A few days ago I read this piece in New Matilda by philosopher Dr Mark Manolopoulos on the coexistence of an accepted hyper-sexualistion of children, and strongly condemned paedophilia. The fact that the former is condoned while the latter is condemned suggests a societal hypocrisy that is shameful, is the crux of his argument.
Although Dr Manolopoulos stresses that he makes no correlation between the two, the fact that he situates their coexistence in the realm of the hypocritical and shameful strongly suggests that he assumes a connection of some kind. Without a connection there is no hypocrisy, and there isn’t any shame either.
The first question is one we’ve been debating on Sheep for a few years now: are children hyper-sexualised?
There is only one, extremely narrow representation of female sexuality that is imposed on young girls. The grotesque image heading this text is an example of an ideal of physical sexuality that promises gratification to any male who is attracted in spite of, or because of, its lack of subtlety.
It’s a mainstream wet dream. Consequently, many women strive to emulate the impossible plasticity of the Barbie doll, and some women inflict the same struggle on their daughters in a ghastly mother-daughter bonding that to this observer, does not speak of hyper-sexualisation as much as it does of a desperate desire to be desired, and for the daughters to vicariously gratify the adult woman’s need.
A man or a woman who looks at a child in “sexy” adult clothing and make up and thinks, gawd, she’s so sexy, has something terribly awry with their perceptions and desires. The child is still a child, albeit a dressed-up child, and the adult who cannot tell the difference between dress-ups and the real is sexualising the child rather than seeing the child, and needs urgent assistance.
Can anyone in their right mind really look at a dressed-up child and see her as a sex object?
How many mothers who dress their daughters “sexily” are actually pimping them out to paedophiles? Practically none, I’d guess.
There is no proven correlation between the manner in which young girls are dressed, and their vulnerability to paedophiles. If there was, Dr Manolopoulos might have an argument, but there isn’t, and he doesn’t. Quite apart from the fact that many victims of child sexual assault are boys, who aren’t dressed in anything other than ordinary clothes.
The implication of the doctor’s thesis is the same old same old: girls and women will be attacked because of what we’re wearing. Paedophiles aren’t responsible for their crimes: little girls looking “sexy” provoked them, they couldn’t resist, and their mothers are to blame.
His remedy is, yes you guessed it, ban things.
Personally, I wouldn’t choose to dress my daughter, if I had one, in a manner that is Barbie sexual, but then I don’t dress myself like that either, except once I was in a burlesque show and that was fun.
Blaming paedophilia, or any sexual assault at all on the so-called “hyper- sexualisation” of the victim is yet again shifting the responsibility from the perpetrator, where it belongs, to the victim, where it doesn’t. This is the most shameful hypocrisy society urgently needs to address, but how much easier to demand the banning of clothing and music videos.
We don’t get raped because we wiggle our hips, no matter what our age. We get raped because rapists rape us. How about society tells rapists not to do that, and leaves us to dress ourselves and our daughters however we wish, without having to fear for our safety?
No Place For Sheep 
Nailed it.
Its probably worth noting (again) that children being ‘attacked’ by strangers is one of the rarest crimes in Australia, and considering then that paedophilia nearly always involves someone the child knows worrying about what the child is dressed in is surely of less a concern than keeping closer eye on the relationships and contact they have with adults.
This idea of sexualizing children keeps coming up without not nearly enough acknowledgment that its actually not really possible to sexualise a child at all. Children don’t have a developed sexual awareness in any real form, hence the reason why its so horrible to force sexual contact on them. What children do like to do, is copy adults; so dressing up like them is a trait common across cultures.
So again, I don’t think children CAN be sexualised, they can only have sexual contact forced upon them. Dress ups is just dress ups. Kiddy pageants might look tasteless but surely it doesn’t move the needle in paedophile stats, surely it takes a lot more than dress ups for that kind of crime.
Banning things, does that EVER work?
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No banning things NEVAH works.
I agree with you, Hawkpeter, I don’t think children can be sexualised. It’s the adult perception that’s at fault.
As for kiddy pageants – I always feel very sorry that the kiddies involved aren’t out playing & climbing trees.
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Agreed, no normal rational man would attack a child because he found it sexually alluring. But there are abnormal and irrational people out there, and if the opportunity arises they can and will attack.
I agree with Hawkpeter that the vast majority of child sex crimes occur within families or are perpetrated by someone in a parental capacity – priest, scoutmaster, sportscoach, teacher . . . someone with the abnormal sex drive and the opportunity.
