Becoming Sexual E-Book

R. Danielle Egan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 307

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The sexualization of girls has captured the attention of the media, advocacy groups and politicians in recent years. This prolific discourse sets alarm bells ringing: sexualization is said to lead to depression, promiscuity and compassion deficit disorder, and rob young girls of their childhood. However, measuring such claims against a wide range of data sources reveals a far more complicated picture.

Becoming Sexual begins with a simple question: why does this discourse feel so natural? Analyzing potent cultural and historical assumptions, and subjecting them to measured investigation, R. Danielle Egan illuminates the implications of dominant thinking on sexualization. The sexualized girl functions as a metaphor for cultural decay and as a common enemy through which adult rage, discontent and anxiety regarding class, gender, sexuality, race and the future can be expressed. Egan argues that, ultimately, the popular literature on sexualization is more reflective of adult disquiet than it is about the lives and practices of girls.

Becoming Sexual will be a welcome intervention into these fraught polemics for anyone interested in engaging with a high-profile contemporary debate, and will be particularly useful for students of sociology, cultural studies, childhood studies, gender studies and media studies.

Leseprobe

Becoming Sexual

For Stephen Pfohl – an amazing professor and dear friend, whose wisdom and unfailing kindness always make all the difference.

Becoming Sexual

A Critical Appraisal of the Sexualization of Girls

R. DANIELLE EGAN

polity

Copyright © R. Danielle Egan 2013

The right of R. Danielle Egan to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

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ISBN 978-0-7456-6958-8

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sexualization as a Social Problem

1  What is Sexualization?

2  (Hetero)Sexualization, Pathological Femininity, and Hope for the Future

3  Sexualized Tastes, Middle-Class Fantasies, and Fears of Class Contagion

4  Unmanageable Bodies, Adult Disgust, and the Demand for Innocence

Conclusion: Reflexive Reticence, Affective Response, and the Social Construction of Sexual Problems

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

Over the past three years, I have sought out numerous conversation partners and devil’s advocates while working through an idea or line of reasoning. Most often, the conversation starts with the confused plea, “I am trying to get my head around this, do you have a minute?” Nine times out of ten, the person on the other line (phone or email) has said, “Absolutely;” they have given their time generously and pushed my thinking farther. Clearly, I am a very privileged woman. Feona Attwood, Lani Brunson, John Collins, Erin McCarthy, Stephen Pfohl, Liz Regosin, Emma Renold, Jessica Ringrose, Allen Shelton, Natalia Singer, Mary Jane Smith, Clarissa Smith, and Eve Stoddard have been particularly generous. Conversations with Barbara Baird, Sue Jackson, Keri Lerum, Susie Orbach, Juliet Schor, and Lisbet van Zoonen are also much appreciated.

The many years of friendship and intellectual collaboration with Gail Hawkes indelibly mark this book and my life in ways untold. Quite simply, Becoming Sexual would not have been possible without the work Gail and I did for Theorizing the Sexual Child.

Writing is a solitary business. All too often it takes me away from the people I love on weekends, holidays, and breaks from teaching – a special thank you to my family and friends who have been nothing but patient, loving, and supportive.

This book came into being as I began my training as a psychoanalyst at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (BGSP). Although there were numerous times when I thought writing a book at the beginning of my clinical training and in the midst of my teaching was ill advised, to say the least, I do believe that the book is all the richer for it. The generative space created in my seminars with Dr Siamek Movahedi, Dr Mara Wagner, Dr Lynn Perlman, Dr Jane Snyder, and Dr John Madonna deepened my thinking and feeling on this topic and many others. The razor-sharp mind and important questions posed by Dr Stephen Soldz have been incredibly illustrative and kept me going back to the data.

