|
The
Sexual Curriculum (Oct.,
2002) [to Volume II Index] [to Main Index Page] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [I] [II] [III] [IV] Janssen, D. F. (Oct., 2002). Growing Up
Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum: The Manufacture and
Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities. Interim Report. Amsterdam, The
Netherlands 16 [previous chapter] [next chapter] Making and Arresting
Sexual/Erotic People: A Cultural Issue.
Erotogenetics,
Object/Subject Debates, and (Non-)Erotic Citizenship
"What is it like to be nurtured, stimulated in the body, both tenderly
and sensually, and to be presented with a riddle, to be awakened to questions
that mystify, that are not even articulated yet nonetheless activate some
inner, diffuse, uncouth inquiry?"[1] "Luscious lips!
Mysterious eyes!- Where has childhood gone?" Summary: This chapter examines cultural ways of
regarding, and effecting, so-called sexualisation / eroticisation processes. It
was observed that Western discourses avoid a positive, or in any way
interactionist, operationalisation of erotic development, and tend to
concentrate on the identification of its misdirection in 'pathological'
situations, as paralleled with a general "hurried erotics" discourse.
Clinically, the discussion is reduced to the causal relation between sexual
'experiences' with resulting 'activities', thus, the negotiation of curricular
agency. Together with this clinical problem, the later 20th century has
been characterised by an avoidance of defining the ontogenesis of erotic
(rather than sexual or reproductive) personhood. It has been claimed that
erotic objectivity and subjectivity are both produced and consumed within a
culturally specific economy of complementation and identification requirements,
as communicated by scripts and interactions, and within a complex double-axis
(horizontal/vertical) plot. It is further suggested that the individual's
(erotic) experience of "society" and "society"'s (erotic) experience of the
individual provides an interactionist discourse in negotiating meaning. This is
demonstrated by Islamic and Western concepts of the "knowing eye". In fact, the
"erotic" child is consumed and produced within very misty cultural implicits. Psychoanalytic,
feminist and ethnographic impressions of the eroticisation process are provided
with an emphasis on the concepts of objectification (complementation) and
subjectification (identification). It was noted that structuralist-activist
literature has conceptualised female erotic curricula as either a manufactured
commodity or as being obliterated within a "sexist" discourse; the male analogy
is much more unexplored. It was concluded that the divergence of these views
sensitises any constructionist perspective on "erotic development". Contents [up]
Making and Arresting
Sexual/Erotic People: A Cultural Issue 16.1.1 Pathologies vs.
Sociologies 16.1.2 Ethcis and Aestethics:
Intracultural Discursive Movements and the Iconographic Entry 16.1.3 Child, Childlike and
Adultlike: Cultural Boundaries 16.1.4 The "Hurried Erotics"
Discourse 16.1.5 Tracking Down
Sexualising Cultures: Locating Authorities and Narratives 16.1.6 Spotting and Imagining
"Erotogenetic" Processes: The Problem
of the "Agogue" 16.2. Scientific and Activist Traditions 16.2.0 Biologist and
Pathological Accounts 16.2.1 Psychoanalytic Accounts 16.2.1.1 Seduced and Sexual
Children: The Freudian Switch 16.2.2 Feminist Concepts of
Cultural Sexualisation and Complementarism 16.2.2.2 Frameworking Girls
and Feminist Discourse: "Claiming" Developmental Erotic Selfhoods 16.3 Developmental Subject/Object Eroticism:
Cross-Cultural Observations 16.3.1 Paternal and
Patriarchic Practices 16.3.2 Attractive Bodies:
Sociogenetics 16.3.3 Hammams and Households:
The Knowing Eye and Splitting Universa 16.3.4 Consuming and Producing
the Erotic Child 16.3.5 The Curricularised
Body: Its Relation to Erotic Curricularisation 16.4 Theoretical and Clinical Notes 16.x Appendices: Some Data on Erotarche (Tables) Tables [up] [Contents]
Table 1 "First Sexual Arousal": Mean Age Table 2 Prepubescent "Sexual" Arousal, Quantitative Studies Table 3 Sexual Arousal: Accumulative % First before Age of 15 Table 4 Homosexual "Attraction": Available Data for the Timing of First
Occurrence 16.0
Introduction [up] [Contents]
Intended as an adjuvans for the present cross-cultural project, this chapter identifies current Western manners of perceiving, and effecting, so-called sexualisation / eroticisation processes. The article follows four major lines: (1) an introductory part identifying
contemporary salience and formulae of the matter; (2) a presentation of
(typically opposing) academic traditions in conceptualising developmental
erotic agency, authority and subjectivity; (3) a preliminary exposé of
ethnographic applications; and (4) a limited discussion of clinical and
contemporary theoretical notions of 'erotarche' processes. 16.1
Socialised
Sexuality/ Development: "Lateral",
Textual, Contextual and Other Constructions and Biases [up] [Contents]
Moran (2000)[2]
discusses the "invention of the sexual
adolescent" starting with Hall's (1904) Adolescence.
Hall, as a result of his own upbringing, Moran argues, placed chastity at the
heart of his theory of adolescence. A paradoxical account at first
sight, Killias' (2000)[3]
observations on the "desexualisation"[4]
of youth in western societies since 1800 pertain to the "partial" (and debatable) issue of
decriminalisation of peer contacts in later adolescence. From these sources it
appears that diverse entries can be and have been used to localise the "sexual
individual". Some major discursive efforts for doing so are identified below. 16.1.1 Pathologies vs. Sociologies [up] [Contents]
Along with diverse sociologist perspectives toward the sexual socialisation process (see chapter 1), the product of such a process, if a "product" at all, that is, if at all the result of a clear-cut "process", is entitled to an equally debatable substantiality. Some sociologists observe how, as Giroux argues, "children's bodies have become sexualized and marketized", and how "children learn to express desire and sexuality in ways that rob them of their childhood innocence". Other authors more definitely identify this product from within a pathobiosocial framework, for instance as normative ("nonabusive") "eroticisation" (Yates)[5], which goes along a number of other expressions such as premature eroticization[6], "sexualisation"[7], etc. So-called "sexualised" doll symptomatology has become a diagnostic cult in the U.S.; the same may be said of the allegedly "sexualised" drawing. Counting over ninety numeric studies proving the "sexualisation" theme in narrow behavioural terms (author's counting, 2001) [see specifics], I would suggest that both the alleged biological and pathological aspects are open for deconstruction, and the factual process, which is very well established numerically, can be seen as a diversion from social norms regarding chronologisation of activity-based sexual identities/roles (rather than a pathophysiological entity per se). The insistence on controlling such a process, in either a culturalist or medicolegal context, thus, might represent an apology for intracultural coherence and consistency, as operationalised through the curricularised culture, rather than a dealing with the pathologies of cultured individuals. Judging form a cursory appraisal of the literature, the concept of sexualisation as it pertains to sexualisable people and sexualisable activities appears to be phenomenologically and clinically isolated from the concept of normative sexual socialisation. The experience leading to children being ruined by exposure has seen many faces since Freud: primal scenes, lascivious literature, pictorial pornography, Greek statues, the Bible, television, certain friends, sex education, no sex education, but mostly peer consultation on sexual matters ("the gutter", "the street"). Most of these matters however never attracted "professionals" to prove the harm they caused, perhaps until recently. Speculations on seduction and sexual socialization have busied many, and such events proved a ready explanation for behaviours as well as for conceptual disappointments about the nature of childhood. The masturbating child was a victim of