I have no truck with the Banning And Censoring Wowser Agenda (BACWA) but if children were discouraged from dressups and the like in public, that might reduce the opportunity offered to these abnormals.
The BACWAists want to prevent adults from doing what they want to do and what they want to see and hear through whatever means they can. That of course includes trying to focus society’s and the authorities’ attention on child issues.
Their banning and censoring is at its most appealing when they can point to some possible harm to children.
Let us face the fact that there will always be the predators of one sort or another in our society. What we need is not banning but to teach children to exercise some caution, and for parents to be vigilant.
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Think of the children! BACWA’s favourite exhortation.
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Hawkpeter – probably should be a little bit careful about the stats around children being abused by strangers. Most child sexual abuse occurs after a period of “grooming” (another term I dislike. “Manipulation” or “coercion” would be better), so the child may well “know” the perpetrator well by the time the abuse happens, whereas the perpetrator might not have had anything to do with the child if he wasn’t “interested” in him/her in the first place.
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I grant that everyone other than direct family is a ‘stranger’ until they’re not.
My point is that greater attention should be paid towards parents vetting close relationships their kids have with anyone over this constant fear broadcasting of the ol’ stranger danger message.
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Paedophillia has taken on the dimensions of what I think the word evil used to mean. Our revulsion for pederasty is so complete that permission to hate is taken reflexively. Not that I want to defend child abusers, but I think our empathy for victims ought to be enough of a pointer to wrongdoing without giving in to an all encompassing mind numbing hatred. I’d even go so far as to mention that in the complexity of experience that is human nature many victims report the worst kind of abuse comes from those whom they loved and/or depended upon.
There is undeniably a very real and sense of tension between emotion and rationality around these issues that I wish to acknowledge. At the same time however I’m flummoxed by intellectuals whose efforts to understand important issues like this lead them to the conclusion that the merest catalyst to bad behaviour must be banned. FFS if you understand something then you should be able to articulate and help others share that understanding to good effect. That’s what makes “evil” abate!
I earlier used two words specifically, paedophilia, and pederasty to distinguish between the predilection and act of child sexual abuse. When we define the former as a perversion after the fashion of religious moral teachings shaped in a bygone era we may be both condemning a thought crime and underestimating an opportunity we have in a universally educated modern digital society to foster the kind of understanding that stands between an antisocial sociopath and his victim.
If nothing else I’d hope to appeal to practicing the Golden rule. In this case I’ll use a modified confucian version, “Do not do to others what you would not want done to you”, and I’d add “If you’re not sure ask!”
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Paedophilia includes pederasty, which means specifically the love of a man for a boy. Paedophilia is a far wider ranging term. They are not degrees of the same thing.
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I may have it wrong if you want to argue all the possible definitions however I really thought I could rely upon these two words to differentiate between thought and deed.
The phillia refers to a psychiatric disorder, thinking.
Pederasty refers to the formation of a specific kind of relationship, that between adult male and pre-pubescent boy, which is deemed abusive, though by no means covers or intends in this instance to describe all kinds of child abuse. I’m just associating it with acting upon the phillia, such that thought becomes deed, at which point I hope most people might agree a bright line is crossed.
Could I have put it differently? Am I aware of common usage? Yes to both.
I am really only concerned to say intellect and understanding inform choices between thinking and acting in a way that dumbing things down to a ban or a taboo in typical BACWA fashion does not.
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When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.
Humpty Godfrey ? :))
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Well the way that it’s supposed to work is that we all use the language we agreed upon in the first place. That way we generally manage to understand on another.
I’ll grant you that there are people who’ll desperately try not to understand something they disagree with to avoid taking the point.
Nor do I propose that either poets or rappers cease and desist from using the language in new and inventive ways that entertain and delight .
In this case I’ve explained what I meant. If you’re still lost grab a dictionary and work your way back.
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Hello,
I was a little bit ready to accept Dr Manolopoulos’ argument, if we think about it with the background assumption that parents everywhere would be hard-pressed not to notice the general furore about paedophiles (which incidentally I would attribute not just to the media, but also to the fact that such a large proportion of us have had unwanted sexual experiences in childhood – so it resonates).
But the reason I agree with you Jennifer, is because I think it’s useful to think about, well what if there weren’t any paedophiles? and in this situation I would think that parents would probably want their kids to feel as though they were good-looking. Doesn’t everybody want to be good-looking?