Mark McClelland’s generous invitation to present at the University of Wollongong was pure pleasure. The provocative conversations that took place as a result were particularly helpful. Emma Renold’s invitation to give a lecture at the University of Cardiff and to be a part of a larger conversation on sexualization with Gail Hawkes, Jessica Ringrose, Valerie Walkerdine, Debbie Epstein, Rosalind Gill, Feona Attwood, Sara Bragg, Meg Barker, Laura Harvey, Robert Duschinsky, and numerous others felt, and still feels, like winning the lottery. Rarely does the door of opportunity open twice, but the conference Pornified? Complicating Debates about the Sexualization of Culture organized by Jessica Ringrose, Emma Renold, Meg Barker, and Rosalind Gill was equally invaluable. It was, by far, one of the best conferences I have had the pleasure to attend. My thinking on class and sexualization was deepened by the excellent questions posed during my talk for the Boston College Sociology Department, a place near and dear to my heart. I have had the pleasure of working with a group of smart, curious, brave, innovative, funny, activist-oriented, and badass students in Gender and Sexuality Studies at St. Lawrence University – my scholarly journey is inextricably tied to the work we do in the classroom, and for that I feel very lucky.

Through it all I have had the pleasure of working with a smart, passionate, and incredibly detail-oriented research assistant, Jonathan Stopyra. His calm in the face of increasingly complicated requests for various demographic studies from three countries and sources to be added to the bibliography was awe-inspiring. If there was an MVP award for research assistance, he would get one!

Working with Polity has been pure pleasure. The support, guidance, and gentle nudging from my editor, Jonathan Skerrett, has been invaluable and much appreciated. At various times when this project felt like it would never come together, Jonathan’s emails always soothed, clarified, and motivated. This book has been a labor of love. The team at Polity always made it clear that it was in good hands. For that I am incredibly grateful.

Words fail to adequately describe how lucky I feel about having Stephen Papson in my life. A brilliant interlocutor who always asks compelling and challenging questions and a caring partner who takes on all household responsibilities when I am anchored to the computer; who could ask for anything more? Your intellect, kindness, and care continue to astound me after all these years; Steve you are truly one of a kind.

Introduction:Sexualization as a Social Problem

Children and young people today are not only exposed to increasing amounts of hyper-sexualized images, they are also sold the idea that they have to look “sexy” and “hot.” As such they are facing pressures that children in the past simply did not have to face. As children grow older, exposure to this imagery leads to body surveillance, or the constant monitoring of personal appearance. This monitoring can result in body dissatisfaction, a recognized risk factor for poor self-esteem, depression and eating disorders. Indeed, there is a significant amount of evidence that attests to the negative effects of sexualization on young people in terms of mental and physical health, attitudes and beliefs.

Linda Papadopoulos (2010), Sexualization of Young People Review: 35

If girls learn that sexualized behavior and appearance are approved of and rewarded by society and by the people (e.g., peers) whose opinions matter most to them, they are likely to internalize these standards, thus engaging in self-sexualization.

American Psychological Association (2007) APA Task Force Report on the Sexualization of Girls: 2

After reading the quotes above, one comes away with a clear and unequivocal warning: sexualization is a ubiquitous force infecting the lives of girls. Sexualization, according to the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force, results when any of the following four conditions have been met:

a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics; a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy; a person is sexually objectified – that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person (APA 2007: 1).

In discussions of the sexualization of girls, it is the fourth condition, “sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person,” that is most often cited. At first glance, this definition resonates with certain longstanding and influential feminist and left-leaning critiques of media and popular culture (Buckingham 2000, 2008; Gill 2007; Attwood 2009; Gonick et al. 2009; Duits and van Zoonen 2011); however, proclamations on the state of this condition rarely focus on media analysis. Indeed most often authors and activists turn their attention to individual outcomes of the effects of consumption in lieu of an analysis of cultural production. Warnings issue on the manifestation of sexualization signal a departure from feminist media criticism which focuses on issues of representation or cultural interrogations of an increasingly insidious capitalist formation toward the pathologization of practices, comportment, and clothing choice of girls who have been deemed to be sexualized (Duits and van Zoonen 2011).

Sexualization is said to defile innocence, leaving in its wake a promiscuous, emotionally deficient, and culturally bankrupt tweenager (Papadopoulos 2010). The toxic mix of sexualizing media and commodities (e.g., Bratz dolls, thongs, tee-shirts) transforms girls between the ages of 8 and 12 (or “tweens”) into self-sexualizing subjects at risk for a host of mental, physical, cognitive, and relational problems. Reviewing such prognoses, one should not be surprised that sexualization narratives function in a deeply provocative manner – the combination of sexual corruption, defiled innocence, and its vision of an imperiled future – and often inspire strong visceral reactions. Really, how could it not? Popular rhetoric on sexualization relies upon and reproduces this potent affective brew to signal alarm bells and foment social action. While this rhetorical form often proves effective, its deployment of affect obscures the dubious epistemological, historical, and empirical foundations upon which its call to action rests.

