misbruik van vooral jongens.]
"The chapter is guided by two distinct paradoxes about the historical treatment of gender and child sexual abuse. The first concerns the fact that despite a feminist emphasis on girls abused in the family, the organised prolific ‘homosexual’ paedophile has formed the primary focus of collective fears, imaginings and police operations since at least the 1970s. And still, the opportunistic male sex offender abusing boys in institutions would appear now to have hidden in plain sight for generations. The second paradox concerns the fact that despite society’s almost universal abhorrence of paedophiles as ‘monsters’, the sexual abuse of children remains common, with more men having targeted boys than perhaps ever imagined. Here I want to examine the historic role that medicine, law and feminist child protection policies have played in these contradictory outcomes, which are only beginning to be acknowledged, and hopefully remedied, in the wake of the Royal Commission." [mijn nadruk] (63)
"In the general population, girls outnumber boys as sexual abuse victims by significant ratios. Reading the Royal Commission as an isolated cultural artifact might suggest that these ratios are in fact reversed."(67)
"Florence Rush’s explosive, landmark presentation, ‘The sexual abuse of children: a feminist point of view’, at the 1971 New York Radical Feminists Rape Conference identified father-daughter incest as the all-pervasive product of patriarchy enabled by Freudian-influenced psychiatric disciplines to dismiss women’s claims of abuse and maintain the patriarchal family. Rush’s polemic was emblematic of the second-wave feminist ‘rediscovery’ of child sexual abuse, which was preoccupied with emphasising the ubiquity of incest across social classes and implicating the medical profession in a comprehensive ‘cover-up’ of abuse in middle-class families."(68)
"Kinsey was so uninterested in boys’ abuse that he declined to ask men about their experiences of it in his 1948 study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. This was despite his sympathetic study of male paedophiles and his proselytising that of the one in four women who reported unwanted childhood sexual contact, it was ‘difficult to understand’ why they would be disturbed by these assaults, if not for social conditioning. [mijn nadruk] "(70)
"Unsurprisingly, when feminists came to formulate analyses of child sexual abuse, they also focused on girls, mirroring the gendered categories of the disciplines they aimed to resist and dismissing the abuse of boys."(70)
[Waarom was dat niet verrassend? Omdat het de algehele trend was? De algehele trend was hoe dan ook het ontkennen van incest / seksueel misbruik, ook van meisjes dus. Waarom dan uitsluitend voor dat laatste kiezen? Vanwege de algemene visie van feministen met mannen als dader en vrouwen als slachtoffer. Je ziet er aan hoe enorm er gegeneraliseerd werd.]
"The fact that many boys are molested by otherwise heterosexually identifying men, including family members, or ‘celibate’ men of churches, was neglected in the formative child abuse theories of the twentieth century. If boys’ abuse was considered at all, it was typically viewed as a problem of homosexuality and deviancy, rather than patriarchy or the family. This reflected legal and medical approaches that had long treated homosexual men as deviants."(71)
"This correlation of boys’ abuse with men’s homosexual identities, which was performed by feminists, therapists, doctors and law enforcement agents alike, has had sustained effects on the ways in which meaning is made of boys’ sexual agency and abuse, within families and beyond. The role of the law in proscribing men’s homosexual sex and their personal and political identities has been crucial to this process."(72)
"The enduring prohibition on adult men’s sexuality sustained at a time of otherwise radical social change intensified a climate, even among gay and women’s liberation movements, in which boys’ sexual agency was treated as fundamentally different from girls’." [mijn nadruk] (72)
"Ironically, the ban on men’s homosexual sex led some to argue that boys needed less protection than girls. It also provided discursive space for the argument made by the paedophile rights movement that paedophiles should be viewed as a persecuted sexual minority just like gay men, which only contributed to common misinformed perceptions of homosexuals and paedophiles as one and the same." [mijn nadruk] (73)
"The discriminatory treatment of homosexual and heterosexual sex, including the age of consent, and the different ways in which boys’ and girls’ sexual agency was subsequently theorised, has continued to shape, even haunt, legal and political treatments of child sexual abuse, of both boys and girls."(75)