I also think it’s useful to point out – as you do – that paedophiles will find children attractive regardless of what they’re wearing. Certainly speaking from personal experience, seeing that picture of Tony Abbott in a right-leaning swimming trunk of some description which incessantly pops up on Sheep doesn’t make him any sexier than when he’s fully clothed. Quite the opposite in fact!
And even less controversially, if people like Dr Manolopoulos want to carelessly throw around the assertion that children are sexual beings, then I think it’s useful to say simultaneously that any sexual activity between an adult and a child is Rape, since CHILDREN ARE INCAPABLE OF CONSENT (and I say this with some reservations about the terminology of “consent”, since I think this is a legalistic term which doesn’t go far enough in an interpersonal setting. I prefer the term “mutual agreement”)
Incidentally, doll manufacturers are responding to concerns about their products’ influence on kids’ body image. Someone from work sent this around this week:
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I’m anonymous BTW. Something went a-computerwise-wry
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I doubt that mutual agreement is a useful definition, Sam; desirable as it may be.
As you say a child is by definition incapable of consent.
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Ah, perhaps I should clarify – I’m talking about adults consenting (precisely for the reasons that Jennifer gives below. it seems to me that consent is a necessary legal test for rape, but that it’s made its way into our mainstream way of thinking about it, probably because we don’t have any other language for talking about it).
Whereas with a child, even if they say “yes”, or if they don’t raise an objection doesn’t mean they want it. rather it’s probably because they’re so terrified that they’re incapacitated and dissociating, or think that the best way to make it end quickly is to go along with it.
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You aren’t. I knew it was you
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It’s called a mankini, I think, Sam. I don’t let myself think about it too often…
I rather like your mutual agreement concept instead of consent – the latter can imply a grudging acquiescence at worst, an ok, then if you really must…
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Hello,
I am pleased that the writer has taken the time to read my article and to critique it. Of course, while the blogger notes that I take care not to advance the thesis that hyper-sexualisation and paedophilia may not be linked, my article is nevertheless opposed precisely because of it.
Perhaps more importantly, the blogger has missed a key point of my argument: my ultimate target is society itself: how can it both condone hyper-sexualisation and condemn paedophilia? Surely this is hypocritical and shameful in the extreme.
My suggestion is not too simply “ban things” but to transform society.
The basic problem here is that we still frame arguments too individualistically: the way we think and act is more structurally determined than we suppose.
Dr Mark Manolopoulos
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“… we must emphatically insist upon the fact that females (and males, for that matter) are not reducible to their sexual attractiveness, that we are more than and otherwise than our sexualness, that we reject contemporary standards of beauty.
What this means, ultimately, is not just banning practices that promote hyper-sexualisation but transforming the institutions and systems that sustain them and profit from them.”
You must be joking, Manolopoulos. Totally unrealistic, unachievable and unacceptable.
I did not bother with your article until I read this comment, but if you want to belabour your “suggestion” here, you may expect criticism.
Your next suggestion might be to turn back the tides, as Cnut was wrongly thought to have tried.
Children are sexualised, whether we like it or not and calling it hyper-sexualised does not advance the debate one iota.
For the record I don’t like it either, but you need a reality check.
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Mark,
If I may, and you happen to see this then did you not take issue with subeditors of the New Matilda, because while you may be at pains to avoid advancing, “the thesis that hyper-sexualisation and paedophilia may not be linked” on re-reading the article the headline all but puts your imprimatur on the theory that they are linked.
Well to be honest those two negatives in the second sentence of your post here have me totally confused.
On the assumption that your article better reflected your views than the above post what I wonder would you say to the view that much as there are many things we would like to change about society pederasty is overwhelmingly the fault of paedophiles. On the surface of it the idea that society is supposed to change to accommodate not tempting them has to my mind something in common with telling a raped woman she was asking for it because of how she dressed.
Granted if you were to rebut me you might say that women who dress to attract men have every business doing so and go on to advance the notion that children don’t. The alternative however is to see these younger individuals whose minds are ill equipped to consent to sex nevertheless somehow engaged in quasi sexual role play, presumably through their choice of fashions or music as sexualised. Surely that sexualisation can only be seen to be problematic through the prism of adult projection. Again the kind of projection that isn’t a problem if one is not a paedophile.
Personally I see find the lines are more blurred by kiddie beauty pageants than they are by youth culture buying into notions of attractiveness that adults think are unhealthy. I can even see good reasons why parents might want to caution against society imprinting unrealistic standards of beauty and confusing ,messages about sexuality on teenagers. Just let’s please agree to stop short of telling anyone its their fault either as victim or the parent of a victim when they’re criminally violated.
