HISTSEX ARCHIVES: 21-29 FEB 2000
© Lesley Hall and list contributors
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:08:32 +1100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
Anne Dietrich wrote:
> An adult touching a child in a sexual manner is exploiting that child's
> trust, whether the child knows it or not as a child, and whether or not the adult grows
> up to rationalize the abuse as acceptable (as in the quotes posted to this list earlier
> tonight).
> You seem to read these quotes as that these people have not been traumatized by it -- I am
> not so ready to accept that point of view. They may simply have introjected the beliefs of
> their abusers -- normalizing sexual abuse and not being cognizant of possible damage. They
> may be in denial. They may be utilizing posttraumatic avoidance and numbing. If they faced
> the actual harmfulness of the abuse, it may well be too painful for them to bear, and so
> they need to minimize and deny and rationalize.
>
Hi Anne,
I am sorry but I believe in allowing people to interpret their own experience. I have no
right to tell others they do not feel what they say they feel. This is challenging - there
are all kinds of situations in which an outsider might say people are being exploited but
those involved deny this. Also many people do routinely avoid their own feelings and live in
a state of denial. However Freudian concepts such as negation or denial are profoundly
authoritarian and this is the only stance I can defend. You use the term 'normalising' to
reject the possibility that an individual's own non-normal interpretation of their experience
might be correct. I can't accept that there is only one way of having this experience and
that we have the right to impose it
upon others. That is normalising as I would use the term - imposing societal definitions and
standards blanket fashion
on others. People don't fit into categories and sexual desire (all desire) is very
multi-faceted, ambivalent and complex and changing.
To understand when people are actually denying their own feelings and experience one has to
search the evidence in each case and look for contradictions, apparent evasions or absences.
And always, of course, question the assumptions we are bringing to our evidence. In the end
if these individuals say they were not damaged - then I would accept they were not. Just as I
would expect someone to accept my estimation of my sexual experience. Historically on the
'concept' - definitions of child abuse in western societies have changed enormously even in
the last century. One of the most challenging tasks for a historian is to understand how
concepts that may seem self-evident have changed radically.
Hera
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 03:11:22 -0500
From: Julienne <julienne@ptd.net>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
At 06:08 PM 2/21/00 +1100, Hera Cook wrote:
>Hi Anne,
>I am sorry but I believe in allowing people to interpret their own
>experience. I have no
>right to tell others they do not feel what they say they feel. This is
>challenging - there
>are all kinds of situations in which an outsider might say people are
>being exploited but
>those involved deny this. Also many people do routinely avoid their own
>feelings and live in
>a state of denial. However Freudian concepts such as negation or denial
>are profoundly
>authoritarian and this is the only stance I can defend. You use the term
>'normalising' to
>reject the possibility that an individual's own non-normal interpretation
>of their experience
>might be correct. I can't accept that there is only one way of having this
>experience and
>that we have the right to impose it upon others. That is normalising as I
>would use the
>term - imposing societal definitions and standards blanket fashion on
>others. People don't
>fit into categories and sexual desire (all desire) is very multi-faceted,
>ambivalent and
>complex and changing.
>
>To understand when people are actually denying their own feelings and
>experience one has to
>search the evidence in each case and look for contradictions, apparent
>evasions or absences.
>And always, of course, question the assumptions we are bringing to our
>evidence. In the end
>if these individuals say they were not damaged - then I would accept they
>were not. Just as I
>would expect someone to accept my estimation of my sexual experience.
>Historically on the
>'concept' - definitions of child abuse in western societies have changed
>enormously even in
>the last century. One of the most challenging tasks for a historian is to
>understand how
>concepts that may seem self-evident have changed radically.
>Hera
And, Hera, would you also accept the statement of the physically abused
that s/he
wasn't abused? Most abused wives and children accept that they "deserved" it...
and that it did them no harm. Look at the guy busy hitting his child
because his own
Dad hit him, and "it did me no harm".
Maybe we need to ask the sexual partners of the sexually abused...maybe
they know more about what the real effects were.
Julienne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 09:22:07 +0000
From: Paula <fa1912@wlv.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: child sexual abuse
Louise Jackson has a book out on child sexual abuse this year - it's a
Routledge publication.
Paula Bartley
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 09:59:43 -0500
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
Subject: Hormones, genetic determinism, and history
Jim Miller wrote:
There is a world of difference between sexual situations
>involving pre-adolescents and sexual situations involving adolescents. The
>former do not have the hormones which drive many adolesents not only to
>accept sexual advances from adults, but to make them as well.
David Harley comments:
I think that as historians we need to beware of taking for granted the
popular science that is fed to us by science pundits and the media. The
idea that hormones "drive" people is a very odd one, since it would suggest
that all humans at all times have exactly the same range of desires,
fuelled by hormonal impulses. This is a very recent notion, and one that
many biologists would reject, as also its cousin genetic determinism (e.g.
the "gay gene"). See Anne Fausto-Sterling's recent book, Sexing the Body,
and Lenny Moss's forthcoming What Genes Can't Do. It makes more sense to
think in terms of a feedback system that operates between culture and
biology, so that current cultural norms become naturalized in the body
developmentally. How can we historicize the early twentieth-century notion
of sex hormones if we cannot stand back a little from yesterday's orthodoxy
or today's "common sense"?
David Harley,
Dept. of History,
University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
tel.: 219-631-7789
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 07:04:21 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
Hera,
Are you saying that you are rejecting concepts such as repression and denial on the grounds that
they are authoritarian? Modern notions of traumatic amnesia and dissociation have nothing to do
with Freudian notions of repression, but rather are premised in Janetian notions of dissociation.
There is nothing authoritarian about this. In short, I retain the possibility as a hypothesis,
rather than automatically rejecting it out of hand. As much as I believe in equality, etc., I
have also seen firsthand the dissociation and avoidance and numbing that occurs with persons who
have been sexually abused. Of course, I would never presume to tell a client that they were
harmed if they insist that they were not, but I keep the possibility in the back of my mind as a
working hypothesis. Many adult survivors have aftereffects of abuse, for which they seek
treatment, without making a connection between their symptoms and the earlier abuse. Here's a
hypothetical example: Clients may present for treatment for substance abuse. During an assessment
interview, they reveal an adolescent rape, and report that they started abusing substances right
after the rape. They may say, "no the rape hasn't affected me," but they don't see the
connection between their substance abuse and rape. This kind of stuff happens more than some
people might want to believe.
Anne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 07:08:41 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: child sexual abuse
Of course, Bob, language shapes identity and notions of reality. However, children
think and perceive differently than adults do. Their initial conceptions of
themselves, others, and the world are very different from adults. Read Jean
Piaget, for example.
Anne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:21:42 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: child sexuality
>In mutual, healthy, adult sexual relationships (whether heterosexual or
>homosexual), there is pleasure in giving and pleasure in receiving.
I neither doubt nor dispute the above.
>Sexual
>behavior between mutually consenting adults need not be selfish.
Yet I would insist there is a "selfish" component to "sexual behavior
between mutually consenting adults."
> It can be very
>loving and giving (and pleasurable for just that reason).
Indeed.
>
> > >Children
> > >need to be cuddled and caressed, but not abused and exploited for
> > >the adult's selfish
> > >sexual pleasure.
> >
> > All "sexual pleasure" is "selfish."
> >
> > >And
> > >yes, I believe children do, and should, have an independent sexuality ...
> >
> > Agreed.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:28:21 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
>At 06:08 PM 2/21/00 +1100, Hera Cook wrote:
>
>>Hi Anne,
>>I am sorry but I believe in allowing people to interpret their own
>>experience. I have no
>>right to tell others they do not feel what they say they feel. This
>>is challenging - there
>>are all kinds of situations in which an outsider might say people
>>are being exploited but
>>those involved deny this. Also many people do routinely avoid their
>>own feelings and live in
>>a state of denial. However Freudian concepts such as negation or
>>denial are profoundly
>>authoritarian and this is the only stance I can defend. You use the
>>term 'normalising' to
>>reject the possibility that an individual's own non-normal
>>interpretation of their experience
>>might be correct. I can't accept that there is only one way of
>>having this experience and
>>that we have the right to impose it upon others. That is
>>normalising as I would use the
>>term - imposing societal definitions and standards blanket fashion
>>on others. People don't
>>fit into categories and sexual desire (all desire) is very
>>multi-faceted, ambivalent and
>>complex and changing.
>>
>>To understand when people are actually denying their own feelings
>>and experience one has to
>>search the evidence in each case and look for contradictions,
>>apparent evasions or absences.