Becoming Sexual is an attempt to render visible these assumptions and analyze their implications. Specifically, it examines the epistemological, historical, and affective work of this discourse1 in order to analyze its social and political implications. Exploring how authors and activists draw on affect as well as longstanding ideologies of race, class, gender, age, and sexuality illuminates how sexualization is made meaningful and intelligible in public discourse. Shedding light on the phenomenological work of this discourse opens the critical space needed to raise larger social-psychoanalytic questions about what this type of thinking about children does for our culture and why we are so seemingly attached to it.

Sexualization as a Social Issue

Since 2006, a steady stream of policy papers, news stories, think-tank reports, parenting manuals, and opinion editorials chronicling the dangers of sexualization have appeared in the Anglophone West.2 The British, Scottish, and Australian governments have commissioned reports and held hearings, and in 2010 the House of Representatives in the United States proposed a bill entitled the Healthy Media for Youth Act. Unlike other socially divisive topics (e.g., abortion, gay marriage, sex education), sexualization is an issue where politicians from the left and right are able to cross the aisle to find common ground. Although it would be erroneous to say that these responses share the same conception of the problem or offer uniform solutions, it is clear that sexualization has proved to be a particularly potent topic in political rhetoric in the Anglophone West over the past several years.

The Australia Institute and the American Psychological Association (APA) released reports within 12 months of one another on the topic which helped move sexualization, as a social problem, into the spotlight (Rush and La Nauze 2006a, 2006b; APA 2007). The Australia Institute’s two reports, Corporate Paedophilia and Letting Children be Children, gained much media attention, spurred political action and were used during a hearing in the Australian Parliament, but their findings did not garner much coverage outside of Australia (Rush and La Nauze 2006a, 2006b). Conversely, the APA’s Task Force Report on the Sexualization of Girls has become doctrinal in discussions of sexualization, and its findings are often taken for granted as fact in popular and academic circles both within and outside of the US (APA 2007). Numerous parenting guides and popular texts have also emerged from across the Anglophone West with titles such as: The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Girls and What we Can Do About it (Durham 2008); Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World Is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do about It (Palmer 2007); So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood, and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids (Levin and Kilbourne 2008); Girls Gone Skank: The Sexualization of Girls in American Culture (Oppliger 2008); Living Dolls: the Return of Sexism (Walter 2010); What’s Happening to Our Girls? Too Much, Too Soon: How Our Kids are Over Stimulated, Oversold and Oversexed (Hamilton 2009b), and Where has My Little Girl Gone? (Carey 2011), as well as anthologies such as The Sexualization of Childhood (Olfman 2009) and Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualization of Girls (Reist 2009b). The combination of girls, sexuality, and pathological outcomes grabs our attention, insuring both its newsworthiness and the need for action. A search on LexisNexis revealed that since 2000 there have been 1,169 stories on the sexualization of children published in newspapers in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Sexualization has been featured in an untold number of blog entries, YouTube videos, television shows, radio programs, parenting newsletters, and workshops across the Anglophone West.

The central premise in much of the popular literature is that consuming sexualizing materials produces sexualized actions. Accordingly, consumption functions in a hypodermic fashion, whereby sexualized ideologies are injected wholesale into tween-aged victims. Sexualizing messages catalyze unsavory behavior, desire, and subjectivity (Egan and Hawkes 2007, 2009; Duits and van Zoonen 2011). As a result, girls “focus on sexualising themselves rather than pursuing other more age-appropriate activities,” a choice which places their “gender identity, sexual attitudes, values and … capacity for love and connection” at risk (Rush and La Nauze 2006a: 3; Kilbourne, quoted in Tataro 2006). Other rampant psychopathological manifestations such as: binge drinking, eating disorders, lack of ability to bond or have strong relationships now and in the future, sextexting, and early pregnancy are also linked to consumption and self sexualization (Rush 2006, 2009; Rush and La Nauze 2006a, 2006b; APA 2007; Durham 2008; Farley 2009a, 2009b; Papadopoulos 2010). Within these texts, sexualized representations are conceptually equivalent with sexualized subjectivity and psychopathology. This raises a thorny issue: although we have seen an increase in sexualized commodities and representation in the Anglophone West, does this actually translate into promiscuity, pathology, and deficiency in tweenaged girls?