oxyuriasis, urinary acidity, warm beds, gymnastic ropes and seductive maids rather than his pleasure, Nature or the usual idiosyncrasies being reserved for adult sex/love. The widespread belief in servants gone immoral seems both a demonstration of medical bias to social class (what percentage of the population did have servants at any time in history?), and of social outcasting of a suitable class in an era of medical helplessness. This scapegoating may also have regulated incest dynamics, parents complaining to the doctor every maid they hired turned out a pervert. Yet it may also be entirely possible that even unwed "Victorian" female care taking personnel may have felt, along the thesis that children indeed go to sleep when masturbated or masturbating, an urge to, as was the conviction, satisfy themselves for their own good. The female "maid" has a easier job nowadays, while male attendants have attracted considerable suspicion by abuse-fearing parents and doctors. Medical interests in abusive relations, their causes and effects, have changed considerably over time. The French in the 2nd half of the 1900's were concerned with the child more than the perpetrator; medical authorities seemed occupied with somatic and post-mortem findings rather than eroticisation scenarios. Leaving aside behavioural pathologies like masturbation, the concept of sexual "activities" as psychological correlates of sexual "experiences" seemed established by Freud's early theoretical attempts to explain adult hysteria. "Degeneration" theorists up to that time declared that this process was most pronounced in hereditarily tainted individuals (in whom paradoxic behaviour would also spontaneously arise). It is likely that no statistics on this association were offered before 1986 by Friedrich et al. However, MacFarlane and Waterman (1986 [1987]) report that sexualised behaviours in sexually abused children was then "one of the most consistent findings reported in the literature for children of all ages (although a subset of children may become extremely sexually inhibited" (p108, 114), referring to 14 authors [including Freud]. The sexualised adolescent offender likewise seems to be an item established in the 1980s, although the child remains primarily entitled to this diagnosis. Constantine (1980:p160-2; 1981:p229-31) noted that in 10 of 30 reviewed articles on "intergenerational" sexual interactions, some sort of prepubertal ("early") sexualisation process was observed to be common or typical. Also, knowledge of [or agreement on] moral negatives, as well as sexual knowledgability may be affected. Concluding:
"Because children are intrinsically sexual beings, actual sexual experiences will tend to sexualize their behavior and their construct of reality. Whether and to what extent this "precocious" sexuality is problematic will depend on the social and familial values with which the child lives. Money's (1973) threshold model provides the simplest and most general model for the role of the "awakening" sexual experience. The threshold for release of erotic response and sexual behavior is higher prior to puberty, therefore, less will be evident in the absence of direct, non-symbolic stimuli" (1980:p168). One hegemonic dimension of alleged abuse reactivity would be age inappropriateness; this 'appropriateness' discourse fits historically well with what Brownlie (2001:p520-1)[8] discusses as the American 'discovery' of the "young [prepubertal] sexual abuser". Both cause ("abuse") and effect ("sexualised" behaviours) are identified by this hardly pedagogically sophisticated denominator[9]. A narrative analysis of earlier statements is even more revealing[10]. Generally, sexual abuse would cause a species of adult-type conditions (Powell and Chalkley, 1981)[11], engagement in excessive [?] masturbation, engagement in highly sexualised [?] play, becoming sexually promiscuous (AMA, 1985), "an early [?] and exaggerated [?] awareness of sex, with either seductive interest [?] or fearful avoidance in close contact with others" (Kenward, 1987:p131)[12], more hypersexuality[13] (Kolko, Moser et al., 1988), and so forth. Later standardised measures of sexualisation included Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Sexual Behavior Problems subscale[14] measuring "sexual behaviours", Louisville Behavior Checklist-Revised Sexual Behavior item (including "having sexual relations and displaying inappropriate sexual behavior such as open masturbation, excessive sexual curiosity, and/or frequent exposure of genitals"), Briere's Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children "Sexual Concerns" subscale[15] (TSCC-SC), along with the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children "Sexual Concerns" subscale (TSCYC-SC), and finally the biblical[16] Child Sexual Behavior Inventory[17], measuring sexual behaviours, not problems per se[18]. Today, the issue is understood in terms of "sexualized copings mechanisms" (Burk and Burkhart, 2002), given the perspective that "[b]iological maturation, onset of puberty and the sex-driven sociocultural atmosphere of adolescence may ultimately open the channel to the instrumental use of sexuality as a strategy of interpersonal control". As interesting are "sexualisation" measures of young offenders. The Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol (J-SOAP)[19] accommodates a Sexual Drive/Preoccupation Scale, including the item "degree of sexualizing the victim", "intended to capture the degree to which the juvenile sexualized his victims (for example, use of pornography in the offense, filming the victim, engaging in unusual or ritualized sexual acts with the victim)". Research by Rorty, Yager, Buckwalter, Rossotto and Guthrie for the Parental Intrusiveness Rating Scale (2000), included the reference to and application of "inappropriate sexualization of father-daughter relationships" (2000:p189)[20]. Again, reactive sexuality has traditionally (yet in variably terms) been issued as being "inappropriate" for ages, "phases", and trajectories (Mannarino and Cohen, 1986; Gale, Thompson, Moran and Sack, 1988; Deblinger, McLeer et al., 1989; Goldston, Turnquist and Knutson, 1989; Kendall-Tackett et al., 1993; etc.). Articles appeared in late 1970s about abuse-induced behaviours, along with theoretical framing of these associations. For instance, MacVicar (1979) found many signs of phase-inappropriate sexuality (excessive excitement) in four "latency-aged"[21] girls being "participating victims" of sexual abuse; 2 girls exhibited compulsive masturbation, while "[t]he need to repeat the trauma [a prelude to PTSD ramifications], most common in adolescents [in the form of promiscuity], occurred in 2 "latency-aged" girls" (p350). Corwin (1988) presents a revealing account of the
vicissitudes of the Sexually Abused
Child's Disorder (SACD), then in its 4th draft, as it was
presented by the National Summit Conference on Diagnosing Child Sexual Abuse
in 1987, and to be incorporated into the DSM-IIIr manual (which was a failure;
the DSM IV also ignored the idea). Unlike the earlier Child Sexual Accommodation Syndrome (Summit, 1983)[22],
the SACD is a diagnostic model differentiating the sexually abused child
(rather its symptoms) from other disorders. The data are entirely without
reference; yet "there was little objection to the validity of the [SACD]" among
the attendants including "many of this country's [U.S.] foremost experts on
child sexual abuse" (p252)[23].
A primary category involves "displays [of] an
increased awareness of differentiated [?] sexual behaviors" as demonstrated by
specific knowledge, or by emotional and behavioral reactions to direct
questions about parts of the body and inquiries about actual exposure to [a
variety of sexual behaviours]. A secondary category involves the ability of description or demonstration of being subjected to any of the
experiences involving force or a partner at least 3 years older. A third
category involves one out of 10 examples, including a history of repeated
attempts to engage others in sexual behaviour (2), age-excessive preoccupation
with genital anatomy or related terms, or "differentiated" sexual behaviour [as
mentioned above, including repeated sexualised doll play, etc.] (3), and
excessive masturbation that would be significantly different from peers [!]