"As may be expected, many gay campaigners were keen to distance themselves from paedophiles as having no sexual interest in children, whereas paedophiles also tried to distinguish themselves from violent child molesters, identifying instead as ‘child-lovers’. As a result, all three radical campaigns – gay, feminist, and paedophile – shared the common theme of characterising the sexual abuse of children as predominantly involving girls within families. Ironically, each radical movement continued to mirror the conservative, gendered therapeutic and common-law formulations of ‘carnal knowledge’ and ‘incest’." [mijn nadruk] (81)
Kern van de zaak:
"Sexting by young people is no longer a marginal behaviour. As our research clearly indicates, young people embracing the possibilities of new technologies are increasingly engaged in technologically facilitated sexual or sexualised activity that ranges from the romantic to the coercive to the abusive, although disproportionally the former rather than the latter. In this context many ‘experts’ have suggested that the harm resulting from such activity is significant. On the other hand, in our research we found that young people themselves do not report high levels of harmful consequences and that most activity is consensual – if not always respectful.
In order to better understand claims about sexting and young people’s practices, this chapter explores the harms associated with sexting. It discusses this in the context of not only examples of sexting practice, but also in how attempts to regulate it can result in harms that perhaps outweigh those presented by sexting itself. In doing so we draw implicitly on data from our own two-year study funded by the Australian Institute of Criminology and on subsequent research by other scholars." [mijn nadruk] (96)
[Leuk, die 'experts' zo heel cynisch tussen aanhalingstekens.]
Er zijn wel mensen die vinden dat sexting eigenlijk niks nieuws is en zich niet druk maken over het fenomeen. Anderen doen dat wel.
"In this vein a dominant narrative has been directed towards young people and their well-being in light of not only the embarrassment, discomfort, or humiliation that can occur from sexting gone wrong, but also the anxiety adults often articulate about expressions of childhood sexuality.
Indeed, as we have noted elsewhere, mainstream discussion about young people sexting has tended to focus almost exclusively on its harmful outcomes."(98 [mijn nadruk] )
"This article attempts to reposition the question of harm using a framework developed from zemiology."(100)
"Zemiology as an approach critiques the notion of ‘crime’ as defined by the state. It suggests that crime as defined by the state ‘consists of many petty events’ which redirect attention away from more serious social harms ‘caused by chronic conditions or states of affairs’. It is an anti-ontological approach that re-conceptualises crime and crime control – indeed it dispenses with these terms altogether." [mijn nadruk] (100)
"A zemiological approach is also by nature a rejection of a crime control approach. Crime control policies and legislation since the 1980s have sought to not only reduce crime through tougher punishments and sentences, they have also used the criminal law as a way of dealing with an ever-expanding range of behaviours deemed criminal. This criminalisation comes complete with its own set of harms, from those inflicted upon the guilty party through the punishment itself, to harm to their family, and the longer-term stigma of being labelled as a criminal or offender. These final points have particular implications for the way in which sexting by young people is dealt with." [mijn nadruk] (102)
"In Australian jurisdictions, as with many jurisdictions internationally, the Commonwealth and many state and territory governments initially strengthened child pornography laws in response to the concern that new technologies were seen to be escalating the dangers of exploitation of young people by adults. Indeed, increased concern about the figure of the ‘paedophile’ and the online grooming of children by sexual predators lurking in cyberspace, as well as the sharing of child abuse material, created an environment in which it was seen as imperative to amend and toughen laws." [mijn nadruk] (103)
"The problem is that sexting by young people, even when it occurs consensually, fits the legal definition of child pornography, even when the motivations, outcomes, and engagement in sexting are likely to be significantly different to the justifications for the laws expressed in this judgement."(104)
"The question of harms implicit in the use of criminal law to deal with young people sexting, and in the outcomes of sexting behaviours themselves, would seem to make zemiology an appropriate lens through which to view sexting. Below are our formative attempts at applying such a framework."(106)
Eerst wordt er naar de 'harms' gekeken, dus naar de schade die sexting kan veroorzaken. Emotionele schade: de 'normale' benadering is dat jongeren niet echt zelf 'consent' kunnen geven. Daar komt bij - ook een 'standaard' idee - dat een jongere later spijt kan hebben van het verzenden van een 'sext'. Psychologische schade. Schade aan de reputatie.