>>And always, of course, question the assumptions we are bringing to
>>our evidence. In the end
>>if these individuals say they were not damaged - then I would
>>accept they were not. Just as I
>>would expect someone to accept my estimation of my sexual
>>experience. Historically on the
>>'concept' - definitions of child abuse in western societies have
>>changed enormously even in
>>the last century. One of the most challenging tasks for a historian
>>is to understand how
>>concepts that may seem self-evident have changed radically.
>>Hera
>
>And, Hera, would you also accept the statement of the physically
>abused that s/he
>wasn't abused?
Doesn't such a statement implicitly accept a "norm" for abuse?
>Most abused wives and children accept that they "deserved" it...
If "most" accept, is this the "norm"?
>and that it did them no harm.
And if, in their opinion, "it did them no harm," is this the "norm"?
>Look at the guy busy hitting his child because his own
>Dad hit him, and "it did me no harm".
Such is the complexity of the issue.
>
>Maybe we need to ask the sexual partners of the sexually abused...maybe
>they know more about what the real effects were.
Point taken -- at least "the real effects" for them.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:51:33 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: child sexual abuse
>Of course, Bob, language shapes identity and notions of reality.
>However, children
>think and perceive differently than adults do.
Of course they do.
>Their initial conceptions of
>themselves, others, and the world are very different from adults.
Of course they are. But as you've alluded to elsewhere, the adult
comes from the child.
>Read Jean
>Piaget, for example.
Thanks for the bibliography. In the spirit of exchange, read Lacan,
for example.
I must note, however, that the notion of recording behavior without
interpretation hasn't been addressed, at least to my satisfaction.
> > >Not if the adult refrained from framing, editing, and
>re-interpreting, etc.,
> > >right? What about the idea of just recording the child's words verbatim?
> >
> > The moment the child enters into the (patriarchal) world of language,
> > there is a "frame," an "edit," an "interpretation."
> >
> > >Of
> > >course, if one wants to know what children thought about sexuality in a
> > >historical sense, then this would seem impossible. Another methodological
> > >approach is to observe children's play, and simple record the
> > >behaviors without
> > >adding anything to it (i.e., interpretations, etc).
> >
> > Is it so "simple" to record behavior WITHOUT interpretation?
> >
> > In short, it's all interpretation.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:56:46 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: "child sexual abuse"; child sexuality
Is the citation for this URL correct?
Http://www.mindspring.com/~rainbowchild/foucault.htm
I received a File Not Found message.
Thanks.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:24:48 +0000
From: "Sam Pryke" <PRYKES@hope.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Hormones, genetic determinism, and history
David Harvey --
Academic 180 degree correctives to popular beliefs may be a standard academic response. After
all, it proves that contrary to what most people assume, 'we' know better. Thus David Harvey
writes, 'The idea that hormones "drive" people is a very odd one, since it would suggest that all
humans at all times have exactly the same range of desires, fuelled by hormonal impulses.' Well,
first of all it -- the idea that hormones drive people -- doesn't suggest this, as I would have
thought that the dominant conception of hormonal desires is that they in themselves are
fluctuating. But more basic than that is the fact that it is the case that people frequently do feel
their sexuality to be driven by innate bodily desire. And they don't find this 'odd'. As David
himself suggests the reality is probably at the interface of culture and biology, hormones.
(Please, this in not intended as a prompt to open once again the by now thoroughly tedious and
quite insoluble 'nature/debate' over sexuality.)
Can I expand the methodological point here. I saw that there was some further debate about nude
sun bathing when I returned to work last week having been off with flue (certainly not contracted
by taking my clothes off in the great outdoors!). One of the correspondents was reprimanded for
suggesting that the origin of sexual conservatism in the Deep South of the USA was its original
settlement by European Christian minorities. The objection was that this conception of US
immigration history is mythical and the basis of sexual conservatism in the South lies in slavery
and other structures of social relations. Well yes, but in accounting for the social conservatism of
states like N & S Carolina -- that manifests itself in, amongst other things, strict bathing laws --
isn't it the case that the religious ideology of the original European settlers is at least 'a factor'?
These things are rarely mutually exclusive. One doesn't have to adopt a hazy, anything goes
approach to appreciate this.
SAM PRYKE
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Donna Larsen" <ladydonna85@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 09:38:30 PST
Now here is where submissive partners of SM run into problems. People
believing that they could possibly consent to what others percieve as abuse,
when for them they are masochists who are experiencing pleasurable pain.
Just another view of this conversation.
>And, Hera, would you also accept the statement of the physically abused
>that s/he
>wasn't abused? Most abused wives and children accept that they "deserved"
>it...
>and that it did them no harm. Look at the guy busy hitting his child
>because his own
>Dad hit him, and "it did me no harm".
>
>Maybe we need to ask the sexual partners of the sexually abused...maybe
>they know more about what the real effects were.
>
>Julienne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 10:22:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Lynn Romer <lynnromer@yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: An introduction
> A friend told me about this web
> site, and I'm glad he did. My academic background
> is
> in philosophy and religion, and I do some free-lance
> writing on gender issues.
>
> I'm very interested in the area of single women and
> the church. Does anyone know whether any studies
> have
> been conducted as to whether the women who act most
> seductive toward married pastors tend to be
> never-married, divorced, married, or widowed. My
> informal research has led me to believe they are
> most
> often married. However, the stereotype says that
> it's
> the never-marrieds and divorcees, which is probably
> unfair. It would seem that the security of marriage
> probably gives the married women more of a "roving
> eye."
>
> Also does anyone know whether seminary textbooks
> from
> the past (or present) contain warnings about single
> women in congregations? If anyone knows of any such
> passages, I would love to read them (current or
> historical). I think churches reflect society's
> fear
> of singles; there still seems to be something of a
> stigma.
>
> Any insights anyone can provide will be greatly
> appreciated. Thanks!
>
> Lynn Romer
> lynnromer@yahoo.com
>
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:04:07 -0500
From: Julienne <julienne@ptd.net>
Subject: Re: child sexual abuse
At 02:57 AM 2/21/00 +0000, Ianthe wrote:
>"One woman I know enjoyed sex with an uncle all through her
>childhood and never realized that anything was unusual until
>she went away to school. What disturbed her then was not what
>her uncle had done, but the attitude of her teachers and the
>school psychiatrist. They assumed that she must have been
>traumatized and disgusted and therefore in need of very special
>help."
A few things bother me about this.
First, how old was this girl when she went away to school?
Further, an adult doing something like this is going to be giving
off signals that something isn't right. How, "all through her
childhood", did she never pick up that the relationship needed
to be secret, that it only happened in private? How did she
never pick up that this isn't something one does? Kids usually
know that uncles aren't supposed to be sexual with them, unless
all information about sexuality is kept secret in the family.
In addition, she "enjoyed" it? How old was she? Her vagina
would have been not yet matured, and the sex is likely to
have been painful...how did she get around that?
I think this story is full of major holes...
Julienne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:57:07 -0700
Subject: Re: child sexual abuse
From: "David Robinson" <dmrobins@U.Arizona.EDU>
I don't know if anyone has mentioned the following:
There are some very good writings on the issue of intergenerational sex
(which is not necessarily child sexual abuse -- at least, that's one of the
issues debated) in a collection of pieces called: _Flaunting It_.
It's a collection from a former gay and lesbian Canadian newspaper called
_The Body Politic_.
The piece by Jane Rule is particularly smart.
David Robinson
Univ. of Arizona
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:57:37 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
On the other hand, there is a difference between battered women and persons who
willfully engage in masochistic sexual practices.
Anne
Donna Larsen wrote:
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> Now here is where submissive partners of SM run into problems. People
> believing that they could possibly consent to what others percieve as abuse,
> when for them they are masochists who are experiencing pleasurable pain.
> Just another view of this conversation.
>
> >And, Hera, would you also accept the statement of the physically abused
> >that s/he
> >wasn't abused? Most abused wives and children accept that they "deserved"
> >it...
> >and that it did them no harm. Look at the guy busy hitting his child
> >because his own
> >Dad hit him, and "it did me no harm".
> >
> >Maybe we need to ask the sexual partners of the sexually abused...maybe
> >they know more about what the real effects were.
> >
> >Julienne
__________________________________________________________________
From: Mal123nash@aol.com
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:17:03 EST
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
Dear Historians,
One website is tooting that as a 14-year-old, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was
molested. In my 23 years of studying Ulrichs, I never read that this was so.