(5). The last categories require the child to be under 10 years of age, and his
behaviour differentiated from consensual peer sex play [but not repeated!],
from the child's misinterpretation about physical contact, or (apparently not
abusive) observed sexual acts, and from fabrication or indoctrination [!!][24]. Some of the Conference's participants worked on a
consensus regarding a list of Possible
Emotional and Behavioral Indicators of Child Sexual Abuse; the list was
printed in full [to stimulate critique and study], with differentiation of the
age groups 0-4 and 6-11 (and 12-18); they are organized as Most Specific to
CSA, May Be Related to CSA But Least Specific, and an in-between
category. Premature Eroticization (a Most Specific behaviour and
emotion) is defined by 5 items [examples?] for the 0-4 group; in the 6-11 [and
adolescent] group, the description of this category refers back to this
"explanation" (the summit thus lacking an argument on difference in the age
groups concerning "eroticization" processes). Later literature invested theoretical stamina in the perspective of two main, roughly synchronically suggested symptom formation theories within the traumatisation doctrine, being the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD[25]), and the Traumatogenic Dynamics Model of Child Sexual Abuse (Finkelhor and Brown, 1985; also Finkelhor, 1988). Other lines of thought referred to a learning theory construction, appealing to Pavlov's classical conditioning, Skinner's operant conditioning, and Bandura's concept of modelling (Butler and Elliott, 1999:p184)[26]. Slightly before it appeared in a specific model, David Finkelhor (1984) issued the same concept of traumatic sexualisation. In a chapter on Sexual Abuse as a Moral Problem, the author recognizes the following public "intuitive" arguments against adult-child sex: intrinsic wrongness and biological/physiological unnaturalness; premature sexualisation; and harmfulness (p15). In the later model, these appear to be fused beyond recognition. Even at the beginning of his writing career on the matter, Finkelhor (1979) suggested that therapists needed a "more adequate", "more compelling" and "more ethical" position-taking against sexual abuse of children, dismissing arguments concerning abuse being "intrinsically wrong", leading to "premature sexualisation", and being "clearly damaging". He states that "[f]or adults who find sex problematic, [premature sexualisation] is an attractive fantasy", while "the asexuality of childhood is a myth". We see that the "inadequate" and "intuitive" arguments against adult-child sex here re-enter the empirical "damage" paradigm (and actually ranking first here), a process Finkelhor wrongly envisioned to become "more and more controversial". After preaching informed consent (as in scientific
experiments), he does ask himself, "doesn't this argument constitute a
condemnation of all child sexuality?" Finkelhor's Traumatic Sexualisation, first of four traumatogenic dynamics refers to "a process in which the child's sexuality (including both sexual feelings and sexual attitudes) is shaped in a developmentally inappropriate and interpersonally dysfunctional fashion as a result of sexual abuse [leading to] inappropriate repertoires of sexual behavior, with confusions and misconceptions about their sexual self-concepts, and with unusual emotional associations to sexual activities" (1985:p531). Critically, the ages in which traumatic sexualisation would occur vary[27]. While it is stated that sexual abuse is primarily about "a precocious introduction to adult sexual behavior", and about appropriate developmental pathways (Finkelhor, 1995:p529), the trauma would include a more sophisticated structure: (1) rewarding of behaviour inappropriate for the child's level of development (1988:p69) or inappropriate considering the child's age group (p72); (2) [such rewarding leading to] the use of behaviours as a manipulative strategy; (3) fetishisation of body parts; (4) confusion and misconception about behaviours and morality; and (5) association of fright with sexual activity. This dynamic is held both unique and among the most important [traumatogenically potent?] of the four regarding "sexual abuse", having both short-term and long-term effects (the latter including dysorgasmia, flashbacks durante coitu, sex aversion, and inappropriate sexualisation of one's own children[28]). As for a short reflection on the above decursus, the studies are methodologically flawed[29], for instance by lacking support from prospective studies and from a theory on normativity. Thus, a positive localisation of erotic development (i.e., outside a localisation of pathologies) is problematic within contemporary clinical perspectives. Any concrete localisation of pathology is thus compromised as well. The following three paragraphs demonstrate that the clinical problem (or the medical pursuit of problems) is paralleled in extramural discourses aswell. 16.1.2 Ethcis and Aestethics:
Intracultural Discursive Movements and the Iconographic Entry [up] [Contents]
I would here wish to take up from another chapter (14) the compelling concept of "culturally" "eroticised" or fetishised innocence and innocents as explored by a number of contemporary authors (Kincaid[30]; Walkerdine[31]; Giroux[32])[33]. Walkerdine (1996/1998, 1997, 1999, 2001; Walkerdine et al., 1999) argued that 'the nature of the child' is not discovered but "produced in regimes of truth created in those very practices which proclaim the child in all his [as opposed to her] naturalness". Conrad[34] likewise refers to an alleged "cultural fascination with sexualized images of children". Victorian age, especially, has been marked by a fascination with little girls[35], entering the iconography of the era. In fact, there was also a small scene in "erotic" depiction of prepubertal girls[36] (some of which was covered in collections by Ovenden)[37]. Today, the apparent need for childhood erotica provides a raison d'être for technological industries and contra-industries, which seems to be a problem typical for Western and Asian technocracies. The issue has provoked some (predominantly historical) reflection on cultural values[38] by authors discussing the "cultural" narratives rather than activist claims. At the present time, cross-cultural studies on iconographic representations of the child within erotological terms have not been offered. 16.1.3 Child, Childlike and
Adultlike: Cultural Boundaries [up] [Contents]
The iconography of erotic childhood raises questions on the location of the agenda: subjectivities, objectivities or individuals. Another image of sexuality invading the childhood domain is concerned with depictions of "sexual naivety" and "childlikeness"[39]. Considering the ill-received work by Reisman, an analogous assessment of contemporary Japan would raise hell: most hentai is kawaii (cute, paedomorphic). This also calls into question the comparatively late adoption of child pornography rulings, as it would run counter to Japan's postWar veneration of freedom of expression. Within
selected contexts, the present work could even be called a "child eroticum" (or
"pedophile paraphernalium")[40].
These currents have greatly problematised and sensitised discussions of the
child, the erotic and the Other that might combine or interfere with the
notorious pair. It has also led to a culture war on claims of childhood as a
space, as a frontier, as a discourse within paedocentric societies, etc. 16.1.4 The "Hurried Erotics"
Discourse [up] [Contents]
There can be no mistake that time and speed take up the larger part of erotological discourses in contemporary Euro-American academia. Not a biological view, the "hurried child" philosophy (Elkind, 1981, 1982, 1993)[41] announces that children "[…] behave like adults and are treated as adults by parents, schools, the workplace, the media, and society in general. This thesis poses numerous methodological, substantive, and empirical problems; these include a limited historical perspective on the changing nature of American childhood, a failure to identify exactly who the hurried children are, and the use of a deterministic model and negative bias in the research[42]. It is argued that these writers fail to take into account the diverse experiences of contemporary American children as they pertain to such factors as age, gender, race, and social class. For the vast majority of contemporary American children, the "hurried child" is more myth than reality" (Lynott and Logue, 1993)[43].
Elkind
states that the media increasingly portrays young people as "precocious", and
presents them in more or less explicit sexual or manipulative situations. Such
portrayals may force young children to think they should act grown up before
they are "ready" ([1988:p120]), trying on "adult" language and behaviours. This
would be confirmed in classrooms[46]. Authors using Elkind's "theory" fail to unravel whether "the world" is hurrying or hurried itself (e.g., McGreevy, 1987)[47]. The concept is closely related to what has been phrased the "teening" of childhood (Hymowitz, 1999; 2001)[48]. This makes for an increasingly complex situation, given the "teening" of culture as a whole[49], that is, "using the trappings of teendom to sell products to grown-ups". The case for naturalised, normalised chronologies in sexology has been problematic since the rise of its clinical praxis and theory building from the 1870s onward (Janssen, 2001). This is intimately connected with the process of generational Othering, and easy biognomic Othering. How much contemporary discourses are informed by claims of protracted puberties remains to be certified. In the mean time, much of the controversy deals with authority (§16.1.5) and persona (§16.1.6) dimensions, and the use of narrative. 16.1.5 Tracking Down Sexualising