Placing the claims made in the sexualization literature against the vast terrain of quantitative and qualitative data gathered by scholars in public health, sociology, media studies, communication, psychology, history, and education reveals that all too often this discourse relies upon hyperbole instead of empirical research – something I discuss at length in chapter 1. In brief, what this research shows is that tweenaged girls are complicated subjects, neither asexual nor hypersexual. For example, girls are having less partnered sex than they did 20 years ago, are more responsible in terms of birth control when they do have vaginal/penile intercourse, and often have strong values and beliefs regarding sex and sexuality (CDC 2010; Fortenberry et al. 2010; Guttmacher Institute 2011). These data do not mean that media is inert or meaningless. A girl’s relationship to media and popular culture is often complex, contradictory, and rarely straightforward (Mitchell and Reid-Walsh 2005; Celeste Kearney 2006, 2011). What it does highlight is that a girl’s sense of self and sexuality should not be reduced to sexualization or any other monolithic effect.3

The schism between the empirical and rhetorical within the sexualization literature raises critical questions: Why are such hyperbolic claims so culturally palatable? Why do these ideas get reproduced with such ease? If our relations with girls reveal what ample data also back up – that, simply put, girls are complicated and diverse beings – then why is our culture so drawn to a vision of girls gone wrong? Are anti-sexualization authors being deceptive and/or manipulative? Anyone reading the popular literature on the topic can clearly see that authors and activists care deeply about the future of girls. Making sense of our cultural affinity for the sexually endangered as well as sexualized and sexualizing girl child is no easy task. Nevertheless, unraveling the phenomenological and affective work of this discourse helps reveal why the dangers associated with sexualization seem to feel so real for so many.

Cautionary narratives on the sexual corruption of children are firmly rooted in the Anglophone cultural imaginary, as are the epistemological claims and rhetorical form which support them. Tracing these cultural and historical foundation(s) upon which such claims are built illuminates the unacknowledged and longstanding preoccupations that help make the topic of sexualization meaningful or intelligible. Situating the discourse on sexualization within this context renders transparent its paradoxical nature and shifts analysis toward more complicated social-psychoanalytic queries. To state that the sexualization literature is misguided in its thinking about the nature of girlhood and consumption is limited because it misses the heart of the matter. The popular movement on sexualization speaks to a particular need in the Anglophone West, one that has a long history. The crux of the argument made throughout this book is that much of the popular rhetoric on sexualization is not really about girls in the messy and material sense, but rather that sexualization – as an outcome of increasingly insidious forms of patriarchal capitalism and popular culture – is actually an unacknowledged substitute for much more dire and disconcerting matters.

Conducting a rigorous textual analysis of the various material produced about sexualization in Australia, Britain and the United States illustrates that affective and ideological supposition often override complex empirical findings. This, coupled with the narrow framing of who is endangered – white, heterosexual, and middle-class girls – further highlights how the girl within sexualization is ultimately more metaphorical than material. It also helps bring to light critical questions about the function or use of this narrative within our cultural imaginary. It is my supposition that the discourse on sexualization is ultimately a cultural defense mechanism. Underneath the hyperbole lies the desire to defend against the unbearable costs of living in an increasingly fragmented, alienating, and unequal cultural landscape. As others have noted, economic despair and futility often spark populist responses, wherein impotence gets displaced into xenophobia, racism, and other forms of discrimination and violence (Bourke 2007; Asma 2009). Within this discourse, the costs of modern life get displaced into anxiety regarding the endless circulation of products (e.g., thongs, magazines, and dolls), people (pedophiles, celebrities, and bad influences), and conditions (sexualized media and increasingly loose sexual mores), which transform middle-class white girlhood into something monstrous and pathological.