Ulrichs did write that a friend of his in Vienna had had "sex" with a
military riding master at age 14. Ulrichs wrote that he had wished something
like that had happened to him.
This website, an anti-Gay, Christian ministry focused on scholarship, is
using Ulrichs and molestation hysteria to further its agenda.
The URL for the site is:
~ (63K) Homosexuality and the Nazi Party
http://egosurf.com/f/www.clm.org/jhs/lively.html
NET: ... The "grandfather of gay rights" was a homosexual German
lawyer named >>Karl Heinrich Ulrichs<<. Ulrichs had been
molested at age 14 by his male riding instructor. ...
... Press, 1989. Kennedy, Hubert. "Man/Boy Love in the Writings
of >>Karl Heinrich Ulrichs<<." In Pascal, Mark (Ed.). Varieties
of Man/Boy Love. New York, ...
With best wishes,
Michael Lombardi-Nash, Ph.D.
__________________________________________________________________
From: "docx2" <docx2@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Masochism
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:57:29 -0800
Dear folks,
I have written extensively on S/M (and was incorrectly referenced in the
_Psychology Today_ article). I have included a link to my CV below. Do you
have a reference for your conservative/liberal observation below?
Take care,
Charles Moser
http://pweb.netcom.com/~docx2/CV.html
----- Original Message -----
From: Lynn Romer <lynnromer@yahoo.com>
To: <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 2:43 PM
Subject: Masochism
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> Another research interest is masochism and feminism.
> Can anyone recommend any books containing positive
> commentaries on masochism. The magazine PSYCHOLOGY
> TODAY recently ran a positive piece that was
> interesting.
>
> I've read that religious conservatives tend to like
> masochism, whereas religious liberals are more into
> being "talked dirty to." It seems to divide down
> political lines, as well, conservative vs. liberal,
> regarding attitudes toward language.
>
> Any reading recommendations will be valued.
>
> Lynn
>
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:04:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Lynn Romer <lynnromer@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Masochism
I believe I read about the conservative/liberal
breakdown in THE JANUS REPORT.
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Donna Larsen" <ladydonna85@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: not being damaged by abuse
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:48:37 PST
Yes, but one of the major problems is when someone calls the authorities on
a couple because they mistake a consentual SM scene for a domestic violence
scene. The cops have no real way of telling which they are walking into, or
they won't make a distinction between the two. In fact in some places Subs
are told that it is illegal to consent to assault. There are also Therapists
who refuse to allow there clients to distinguish between the difference,
because they can't or will not themselves.
Consider the Spanner case in England. A gay male SM play party was raided by
Scotland Yard. The men were convicted of assault and in some cases the
submissives were charged with aiding and abetting in there own assult.(if
someone here sees places where I am not describing this case correctly
please feel free to fill in the holes)
What I am doing here is pointing to one place where I see problems in not
letting the person themselves distinquish between a healthy happy
consentually situation and an abusive one. I do not really have any answers
on what to do with this conflict, but it is one that is prevelent. As an
SMer myself this is one of the problems with getting civil rights such as
not loosing jobs, homes, and children due to being involved in SM.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:11:27 +1100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: child sexuality
Hi Anne and Bob -
Sorry, pleasure in giving is the gateway to sexual abuse as far as I am concerned.
Selfish physical pleasure is the only reason we should engage in sexual activity.
There is a long history of women being required to be available for sex with their
husbands -
conjugal rights. In the 1950s this was developed into an argument that women should
find pleasure in giving
- I quote from 'The power of sexual surrender', Marie N.Robinson, 1961.
[The wife's] eternal acquiescence, her ever-readiness, never lets her in for a
painful sexual experience however. She knows that ninety-nine times out of one
hundred even negative sexual feelings in herself will soon turn to eagerness, and
eagerness to desire. And even if that one in a hundred times occurs, she will still
get a profound satisfaction from the pleasure she is able to give her husband, the
very obvious pleasure. Once more that deep altruism. p.45
Women (and children) need to be taught that sex is about mutual physical sexual
desire not that it is about giving.
The only reason to engage in sexual activity with another is physical desire -
tenderness and nurturing
can be expressed in other ways. Encouraging adult men to believe that it is
acceptable to have sex with
a partner who does not have their own physical desire is a major contribution to an
abusive sexual culture.
Seduction or arousing a partner's sexual desire is of course part of this but
masturbation is a perfectly
good means of sexual relief if a partner still does not feel desire.
I know I am coming perilously close to suggesting there is one right way here - but
this notion of sex and giving is
a cultural norm that has had and still has very different meanings for male and
female in heterosexual relationships and it seems worth overstating it.
This issue of sex as giving and not as desire is also present in relationships
between women but I would be curious to know what gay men feel about this. Other
aspects of male heterosexual practice mirror gay male sexuality - does this do so?
In the context of abuse, Anne's comments on sex and giving seem to imply that she
accepts the solution to an abusive sexual
culture lies in a revivified loving heterosexual monogamous marriage. This is a
leap and Anne would be entitled to feel I have read more into her posts than is
there. But rejection of sexual selfishness is a very loaded topic and I wondered
where it led to?
Regards,
Hera
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:21:52 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Masochism
>Another research interest is masochism and feminism.
>Can anyone recommend any books containing positive
>commentaries on masochism. The magazine PSYCHOLOGY
>TODAY recently ran a positive piece that was
>interesting.
Is it possible for you to provide a more complete citation? I'm
interested in looking at this. Thanks.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 17:31:38 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Masochism
And the specific citation would be (for those of us unfamiliar with
THE JANUS REPORT)?
>I believe I read about the conservative/liberal
>breakdown in THE JANUS REPORT.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:23:59 +1100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Child abuse,dissociation and battered women
Anne,
Thank you for your extended description of your position. However, I think this description of your
stance is not entirely honest. If I understand your position correctly from your previous posts, (see
below) you do not believe in the possibility that a person can have these experiences and not be
damaged. Therefore you are not just entertaining the possibility but waiting for what you see as the
only response to emerge.
I don't disagree at all about dissociation - but if you believe in only one outcome then you are
imposing your beliefs and that is why I would label what you say as fundamentally authoritarian. (in
passing to those who think 'normalising' - I find that a waffly concept) As a therapist or a
researcher you are saying you believe you know what people have experienced even if they tell you
otherwise. There is a right answer and you help them to provide it. If you are a therapist you see a
selected population - people who are unhappy and believe themselves to be in need of help - they are
seeking guidance and unsurprisingly will often accept your answers as correct.
The women whom Ianthe quoted are a very different group - confident, articulate and engaged in
thinking about this experience outside a therapeutic encounter. You open yourself to serious
accusations of bias if you simply reject what they say as impossible.
Obviously many people do not associate their problems with causes that others see as obvious. Just
talking to people who have been abused makes this clear. That does not mean others are always correct
- though they may be. There is a long history of psych/iatry/ology/analysis imposing normative
beliefs on people - women and gay people are pertinent examples.
To respond to the comment about battered women. I can't find the post but first of all the notion
women blame themselves is as much an urban myth as a reflection of reality in my experience and
reading. In the context of the 1970s and a very young assertive feminism which (quite rightly) wanted
such women to reject the men - a picture of women simply blaming themselves emerged. In fact
testimony from battered women is a perfect example of looking for contradictions, ambivalence,
pragmatic acceptance because there is no choice rather than actual acceptance, and so on. Most
battered women do not accept being hit in any easy or simple way if at all. As I understand it, what
they do often want is to continue the relationship - which is a different issue though hard for those
outside to comprehend.
Hera
Anne Dietrich wrote:
> but rather are premised in Janetian notions of
> There is nothing authoritarian about this. In short, I retain the possibility as a hypothesis,
> rather than automatically rejecting it out of hand.
> As much as I believe in equality, etc., I
> have also seen firsthand the dissociation and avoidance and numbing that occurs with persons who
> have been sexually abused. Of course, I would never presume to tell a client that they were
> harmed if they insist that they were not, but I keep the possibility in the back of my mind as a
> working hypothesis.
> >
> > Anne Dietrich wrote:
> >
> > > An adult touching a child in a sexual manner is exploiting that child's
> > > trust, whether the child knows it or not as a child, and whether or not the adult grows
> > > up to rationalize the abuse as acceptable (as in the quotes posted to this list earlier
> > > tonight).