Cultures: Locating Authorities and Narratives [up] [Contents]
The clinical issue is rather problematic given the lack of normative theory. For instance, how "sexualizing" should "attention" be? [50] Studies suggest that, along with "sexualised" attention, puberty is broadly associated with the "attribution of social meanings to feelings of sexual arousal"[51]. This question, situated within the construct of paedophilia (Kincaid) and the Othered child, has led to a polarised set of views that either meet the child as a seduced (seducible) or as a seductive (seducing) agent. Reading Victorian classics and cartoons (1992) and studying U.S. TV culture, hometown folklore and the like (1998) Kincaid compellingly argues that "child molesting cultures" "eroticise" "innocence" by repeating various "stories" (1992:p375) "allowing us to construct, watch, enjoy the erotic child without taking any responsibility for our actions". An Aerol Arnold Professor of English, Kincaid's interpretation of "the sexualizing of the child" (1992:p172-6), affirmed by denial, departs from Foucault's observation that through the narrative of denial, child sexuality was presented as a "fundamental problem", society "sexually exciting the bodies of children" (1977:p120)[52]. The way out would again require our embracing of stories, "new" ones (K., 1998:p279-95). Kincaid's works, I reckon, are by far the best available to examine, locate and deconstruct the narratives that shape, sell and reinvent the ideas of the intergenerational in the "erotic". Significantly, they have been neglected by contemporary authors. The argument for a "baseline" condition here is an essential plot in the totality of culturalist views on "developmental sexualities". It is rarely offered. To see children as "sexual objects" is generally considered a "cognitive distortion", represented within "implicit theories" that "function like scientific theories and are used to explain empirical regularities and to make predictions about the world", and as such are ascribed to child molesters[53] and perhaps to certain environments[54], or specific agents[55] as facilitating such theorising. A tendency is noted, however, to describe such impenetrable areas of public discourse as "sexual abuse" in terms of the sociological images[56] involved, rather than the alleged "realities" (e.g., Jenks)[57]. 16.1.6 Spotting and Imagining
"Erotogenetic" Processes: The Problem
of the "Agogue" [up] [Contents]
Stepping down from criticising cultures, a range of authors has explored the literary and philosophical possibilities concerning reciprocal attraction in agogic situations[58]. The crossing, or fusion of erotics and agogics, particularly from the perspective of the "agogue", was further explored in frameworks like feminist pedagogy[59], particularist so-addressed pedagogical Eros models (e.g., Maasen, 1988/1990)[60], Greek paideia concepts, et cetera[61]. The field incorporates diverse understandings of "erotics"and "seduction"[62] in teaching, being taught[63] and the agogic dyad. For a good understanding, "educational seduction" is classically taken as a sitiation in which "a charismatic, entertaining instructor obtains favorable student ratings while presenting insufficient lecture content"[64]. At least for most of these authors, this erotics/exotics/agogics entry opens up a novel, wider understanding of the seduction-transmission sphere (a sphere traditionally pioneered by the psychoanalytic movement) as applied to the modern scholastic experience: erotic/agogic reciprocity. Malone, studying "cultural seduction" issues within historical context (1988:p81-121)[65], suggests the following (broad) operationalisation: "At the outset, we might think of cultural seduction as the pleasures, images, stories, kinds of knowledge, demands, desires, opportunities, promises, threats, horizons of expectation, and bodily interactions implicated in the practices of solicitude with which children are attended to. To study cultural seduction is to analyze these practices within cultural, historical, and physical geographies of the possible and the impossible, the moral and the immoral, the pleasurable and the painful, and the aims and ends of human development" (p12). Clearly advocating constructionist perspectives, Malone argues that "[t]he unwillingness and inability to address education as cultural seduction can be clearly seen in how understandings of childhood, and the child, are isolated from the (adult) cultural landscapes of desires within which children are raised, educated, and prepared for the adult world" (p14). Together with a tendency to isolate sexuality from development, both erotic development and authorities that might direct such evolution suffer from the problematisation of their social identity in Western discourse. For one, they would not exist, and secondly, they lack agreed-upon normative boundaries so that any realisation of their existence might attract oppositional interpretations. In any case, social constructionist perspectives are likely to fit into activist agendas, and to invite counter-activist agendas. 16.2
Scientific and Activist Traditions [up] [Contents]
Two major academic traditions (one dogmatic, one activist) have traditionally addressed what are considered "erotarchic" processes, moments, subjectivities and objectivities; as theoretical domains, they proceed from a biopathological ancestor briefly addressed in §16.2.0. The feminist quarrel with psychoanalysis is chiefly based on implications of its theory of female sexuality[66], and inherently, the acquisition of sexuality, language, and subjectivity. The following section aims at providing a collage of current narrative and thematic direction, and is not to be taken as a representative overview. 16.2.0 Biologist and Pathological
Accounts [up] [Contents]
As demonstrated in a previous account, eroticisation processes fell under the early speculations concerning the neuroendocrinological representation of eroticism. Authors pointed to erotomania, nymphomania, and satyriasis in childhood (Moreau)[67]; to "ererbte Hyperästhesie auf sexuellem Gebiete" [I, p429] or "psychosexuelle Hyperästhesie" [II, p422] causing a premature psychic puberty (Moll)[68]; "sexuelle Hyperhedonien"[69], etc. Rohleder (1921)[70], with a reference to Kohl[71] classified "gewisse Koketterie kleiner Mädchen" within the first of three stages of "brain eroticisation", thus governed by "unconscious sexuality". Authors (e.g., Peritz, 1932)[72] defended the endocrinologic onset of eroticism, causing sexuality to awake in the 10th to 11th year (Vorpubertätszeit). Pubertas praecox would cause an eroticisation, a Hyperlibido (ibid., p602) and a Frühsexualität (early sexuality), although the author could only name the example of a retarded boy. Later, pedagogical concerns invading the sexual child pointed to parental failures leading to "the precocious awakening of sexuality [as] evidenced by conspicuous dress and coquettish behaviour with boys and men teachers"[73]. 16.2.1 Psychoanalytic Accounts [up] [Contents]
Recent psychoanalytic accounts by Dio-Bleichmar[74], in a somewhat similar line of reasoning as that of Flaake (1996)[75] seduces readers into the argument that "[w]hile the process of sexualization in boys is controlled by the principle of intrapsychic secret, the same process is controlled in girls by the principle of perceived "complicity" that generates shame and guilt in the girls. When the physical attributes of a young girl's body arouse the voyeurism of an adult male, this happens in a way totally exogenous to the girl: the adult male's gaze [[76]] and the exchange of looks between the two protagonists of this unwanted (by the girl) exchange generates in the girl feelings of responsibility and guilt for her supposed seductiveness and provocative behavior". Using Laplanche[77]'s ramifications of "generalised seduction", Dio-Bleichmar (1995) argues that "[p]aternal infantile seduction may create an intersubjective topic for sexual meaning through the look. The look sets up an intersubjective space that is silent and secretive in that the interchange does not go beyond looking. The sexual look sets up in the girl's mind a meaning attached to her body as her flesh itself: her body, even clothed, can provoke a look that sees her in the nude. Realization of her provocativeness sets up conflicts of public versus private and exhibitionism versus voyeurism. […] The intersubjective nature of the operations in woman's constructing and sustaining the meaning of sexuality facilitates attribution of provocativeness to the female. Rather than stressing paternal erotogenetics, other authors point to certain passages, or rather, certain structuring moments, within the mother-daughter relationship, identified in retrospect as stages of a linear development that leads the little girl to become a woman and mother, acquiring the "erotic feminine essence"[78]. According to Stein (1998:p604)[79], the mother sends an "enigmatic signifier" or message of her sexuality to the child whom she nurtures. Thus, "[a] tension arc is created between bodily sensations and the enigmatic other carrying over into adult life and constituting a bedrock for the sense of enigma and unfathomableness and the sense of the profound revelation that sometimes accompanies sexual experience". It is psychoanalysis that has provided the most articulate views on the eroticisation of children's bodies, and body parts. Views, of course, expectedly lacking empiricism. To proving, for instance, that the girl-child's frustrated clitoral primacy should, by phallic intervention, be redirected into a passive vaginal end-identity. Psychodynamically, girls' first lipstick use potentialises a crisis[80], perhaps the beginning of "femininity" as "the erotic cathexis of the feminine body in a "hide-and-show" game that is enhanced, in adulthood, by feminine finery and make-up"[81]. Using a discursive psychoanalytic approach Angelides[82] elaborates on established representations of seduction in that "Without a language to express childhood sexuality, we deny human beings the capacity to symbolize the erotic and traumatic child/adult encounter, and it is this capacity to symbolize experience that is essential for coping with desire, loss, guilt, shame, and grief. Furthermore, in psychoanalytic terms, the more extreme the repression the more intense is the neurotic symptomatology. This might well explain many of the exaggerated emotional responses to pedophilia". Thus,