"young people need protection because they lack the capacity to exercise judgment"(107)
"Research in this area has tended to highlight the fact that young people can act impulsively, and that a decision made ‘in the moment’ can be impossible to reverse once an image enters the digital realm. Feelings of regret, low self-esteem, and even panic can follow the decision to send an image."(107)
"Being embarrassed, humiliated, feeling shamed, and being shamed by others viewing their image can have severe consequences psychologically – and at the extreme has resulted in cases of suicide."(108)
"Moreover, sexting can be used as a form of cyberbullying and can give rise to a range of technologically facilitated abuse and its associated harms.
Research (including our own) has clearly identified a strongly gendered dimension to sexting, with images more likely to be of girls and distributed by boys. There is evidence suggesting that girls feel particular peer pressure to send naked images.This can have negative impacts for the young person’s privacy and reputation, which can lead to ‘poor self-esteem and self-image, isolating behaviours, school avoidance, eating disorders, self-harm and suicidal ideation and behaviours’. And as we will argue below, these individual and cultural harms are structurally reproduced." [mijn nadruk] (109)
"If the images are then distributed to others, they could be a source of haunting harm and could result in far-reaching consequences for the minors involved. This haunting harm scenario is continually reinforced by media campaigns and education campaigns. These often focus on the idea of continuing damage to reputation caused by the sharing of images particularly at the end of a relationship." [mijn nadruk] (110)
"A significant harm associated with sexting comes not from the behaviour itself but from the legal responses to it. There have been cases where young people have been prosecuted and found guilty of child pornography offences where they have consensually engaged in sexting." [mijn nadruk] (111)
[Belachelijk. Weer zo'n vorm van criminaliseren.]
"Criminalising sexting precludes sexually active 16- and 17-year-olds (in some jurisdictions) from any visual representation of their sexual life, even to one another. This leads sociologist Kath Albury et al. to question whether this excludes young people from the rights and forms of citizenship enjoyed by adults. This may be a significant individual and social harm in and of itself. Criminalisation also effectively silences the voices of young people as participants in sexual behaviour." [mijn nadruk] (112)
[Precies! ]
"Another indirect harm that has been associated with sexting is that it is symbolic of, and could encourage, problematic sexual behaviour among younger people."(113)
[De grote angst van alle conservatievelingen ... ]
"Some research associates sexting with a gamut of negative risk factors, including ‘risky’ sexual behaviours. Negative associations between sexting and sexual practices constructed as ‘risky’ or ‘deviant’ are, however, unsurprising, given the social discomfort that adults may feel about young people as emerging sexual subjects. As Jackson states, ‘[c]hildren are still not generally treated as sexual beings and the possibility that they might be makes many of us feel uneasy’. In the US, Kimpel comments that society is ‘deeply uncomfortable with adolescent sexuality’." [mijn nadruk] (113)
"It would seem to us unsurprising that young people involved in sexting might also be more likely to be sexually active. However, the evidence for any causal link is limited, and the link between sexting and risky sexual behaviours even more vexed."(114)
"In contrast to the framing of sexting as inexorably linked to risky, deviant sexual behaviour is the view that sexting may well facilitate a positive experience by providing a cyber (rather than real life) environment in which young people can safely explore their sexuality and take control of it. In this vein, Simpson argues that mobile technologies allow young people to free themselves from the traditional constraints imposed on their sexuality by adults and to construct their own paradigms of sexual life." [mijn nadruk] (115)
"Thus, idealised displays of femininity can lead to the commodification of girls as sexual objects, reproducing and reinforcing particular stereotypes, social relations, and even violence, which then need to be negotiated in the terrestrial world as well. This external negotiation creates a particular set of anxieties and double standards for young women to negotiate. Indeed, if porno-discourses provide the scripts for sexting it is likely an extension of the social harm that pornography itself can reap.