In his writing on the philosophy of monsters, Stephen Asma notes that the word “monster” comes from the Latin root monere, “to warn” (Asma 2009). “To be a monster is to be an omen” or portent of impending doom (Asma 2009: 13). Whether it is the result of moral turpitude or fears regarding cultural and ideological shift within a society, the monster symbolizes a future in ruin. When reading descriptions of oral sex for pay and hyper promiscuity as well as psychopathological conditions such as depression or compassion deficit disorder, it soon becomes clear that within the popular literature the sexualized girl is a monster – the end point of defiled middle-class heterosexual femininity; and for more conservative authors, she also represents the erosion of the traditional family. A legacy of deeply problematic assumptions regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality informs this construction. The sexualized girl is a sign. She is emblematic of a fractured and corrupted middle-class status as well as an expression of nostalgia for times past when taste, status, age, difference, and control were believed to be more transparent and manageable. This is not to say that the child is never endangered or that capitalism is inert, but rather that the child in the fleshy sense is replaced by the girl, a figure, into which middle-class advocates project the vagaries of postmodern capital and its resultant social insecurity.

Repetition Compulsion and Historical Lineage

Psychoanalytic insights on repetition compulsion are particularly helpful when thinking about the obstinacy of such ideas and their currency in our cultural imaginary. At base, repetition compulsion functions as an unconscious pattern of behavior that resuscitates an unresolved trauma or conflict in various guises throughout an individual’s life (Bibring 1943). Within this context, a person gets stuck in an often bewildering cycle as different protagonists rotate in as replacements destined to play out a familiar, and often unconsciously desired, script. Although these situations are painful, even traumatic, we tend to grow attached to their familiarity and seek out their presence.4 It is important to note that patterns are not necessarily a carbon copy of the original; more often than not, they represent the defense mechanisms used to avoid the pain, confusion, rage, desire, and anxiety that would be evoked if one came into direct contact with the initial conflict or trauma. The replacement then is always already a derivative from the original, which makes its appearance all the more seductive while at the same time allowing it to retain its affective charge. As Freud noted in his earliest writings with Breuer, repression does not make trauma disappear, it only makes it harder to recognize due to its disguised form (Freud and Breuer 1895). Similarly, repetition compulsion does not eradicate the conflict; it only lessens its tension by prolonging it in a less traumatic form by proxy.

We need the threat of immanent sexual corruption, because it deflects the unbearable truth of what it means to live in a culture with decreasing social safety nets, joblessness, eroding security for the middle class, environmental degradation, increasing isolation and insecurity, as well as a shrinking public sphere through which to voice our concerns. By displacing our impotence onto something more manageable and potent – the cultural and sexual corruption of the girl child – our rage, disgust, and anxiety can be voiced and a fantasy of the future free of such defilement can be sought. The girl is a derivative – repellent in her sexualized form and freed from society in her innocence. This process is reproduced with ease because the child, as a cultural construct in the Anglophone West, functions as an endlessly permeable, but ultimately empty, receptacle into which adults can project our ills, anxieties, and aspirations (Walkerdine 1991, 1998; Kincaid 1998; Lamb 2001; Edelman 2004; Gonick et al. 2009; Stockton 2009).

As Karen Sternheimer has illustrated, our culture is besotted by sensational acts of sex and violence, directed toward or committed by the child, rather than the more mundane but far more pressing risks posed by poverty, neglect, and lack of medical care (Sternheimer 2006; see also Levine 2002). These cultural tendencies are not neutral; they inform policy, categories of normality and abnormality, and directly impact the lives of girls. The palliative effect of this cultural defense comes with a cost, the splitting of the girl child into one that is innocent and must be protected and the other who is viewed as sexually corrupting and reviled. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the nature of this splitting to illuminate how loathing and disgust toward girls function as part of the affective undercurrent in the discourse on sexualization. For all the reasons stated above, an examination of the historical, epistemological, and affective architecture upon which such adult preoccupations and projections are built and made meaningful is a particularly important sociological and feminist endeavor.