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One problem is that Dr Manolopoulos anthropomorphises “society” into a single entity. Perhaps his needed reality check needs to start right there. We live in a pluralist, multicultural set of societies rather than one homogeneous society.
A fine post, HG.
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Thanks. I think homogenises would suffice or lumps together. I always though to anthropomorphise was to ascribe human characteristics to non-human species of animals or even plants. So there’s a generalisation he makes that may be too broad, but then even when we speak of society we’re probably glossing a few distinctions.
I may be doing likewise in my response because I really only want to highlight two important psychological distinctions, that between children and adult ways of relating to human sexuality and that between adults who are attracted to children and the rest of us. There’s one other behavioural distinction, but it a whopper, between people who sexually violate others and people who don’t either because they don’t want to or because they accept that would be wrong.
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It includes ascribing human characteristics to things; I checked the definition before posting. In hindsight ‘personification’ is perhaps a better fit.
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Okay good, what you wrote reads the way I anticipated its meaning.
I should earlier perhaps have added what may already be conspicuous in its absence, that I’m not drawing the same distinctions around the idea of “sexialisation” that Dr Manolopoulos does.
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Actually, HG, those two negatives have totally confused me as well.
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Oh goody we finally found agreement about a mangled sentence that I didn’t write 🙂
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Hello, Dr Manolopoulos
Your premise that society is hypocritical because it both condones hyper-sexualisation and opposes paedophilia is based upon, must be based upon, an assumption that the former leads to the latter or else what on earth is your argument?
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Hello everyone,
Thank-you for your thoughtful responses. They reflect the fact that this question is both an important and complex one – and we should all be reminded that one cannot possibly state “everything” about it in a rather short op-ed piece.
I’ll attempt to respond to some of the key counter-arguments in turn.
Doug Quixote,
You asserts that my call for social transformation is “Totally unrealistic, unachievable and unacceptable” – I’m glad that the likes of Lenin, Mao, Gandhi, Mandela and other revolutionaries didn’t have the same cynicism that you have, Doug. Of course, I’m saddened that our age is marked by an apathy and cynicism that prevent many of us from even being able to imagine an alternative society, let alone implement it. Hopefully this will change, or the planet will only face further destruction and disfiguration. Unlike you, Doug, I won’t refuse to keep hoping and struggling.
Doug, your other criticism, about my purportedly homogenised or reductive use of the word “society” is ultimately a tedious, sophistic one: OF COURSE “society” is complex and heterogeneous, but in an op-ed piece, one can’t qualify and nuance everything – there wouldn’t be any words left for the basic argument . I’m so tired of this hyper-postmodern tendency to need to qualify and scare quote everything ad infinitum.
Hudsongodfrey,
I’ll just repeat this one more time: the core target of my article is society itself: how can it be that it both condones hyper-sexualisation and condemns paedophilia? I don’t claim to provide all the answers: my main goal was to get people to perceive this despicable hypocrisy, this atrocious double-standard.
Jennifer,
First of all, apologies for the confusion: the sentence should have read: “Of course, while the blogger notes that I take care not to advance the thesis that hyper-sexualisation and paedophilia may be linked, my article is nevertheless opposed precisely because of it.” However, perhaps it was a bit of a Freudian slip: should we be absolutely dogmatically closed-minded about any possible link between the two? Should we act like fundamentalists and assert that there is absolutely no relation? Instead, we should remain open-minded enough about the two, and perhaps further research may disclose insights in this regard.
Finally, Jennifer, just to re-state my argument in a nutshell: what kind of society are we living in whereby we simultaneously condemn paedophilia yet condone hyper-sexualisation? My proposed answer: a hypocritical society that needs to be transformed.
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Mark,
Thanks for replying I don’t take issue with anyone wanting to improve society, but I’m a bit surprised you haven’t really enlightened me much in reiterating your line about an “atrocious double standard” making a link between paedophillia and the suggestion of children being sexualised by…. I haven’t bought into the assumptions you’re premising that on.
If I’m permitted to be more direct; I don’t think it matters if children were to go naked in the streets, it would still be wrong of adults to assume consent. At the core of it that’s my basic problem with the assumption that sexualisation and paedophillia are linked.
I’m not closed to arguments that there are other things wrong with the way we engage children and teens in learning about sex, but my understanding of the crime and the nature of the violation that takes place in child abuse is that the interest and gratification are entirely in the mind and on the side of the perpetrator. Unless I’m very much mistaken i find linking sexualisztion of minors with paedophillia is both incorrect and unacceptable in terms of putting the blame where it really belongs.