> >
> > > You seem to read these quotes as that these people have not been traumatized by it -- I am
> > > not so ready to accept that point of view. They may simply have introjected the beliefs of
> > > their abusers -- normalizing sexual abuse and not being cognizant of possible damage. They
> > > may be in denial. They may be utilizing posttraumatic avoidance and numbing. If they faced
> > > the actual harmfulness of the abuse, it may well be too painful for them to bear, and so
> > > they need to minimize and deny and rationalize.
> > >
> >
> > Hi Anne,
> > I am sorry but I believe in allowing people to interpret their own experience. I have no
> > right to tell others they do not feel what they say they feel. This is challenging - there
> > are all kinds of situations in which an outsider might say people are being exploited but
> > those involved deny this. Also many people do routinely avoid their own feelings and live in
> > a state of denial. However Freudian concepts such as negation or denial are profoundly
> > authoritarian and this is the only stance I can defend. You use the term 'normalising' to
> > reject the possibility that an individual's own non-normal interpretation of their experience
> > might be correct. I can't accept that there is only one way of having this experience and
> > that we have the right to impose it
> > upon others. That is normalising as I would use the term - imposing societal definitions and
> > standards blanket fashion
> > on others. People don't fit into categories and sexual desire (all desire) is very
> > multi-faceted, ambivalent and complex and changing.
> >
> > To understand when people are actually denying their own feelings and experience one has to
> > search the evidence in each case and look for contradictions, apparent evasions or absences.
> > And always, of course, question the assumptions we are bringing to our evidence. In the end
> > if these individuals say they were not damaged - then I would accept they were not. Just as I
> > would expect someone to accept my estimation of my sexual experience. Historically on the
> > 'concept' - definitions of child abuse in western societies have changed enormously even in
> > the last century. One of the most challenging tasks for a historian is to understand how
> > concepts that may seem self-evident have changed radically.
> > Hera
> >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Hera Cook
--
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:33:11 -0800 (PST)
From: Lynn Romer <lynnromer@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Masochism
Don't know. Just checked it out of a local library
several months ago. I believe it's in a chapter on
sex and religion. There's a chapter on sex and
politics, too. I believe the authors are husband and
wife (Janus is the last name).
--- Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
> http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> And the specific citation would be (for those of us
> unfamiliar with
> THE JANUS REPORT)?
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:10:26 -0500
From: liz crain <elcrain@vassar.edu>
Subject: Re: Masochism
i'm taking a class right now called the decadent imagination--centering
around music and literature--or the combo of both in opera--during the fin
de siecle. last class we read some sacher-masoch tales (where the term
masochism is derived). he "collected" many tales and the ones we were
reading were titled simply "jewish tales." I would recommend those which I
read "madame leopard" and "shimmel knofelles." and as far as present day
goes--eva norvivnd is a life of masochism and monica treut's film about
norvind--"didn't do it for love" is filled to the brim with what your
looking for....so hope that helps.
liz crain
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:43:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Lynn Romer <lynnromer@yahoo.com>
Subject: Masochism
Another research interest is masochism and feminism.
Can anyone recommend any books containing positive
commentaries on masochism. The magazine PSYCHOLOGY
TODAY recently ran a positive piece that was
interesting.
I've read that religious conservatives tend to like
masochism, whereas religious liberals are more into
being "talked dirty to." It seems to divide down
political lines, as well, conservative vs. liberal,
regarding attitudes toward language.
Any reading recommendations will be valued.
Lynn
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:51:01 -0800
From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: child sexual abuse
Robinson wrote:
>There are some very good writings on the issue of intergenerational sex
>(which is not necessarily child sexual abuse -- at least, that's one of the
>issues debated) in a collection of pieces called: _Flaunting It_.
I would additionally suggest a particuarly perceptive piece on
inter-generational sex (especially if we want to consider issues such as
change over time and class relations) by Steven Maynard:
Steven Maynard, " 'Horrible Temptations': Sex, Men and Working-Class Male
Youth in Urban Ontario, 1890-1935," _Canadian HIstorical Review_ 78:2 (June
1997): 191-235.
_______________________
Chris Dummitt
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
_______________________
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:04:58 -0500
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
Subject: Re: Hormones, genetic determinism, and history
Sam Pryke wrote:
>Academic 180 degree correctives to popular beliefs may be a standard
academic response. After all, it proves that contrary to what most people
assume, 'we' know better. Thus David Harvey writes, 'The idea that
hormones "drive" people is a very odd one, since it would suggest that all
humans at all times have exactly the same range of desires, fuelled by
hormonal impulses.' Well, first of all it -- the idea that hormones drive
people -- doesn't suggest this, as I would have thought that the dominant
conception of hormonal desires is that they in themselves are fluctuating.
David Harley comments:
This is a curious criticism. I suspect that Dr Pryke does not take for
granted whatever "most people assume" about nationalism, be they academics,
or politicians, or merely having a chat on the 14C bus to Croxteth. Ideas
that "everybody knows" are always problematic because they are unexamined.
We need to ask where these ideas come from, how have they been propagated
and sustained, and what interests have they served at various points in
their career. A hundred years ago, no one attributed anything at all to
hormones, so their rising status as the cause of each and every gender
characteristic can be traced quite easily.
This is not an attack on non-academic knowledge, even though biologists
and endocrinologists currently try to avoid such talk, at least in print.
Nor is it an attack on scientists. The ideas that historians or
sociologists or any other academics think they know are no different in
their tendency to rest on very insecure foundations.
"the dominant conception": who is dominating whom?
"hormonal desires": are desires hormonal? in what sense?
Sam Pryke wrote:
But more basic than that is the fact that it is the case that people
frequently do feel their sexuality to be driven by innate bodily desire.
And they don't find this 'odd'.
David Harley comments:
People "feel" all sorts of things. They do not find this odd. But what
has this to do with attributing causation to hormones, let alone
characterizing them as "sex hormones"? People feel fear and experience a
"rush" which we attribute to adrenaline. Does the adrenaline determine
what they should fear, or does some combination of culture and experience?
The adrenal response is surely a learned one.
Sam Pryke wrote:
One of the correspondents was reprimanded for suggesting that the origin of
sexual conservatism in the Deep South of the USA was its original
settlement by European Christian minorities. The objection was that this
conception of US immigration history is mythical and the basis of sexual
conservatism in the South lies in slavery and other structures of social
relations. Well yes, but in accounting for the social conservatism of
states like N & S Carolina -- that manifests itself in, amongst other
things, strict bathing laws -- isn't it the case that the religious
ideology of the original European settlers is at least 'a factor'? These
things are rarely mutually exclusive. One doesn't have to adopt a hazy,
anything goes approach to appreciate this.
David Harley comments:
The point was not some "hazy, anything goes approach", but that the
religious beliefs of North and South Carolina, for example, were not those
of the settlers. The religious beliefs of the Bible Belt were imported
from the North during the early nineteenth century, not brought by
immigrants from Europe. Southerners had to be converted from their
previous lack of interest in strict morals. In the process, Northern
religious positions had to make compromises with the patriarchalism of the
slave states. It is the notion that fundamentalism in the South descends
from seventeenth-century Puritanism that is hazy.
David Harley,
Dept. of History,
University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
tel.: 219-631-7789
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:24:59 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: child sexuality
Hera,
There is a difference, from my experience, between acquiescence and feeling pleasure in
giving pleasure. I have done both and I guarantee you, there is a difference.
Anne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:31:53 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: Child abuse,dissociation and battered women
Hera,
You are assuming that I impose my beliefs on my clients -- that is not at all so. I may believe
something, but I do not impose my beliefs on my clients. If they go to their death beds believing they
were not harmed, I do NOT try to change that. What makes you assume that I do? It is a jump from my
saying that I do not accept (privately, to myself) at face value denials at harm to your conclusion that
I therefore must impose my beliefs.
Anne
that they were
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 14:13:25 +1100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re:pleasure in giving
Anne,
You too have been socialised as a female in this culture - are you so certain that your own
behaviour is the standard by which you should measure what does or does not contribute
towards the sexual culture that has made widespread abuse possible? So certain that all
that is questionable in our sexual culture is outside of your particular boundaries?
In fact Marie Robinson whom I quoted would have felt that what you describe feeling was
exactly what an 'ideal' woman should feel. Read the quote again:
'[The wife will] get a profound satisfaction from the pleasure she is able to give her
husband, the very obvious pleasure. Once more that deep altruism.'
Isn't this exactly what you are talking about? The fact that this feels right to you is no
different to the person to whom what you label abuse felt right or the battered woman who
believed she was to blame.
Hera
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:23:47 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Dear Hera,
I ask this respectfully: Are you imposing your beliefs on me, perchance?