While young men’s social roles may not be as ascribed by porno-discourses as young women’s, they are not immune either. Particular heteronormative versions of masculinity also become idealised, with young men who fail to exhibit the requisite ‘six-pack’ or smooth pecs likely to fall short. Moreover, young gay men may be expected to exhibit a particular, highly sexualised subjectivity on the basis of participation in online environments such as Grindr and Scruff." [mijn nadruk] (116)
"Intersecting with the individual and cultural harms outlined, we can also identify a range of socio-structural harms. These include the perpetuation and encouragement of child abuse through the distribution of sexual images of young people and the perpetuation of stereotypical gendered power relations.
A more indirect social harm associated with sexting is that the availability of such images can whet the appetites of child abusers and encourage an enabling culture in regard to committing offences against young people." [mijn nadruk] (117)
[Dat laatste moet dan eerst maar eens aangetoond worden. ]
"While it is easy to overstate the causal links between broader child abuse and the distribution of ‘sexts’ amongst consenting young people, there have nonetheless been a number of cases where websites dedicated to the posting of non-consensually gained images (of young women in particular) have been posted for the titillation or amusement of subscribers demonstrating that these harms are to be taken seriously."(119)
Kern van de zaak:
"Mainstream media, law and policy representations of and responses to sexual violence against Indigenous children is part of a broader ongoing colonial failure to listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, in particular to women and children. We argue that there are two dichotomised responses to Aboriginal child sex abuse, both of which are conceptually linked to ongoing colonial violence. These responses are part of a continuity in failure to perceive value in Indigenous Australian cultures, to take responsibility for the intergenerational harms which colonial policies – including forced removals from land and culture and associated violence – have caused, and in the ongoing imposition of assimilationist values."(123)
"The removal of Aboriginal children from their mothers and families during the extensive period known as the Stolen Generations facilitated widespread sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in missions, homes and non-Aboriginal households that procured children as often unpaid domestic servants and labourers. As the Bringing Them Home inquiry reported, ‘Children in every placement were vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation’."(135)
"The law’s failure to protect Indigenous children publicly signals non-Indigenous Australian prejudice that holds that Aboriginal children’s lives don’t matter and encourages impunity, rather than accountability, for adult male perpetrators against Aboriginal children. In turn, this contributes to creating conditions that further entrench Aboriginal children’s vulnerability to child sexual abuse and the magnitude of psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual trauma associated with such abuse."(146)
"In 2014–15, the authors of this chapter conducted focus groups in NSW high schools to find out specifically what young people themselves have to say about how online, mobile and social media affect the way they form their identities, their friendships and their attitudes to sexuality and intimate relationships. The research project, funded by the Australian Research Council, was titled Young People, Sex, Love and Media (YPSLM). At its heart was a desire to hear directly from young people about how they are navigating relationships and personal identities in a world where access to information once seen as adult has exploded. We were particularly keen to know more about what they wanted support with and who they are comfortable seeking advice from." [mijn nadruk] (163)
"It is now impossible to talk about ethics, sexuality and relationships without talking about the impact that online and social media platforms are having on how young people learn about these issues. Media technologies present very immediate challenges because they blur the boundaries between the school and the home, the home and the outside world. Schools and parents can filter content and put rules in place about the use of mobiles and online media, but students, even in younger age groups, are very skilled at evading restrictions, according to our research. Such evasions were a recurrent theme in focus groups." [mijn nadruk] (165)
"One thing many young people were clear about was that they didn’t want their parents or other adults intruding into their online world." [mijn nadruk] (166)
"Online pornography also came up in many discussions, particularly with the young men. None of the participants in our study, male or female, said they had been unduly disturbed by sexually explicit material they had encountered online. Young women in the older age group appeared resigned to the fact that young men would seek out this material – though, importantly, none of the young women in our sample said they felt they were being pressured into unwanted sexual behaviours as a result." [mijn nadruk] (167)
"A common theme of discussion was the important role teachers and schools play in supporting their journey into adulthood. One of the consistent but surprising findings was how few young people felt comfortable talking to their parents about their emerging sexuality and about how to form intimate relationships. Indeed, we found that an average of only one in five young people in the focus groups would ever seek advice on these matters at home – largely because they perceive that their parents would be uncomfortable discussing sexuality or intimate relationships. Far more students cited contact with a trusted teacher as a pivotal source of information. And it was clear that these interactions often happened informally rather than as part of a discussion embedded in the curriculum.
