Pedophilia, Patriarchy & the Conservative Agenda (Part 3)
How do patriarchy and the Conservative agenda function to enable pedophilia?
To understand this, there are still a few more factors that have to be brought into the open. One of the most important being that, in North American society, children are largely viewed as the property of their parents (not at all dissimilar to women being viewed historically as the property of their husbands), and as such are already objects even before aspects of adult sexuality are projected on to them (as discussed in Part 1). As feminists understand, and have discussed in commentary on the objectification of women and rape by men, an object has no right to say no. There is, beyond any consideration of physical size, a cultural power imbalance between children and adults which is expoitable by pedaphiles (they do need to garner enough localised trust first, before they can use this power, but that is a separate issue).
On the issue of sex itself, we must come to the uncomfortable (for many) recognisation that children, as humans, are sexual beings (parents, where does the infant's hand go when the diaper comes off? -- and personally, I can remember a 7 year old blonde that I would have liked to have kissed back when I was 6, though I tend to prefer them a fair bit older than that now). We must also, and somewhat more easily, recognise that childhood sexuality is not the same thing as adult sexuality (hell, adult sexuality isn't the same thing at 60 that it is at 35, that it is at 20). Why this is important is in how it interacts with our sex negative culture.
In a culture where abstinence only sex education (for adolescents) is increasingly the norm, how much sexual knowledge can we expect even a school aged child to have? At the extreme, how many children enter school, having as their only referent to their own genitals the term "down there?" Children learn quite easily that there are some things that U aren't supposed to be comfortable talking about. In a culture where even many progressive parents find embarrassment naming body parts with three year olds, and Conservative parents (with the help of their Minister) are teaching that those same parts are disgusting and sinful and something to be ashamed of even having, how many children are actually going to be comfortable enough with their own bodies to say something when they think that they've been touched inappropriately?
So, we have a culture where all adults have (at least to an extent) an authority over all children, and where the human body is largely a source of shame. Into this we add a sexualisation of children (via transference) through a culture of fetishes -- with girls primarily sexualised though clothing and boys primarily sexualised though sport and achievement.
In other words, pedaphiles have the cultural power needed to coerce children into sexual acts, and a virtual guarantee of secrecy between private coercion and institutionalised shame, within the context of a culture that is sexually objectifying children in order to turn them into sexually objectified adults.
And all of this without even discussing the pedaphiles themselves or how it is that they became pedaphiles in the first place.
To understand this, there are still a few more factors that have to be brought into the open. One of the most important being that, in North American society, children are largely viewed as the property of their parents (not at all dissimilar to women being viewed historically as the property of their husbands), and as such are already objects even before aspects of adult sexuality are projected on to them (as discussed in Part 1). As feminists understand, and have discussed in commentary on the objectification of women and rape by men, an object has no right to say no. There is, beyond any consideration of physical size, a cultural power imbalance between children and adults which is expoitable by pedaphiles (they do need to garner enough localised trust first, before they can use this power, but that is a separate issue).
On the issue of sex itself, we must come to the uncomfortable (for many) recognisation that children, as humans, are sexual beings (parents, where does the infant's hand go when the diaper comes off? -- and personally, I can remember a 7 year old blonde that I would have liked to have kissed back when I was 6, though I tend to prefer them a fair bit older than that now). We must also, and somewhat more easily, recognise that childhood sexuality is not the same thing as adult sexuality (hell, adult sexuality isn't the same thing at 60 that it is at 35, that it is at 20). Why this is important is in how it interacts with our sex negative culture.
In a culture where abstinence only sex education (for adolescents) is increasingly the norm, how much sexual knowledge can we expect even a school aged child to have? At the extreme, how many children enter school, having as their only referent to their own genitals the term "down there?" Children learn quite easily that there are some things that U aren't supposed to be comfortable talking about. In a culture where even many progressive parents find embarrassment naming body parts with three year olds, and Conservative parents (with the help of their Minister) are teaching that those same parts are disgusting and sinful and something to be ashamed of even having, how many children are actually going to be comfortable enough with their own bodies to say something when they think that they've been touched inappropriately?
So, we have a culture where all adults have (at least to an extent) an authority over all children, and where the human body is largely a source of shame. Into this we add a sexualisation of children (via transference) through a culture of fetishes -- with girls primarily sexualised though clothing and boys primarily sexualised though sport and achievement.
In other words, pedaphiles have the cultural power needed to coerce children into sexual acts, and a virtual guarantee of secrecy between private coercion and institutionalised shame, within the context of a culture that is sexually objectifying children in order to turn them into sexually objectified adults.
And all of this without even discussing the pedaphiles themselves or how it is that they became pedaphiles in the first place.
posted by ARConn at 2:28 p.m.
1 Comments:
Very interesting, thanks. and I agree with you.
I also think that there is yet another way in which authoritarian-"traditional" mores contribute to pedophilia: the part where the orientation/fetish/whatever itself is formed.
Mostly basing this on some high-profile cases (Michael Jackson, Victorian John Ruskin, a few others); but it strikes me that there are a few common elements:
1)-very- authoritarian and sexually repressive background, to the point where even if actual physical sexual abuse has not taken place (and it seems like it often has done), one could still justifiably call it "sexual abuse:" covert incest, spiritual abuse of sexuality, that sort of thing.
2) Adulthood and particularly adult sexuality seen as somehow terrifying and sinister. Elements from 1) contribute to this quite a bit; also adults in pedophile-to-be's life are harsh and forbidding, and probably have prematurely rushed him into an extremely dour sort of "early adulthood" as well.
3) Childhood and by extension children therefore take on a special golden significance: happiness, freedom, and above all, *innocence.* And unlike all the routes toward adult sexuality as established by the punitive culture, "innocence" is seen as a -good- thing, an...attractive thing. Some people have taken the "become as little children" bit a little too literally, perhaps.
but in any case, the pedophile is picking up on one of the covert messages of the repressive culture you've been describing: *it is okay to be attracted to children, because children, unlike adults, are "innocent," or free of taint; and thus, -safe.-*
it's just that in the case of the pedophile, for the particular personal reasons as outlined in 1 and 2, he's taken it a step further: now the attraction is quite literal and overtly erotic.
That's my theory, anyway.
But I mean: all you have to do is look at the Michael Jackson thing. Sure, celebrity fucking was a big part of it; but also, the whole, "oh, he CAN'T be like THAT; he's a child himself!" Well, yes: exactly. But y'see, that would never have played if people weren't SO needing to believe that children are asexual and thus "innocent" to begin with.
which is also why it's considered more or less O.K. for a grown man to be indulging in "Neverland."
yeah, the MJ thing. loads of cultural shit to unpack there, really. fear of aging and thus death is another big part of it, and can also ultimately be traced back to our peculiar form of post-Industrial Calvinism, i think.
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