Anne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 04:41:05 +0000
From: Ianthe <ianthe@duende.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Homosexuality & The Nazi Party
In message <67.1c0ff37.25e32f7f@aol.com>, Mal123nash@aol.com writes
>Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
> This website, an anti-Gay, Christian ministry focused
>on scholarship, is using Ulrichs and molestation hysteria
>to further its agenda.
>
> The URL for the site is: (63K) Homosexuality and the Nazi Party
> http://egosurf.com/f/www.clm.org/jhs/lively.html
It's part of a history-twisting anti-gay pseudo-history -
paralleling that around 'Holocaust-denial' literature -
which seeks to "prove" that the Nazi's were gay. Their
main text is called _The Pink Swastika_:
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Village/1360/
Refutations here:
http://www.bway.net/~halsall/lgbh/lgbh-gaysnazis.txt
http://library.willamette.edu/home/publications/movtyp/spring1996/douglass.html
NARTH (a front for Exodus International) is one of the
Evangelical "gay-saving" groups who endorse the Pink Swastika
rubbish (they were offering it on their site until a few
months ago), along with other minor Ministries & fruitcake
Evangelicals all across the dark heart of Amerika.
--
Ianthe Duende
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Matthew Johnson" <trekdrop78@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Masochism biblio
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:50:21 PST
Better yet: see Sacher-Masoch's most famous work, Venus in Furs.
In a more contemporary and less literary vein, I would highly recommend
David Halperin's Saint Foucault, which I am currently reading. It contains
extensive commentary on Michel Foucault's discussions of s/m as spiritually
and socially liberative sexual practice. Admittedly, this book is largely
concerned with male homosexuality, but Halperin sees liberative potential in
s/m for all of its practitioners, regardless of gender, orientation or role.
Below please find a brief biblio sent to me several months ago by a
professor of mine. Enjoy and always play safe.
- matt johnson
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Masochism
Gilles Deleuze, Présentation de Sacher-Masoch (Paris: Minuit, 1967)
Ian Gibson, The English Vice. Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England
and After (London: Duckworth, 1978)
Lynda Hart, Between the Body and the Flesh. Performing Sadomasochism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1998)
John K. Noyes, The Mastery of Submission. Inventions of Masochism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1998)
Ken Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories. Power, change and social worlds
(London: Routledge, 1995)
Samois, Coming to Power. Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M (Boston:
Alyson, 1981)
Bill Thompson, Sadomasochism. Painful Perversion or Pleasurable Play?
(London: Cassell, 1994)
Thomas Weinberg and G.W. Levi Kamel (eds), S and M. Studies in
Sadomasochism (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1983, 1995)
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 16:28:36 +1100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Anne,
No - I am asking you a series of questions. It is true that I end with a statement and you are
correct in thinking that I feel these questions do lead to a particular answer. (And your reply
evades dealing with what I asked you.)
I am chasing you to an extent because you appear to have two lists of sexual behaviours - one lot
that are completely acceptable and another completely separate list of behaviours that are
totally unacceptable. I don't think sex and desire is like that - even or perhaps especially for
those who are able to regard their sexual practice as totally 'normal'. After all those who are
most 'normal' are those who are most totally of the culture that has produced this abuse. The
connection I was making between giving sexually and permitting abusive behaviour is an example of
this.
To make that personal as I have asked you to do so - I don't feel that all that is sexually
questionable in our culture is outside my sexual boundaries. But the solution is not to project
the rejected elements on to others. The challenge is to integrate this complex cultural sexual
melange within ourselves in a way that creates pleasure and enhances our lives and those of the
people of all ages around us.
Regards,
Hera
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:51:20 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Dear Hera,
Yes, I do have two views: (1) If the sexual activity is between consenting adults, that is perfectly
fine; (2) If the sexual activity is between an adult and a child/teen unable to consent, that that is
not okay.
Anne
__________________________________________________________________
From: MillerJimE@aol.com
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:44:21 EST
Subject: Re: Pedophilic haven?
In a message dated 02/20/2000 11:24:32 PM Central Standard Time,
MillerJimE@aol.com writes:
<< I would like to make a few distinctions. It seems
to me that we have been using the terms "child" and "pedophilia"
indiscriminately. There is a world of difference between sexual situations
involving pre-adolescents and sexual situations involving adolescents. The
former do not have the hormones which drive many adolesents not only to
accept sexual advances from adults, but to make them as well. Also there is
a world of difference if the "child" is a 12-year-old adolescent or a
17-year-old adolescent (legal age here being 18). With every passing year
the adolescent usually becomes more confident in dealing with adults as a
near equal.
Should we wish to discuss sex with or among minors it is important to
state what age group is the topic of discussion.
Jim Miller >>
Now for a couple of clarifications.
First, I did not say that the presence of hormonal drives made sexual
contact
with adults less damaging. The presence of hormonal drives do make the
contacts significantly different -- and sometimes more damaging. Also, the
presence of the hormones do cause some adolescents to flirt seriously with
adults or otherwise encourage adults. The adolescent may not want actual
sexual contact, but merely to be seen as sexual. Adults should refrain from
crossing that boundary, however much the adolescent seems to be inviting
(sorry to get moralistic here).
There are a variety of ways in which the presence of the sex drive in
adolescents makes pedophilia with adolescents quite different than pedophilia
with pre-adolescents. Some posts seemed to be reference adolescent
pedophilia, and others to reference pre-adolescent pedophilia. I wanted some
specificity here.
Secondly, age of consent does not overnight turn an immature person into
a mature person. Maturation continues throughout the life span, and becomes
a significant factor in older adolescents as they near the age of consent.
There is an entire cultural context which comes into play as an adolescent
approaches the age of consent.
Oh, yes. For those who question my statement, "hormones which drive many
adolescents", may I suggest that it has been too long since you were
adolescents.
Jim Miller
__________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 05:01:29 EST
Subject: Re: Masochism biblio
For a masochism-positive argument, Anita Philips _A Defence of Masochism_
(Faber 1999) is pretty good, if somewhat restricted to a hetero monogamous
model.
Chris White
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Dionne Stephens" <dionne@arches.uga.edu>
Subject: Sarah Bartman
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 08:02:51 -0500
I am looking for some scholarly texts on Sarah Bartman also known as the
Hottentotten Venus. She was taken from the Hottentotten tribe of Africa, put
on display throughout Europe and remains are still help in Paris' Museum of
Natural History. I have the section from Patricia Hill Collins "Black
Feminist Thought" some opinion pieces. Unfortunately, I have been having
difficulty trying to locate any information specifically focusing on her, or
images of women of African descent either before slavery or outside an
American context before the 1850's.
Dionne
____________________________________________________________________________
_______________
Dionne Stephens, Doctoral Student
University of Georgia
Department of Child and Family
Email: dionne@arches.uga.edu
Internet: www.arches.uga.edu/~dionne (under construction)
__________________________________________________________________From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 08:06:11 EST
Subject: Selfish Pleasure
Hera wrote
<< Sorry, pleasure in giving is the gateway to sexual abuse as far as I am
concerned.
Selfish physical pleasure is the only reason we should engage in sexual
activity.
>>
This makes me feel as tho' I've entered Looking Glass land. How big a gap is
there between selfish sexual pleasure and abuse or rape? A much smaller one
than there is between pleasure in giving and abuse. Giving does not preclude
taking. Giving is not synonymous with acquiescence, which is a sight closer
to passivity (endurance, degradation) than it is to active giving. Hera, I
find your assertion very very scary.
Chris White
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 08:55:33 -0500
From: Heather Lee Miller <miller.1438@osu.edu>
Subject: Re: Sarah Bartman
See Anne Fausto-Sterling's essay on Sarah Bartmann in Jennifer Terry and
Jacqueline Urla,eds., <i>Deviant Bodies<br>
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:14:49 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Dear Anne,
To invert your second question, how indeed is a child/teen ABLE to consent?
Best,
Bob
>Dear Hera,
>
>Yes, I do have two views: (1) If the sexual activity is between
>consenting adults, that is perfectly
>fine; (2) If the sexual activity is between an adult and a
>child/teen unable to consent, that that is
>not okay.
>
>Anne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:19:36 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Selfish Pleasure
Shouldn't we be questioning the assumptions underlying such concepts as:
acquiescence
passivity
endurance
degradation
????
These seem to lay along some continuum of "giving," one that is hardly stable.
Bob
>Hera wrote
><< Sorry, pleasure in giving is the gateway to sexual abuse as far as I am
>concerned.
