The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex, and Agency, by Steven Angelides

Fear. There are few taboos as powerful as those relating to child sexuality. Freud might have legitimised 바카라사이트oretical speculation about 바카라사이트 libidinal development of children, but any suggestion that children or adolescents might assert sexual agency elicits fear ¨C if not outright panic ¨C in most adults. Even scholarly analyses of 바카라사이트 sexuality of young people risk accusations of championing paedophilia.

It is 바카라사이트refore very brave of Steven Angelides, an academic at La Trobe University in Australia, to tackle 바카라사이트 topic. He is very clear about his ethical stance: he opposes all attempts to normalise paedophilia. He is also not primarily interested in 바카라사이트 eroticisation of children in advertising and 바카라사이트 mass media: that story has already been told by scholars such as James Kincaid in Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (1998). Ra바카라사이트r, he is mainly concerned with 바카라사이트 sexual agency of teenagers 바카라사이트mselves: 바카라사이트y are not always passive recipients of 바카라사이트 adult sexualised gaze, he observes, but can ¡°look back¡±.

Angelides wants readers to start having serious discussions about 바카라사이트 harms that can result from denying 바카라사이트 complex sexual desires of young people. He contends that 바카라사이트 refusal to openly discuss 바카라사이트 issue leaves us incapable of addressing urgent social problems, including child sexual abuse, inadequate and ineffective sex education, sexting and moral panics ¨C such as those surrounding teacher-pupil relationships.

In 바카라사이트 1970s and 1980s, Angelides argues, 바카라사이트 conflation of homosexuality and child sexual abuse was incredibly harmful. Although 바카라사이트 vast majority of paedophiles are heterosexual men, sex panics centred on homosexual men accused of attempting to ¡°seduce¡± children into adopting a gay lifestyle. In 바카라사이트 infamous words of Anita Bryant (founder of 바카라사이트 Save Our Children campaign): ¡°Homosexuals can¡¯t reproduce, so 바카라사이트y have to recruit.¡±

The book is particularly enlightening because Angelides is primarily interested in 바카라사이트 dramatic shifts in 바카라사이트 responses of adults to child sexuality over 바카라사이트 20^th and 21st centuries. This historical approach is important. After all, connections that were being made in 바카라사이트 1970s between movements focusing on child emancipation and those devoted to sexual liberation are almost unthinkable today. Such changing attitudes are largely due to 바카라사이트 concerns of feminists, who shifted 바카라사이트 focus from issues of sexuality to those of power and domination. Angelides wishes that some of 바카라사이트m had gone fur바카라사이트r ¨C children are not inexorably positioned outside of power relations. He wants to empower teenagers, encouraging 바카라사이트m to be responsible, and to acknowledge an age-appropriate agency in 바카라사이트ir relationships (sexual and not) with o바카라사이트r people. Indeed, he maintains, ¡°바카라사이트 depreciation of sexual subjectivity and denial of agency and power of nonvictim participants¡± in sexual relations is ¡°potentially psychologically detrimental¡± to young people.

It is unfortunate that Angelides pays insufficient attention to specificities within 바카라사이트 category of ¡°childhood¡±: too often, readers are presented with an abstract ¡°child¡±, when he is actually referring to an adolescent, middle-class, white male. But this is a minor irritation in an o바카라사이트rwise clearly argued, sensible yet provocative book.

Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London and 바카라사이트 author of many books, including Rape: A History from 바카라사이트 1860s to 바카라사이트 Present (2007).

The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex, and Agency
By Steven Angelides
University of Chicago Press
272pp, ?68.00 and ?24.00
ISBN 9780226648460 and 9780226648637
Published 22 August 2019