Situating sexualization within a larger socio-historical context helps illuminate the continuities and discontinuities it shares with previous sexual protection movements in the Anglophone West (Egan and Hawkes 2010). My research with Gail Hawkes shows that since the mid 1800s the child’s sexuality has been a key focal point for such movements (Egan and Hawkes 2010). Using Michel Foucault’s analysis of the intersection of sexuality and biopower5 as a starting point, we found that the child and its sexuality were foundational to the rise and validation of particular disciplines such as pediatrics, developmental psychology, hygiene, psychoanalysis, and sexology in the modern period. The production of expertise and moral authority often reflected larger conflicts of who “owned the child and its sex” as a site of knowledge – at various times medics, psychologists, pedagogues, psychoanalysts, sexologists, and feminist advocates all claimed the higher ground in these discursive struggles (Egan and Hawkes 2010). The espoused dangers to the child’s sex were also, more often than not, allegories for larger societal ills (immigration, urbanization, racial purity) (Egan and Hawkes 2010). Although the discourse on sexualization draws on different conceptions of causation (e.g., the Internet, celebrity culture, and thongs) and outcome (hyper promiscuity), the manner in which the sexual child is conceptualized is strikingly consistent (Egan and Hawkes 2007, 2008, 2010). The following themes are part of a common conceptual architecture that has been taken for granted as natural by both anti-sexualization activists and their predecessors in times past.

Presence and Absence

The sexuality of the child is simultaneously present and absent within discourses on childhood sexuality. Although the child is conceptualized as having the physiological potential for sexuality (in the sense that they have reproductive organs and genitalia), this capacity should, under normal circumstances, be biologically, subjectively, and affectively absent until puberty (Foucault 1980; Egan and Hawkes 2010). In The Choice: A Purity Booklet for Young Men published in 1903, Australian purity advocate and politician, Richard Arthur, underscores this paradoxical conception when he cautions, “the boy knows nothing of this instinct, which is well; and I believe that most lads would not be disturbed by the vague stirrings of the sex sense, were it not that in many of them it is precociously developed by a constant turning of the attention to sex matters” (Arthur 1903: 4). Purity advocates believed one could direct the child’s sexual instinct through moral education and in so doing protect them from perverse influences, compulsive masturbation, and a future life of debauchery (Egan and Hawkes 2007, 2010). Maggie Hamilton forwards a similar sentiment in her essay, “The seduction of girls: The human cost,” published in 2009. Sexualizing media and commodities transform innocence into promiscuity and promote dangerous behaviors which threaten girls and society at large (Hamilton 2009a). Innocence within this framing is inherently asexual, and childhood is marked temporally by its innocence; in this sense childhood as a cultural category is intertwined with a particular conception of sexual dormancy (Egan and Hawkes 2010; Faulkner 2010). To rip away the veil of innocence, then, is to rob children of “a childhood” and instantiate eroticism. This is why eradicating corrupt influences is paramount within the literature.

Contemporary Dangers

Within protection narratives, risks normally fall into one of three categories: consuming sexually salacious materials (e.g., novels, comic books, rock music, television, magazines, and clothing items), playing outside the watchful gaze of parents (e.g., school yards, urban back alleys, or cyberspace), or interacting with “deviant” and/or socially marginal individuals (e.g., immigrants, homosexuals, sex workers, pedophiles, and knowing companions). The menacing nature of these influences is further exaggerated because they are deemed to be the result of threatening changes (urbanization, the Internet, the rise of social networking, the easing of censorship standards) that are unprecedented in their risk and impact (Egan and Hawkes 2010). Each generation is said to be facing and doing something their parents did not, and it is the immanence of peril which often legitimates calls for social and political action. Whether it is the comic book or the pedophile lurking behind every bush, the ignition of sexuality gets projected outward onto something or someone that must be censored or controlled.