> Selfish physical pleasure is the only reason we should engage in sexual
>activity.
> >>
>
>This makes me feel as tho' I've entered Looking Glass land. How big a gap is
>there between selfish sexual pleasure and abuse or rape? A much smaller one
>than there is between pleasure in giving and abuse. Giving does not preclude
>taking. Giving is not synonymous with acquiescence, which is a sight closer
>to passivity (endurance, degradation) than it is to active giving. Hera, I
>find your assertion very very scary.
>
>Chris White
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:02:37 -0500
From: Cristina Nelson <crn@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Sara Baartman
There is a well-reviewed film out there which may be of interest to Dionne
Stevens. _The Life and TIme of Sara Baartman_ Film by Zola Maseko 1998. IT
won Best Documentary at the 1999 PAn African Film Festival. I don't know
where to get it, but I read a review of it by Dr Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges
<mmonges@csuchico.edu> in the Dept of Sociology/Social Work. She may have
some leads if your library can't find it.
Cristina Nelson
__________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:06:07 EST
Subject: Re: Selfish Pleasure
Questioning assumptions? I thought that was what I was doing ;) One person's
degradation is another's major turn-on. I'm tempted at the moment to argue
that there are no absolutes (even in paedophilia -- at the risk of putting my
head in the lion's whatnot...) other than arguably consent and non-consent
(the former of which can be engineered or extracted out of the latter in an
unequal relationship/contract) but (non) consent is always part of a cultural
process and a social construction of acceptable/viable identity and not an a
priori 'ethic'.
CW
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 08:23:44 -0800
From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Hi,
They aren't able to consent. That is my point. Thanks.
Anne
Bob wrote:
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> Dear Anne,
>
> To invert your second question, how indeed is a child/teen ABLE to consent?
>
> Best,
> Bob
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:32:58 -0500
From: Cristina Nelson <crn@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Black/White female bodies and sexuality
The recent post by Dionne Stephens (sorry, I misspelled your name in my
last post) reminded me that I have a lecture to write for undergraduates
and am skirting panic mode...I need some references and ideas from those of
you with experience in presenting complex issues to undergrads. I am a
doctoral candidate in US History. B/c my dissertation deals with the female
body (US, 1940-70) I was asked by a professor to lecture in his Race
Relations (formerly known as Af-Am history, Jamestown to the present) class
on the black and white female body/notions of sexuality and gender. I will
be lecturing a few days after the class discusses Gone WIth the Wind.
Part of my panic results from having given two lectures recently to
undergrads - one on the New Woman and one on Progressivism, and both were
far too complex for undergrads, I later realized. And these were, relative
to sexuality, gener and race, simpler topics!
If anyone remembers the comic strip Bloom County, and its resident crazy
feline, Bill the Cat...well, I am having a Bill "AACHKKK" moment (bulging
eyes, mask-of-death grin, tilted head). How do I scrunch themes of race,
sex, gender into something these undergrads can grasp? I hardly know where
to start. I'm thinking of starting with notions of gender roles in slave
society (the debate about the presence of egalitarianism); then moving into
the Jim Crow era, and the notions of African American female propriety,
than...? Does anyone have a reference for sexual propriety and sexuality
vis-a-vis the African AMerican female body 1865 - 1900? I think that Sara
Baartman will figure in this, to illustrate European/American fascination
with the sexuality of Africans. Any primary sources?
And what about theory? How does one present Foucauld, for instance, or
Butler, to undergrads in such a way that there won't be a rush to the exits?
Also, any ideas on visuals? I have an overhead of Mammy tightening
Scarlett's corset in GWTW, but any other ideas on visuals would be
appreciated.
I appreciate any and all suggestions. I will be posting this query to the
general and women's history list as well, so I apogize in advance for
repetition.
Cristina Nelson
<crn@alum.mit.edu>
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:51:51 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Selfish Pleasure
>Questioning assumptions? I thought that was what I was doing ;) One person's
>degradation is another's major turn-on.
PRECISELY
>I'm tempted at the moment to argue
that there are no absolutes
Of course there ARE "absolutes" -- my absolutes ;)
>(even in paedophilia -- at the risk of putting my
>head in the lion's whatnot...) other than arguably consent and non-consent
>(the former of which can be engineered or extracted out of the latter in an
>unequal relationship/contract)
Precisely
>but (non) consent is always part of a cultural
>process and a social construction of acceptable/viable identity and not an a
>priori 'ethic'.
Indeed.
Bob
__________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:55:45 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Hi,
OIC
I took your prose to suggest the possibility that a child/teen could
indeed be able to consent.
Bob
>Hi,
>They aren't able to consent. That is my point. Thanks.
>Anne
>
>Bob wrote:
>
> > Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
>http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
> >
> > Dear Anne,
> >
> > To invert your second question, how indeed is a child/teen ABLE to consent?
> >
> > Best,
> > Bob
> >
> > >Dear Hera,
> > >
> > >Yes, I do have two views: (1) If the sexual activity is between
> > >consenting adults, that is perfectly
> > >fine; (2) If the sexual activity is between an adult and a
> > >child/teen unable to consent, that that is
> > >not okay.
> > >
> > >Anne
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:04:33 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Black/White female bodies and sexuality
>Does anyone have a reference for sexual propriety and sexuality
>vis-a-vis the African AMerican female body 1865 - 1900? I think that Sara
>Baartman will figure in this, to illustrate European/American fascination
>with the sexuality of Africans. Any primary sources?
Undoubtedly past your time constraint, but what about Spike Lee's
_Jungle Fever_? By bringing in something contemporary, you'll make
the talk "hip" & "cool" & "bad" & indeed possibly relevant to today's
undergrads?
>
>And what about theory? How does one present Foucauld, for instance, or
>Butler, to undergrads in such a way that there won't be a rush to the exits?
Summarize in little bitty words ("hip" & "cool" & "bad") the major
relevant points of these thinkers.
>
>
>Also, any ideas on visuals? I have an overhead of Mammy tightening
>Scarlett's corset in GWTW, but any other ideas on visuals would be
>appreciated.
There are visuals (prints) of Baartman.
And of course ALL of GWTW is a construct, a point that should not be
neglected to be made to undergrads. It is not a transcription of
"reality," in the format of the "reality" medium, but the fantasy
(and I'm ready to duck here) of one southern, antebellum, white
woman, magnified by the apparatus of "Hollywood." One classic
example where the reality apparatus fails in this flic is the absence
of cast shadows in the procession of the carriages to Tara for the
bbq.
Perhaps more relevant to your time period is the Disney feature
cartoon _Tarzan_, set in an Africa curiously absent of black folk.
Bob
__________________________________________________________________
From: Dionne Stephens <dionne@arches.uga.edu>
Subject: Re: Black/White female bodies and sexuality
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:13:28 -0500 (est)
Patricia Hill Collins has a fabulous chapter on four sexualized images
of Black women- the mammy, Jezebel, matriarch and welfare mother. The
book is titled Black Feminist Thought; the chapter is Mammies,
Matriarchs and other Controlling images. She links it to economic,
political and social contexts throughout American history to the
present day. It is based on a feminist perspective.
As well, there is a good piece on the sexualization of women during
colonization in the Caribbean and Philippines, called "Making the
Empire Respectable" by Ann Stoler. I can't remember the exact volume or
number, but it was printed in the American Ethnologist in the early
1990's.
****************************************************************************
Dionne Stephens, Doctoral Student
Department of Child & Family Development
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602
E-Mail: dionne@arches.uga.edu
****************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 11:28:31 -0800
From: Anne Herbert <satya@bradley.edu>
Subject: Re: Sarah Bartman
Try the new book by T.D. Sharpley-Whiting, _Black Venus : Sexualized
Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French_.
A. Herbert
Bradley University
Dept. of English
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 13:38:52 -0700
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
From: "David Robinson" <dmrobins@U.Arizona.EDU>
I haven't wanted to enter this debate, because I don't really have the time.
But I can't help it.
No, Hera is not imposing her beliefs on Anne. Hera has pointed out that Anne
claims to be able to correctly interpret all instances of sex between adults
and non-adults: according to Anne, it is all abuse, even if the child or
adolescent involved does not recognize it as such.
Hera has then gone on to point out that Anne seems to have a double
standard: Anne has remarked that certain people (some non-adults in
intergenerational sexual relationships, as well as some battered women) are
socialized not to recognize their experiences as abuse, and are socialized
even to derive pleasure or meaning from their role in the abusive
relationships. Hera has simply pointed out that Anne does not apply the same
critical lens to her own description of the pleasure she, Anne, derives from
giving in a sexual relationship. Hera, however, would have us remember that
women are socialized in our patriarchal society to experience precisely this
sort of pleasure.