the author argues that "we can also see an intensified [collective] neurosis at
work at the level of cultural representation". [Additional refs.: Vergote, A. (2001) Libido awakened and shaped,
libido seduced and disturbed, Haute, Ph. van & Corveleyn, J. (Eds.) Seduction,
Suggestion, Psychoanalysis. Figures of the Unconscious, Volume 1. Leuven:
Leuven University Press] 16.2.1.1 Seduced
and Sexual Children: The Freudian Switch [up] [Contents]
In his book The Assault on Truth[83] Masson sets out a radical explanation of Freud's renunciation of the seduction hypothesis on September 21, 1897 (see p107), which pathed the road to the construction of an infantile sexual development, and to psychoanalysis (p188). His "seduction theory" of hysteria would have been to a great extent determined by his 1885 study trip to Paris, where he was influenced by works of Ambroise Tardieu, Paul Brouardel, Paul Bernard (whose work he possessed) and Charcot, who all observed and offered lectures on the sexual crimes against little girls. It is not ruled out that Freud was present at some autopsies of little victims. From a body of unpublished letters (Fliess, particularly), Masson arrives at the conclusion, that Freud's major change of perspective, shifting his attention from external trauma to internal fantasy as a causative agent in mental illness, was not for theoretical or clinical reasons, but because of a "personal failure of courage" (p189), because he, perhaps not consciously, chose to disregard the actual, often sexual, abuse of children as a potent and prevalent instance of psychic disruption[84]. The massive circle of psychoanalysts did not, with the rare exception of Sándor Ferenczi, resist the doctrine of this line of commitment. In fact, Masson's previous collaboration with Anna Freud and Robert Fliess, were terminated because of, as Masson implied, the vast implications of the public awareness of this historical trap for both psychoanalysis and Freud's person. He argues: "If it is not possible for the therapeutic community to address this serious issue in an honest and open-minded manner, then it is time for their patients to stop subjecting themselves to needless repetition of their deepest and earliest sorrow" (p192). He says little to nothing on the theoretical or scientific notion of infantile sexuality, nor does he refer to the then growing social instability on the subject of "child sexual abuse" in the United States of America. This book may be seen as a milestone, announcing the cultural (American) reappraisal, or renaissance, of the seduction theme ("theory", "hypothesis") then begun to be popularised by scientists and community resources[85]. The paper seemed to trigger a renewed historical interest in the matter[i]. However "popular" seduction "theories" are now, neither Freud, psychoanalysis at large nor anyone outside this "primal" field has to date presented basic evidence for the generally accepted inevitability and gravity of psychological sequelae of what is now called sexual abuse, as far as including a genetic explanation of the damage unmistakably prevalent in many "survivors". The (too easy) question seems to be the following: can we blame the individual for what can also be blamed on historical-cultural configurations, as psychohistorians do? Note that I do not which to enter debates on damaging properties: a more fundamental debate is at stake. Some may argue that Freud's localisation of sexuality (1905) meant "the end of historical innocence concerning infantile sexuality, sexual alterations, and the transformation of puberty" (e.g., Marcus, 1975)[86]; others may stress that Freudian ideas on sexual development were anticipated by other writers (see particularly Sulloway), and arose diffusely within the growing Austrian liberalism (e.g., Nagler, 1985)[87]. Whatever the historical precedents, Money (1991:p41-2, 44)[88] remarks that the "recycling" of the seduction theme, integrated in a social movement organised around "abuse", halted the realisation of a "pediatric sexology". This is a particularly interesting issue: the positioning (e.g., lateralisation, decentralisation) of the sexual within sexual abuse images. This is very much part of feminist victimologies as well. Even for the post-Freudian case, "[…] the idea of childhood as a phase of development from innocence and dependence to maturity sets up a space of anxiety and establishes a problem space for governance" (Ashenden, 2002:p199) [89]. Could this be the governance of erotics? 16.2.2 Feminist Concepts of Cultural Sexualisation and Complementarism [up] [Contents]
16.2.2.0
Feminism and the Shaped Female [up]
[Contents]
Most works on "female sexualisation" have been offered within feminist antipatriarchal, or at least patriarchy-aware, settings[90]. Thus, the process of "(hetero-)sexualisation" (Lee, 1994; Lee and Sasser-Coen, 1996a:p91-4; Lee and Sasser-Coen, 1996b:p85-110)[91] would entail "the social construction of "woman" through the politics surrounding the female body. Given that female bodies are construed as objects of attention and desire, menarche marks the simultaneous entry into adult womanhood and adult female sexualization". An interesting exercise would be the American cheerleader icon. Bennett[92], in discussing "The Cheerleader as Erotic Object", laments on the apparent dualism involved: "Some mothers, particularly those who were less attractive than others, wanted the cheerleaders' skirts even shorter than they were. Sex was a taboo subject, though. We were putting out the image of a beautiful sex idol, but no one could think she would be sexually active. She was like an adult Barbie doll. Heaven forbid, though, that she ever be sexually introduced to Ken. Football was only a medium for displaying her". Not in comparable ways paralleled for boys, girls' sexual positions are explored through the ways by which "girls' knowledge and experiences of their bodies and of their desire [are] shaped, enabled, and undermined by stories available in the culture about female intimate relationships and sexuality" (Tolman)[93], or the absence of such stories. Feminists' conclusions always seem to be negative: "Our [U.S.] culture tells girls they are exchangeable, sexualized commodities, thus thwarting their process of becoming whole persons"[94]. Selected research[95] however, advocates girls' ability "to bring interpretations of their lived experiences" to objectification tendencies rather than being "passive recipients" of such influence. Other authors suggest that girls, "being robbed of their sexual subjectivity and agency", are merely "participating in the process"[96]. Joining this line of ideas, Rossiter[97] notes how girls indeed experience their first co-ed dance party as "an important moment in learning to become an object of the male gaze" (ital.add.). For feminists, children's writing is "a
cultural artefact representing their constructs, critiques, and resistances of
locations" [98]. Not too
hesitant to cover up "recruitment agenda", feminists suggest offering the
provision of a "dialogical space for young women to discuss body domain
struggles and integrate them into their emerging feminist consciousness"[99].
After all, " 'Adolescence' is a crucial moment in which young women (and men)
must be "won" for the (heterosexual) patriarchal system"[100];
and girls need to be invited for "the
uncovering of silenced and subjugated knowledges"[101]. Sexualization processes
are currently measured by their relative chronological properties, and a
progressive earliness[102]
is frequently noted. In this line, female and feminist authors currently tend
to discuss female and childhood (girlhood) identities as having their roots in
"the sexualization of their humanity [, that is] transforming [developmental]
femaleness to a fetish"[103].
The position is taken that "adolescent females today are coming of age in a
girl-poisoning culture, saturated with sexualized and sexist media images and
expectations"[104]. Indeed,
it is the media that are doing it[105].
Authors have suggested that "[a]dolescents whose main source of information
about sex is TV are preoccupied with becoming sexually attractive or engaging
in early unprotected sexual intercourse"[106].