The critical role schools and teachers play in young people’s lives emerged as one of the dominant themes in our findings. At the same time, the majority of students expressed concern that formal sex education too often focused on what one summed up as ‘biology and diseases’. In younger age groups, they said they felt they were often repeating lessons they’d had in upper primary school. In the older age groups, they expressed a desire to have more opportunity for discussions about how to communicate with an intimate partner and how to ask for what they want and what the other person wants." [mijn nadruk] (168)
"Gender was also a key theme in discussions in both the male and female groups. Many students felt that gender roles put pressure on them and that there was a double standard operating in regard to what was ‘appropriate’ when it came to communicating with the opposite sex, dating, and eventually forming intimate relationships." [mijn nadruk] (169)
"Research has consistently shown that formal sex education is often distant from the issues that young people nominate as the topics they most want to learn about. Young people want information about the emotional side of physical intimacy – how to start, manage and if necessary end relationships, and understand the place of love and physical intimacy in them. (...) Their comments support broader research showing that young people want to know how to make physical intimacy more pleasurable for themselves and for their partners." [mijn nadruk] (171)
"Looking over the research, despite almost 30 years of research findings in this area, much sex education continues to focus on ‘scientific’ approaches to sex education and excludes the real concerns of young people. This, understandably, leads to young people being disengaged from the material taught in these courses."(172)
"A range of obstacles constrain the delivery of holistic sex education, which focuses on the broader issues of gender and sexual identity as well as values and ethics; they include an overburdened curriculum, a lack of teacher training in delivery, and parental and political objections to students learning about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) issues."(176)
"Of course, educating young people always involves the transfer of knowledge about the adult world. And there will always be adults who resist that knowledge being passed on. (...)
Sex education will always be political. Even defining ‘sex education’ is. "(179)
[Het begin is tamelijk kritiekloos, vind ik:]
"Child sexual abuse is a serious issue of global significance. The World Health Organization estimates that, globally, 18 per cent of girls and 8 per cent of boys have experienced sexual abuse during the past year. In Australia, according to the Personal Safety Survey, 12 per cent of women and 4.5 per cent of men in Australia report having been sexually abused as children – that is, having experienced ‘any act, by an adult, involving a child under the age of 15 years in sexual activity’. Another important summary of Australian prevalence studies estimates that in relation to non-penetrative sexual abuse the figures are higher again, with 12 to 16 per cent of males and 23 to 36 per cent of females experiencing abuse." [mijn nadruk] (185)
[Tja, als je het zo definieert ... Elke nuance, elke vrijwilligheid, elk eigen initiatief wordt daarmee ontkend.]