In other words, Hera (if I have understood her correctly) is pointing out
that Anne gives credence to her own experience, but not to other people's
experience (at least when their experience conflicts with Anne's beliefs
about sexual relations between adults and non-adults).
I agree wholeheartedly with Hera. I take the issue of sexual abuse very
seriously. But I also take the issue of coercive and authoritarian
imposition of one's interpretation of the world on others very seriously as
well. To decide, ahead of time, that all sexual relations between adults and
non-adults is abusive is a dangerous, harmful, and authoritarian thing to
do, even if one's intentions are good (i.e. protecting children), as I
believe Anne's are.
David
Univ. of Arizona
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 13:50:27 -0700
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
From: "David Robinson" <dmrobins@U.Arizona.EDU>
>From: Anne Dietrich <amdma@telus.net>
>To: Histsex:For historians of sexuality <histsex@listbot.com>
>Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
>Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2000, 9:23 AM
>
> Hi,
> They aren't able to consent. That is my point. Thanks.
> Anne
I am astounded at this blithe assertion.
If only the issue of consent were as simple as easy. If only the world were
as simple and easy.
David
__________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Message-ID: <33.1a2c2c6.25e45100@aol.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 15:52:16 EST
Subject: Re: teen sexuality
To: histsex@listbot.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: AOL 4.0.i for Windows 95 sub 137
Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
Couldn't agree more with Sheila about teen sexuality. But. The endemic
cultural notion that children (which I use to mean pre-pubescent people) are
asexual innocents prevents anything from really being done to stop abuse (as
opposed to consensual exploration) because it traps children in a binary of
innocent/corrupt with all the resultant guilt-baggage and the inability to
distinguish between 'good' (wanted, accepted) sexual-type things and 'bad'
(abusive) sexual-type things. This in a context in which parents attach
possessive pronouns to their offspring and in which the theft/abuse/crime is
not perceived to be against the knowing and knowledgeable ones, the adults,
but is often represented as such. Children are not permitted to own their own
experiences, let alone their own bodies. And consent for children is thus a
moot point.
Chris White
__________________________________________________________________
From: ScarletMagazine@aol.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 15:58:04 EST
Subject: Re: teen sexuality
As note in this discussion, for anyone really interesting in contributing to
this sort of work, Hanne Blank and myself are just starting work on two books
based on our teen sex resource sites (scarleteen.com). We're scoping out
sidebar text and accompanying articles and resources over the next six
months. Give a shout if you're at all interested in adding to the discussion
in print.
Consent is a huge issue, some of it determined legally, and some on an active
and individual level, but the simple truth is that no one, regardless of
their age, can give informed consent... if they aren't informed.
Heather Corinna
H E A T H E R C O R I N N A
E d i t r i x S e x p e r t D i v a
******************************************
Scarlet Letters: A Journal of Femmerotica
Scarlet Teen: Pink Slip and Boyfriend!
ICQ#: 47165499 email:hcorinna@aol.com
http://scarletletters.com/heather
Post Office Box 4723, Saint Paul, MN 55104
******************************************
"Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."
- Dorothy Parker
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: The Janus Report
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:07:32 -0000
I find that I have this on my shelves! (unread or certainly only picked =
at) Samuel S amd Cynthia L Janus, The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior - =
the First Broad-scale scientific national survey since Kinsey ,John =
Wiley and Sons Inc, New York (etc) 1993. Cover puffs from among others, =
William Masters, Lloyd deMause, John Money, so presumably a fairly =
respectable source, as these things go...
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 13:18:38 +1100
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: pleasure in giving
Thanks David - those are the points I was trying to make.
Regards,
Hera
Hera Cook
History Department
MacCallum Building A17
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
Phone 61 2 9351 2862, Fax 61 2 9351 3918
__________________________________________________________________
From: alison shea bateman <asb4a@cms.mail.virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: Sarah Bartman
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:04:20 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
Dionne,
The following comes from footnote 42 of Chapter 1 of
_Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood_
by Cynthia Eagle Russett (Harvard UP:1989) Despite the
differences in name, I believe the subject is Sarah Bartman.
"Sartzee (more properly Saartjie), the Hottentot Venus, was
a Bushwoman who earned her small niche in the annals of
nineteenth-century anthropology primarily on the basis of
two arresting physical characteristics: her steatopygous
(extraordinarily large) buttocks and her tablier, or
vaginal veil. On a less sensational note, scientists were
also interested in the appearance of her brain, which they
adjudged strikingly small and simple. Preserved in the
Musee de l'Homme, it showed itself to be "palpably inferior
to that of a normally developed white woman, and could only
be compared with the brain of a white idiotic from arrest of
cerebral development." Henry Maudsley, Body and Mind (New
York: D. Appleton, 1874), 52. In the early 1980s Stephen
Jay Gould visited the Musee de l'Homme and spotted
Sartzee's genitalia pickled in a jar on the shelf above
Broca's brain - a monument to the prurient racism of
nineteenth-century anthropology. Stephen Jay Gould, "The
Hottentot Venus," in The Flamingo's Smile (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1985), 291-301."
Could you please post the results of your search if more
information comes in off-list?
Alison
Alison Bateman
Biomedical Ethics Program
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 21:54:03 -0600
From: Dar Weyenberg <dweyenbe@students.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: "child sexual abuse"; child sexuality
hi folks
Yes, except add an l (as in low) to the end of URL. I just got in-its still
there.
I just cut and pasted this URL:
http://www.mindspring.com/~rainbowchild/foucault.html
("The danger of child sexuality")
dar
At 10:56 AM 2/21/00 -0600, you wrote:
>Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
>Is the citation for this URL correct?
>
>Http://www.mindspring.com/~rainbowchild/foucault.htm
>
>I received a File Not Found message.
>
>Thanks.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:08:23 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: teen sexuality
>This in a context in which parents attach
>possessive pronouns .... Children are not permitted to own their own
>experiences, let alone their own bodies. And consent for children is thus a
moot point.
Well, in the grand scheme of things -- like the entire history of the
world -- until quite recently -- like the last century or so --
children were regarded to be little more than chattel. Indeed one of
my favorite scholars, Leo Steinberg, once made the claim in a class
that until quite recently (18th century I think -- damn that
Enlightenment!) children were considered to be not quite human, or
not fully formed humans, or some such Steinbergism.
Bob
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:10:21 -0600
From: Bob <suannschafer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: The Janus Report
Leslie, mucho thanks for the cite!
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 20:21:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Lynn Romer <lynnromer@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Masochism biblio
Thanks so much for all these great reading
recommendations!
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 18:39:57 +1000 (GMT+1000)
From: Reuben Ham <s366959@student.uq.edu.au>
Subject: Sade, Bataille and the Limits of Imagination and Reality
Greetings, all..
I am currently preparing a paper centred around the notion of bending the
limits of the 'real' or the possible through writing.. -- my argument
rests on my belief that the act of writing (imaginatively) may be a
gateway to more intense and indeed more 'real' experiences than the five
commonly-recognised senses ordinarily allow to be accessed.. I am
focussing chiefly on erotica, the literature of "shock", and the brand of
poetry which the French Symbolists embraced.. I will be giving particular
prominence to Sade ('120 Days'), Bataille('Story of the Eye'), Rimbaud and
Mallarme..
Are any of you aware of any related critical material?
I would greatly appreciate any response..
Thanks..
-R.
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 12:01:54 +0000 (GMT)
From: RM CLEMINSON <R.M.Cleminson@Bradford.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Prostitution in Europe and England, 1400-1700
For Spain, but in Spanish language, the studies of Francisco Vazquez
Garcia are very useful. Jean-Louis Guerena has also written about Spain in
both Spanish & French.
******************************
Dr.Richard M. Cleminson
Lecturer in Spanish Studies
Department of Modern Languages
University of Bradford
Bradford, West Yorkshire
BD7 1DP
http://www.expert.brad.ac.uk/r_m_cleminson/
tel: +1274 234595
fax: +1274 235590
__________________________________________________________________
From: "LJ Hall, Historical Studies" <Lisa.J.Hall@bristol.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 13:05:26 +0000
Subject: Re: teen sexuality
In almost complete contradiction to the below my present research
into children and 'sexuality' in the 19th century suggests that
children are LOSING their 'voices' throughout this period and thus
their ability to 'consent' in concert with their status as a
wage-earning and thus to a certain degree autonomous member of the
'family unit'.(Yes, a very simplistic representation of the issue, I
know!)I'm not saying life was rosy for kids prior to this but I am
unsure as to the extent that they were perceived as qualitatively
different to 'adults' particularly with regard to questions of 'sexual
activity'.It is surely no coincidence that the late 19th century also
represents the 'high point' for the cultural eroticisation of the
'child' through notions of innocence and dependence.