Simpson[107]
argued that the media-generated image of Xuxa (Maria da Graça Meneghel)
emerging during the 1980's as the wildly popular queen of Brazilian popular
culture, portraying "the standard of beauty, sensuality, and femininity for
much of Brazil" has had "a pernicious effect upon younger Brazilians,
especially with respect to her erotic marketing to preteen girls". Thus, the woman-child is "traumatically sexualised" (or at least jeopardised) as a result of an abusive process, and leading to abusive (or hazardous) processes. In tracking down such abuse/danger, authors from feminist and gay theorist backgrounds have tried to localise sexualisation in specific environments (families, schools[108], media) as potentially "highly sexualized sites characterized by constant reinforcement of compulsory heterosexuality through sexist discourses about masculinity and femininity"[109]. Modern feminism has explicated the ways that women, especially, are ascribed meanings of the body in a patriarchal society that "emphasise their sexual or reproductive spheres"[110]. In these spheres, women would use "body technologies" to both perform and negotiate identity. "Objectification experiences" (including "sexualized" inspection and verbal "harassment") lead to "objectified body consciousness", which would be "the cognitive and affective experience, including body surveillance, body shame, and appearance control beliefs, related to the construction of the female body as an object"[111]. 16.2.2.1 Uneroticising Girls [up] [Contents]
Conversely, others speak of the "missing discourse of desire" (Fine, 1988)[112], teachers having been "[…] positioned within the same discourses of desexualisation to which students are subjected. As purveyors of such discourses, teachers are expected to deny Eros" (Kelly, 1997:p124)[113]. Tolman discusses the dilemma caused for adolescent girls by "the "missing discourse of desire" in the culture [U.S.], the absence of any acknowledgement of female sexual desire" (1991). Thus, "the tactics of silencing and denigrating young women's sexual desire tend to divert them from realizing the possibilities of empowerment through that desire, regardless of sexual orientation" (1994). Girls would respond to the dilemma in three ways: "simply not feeling the desire, resisting their own desire, or making a claim to their own desire" (1999). In the latter study, it was claimed that no pattern was found of race, ethnicity, or social location, within the U.S., in each of these resolutions voiced by the girls. Thus, sexuality would be "shaped, enabled, and undermined" by cultural texts (2001). The question, then, as Simon Watney (1991:p398)[114] observes, "is not whether or not children are sexual beings, but how adults respond to children's sexuality, in ways that range from total denial to an untroubled acceptance". More or less contrary to this "response" model, school sexual curricula would be self-devised (Best, 1983)[115], and unwritten (Roberts, 1980)[116]. The ethnographically widespread issuing of genital exposure as "sexually differential ethological shaping of the genital" has provided a useful entry to describing the girlhood sexual scene via the concepts of malpositioned, malinformed, and immobilised bodies. Summing up, three models are verbalised within the feminist observations on erotic undevelopment: eroticism is (a) not addressed or recognised (the differential "neglect" discourse); (b) corrupted, deflected or wrongly directed (the differential "maltreatment" discourse); and (c) unpromoted, undeveloped, not provided for, diminished or neutralised (the differential "retardation" / "starvation" discourse). 16.2.2.2 Frameworking Girls and
Feminist Discourse: "Claiming" Developmental Erotic Selfhoods [up] [Contents]
Generally, feminist and psychoanalysts operate from what might be designated an essentialist position, which is polluted with traces of constructionism (e.g., Carr, 1999)[117]. For feminists, there is indeed some innate "female desire" (Tolman), of sexual "sphere" (Wesely), being "not realised" or "resisted" or claimed. Girls are "robbed" of their existent "sexual subjectivity and agency" (Loftus) or entitled to some universal teleos of "wholeness" (MacDonald). It is this "femaleness" or "humanity" (McCloskey) being violated, poisoned (Pipher), "sexualised", in some recruitment process. The issue of "sexism" (e.g., Epstein) likewise suggests an absolute (yet disputed) concept of legitimate sexual identity. Feminist ideologies, as gay activists, tend to stress the concept of "reclaiming" lost, natural, entitled bodies, spaces (e.g., Wex, 1979)[118], identities and "developments". Although some authors identify a participant role in the process (Corby), most conceptualise "eroticisation" as a passive fate for females, were it not for feminist intervention. A parallel argument for boys would follow from the common structuralist-functionalist approach, but is badly underrepresented in the rhetoric. The boy is commonly sided the Patriarch, or with the girl in Childhood debates. 16.3
Developmental Subject/Object
Eroticism: Cross-Cultural Observations [up] [Contents]
Leaving an in-depth cross-cultural challenge of Western ramifications to another occasion, below are collected a selection of applications in alium. Few comprehensive attempts at localising erotic developments seem to have been offered. This seems odd considering the outpour of gender studies in Western ethnography. It is also clear that contemporary ethnography has not been discovering the issue. 16.3.1 Paternal
and Patriarchic Practices [up] [Contents]
Offering input for psychoanalyst prose, the fact that the pater familias holds a key impact on the erotarche of daughters is uncontested for many Islamic and African societies. His attitudes are often ambivalent. After menarche a Tunisian
girl is not allowed outside the house "for anything but the most legitimate
social reasons" (Gram, 1974)[119];
paradoxically, they are encouraged to dress up and "look attractive". This
corresponds to behaviour of the father towards his three-year-old girl, who "encourages
a sort of demanding flirtatious feminine behavior forbidden his wife". Whether
traditionally tattooed or not, "little girls are encouraged to think of
themselves as objects, played with and decorated by their male relations". Her
transition to adolescence is "hardly noticeable". A comparable paradox is apparently noted in Puerto Rico: "Since little girls are expected to grow into demure and virtuous women, they are also supposed to be innocent and ignorant of the physiological processes connected with sex and sexual behavior. They are supposed to be feminine in the sense of being coquettish, yet are to refrain from using their feminine charms to attract men, unless they are addressing themselves to a suitor who has parental approval" (Padilla 1958[120]). Blackman (1968:p43, 47, 90)[121] relates how, although Egyptian laws prohibited early marriage (before 16, boys until age 18), Fellahin girls are dressed up at an early age to attract men, "old enough to be their fathers or even their grandfathers". These cases suggest a tension between eroticisation and nonerotisation discourses. "Patriarchic eroticisation" occurs within the interactive space of the familia. In Italy, around the age of six or seven, "the growing attractiveness of the little girl is the focus of considerable teasing from father and older brothers, uncles, etc." (Parsons, 1964 [1969:p255-6])[122]. This interpretation confirms feminist claims of "patriarchic sexualisation".
Lindblom[123]
notes how father-daughter intimacy enters local discourses in Northern Pakistan
Pashtun families: "Girls […] are much beloved by their fathers, who cuddle them, tease them, and roguishly rub them and bite them; which again is not to claim that daughters are not beaten by their fathers. But the relation is a loving one, and the little girls are coquettish with their fathers. Father and daughter remain close in later life. It is said that a woman respects and obeys only her father and, to a lesser extent, her brothers. The mother gives her daughters little affection. Instead, she is generally harsh and demanding. There is certainly an element of jealousy in the hostile relationship between mother and daughter, for the daughter is treated more sensually and lovingly by her father than the wife is ever treated by her husband. The jealousy is not always unfounded, since cases of father—daughter incest are often the subject of local gossip. Of course, since incest is a domestic offense, the village takes no action against the offender, but his daughter will find difficulty in marrying. In one case in Shin Bagh, the girl ended by being engaged to a very old man living near Peshawar". The attention may result in girls being geared toward marriage[124]. Whereas the premenarchal girl can be teasingly sensiticised, menarche redefines the space in which the girl moves, and in which the extrafamilial male may enter and the familial male is repositioned. A reverse pattern is noted by Schlegel (1973)[125], who states that the Hopi girl "must be wary of boy's advances and do nothing to attract their sexual interest, if she is to remain chaste. This is particularly true at menstruation, when the smell of menstrual blood is believed to make the woman more sexually attractive to men as they are made aware of her sexual readiness". Among the New Guinean Bimin-Kukusmin, male and female siblings are to chaperon the neothelarchic girl, since she is now regarded "attractive". "Among both Turks and Arabs, the young unmarried girl is "loved" by her older brothers and father, but as she reaches puberty they are faced with a state they cannot "control", that is, their daughter's or sister's sexuality. The girl must therefore be married, and among both rural peoples, marriage normally occurs promptly after the onset of puberty" (Meeker). But even before puberty, girls' sexual spaces may be well-bordered, and smaller than boys': Puerto Rican little girls are less encouraged to have "boy-friends" than boys are encouraged to have girl-friends. Instead, they are constantly reminded of their beauty, the need to maintain pleasing looks and demeanor, to keep their legs together when sitting, […] to never say a "bad" word" […]". The vulva is covered since birth, the penis may be bare until age 7 years (Mintz, 1956). In their 1996 Blood Stories Lee and Sasser-Coen focus on menarche as "a central aspect of body politics in contemporary [U.S.] society". Using a social constructivist /post-structuralist view of the subject, the book emphasises that it is in part through the body that women are "integrated into the social and sexual order", and in part through the discourses and disciplinary practices of menstruation, framed as "feminine" normative practices, that "heterosexuality is constructed and reconstructed in everyday live". Unfortunately, this process would be perfused with concepts of contamination, alienation, and anxiety (Lee). 16.3.2 Attractive Bodies: Sociogenetics [up] [Contents]
"[…]
the main object of tatuing on the part of either males or females is to enhance
their attractions in the eyes of the opposite sex and thus to stimulate desire.