British sexual hygienist, Walter Gallichan, provides a particularly illustrative example of this type of thinking when cautioning his readers to be wary of the danger posed by “inverts (homosexuals),” “prostitutes,” “foul minded adolescents,” and “bad parents,” all of whom could render vulgar the sexual instincts of the child (Gallichan 1921: 12). Gallichan claimed that a single conversation could “blight” the future of the uninformed by initiating sexual thoughts, promiscuous sex, and resultant disease (Gallichan 1921). Echoing this sentiment some 86 years later, American feminist, Jean Kilbourne, warns, “our kids are growing up in a toxic cultural environment and it’s awfully difficult for parents to stem the tide. We can tell parents, ‘Don’t let your kids dress this way,’ but it’s like saying the air is poisoned, don’t let your kids breathe” (Kilbourne in Cabrera 2007).

Ignition incites Compulsion

Another common supposition at work in protection narratives is that, once stimulated, the child’s sexuality becomes compulsive, dangerous, and uncontrollable (Hawkes and Egan 2008; Egan and Hawkes 2010). Because eroticism is catalyzed by salacious sources, it makes sense that the outcome would be deviant; however, the end point identified in many publications is hyper-compulsive and almost preternatural in its expression. In 1881 American pediatrician, William Humboldt Parker, argued that, once stimulated, “little female infants of tender years [produce] lascivious emotions by giving themselves up to furious masturbation” (Parker 1881: 77–8). Addiction to this solitary vice was said to lead to depravity, insanity, and possibly even death (Egan and Hawkes 2010). A cautionary tale written by feminist professor, Renata Klein, some 128 years later is eerily similar (Klein 2009: 133). The story revolves around a protagonist called Emma. Hoping to find her first boyfriend, Emma seeks guidance from numerous tween magazines. After reading the beauty advice found therein, Emma becomes bulimic and, once in a relationship, is “keen on having three Gardasil injections so she won’t get cervical cancer from sex” (Klein 2009). Instead of the peace of mind promised in advertisements for the vaccine, she develops “a body rash” from the prescription. Confusing vaccination and birth control, Emma has unprotected sex with her boyfriend and ends up pregnant, dumped, and covered with “blisters.” Although she tries to hide her mistakes by seeking an abortion, her sexual activities come to light, and she becomes the butt of jokes and ridicule, both in person and online. Once a star pupil, Emma’s grades plummet along with her social status. Not surprisingly, depression sets in and she must start taking “SSRI antidepressants” in order to cope, but cannot help but feel that “she is a total failure” (Klein 2009: 133). Unlike the protagonists in treatises on masturbation phobia, Emma gets to live; however, it would not be beyond the bounds to say that Klein’s narrative is one of social death. These descriptions of sexual corruption share an understated schadenfreude-esque quality; once lost, she is incapable of redemption and undeserving of empathy. The sexualized child must be destroyed mentally, emotionally, and physically. Once robbed of innocence, they are damaged goods.

The Need for Expertise

As I have noted already, anti-sexualization advocates argue that sexualization begets both sexual behavior and a host of dangerous mental health effects encompassing everything from “contagious acts of self harm” and crippling depression to thoughts of suicide (Rush 2006, 2009; Durham 2008; Levin and Kilbourne 2008; Oppliger 2008; M. Hamilton 2009a, 2009b; Travis 2010). We are also informed that sexualizing materials act as the “wallpaper” of a girl’s life (Bailey 2011). Given the fragile and highly permeable nature of a girl’s sexuality and the ubiquity of causative agents, one must wonder, how can sexualization be anything but a fait accompli? Nevertheless, anti-sexualization advocates, like their historical predecessors, insist that expert advice can offer parents preventative measures to stem the tide of risk.

Claims of expertise within protection narratives are grounded within a particular domain of knowledge (religion, medicine, psychology, or feminism) which is used to justify adult entry into this controversial and highly sensitive topic (Egan and Hawkes 2010). The presumption at work in these discourses is often one of parental ineptitude; in early writings, parents were seen as incapable of providing correct information, and poor parents, in particular, were believed to perpetuate harm (Walkerdine 1991, 1998; Walkerdine et al. 2001; Furedi 2002; Cross 2004; Egan and Hawkes 2010). In the current concerns, parents are framed as confused and befuddled, and in some texts, to blame for letting their children buy sexualizing products or engaging in “fat talk” (APA 2007; Egan and Hawkes 2008; Bragg 2012). A striking example from the past is provided in a speech given to the New York City School Board in 1916 by Maurice Bigelow within which he argued that professionals, not parents, should instruct children in sexual hygiene because, “most parents lack the skill and knowledge to impart adequate and accurate information on sex subjects to their children” (Bigelow 1916: A2). American Thomas Balliet’s counsel to educators was equally strident; because parents promoted misinformation, it produced “a wholly wrong attitude toward sex” and as a result “tempt[ed] them to go wrong” (Balliet 1928: 4). It was for this reason, that even the “most stupid teacher [trained in the science of sex hygiene] in school could not make blunders in giving this instruction comparable in their injurious effects to the teachings in the street to which all children are exposed” (Balliet 1928: 4, emphasis in the original).