Either that or you simply failed to clarify something that went missing the the sentence we couldn’t decipher.
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Imagining a society in which everyone respected everyone else’s rights is not too hard a task.
Implementing it is another matter altogether, as the revolutionaries found out, or knew already.
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Hudsongodfrey,
I don’t think I could be any more clearer, but I’ll try one more time: my article doesn’t dogmatically confirm a link between the two practices but draws attention to the fact that they co-exist in society, and what this co-existence might disclose about society.
Doug Quixote,
I certainly agree that implementing transformation is certainly a risky matter, and that such efforts sometimes even make matters worse. But I think that it’s better to try and fail than to stand idly by.
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Thanks Mark,
I thought you could’ve been clearer, that’s why I pressed the point. You’ve clarified now, so it remains only for me to say that I do not think the correlation is a close one and I have explained where I think the emphasis should rather lie.
As for the notion of co-existence there are more different things in society that we accept or tolerate the co-existence of than those we don’t. Since most things that simply happen to co-exist do so either in harmony or in parallel, care always has to be taken where it is not immediately apparent that the co-existence of two or more things is harmful.
My question to you in any other form than I have put it already, so as not to repeat myself, would be what you mean by sexualization?
On a stricter definition that I more or less agree with sexualization occurs when “individuals are regarded as sex objects and evaluated in terms of their physical characteristics and sexiness.” (American Psychological Association – quoted in Wikipedia). But then it isn’t something individuals do to themselves or as I see it something society can change about the eye of the beholder no matter what images or advertising we ban.
Some case histories have shown we’re not even sure that chemical castration works. So the only thing you can take away from an offender that we know works is access to victims, and pretty much the best thing to add would be voluntary restraint on their part that we’re all aware of in terms of age of consent laws etc.
Like I said all the other problems about unrealistic social pressure and their impact on self esteem can be taken as granted. I just think the problem of peadophillia doesn’t intersect with those the eye of the beholder being entirely theirs to control.
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Oh, my goodness, Dr Mark, whatever you mean by hypersexuality does not, as HG points out, indicate consent.
Your argument seems to claim that paedophiles are not responsible for their actions, the “hyper sexualised” children who “tempt” them are.
As children are unable to consent to sex with an adult, it really doesn’t matter what they are or aren’t wearing, how they are dancing, or how they are existing in the world.
What this coexistence of children and paedophiles discloses about society is that children are at risk, no matter what they wear or do, & claiming that “hypersexuality” is in anyway linked to paedophilia is a way of letting those criminals off the hook, and what that says about us is almost too horrific to contemplate.
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One last time: the article critically questions how a society can maintain two diametrically opposed practices, and consequently proposes the need for social transformation.
While this contradiction remains hidden and suppressed, I didn’t think intelligent people would so easily misunderstand it.
But perhaps such misinterpretation confirms its suppressed nature: people will discuss things like “consent” while ignoring the central idea: that our neoliberal society generates/exacerbates horrific contradictions.
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We saw that point rather easily; it is hardly original. Hence your proposition is up for discussion. It is somewhat of a a non sequitur.
But keep thinking.
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Well, for another last time from me also the matter of consent isn’t conditional upon society or its neoliberal ideas about young children. It’s considered for various psychological or cognitive neurological reasons a developmental impossibility.
Its one thing to share a dislike for aspects of how our culture deals with children that can be lumped under the umbrella of sexualisation, but altogether another to simply assume that failing that sniff test is all the disposition we need to link it to paedophillia. I may be breaking your balls a little on this point, but either make the link or don’t. What does “diametrically opposed” mean? If we get rid of Ozzy Osbourne we don’t have to put up with Justin Bieber?
Otherwise its a big hairy deal to go wanting to change society without hard evidence those changes would produce the expected results. Either you may have the beginnings here of an hypothesis I wish you luck in getting funds to research or you’ve simply missed an opportunity with us to present evidence we’re unaware of.
What I’m also disappointed you didn’t respond to is that the understanding we can form about the offender’s responsibility for their own actions weights heavily in favour of more established thinking I doubt we can afford to abandon.
I take the strong critical stance that I have here because I think it would be wrong to argue that these social factors raise any possibility of diminishing offender’s responsibility or in any way questioning the role victim’s socialisation or parenting might play unless there is very sound evidence for it indeed.
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