Tatuing, in this view, is merely an incident of courtship and has nothing to do
with religion or totems, while its association with puberty arises solely from
the fact that savage people set about their wooing betimes"[126]. Using
HRAF sources, Rogoff et al. (1975)[127]
examined 27[128] variables that
would signify "cognitive or social changes which might occur with age in
childhood or be attributed to children in a particular age, and which would be
noticeable to an ethnographer visiting a culture". Among these are (variable
18:) consideration of "sexual" status ("The age when the child is considered
capable of sexual activity and stimulation, or when this behavior is bound by
the taboos of the culture") and (v19:) emphasis on "sexual attractiveness"
("The culture encourages the child to be concerned with sexual attractiveness
in clothing, self-decoration, hair-styling, personal cleanliness"). Of 50 HRAF
cultures, 22 reported ages for variable v18, and 18 for v19. While sexual
attractiveness showed a mode age of 13, "considered sexual" seemed to be assigned
across a broad age range[129]. This range is most likely caused by the surprising dualistic definition, and the indefinite character of the term "sexual". Although a central issue in socialisation, the first part of the definition (socially recognised sexual capacity) is not explored elsewhere. The culture of making bodies attractive has been studied predominantly in monocultural settings. Girls' entry into "cosmetic culture" (Thorne, 1993:p148-51) entails the trajectory from "pretend" to "real" attractiveness. Thorne (1991)[130] argued that "a major symbolic disjuncture is bound up in the transition from the sexually innocent child to the publicly sexual teen". Few qualitative and hardly any numeric studies add to these data. 16.3.3 Hammams
and Households: The Knowing Eye and Splitting Universa [cf. Atlas, Hammam] [up]
[Contents]
The
role of sex in the traditional Mediterranean bath house is widely discussed.
North African boys are banned from the women's Hammam at the date of sexual
coming-of-age (Buitelaar and Van Gelder, 1996:p145-6)[131].
Later, the smouldering memories of naked females would eroticise the
institution. According to Serhane ([1995:p169-77])[132]
the Hammam is remembered as a revolution in male sexual development, a
transition nicely illustrated in the film Halfaouine[133].
In his Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi
(1994)[134] describes
her cousin's expulsion from the women's hammam, which seemed to have resulted
from a similar gaze as that of Noura (Halfaouine): "Then came the day that
Samir was thrown out of the hammam because a woman noticed that he had "a man's
stare" […] "He might be four, but I am telling you, he looked at my breast just
like my husband does". […] [T]hat […] incident signalled, without Samir [the
cousin] and I realizing it, the end of childhood, when the difference between
the sexes did not matter. After that Samir was less and less tolerated in the
woman's hammam, as his "erotic stare"
began to disturb more and more women" (p239-42). The result is dramatic: "Men do not understand women […] and women do
understand men, and it all starts when little girls are separated from little
boys in the hammam. Then a cosmic
frontier splits the planet in two halves. The frontier indicates the line of
power because whenever there is a frontier, there are two kinds of creatures
walking on Allah's earth, the powerful on one side, and the powerless on the
other" (p242). Other authors mention the hammam is a forbidden place after the stigma of circumcision that announces the bankruptcy of the boy's "asexual" status. According to Bouhdiba (1985)[135]: "The hammam [...] is a highly eroticized place - so much so indeed that the name has come to signify for the masses the sexual act itself [...] "going to the hammam" quite simply means "making love" […] . Every Muslim can relive his childhood in terms of his experience of the hammam […] notoriously a place of homosexuality, male and female […] there the child has all the time in the world to contemplate, examine and compare sexual organs [so that] every Muslim is fixated on his mother [...]". Bouhdiba even speaks of a Hammam-complex. According to Messina (1991:p201-2)[136], the Moroccan boy may remember to be expelled from the Hammam at ages three or four, eight and as late as ten. To summarise the Islamic eye, "It is the eye that is the root cause of all mischief. It is the spark that fuels the fire. An eye is safe from Hell when it keeps a vigil for the sake of Allah, sheds tears out of His fear and abstains from looking at female strangers"[137]. Significantly, Newson and Newson (1968:p363-5)[138] discussed a similar developmental difference in "looking" and "seeing" in American four-year-olds. The subjective maternal experience, however, is not likely to sort a revolution in social organisation as radical as in the Hammam case. Still, the effects may be as significant as to sort a culturally specific eroticism that defines intergenerational tensions (Oedipus), as well as the subsequent reorientation of social reference from vertical to horizontal (agogic to erotic)[139] dynamics. 16.3.4 Consuming and Producing the
Erotic Child [up] [Contents]
Much of the speculation on eroticism development is, regrettingly, in the eye of the beholder solely (cf. chapter 9). Kincaid clearly details how the Western erotic child is both consumed, produced (and not-consumed and not-produced) in an economy of implicit meanings and representations. Dances at Nharo girls' menarchal rites, for instance, would be "frenzied and replete with erotic gestures" (Guenther, 1986:p280)[140]. Variously titled "obscene" or "sexual", such gestural curricula are a remarkable attribute of many puberty rites. Probably representative of many such rituals are the Klamath's where "erotic" songs pass under the name of pilpil or puberty songs (Gatschet, 1890)[141]. "They include lines on signs of womanhood, courting, love sentiments, disappointments in love, marriage fees paid to parents, on marrying and on conjugal life. […] [T]hey all refer in fact to love-making and kindred sentiments, the satiric lines confirming the proverbial inclination of lovers to fight among themselves". Danielsson ([1956]:p84-5; 1961:p834)[142] quotes Cook: "Dances of an erotic character were common. Cook wrote that in Haiti, dances of this type were "performed by young girls, whenever eight or ten of them can be collected together, and added that they consisted of "motions and gestures beyond imagination wanton, in which they are brought up since their earliest childhood, accompanied by words, which, if it were possible, would more explicitly convey the same idea"[143]. The element of culture-typical complementation norms is universal. Boys in Central Asia, batshas, would be "trained" from childhood on in erotic songs and dances[144]. Among the "Sambia", "[m]en perceive premenarche females as children, a category of asexual or not exciting erotic objects", in contrast to boys (Herdt). In contrast to the "Sambia", the Gebusi did not declare or imply that men had to be inseminated to reach adulthood; "this was simply an erotic act that could help them in this regard" (Knauft). This "simply erotic" status of boys is a typical attribute of cultures with age-structured homosexuality; most of these cultures (Greece, Japan, Pukhtunistan/Afghanistan, Persia)[145] develop elaborate poetry and prose curricula to "celebrate" and document age-structured affects. The Kogi mother, in addition to masturbating her son, "[…] shows a lively interest in the erotic pleasures which her daughter derives from her body and takes a certain pride in the fact that this instinct is developing in her children"; this would co-occur with "children five or six years old [being] frequently subjected to sexual aggression by adults". A demonstration of complementarism, Cowgill and Hutchinson (1963)[146] (cited by DeMause, 1989)[147] reported that all the girls were very flirtatious with the grown men, often overtly sexual even as very young girls. When they looked for the reasons why, they found a very high boy/girl ratio and noticed that girls were regularly allowed to die off - through giving them less food and by other neglect - if they did not appeal sexually to the men around them. Predominantly a manner of speaking, authors definitely identify eroticism, or "erotic components" in the (coital) play of young children (e.g., Malinowski: Trobrianders; Schefold: Mentawaians), such affects being explained by the "instruction in erotic matters from their companions". Kurtz (1991:p79-83)[148] assumes that the Trobriand mythical "erotic paradise" Tuma is a "conscious depiction of the adult Trobriander's unconscious childhood memories" of erotic [coital?] initiation in early childhood. Theoretically, one entry to developmental eroticism would indeed be the alleged "erotic" curricular folklore (e.g., Armalinsky, 1995[149]; Badalanova, 1993, 1995, 1996)[150] including "erotic jokes" (Covarrubias, 1937 [1938:p132-3])[151], "erotic" drawings (Koch)[152], and the like. These operationalisations clearly lie in the sphere of "productive eroticism", rather than the consumptive sphere. The argument that these formulations serve to project observers' values onto unexplored realms of functionality is, I reckon, grounded. The mentioned reports are generally informed by indirect methodologies, so that the evolutionary question (erotogenesis) is a matter of interpretation, not observation. 16.3.5 The Curricularised Body: Its Relation to Erotic
Curricularisation [up] [Contents]
On the basis of ethnographic study of 10-12 year olds in the transition from primary to secondary school in England, Jenks (2001)[153] argues that "[…] the process of learning about the body plays a critical and orienting role. The competencies and capacities of the body are made the focus of the particular temporal regimes associated with the punctuations of curriculum time at school, such that time comes to literally be embodied by children through the twin processes of discipline and empowerment that shape their everyday relations at school". This is supported by other material (e.g., Martin, 1998)[154]. Further findings suggest that the discourses of power which perpetuate gendered practice are not just to be found in language exchanges, but in practices enacted on and through bodies as well[155]. The current project on sexually growing
up suggests just that curricularisation of sexual/erotic bodies. 16.4
Theoretical and Clinical Notes [up] [Contents]
What can clinical
perspectives add to the above delineations? This seems to be restricted to the introduction
of objective measures (§16.4.1), and of biosociological entries. The
issue somewhere enters anthropology's incest debate (cf. §14.2). In Bem's[156]
Exotic Becomes Erotic theory, regardless of the specific source or affective tone,
childhood physiological arousal as being evoked by gender-identified otherness
is subsequently "transformed" into erotic attraction. Considering the timing of
this last step, it is argued that "[…] social norms and expectations inevitably influence an individual's awareness and interpretation of early arousal. Most individuals in our [U.S.] culture are primed to anticipate, recognize, and interpret opposite-sex arousal as erotic or romantic attraction and to ignore, repress, or differently interpret comparable same-sex arousal. We should also expect to see secular changes and cohort effects"[157]. Thus, Bem allows "cultural" factors to
modify "biosocial pathways of "exotification" and "eroticisation", processes
that are not primarily generated by "vertical" or generational dynamics. The
theory would apply to most individuals "in a gender-polarizing culture like
ours [U.S.], a culture that emphasizes the differences between the sexes by
pervasively organizing both the perceptions and realities of communal life
around the male–female dichotomy". Furthermore, "[c]ultural factors can also enter to create
individual differences that appear to be exceptions to the EBE model" (2000:p543). Just how
obviously polarising U.S. society is indeed may depend on the life phase. In
this sense, nonpolarising policies in the early life phase modifies
(decelerates) the exotic/erotic trajectory. While hinted at very briefly (1997;
2000:p537), a discussion of the theory's use in incest debates was not offered.