Authors writing on sexualization have come from various fields (communication, education, and psychology), nonetheless a psychological discourse is used to legitimate their claims. Although the APA Task Force Report has faced both conceptual and methodological criticism, it is circulated in an almost doctrinal manner in the literature (Egan and Hawkes 2008, 2012; Lerum and Dworkin 2009; Lumby and Albury 2011). However, it is also important to note that the popular literature on sexualization often constructs the problem in a manner that extends far beyond the claims made within the APA report. Nevertheless, a circularity exists within the sexualization literature; a psychological discourse and its production of a pathologized sexualized subject legitimates the protection movement (or field of expertise), which necessitates the creation of more advice which draws on a psychological frame, which recreates the pathologized sexualized subject. What gets ignored is a conception of girls as complex sexual citizens capable of engaging with media in ways that are both critical of, and complicit with, the ideologies of gender and sexuality forwarded in popular culture (Harris 2003; Celeste Kearney 2006, 2011; Jackson 2011; Phoenix 2011). As I will show in chapter 1, feminist psychology which challenges dominant conceptions of sexualization is also absent from the literature.

Think of the Children!

Historically, protection movements have inspired particularly problematic social practices such as circumcision to prevent masturbation, the creation of medical and psychological labels to stigmatize the expression of sexuality or desire, and the policing of marginalized populations (gays and lesbians, sex workers) under the guise of protecting children from sex (Angelides 2004, 2008; de Coninck-Smith 2008; Romesberg 2008; Schneider 2008; Egan and Hawkes 2010). It is my contention that the contemporary discourse on sexualization deploys many of the same epistemological assumptions and, as a result, suffers from the same problematic implications.

Nevertheless, it is critical to note that current concerns are gendered in a manner that is strikingly different from the ones raised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike the discourses of the past which focused on the perils of the child and sexuality, the current discourse on sexualization has narrowed its range of concern, to the distortion of a particular formation – the white, middle-class, and heterosexual tweenaged girl (Egan and Hawkes 2007, 2008, 2010; Renold and Ringrose 2008, 2011; Robinson and Davies 2008; Lerum and Dworkin 2009; Lumby and Albury 2010; Smith 2010; Duschinsky 2011; Jackson and Vares 2011; Bragg 2012). The complex lives of girls get lost when translated into the sexualized girl. Deconstructing the implications of this shift is the focus of chapters 2 and 3.

In the art world, armatures are crucial, yet often unseen, structures made of mesh or wood that artists use to support the production of something larger – sculpture, three-dimensional models, puppets, etc. Drawing on the armature as a conceptual image, I analyze how the sexualized girl has been built upon a set of taken-for-granted and longstanding historical assumptions which give her form and affective life. Following the various lines of epistemological and historical support helps us understand why the deployment of the sexualized girl functions in a particular way and why she incites a particular affective response. After placing sexualization into a larger context, it becomes strikingly clear that, although there are clear distinctions in the construction of the child within the current discourse, our culture has formed a strong cathexis for and attachment to the sexual child and its double manifestation – as sexually defiled and sexually endangered. While the sexual child has had an important and recurring role in Anglophone culture since the early 1800s, it is equally true that children as sexual subjects or sexual citizens have been painfully absent (Irvine 1994, 2004; James et al. 1998; Renold and Ringrose 2008, 2011; Robinson and Davies 2008; Egan and Hawkes 2009, 2010; Duschinsky 2011; Jackson and Vares 2011; Bragg 2012; Robinson 2012).