"The damaging impacts of child sexual abuse have been well documented. Victims/survivors experience high rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, antisocial behaviours, suicidality, eating disorders, substance misuse, post-partum depression, parenting difficulties, sexual re-victimisation and sexual dysfunction. There are also substantial economic costs for the community due to lost productivity of victims/survivors and the extensive service provision (e.g. counselling, health) required." [mijn nadruk] (186)
[Ook kritiekloos. Die 'schade' is voor een groot deel een sociale constructie. Mensen voelen zich gedwongen zich als slachtoffers te gedragen, kunnen absoluut niet meer vrij of positief duiden wat er gebeurd is, omdat de samenleving om hen heen negatief denkt over seks. Trauma's hebben vaak minder met het seksuele te maken dan met het gewelddadige van het contact.]
"A vast body of research has been undertaken on what the public believes should be done about the problem of child sexual abuse. There tends to be a strong preference for punitive responses to offenders, such as sex offender registries, community notification, preventative detention, and residency restrictions. The public overwhelmingly perceives child sexual abusers as ‘others’, often ignoring the fact that most abuse occurs within families, and characterising abusers as ‘monsters’ and the like. However, little has been documented about what the public thinks causes child sexual abuse. Understanding public perceptions of the causes of child sexual offending is nonetheless vital as sex offender policy is strongly influenced by what the public wants." [mijn nadruk] (186)
[Precies, dus moeten we het 'grote publiek' geen stem geven in wat gedaan moet worden. Het laatste punt is wel boeiend, ja: waarom is het verschijnsel er en dan ook nog in zo'n grote omvang. Die 'cycle-of-abuse-theory' komt - ook bij het grote publiek - inderdaad altijd op de proppen: misbruikers zijn zelf misbruikt. Er is enorm veel af te dingen op die theorie die ook nog eens stigmatiserend is voor de mensen die misbruikt zijn en dat gebeurt hier dan ook terecht. Ik vind het een open deur, ik ga dit verder niet uitwerken.]
"Individualised explanations of child sexual abuse – such as that perpetrators are ‘sick’ or ‘evil’ aberrations – were challenged by feminist advocacy in this regard, and ‘child sexual abuse was exposed as a problem endemic to the patriarchal nuclear family and to hegemonic rather than marginal or deviant forms of masculinity and male sexuality’.
The enduring public adherence to the cycle-of-abuse explanation – and other individualising and/or pathologising causal explanations that divorce child sexual abuse from its sociostructural context – demonstrates that feminist advocacy has failed in this regard." [mijn nadruk] (206)
[Ik denk dat de feministes die hier besproken worden gelijk hebben: we hebben - nog steeds - te maken met een patriarchale samenleving met heel bepaalde waarden en normen voor masculien en feminien gedrag die mannen, maar ook vrouwen, volgen. Dat laatste zien of zagen feministes dan weer een stuk minder.]
"It has been well documented that much child sexual abuse is not committed by paedophiles – that is, by those with a fixed sexual orientation towards children. Rather, much or most sexual offending against children is opportunistic rather than predatory, and is committed by adult men whose sexual interest is predominantly adult women. However, the cycle-of-abuse narrative enables the public to ignore these inconvenient truths, despite feminist efforts to frame the problem in structural (that is, gendered) rather than individualistic terms." [mijn nadruk] (207)
"At the same time, feminist campaigners and other social reformers at the advent of modern age of consent reforms fought hard for higher ages of consent for girls for important reasons, including to protect girls and young women from child abuse and other forms of sexual exploitation, including from employers and family members. These campaigns typically drew on middle-class Victorian notions of sexuality – including the paradigmatic idea that male and female sexuality are fundamentally different – the underlying logic of which partly explains some of the contradictory effects of age of consent legislation that I will tease out further across the chapter." [mijn nadruk] (213)
"In this chapter the emphasis is on heterosexual sex as most commonly defined across most of the history of relevant legislation, i.e. penile penetration of a vagina."(213)
[Wat een merkwaardige inperking. Dus dat mag niet, maar de rest wel?]