The theory, while the possibilities are briefly issued (2000:p535), does not
factually offer supported generalisations beyond the hegemonic gender axis. 16.4.1 A Clinical Note [up] [Contents]
As for objectively measuring erotics, an often-used axis to categorise the affective orientation toward "sexuality" is the erotophilia-erotophobia dichotomy[158], or "the disposition to respond to sexual cues along a negative-positive dimension of affect and evaluation". Expanding on the primary definition by including the motivational attitude toward genital/orificial behaviour, it has not been established whether "healthy" children are or ought to be erotophilic: it has never been studied in preadolescents. Some material, however, seems suggestive of a phenomenon that may tentatively be described as erotomisy, or opposition to the very concept of sexual behaviour, thoughts or discussion, whether in reference to others or the self. Other than in the nosological rejection of sexual activities, the negative affect would be based on moral or idiosyncratic assumptions, and is generally nondiscriminative for specific behaviour categories (pan-erotomisy). In the absence of pre-adolescent baselines, these remarks remain tentative in every respect. After having interviewed approximately 1,000 children (aged 5-15 years) from nuclear intact families in Australia, England, North America, children could generally be termed asexual (up to 7 years old), presexual (from 7-9 years), and sexual (from 11 years on)[159]. These concepts (referring to cognitive aspects of sexuality) are important considering the light in which society's concerns for "evil" interference are formulated in concepts of a- and presexuality[160]. The extent to which the Goldmans' use of "sexual" categories translates to "erotic" ones is largely unstudied. Freund and Kuban (1993; Freund, 1994)[161] investigated age and gender orientation in childhood curiosity for visual nudity as an "indicator of developing erotic interest". Van Goozen et al. (2002)[162] measured preteen "preference" for "sexual" stimuli: "(e.g., a woman with naked breasts, man and women lying on top of each other and kissing)". In a 1956 paper unseen by the author, Mamiya measured "excitability to words, sentences, anatomical figures and pictures with sexual content by means of GSR [galvanic skin resistance?] and respiratory rate recordings" in Japanese peripubescents Being detailed elsewhere[163], papers have established some insights to the timing of "first" and "early" sexual arousal (see Table 1-Table 4). Disregarding the methodological problems apparent in these studies, no cross-cultural data are available[164]. From these Western data, and within the variance in methodology and definitions, mean age figures indicate timing in late prepubescence to peripubescence. Hypothetically, this figure should be much lower due to unspecific or specific (e.g. Borneman) amnestic processes; further, it might be culturally variable. More interestingly, object-specific eroticism may be subject to culture-specific chronologies. 16.5
Concluding Remarks [up] [Contents]
Within a constructionist approach, the following theses emerge: -- erotic being is a social construct mediated through processes that
variably issue identification, predominantly by projecting
erotic subjectivity of (previously eroticised) age classes, and complementation, predominantly in (cultural or individual) situations that require
and legitimise "recruitment"; -- (developmental) eroticism is a confrontation between performances by individuals and
disciplinary structures. Little is known about the young individual's
performance of attractiveness, and of erotic attraction; -- political and scientific agendas have disputed the issue of "gazes" or identified spectators shaping the performance of attractiveness.
Disputes have focussed on the identity of the viewer: these were isolated as
the patriarch gaze (feminism), the incestuous gaze (psychoanalysis), the
"paedophilic" gaze (sociology), and the "levelled" (though sexist,
heterosexist, objectifying, etc.) gaze of male peers. This (normative vs.
perverse) "traumatic gaze curriculum" is an essentially complementary concept.
The crucial issue of "being gazed at" has been underrepresented in academic
discourse, as well as heavily politicised, until recently; the masculine side
appears to be neglected as well. 16.x Additional
Reading [up] [Contents]
-- 04-01-1995 Panel
chair, "The Sexualization of Childhood".
Presented at the conference Women,
Sexuality, and Violence: Re-Visioning Public Policy, Annenberg Public
Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania -- Fredrickson, B.
L. & Roberts, T. A. (1997) Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding
Women's Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks, Psychol Women Quart 21,2:173-206 -- Hey, V. (1996) The Company She Keeps: An Ethnography of
Girls' Friendship. Buckingham, England: Open University Press -- Hodder, F. H.
(1998) The eroticized child [Kiku Adatto], Harvard
Mag, May -- Lees, S. (1989)
Learning to love: Sexual reputation, morality and the social control of girls,
in Cain, M. (Ed.) Growing Up Good:
Policing the Behaviour of Girls in Europe. London: Sage -- Lees, S.
(1996) Ruling Passions: Sexual Violence,
Reputation and the Law. Buckingham: Open University Press [ch.1 The
policing of girls in everyday life: Sexual reputation, morality and the social
control of girls] -- Leonard, M.
R. (1966) Fathers and daughters: the significance of "fathering" in the
psychosexual development of the girl, Int
J Psychoanal 47,2:325-34 -- Murnen, S. K.
& Smolak, L. (2000) The Experience of Sexual Harassment among Grade-School
Students: Early Socialization of Female Subordination, Sex Roles 43,1-2:1-17 -- Rapoport,
T. (1992) Two Patterns of Girlhood: Inconsistent Sexuality-Laden Experiences
across Institutions of Socialisation and Socio-Cultural Milieux, Int Sociol 7,3:329-46 -- Rapoport,
T. (1993) "To be a girl": Inconsistent sexuality-laden experiences across
socialization institutions / Two patterns of girlhood: Inconsistent
sexuality-laden experiences across socialization institutions and
socio-cultural milieux, Megamot
35,1:5-22 -- Silver, A.
K. (2000) A Caught Dream: John Ruskin, Kate Greenaway and the Erotic Innocent
Girl, Children's Lit Assoc Quart
25,1:37-44 -- Walkerdine, V. (1984) Some day my prince will come: Young girls and the preparation for adolescent sexuality, in McRobbie, A. & Nava, M. (Eds.) Gender and Generation. Basingstoke Hants, UK: Macmillan Educational 16.y
Appendices: Some Data on Erotarche [up] [Contents]
Note: Clearly peripheral to GUS' current theoretical workup, the following appendices provide the suggestion of "objectives" includible in the above discussion. The insertion of quotation marks highlights the problem of interpretation with these broadly accepted measures, at least in the attempt of tracing and remembering "first occurrences". Table 1
"First
Sexual Arousal": Mean
Age [up] [Contents]
Table 2 Prepubescent
"Sexual" Arousal,
Quantitative Studies [up] [Contents]
Table 3 Sexual
Arousal:
Accumulative % First before Age of 15 [197] [up] [Contents]
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