"My primary focus, however, is not on current legislation but on the emergence and endurance of the age of consent as heteronormative, heavily gendered and, in its operations and discourses, highly inflected with contemporary assumptions and anxieties about class and race." [mijn nadruk] (214)
"I am stepping back in time then – before returning to the present moment in the concluding section – to foundational moments in the history of the age of consent to trace how various assumptions about female sexuality, childhood innocence or corruption, and male sexual agency or entitlement emerged and lingered." [mijn nadruk] (216)
The age of protection: 1880s–1920s
"In Britain, the US and Australia, the peak period of age of consent reform was from the 1880s through to the 1920s – which saw the age raised from an average of 10 to 12 to 14 to 16, set explicitly for girls, with an occasional nod to boys. In some European countries the age went up from an average of 10–12 to 14, though it generally remained lower than 16, the age enshrined in England and Wales in the historic and far-reaching Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, or ‘An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes’. This Act specifically set 16 as the age for vaginal–penile intercourse, though for oral and manual sex the age of consent remained 13 until the 1920s. These shifts were part of wider moves to regulate childhood across a range of sites (including labour and education) and a general upswing in sexual regulation, including in the European colonies, evidenced in Contagious Diseases Acts targeting prostitutes from the 1860s." [mijn nadruk] (218)
"That social purity advocates pushed on with a campaign to raise the age of consent to 21, while their opponents defended the status quo, is revealing of contradictory views held at the time about childhood, female sexuality and the role of the state. On the one hand, campaigners for change made the case that girls and young women under the age of 21 were too young, naïve and passive to consent to or want sex and thus required the protection (or control) of the state – the same state that set the marriageable age for girls at 12 until the late 1920s. On the other, defenders of existing laws drummed up frightening scenarios of middle-class men becoming entrapped by a law that denied them sexual access to young working-class women. It was in their interests to keep the age of consent for girls as it was. Meanwhile, not much of this public discourse corresponded with the reality of the sex lives of young, working-class women in particular, many of whom had already been having regular sex since their teens, including transactional sex for a lack of better options or simply because they wanted to have sex." [mijn nadruk] (220)
"Social purity campaigners continued to bombard the legislature with new bills and amendments for the next four decades, culminating in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1922, which reiterated 16 as the age of consent, while dealing with some of the unfinished business of the 1885 Act. These included counter-balancing the escape clause with ‘the young man’s defence’ (in effect an escape clause for accused men under the age of 23), which survived until the Sexual Offences Act 2003 made all so-called ‘consensual’ relationships with minors illegal and all non-consensual sex offences, apart from rape, gender-neutral." [mijn nadruk] (222)
"Between 1876 and 1924, all Australian states enacted laws against incest (in many cases before England) and expanded the range of indictable sexual offences, often in tandem with proposals to raise the age of consent."(225)
[Ontstond die wetgeving nu werkelijk om meisjes en vrouwen te beschermen? Of kwam ze gewoon voort uit negatief en conservatief denken over seksualiteit? En dan vooral voor de arbeidersklasse en zo natuurlijk. De invloed van die middenklasse 'social purity movement' zegt toch zeker ook het laatste. Die beschermende functie viel overigens hoe dan ook tegen in de praktijk, zeggen de auteurs.]
"In this instance, the age of consent was raised to 16 – with an ‘immoral’ girls exemption. With this legal caveat, a girl’s past sexual experience could be raised by the defence, including in rape cases, while a carnal knowledge charge could be dismissed on the grounds a girl appeared to be over 16 or the accused believed she was a ‘common prostitute’, or an associate of one. With that move, historian Judith Allen has argued, ‘the parliament of New South Wales ensured…that a certain supply of “immoral” young women would be available for identification and sexual use by men’. Higher ages of consent, legislated elsewhere in Australia around this time, were similarly ineffective due to numerous loopholes for the defence on the basis of the girl’s physical appearance or alleged character.
Court cases featured the same preoccupation with the physical appearance of girls and young women evident in the parliamentary debates. Judges and juries often found it difficult to convict the accused if the ‘girl although under sixteen was to all intents and purposes a woman in physique’, to quote a Melbourne policeman in 1909. As historian Jill Bavin-Mizzi’s work on turn-of-the-century rape and carnal knowledge cases has shown, girls under 12 years of age were far more likely to obtain convictions than those aged 12 years or more.
Apart from the age, what also set younger and older girls apart was lack or suggestion of sexual knowledge. Girls under 12 were more likely to use sexually naïve language in court, while most older girls explained sex in ‘terms similar to those of adult women’. Perceptions of sexual knowledge had a clear impact on the outcome of carnal knowledge cases, with some juries acquitting the defendants on this basis, regardless of the fact that carnal knowledge cases were not premised on consent." [mijn nadruk] (231-232)
"While some influential nineteenth-century thinkers like the English psychologist Henry Maudsley held firm that childhood sexuality was both natural and universal – a view expanded and popularised by Freud in the next century – during the decades around the turn of the century, far more widespread was the understanding that childhood was an asexual state and that the presence of sexuality was an abnormality either congenital or as a result of parental failure. What was at issue then was when childhood ended and sexuality began, a conundrum debated both in parliaments and in the courts as new ages of consent were enforced. The period between ages 10 to 12, or the onset of puberty for girls and the crucial few years after this, was especially contested as participants variously defended the need for ‘protection’ from themselves or others or dismissed such a need altogether on the basis that physical maturity was the best indicator of sexual readiness. Emerging then, but not yet fully articulated apart from its early key theorists such as American psychologist G. Stanley Hall, was the notion of adolescence, a stormy transition period ‘where childhood is left behind but adult capacities are still developing’. The distinction that emerged in age of consent debates and cases between adolescent girls and younger girls not only illustrates this but is constitutive of it. It was during this period that a discernible distinction emerged between girls under 12 and those over, a distinction that helped prepare the ground for the modern notion of adolescence. By the 1950s, this period between childhood and adulthood was captured in the category ‘teenager’, with sex and sexuality among its most contested and scrutinised features, particularly for teenage girls." [mijn nadruk] (234)
1920s to the present
"Numerous feminist organisations continued to push for higher ages of consent, including in alliance with eugenicist groups such as the Racial Hygiene Association, who explicitly cast sexually precocious young women as threats to both white Australia and to young men."(235)
[Waaraan je kunt zien dat feministes niet altijd de juiste keuzes maken als het gaat om waarden en normen.]
"The pattern of institutionalising and/or punishing girls and young women for their sexual behaviour, already established by the end of the nineteenth century, continued into the twentieth and included forced adoptions. Given such practices, and the general emphasis on sexual activity as an index for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ femininity, historians such as Deborah Tyler have questioned the capacity of categories such as ‘childhood’, ‘adolescence’ and ‘delinquent’ to properly delineate how gendered (and classed) these phenomena are." [mijn nadruk] (236)
"The various legislations related to age of consent introduced in the early twentieth century would not undergo any significant revisions until at least the 1970s, under the influence of three sometimes intersecting, sometimes distinct rights movements – for women, children and gay people. Their agendas would not always dovetail, but under their collective pressure, all Australian jurisdictions from the 1970s began to amend sex law, partly in response to critiques of the law and its instruments as heteronormative and patriarchal." [mijn nadruk] (238)
De 'age of consent' ligt vrijwel overal in Australië rond de 16, 17 jaar, met af en toe een pleidooi voor 15 jaar (gezien wat er in de praktijk gebeurt).
"Furthermore, despite some progressive developments such as ‘near-age’ provisions that seek to recognise the sexual agency of young people close in age, child sexuality between the ages of 14 and 16 remains the murky area in age-of-consent legislation and interpretation."(240)
"At the time of writing, sexual consent is back on the public and legislative agenda but this time the primary focus is on the notion of ‘consent’ rather than age."(241)
Nog een verwijzing naar Egan en Hawkes vanwege het problematische karakter van alle 'beschermende' wetgeving op dit punt.