Sorry to jump into the debate rather late - but I have only just
caught up with it!
Lisa.
LJ Hall, Historical Studies
Lisa.J.Hall@bristol.ac.uk
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Dionne Stephens" <dionne@arches.uga.edu>
Subject: Sarah Bartman/Saartjie/ Hottentotten Venus
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 09:00:31 -0500
In less than 24 hours I received the following re. my request for info =
on
Sarah Bartman/Saartjie/ Hottentotten Venus....
Heather Lee Miller sent: See Anne Fausto-Sterling's essay on Sarah =
Bartmann
in Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla,eds., Deviant Bodies
Another person let me know about the invaluable book- Black Venus:
Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives by T. Denean
Sharpley-Whiting. Unfortunately, I can't find the sender's message to =
give
him the credit he deserves.
Christina Nelson sent: There is a well-reviewed film out there which may =
be
of interest. _The Life and Time of Sara Baartman_ Film by Zola Maseko =
1998.
IT won Best Documentary at the 1999 Pan African Film Festival
Christina also put me in touch with Dr. Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges who
reviewed this film. Dr. Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges provided me with the
picture of Sarah Bartman/Saartjie/ Hottentotten Venus and her review of =
the
film. If you would like a picture of either, contact me directly since =
it is a large file.
I really appreciate everyone's help with this- I've taught on this topic =
in
the past, but this wealth of information will take the course to another
level.
_________________________________________________________________________=
__________________
Dionne Stephens, Doctoral Student
University of Georgia
Department of Child and Family
113 Dawson Hall
Athens Georgia 30602 =20
Phone: (706) 524-4840
Email: dionne@arches.uga.edu
Internet: www.arches.uga.edu/~dionne (under construction)
Everybody is looking for the answer;=20
How a story starts and just how it will end.
What's the use in half a story, half of a dream?
You have to climb all the steps between.
The Ladder
Prince (Around the =
World in a Day)
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:12:48 +0100
From: Gert Hekma <hekma@pscw.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: "madame arthur"
Dear friends,
a Dutch translator asked me the following question. She is working on
Daudet's "Dame aux camelias" where is a sentence "All Arthurs are the same"
(Tous les Arthurs sont les memes). Because of a French song, and several
bars with the name of Madame Arthur (in the fifties in Paris and Amsterdam,
both with drag shows) she thought the word "Arthur" might refer to a
(perhaps) feminine homosexual. The word is however not to be found in the
gay dictionaries such as Rodgers for the US, Courouve for France, Skinner
for German or Joustra for Dutch.
Who has an idea on the meaning and background of this (Madame) Arthur?
Greetings,
Gert Hekma
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 07:28:52 -0800 (PST)
From: technotoy <technotoy@yahoo.com>
Subject: Emancipated women and the third sex
I've started working on a popular German novel from
1899 by Ernst von Wolzogen entitled "The Third Sex"
("Das dritte Geschlecht"). Interestingly, the third
sex is *not* a reference to homosexuality (although
that usage was in existence at the time in the
German-speaking world), but rather emancipated women.
Were the suffragettes frequently given this
apellation?
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs does compare his "urnings" (men
who love men) with emancipated women, which sounds
progressive. However, he links the two because in both
cases an essential feminine being has been falsely
socialized--or to use his word "virilized"--into being
a man, which doesn't sound quite so progressive. Has
anyone else run into this comparison, especially in
the late nineteenth/early twentieth century?
And if anyone knows anything about Wolzogen, I would
be interested to hear that as well, although it might
not belong on the list. Thanks!
=====
Robert Tobin
Conrad-Blenkle-Str. 58
10407 Berlin Germany
(030) 4280 3109
__________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 05:15:05 -0600
From: Dar Weyenberg <dweyenbe@students.wisc.edu>
Subject: "child sexual abuse"; child sexuality
Hi
I have been following this thread with much interest and am posting a
conference interview below because I think it is pertinent to many of the
comments/issues that this tread that brought up in the course of discussion.
While at first glance it may seem somewhat dated and local to France, I
think it also raises some guestions or asks us to rethink how questions can
be framed about these very pertinent issues. Perhaps one of the more
important questions for me -in following this tread-is the discursive
construction of the child, child sexuality, the criminal, the "victim" and
so on. How have we come to think about "child sexual abuse" as we do? What
are our assumptions about child sexuality? etc.
Dar
Http://www.mindspring.com/~rainbowchild/foucault.htm, 2/17/2000. 08:45
The Danger of Child Sexuality - an interview with Michel Foucault
"The Danger of Child Sexuality", Foucault's dialogue with Guy Hocquenghem and
Jean Danet, was produced by Roger Pillaudin and broadcast by France Culture
on April 4, 1978. It was
published as "La Loi de la pudeur" in RECHERCHES, 37, April 1979.
First published in English in Semiotext(e) Magazine, (New York):
Semiotext(e) Special Intervention
Series 2: Loving Boys / Loving Children (Summer 1980), in a translation by
Daniel Moshenberg.
This is the full version, published in: Michel Foucault: politics,
philosophy, culture: interviews and
other writings. ( Ed.) by Lawrence D. Kritzman. (New York: Routledge,
1988). Translated
by Alan Sheridan, with the title "Sexuality Morality and the Law."
"THE DANGER OF CHILD SEXUALITY"
MICHEL FOUCAULT: All three of us agreed to take part in this
broadcast (it was agreed in principle several months ago) for the following
reason.
Things had evolved on such a wide front, in such an overwhelming and at
first sight apparently irreversible way, that many of us began to hope
that the legal regime imposed on the sexual practices of our contemporaries
would at last be relaxed and broken up. This regime is not as old as all
that, since the penal code of 1810 (1) said very little about sexuality, as if
sexuality was not the business of the law; and it was only during the
19th century and above all in the 20th, at the time of Petain or of the
Mirguet amendment (1960) (2), that legislation on sexuality increasingly became
oppressive. But, over the last ten years or so, a movement in public
opinion and sexual morals has been discernible in favor of reconsidering this
legal regime. A Commission for the Reform of Penal Law was even set up, whose
task it was to revise a number of fundamental articles in the penal code.
And this commission has actually admitted, I must say with great
seriousness, not only the possibility, but the need to change most of the
articles
in our present legislation concerning sexual behavior. This commission, which
has now been sitting for several months, considered this reform of the
sexual legislation last May and June. I believe that the proposals it expected
to make were what may be called liberal. However, it would seem that for
several months now, a movement in the opposite direction has begun to
emerge. It is a disturbing movement - firstly, because it is not only
occuring in France. Take, for example, what is happening in the United
States, with Anita Bryant's campaign against homosexuals, which has
almost gone so far as to call for murder. It's a phenomenon observable in
France.
But in France we see it through a number of particular, specific facts,
which we shall talk about later (Jean Danet and Guy Hocquenghem will
certainly provide examples), but ones that seem to show that in both
police and legal practice we are returning to tougher and stricter positions.
And this movement, observable in police and legal practice, is
unfortunately very often supported by press campaigns, or by a system of
information
carried out in the press. It is therefore in this situation, that of an
overall movement tending to liberalism, followed by a phenomenon of
reaction, of slowing down, perhaps even the beginning of a reverse
process, that we are holding our discussion this evening.
GUY HOCQUENGHEM: Six months ago we launched a petition demanding
the abrogation of a number of articles in the law, in particular those
concerning relations between and decriminalization of relations between
adults and minors below the age of fifteen. A lot of people signed
it, people belonging to a wide range of political positions, from the Communist
Party to Mme. Dolto (3). So it's a petition that has been signed by a lot
of people who are suspect neither of being particularly pedophiles
themselves nor
even of entertaining extravagant political views. We felt that a certain
movement was beginning to emerge, and this movement was confirmed by the
evidence
submitted to the commission reforming the penal code. What we can now
see, then, is not only that this kind of movement is something of a liberal
illusion, but that in fact it does not amount to a profound
transformation in the legal system, either in the way in which a case is
investigated
or in the way it is judged in court. Furthermore, at the level of public
opinion, at the level of the mass media, the newspapers, radio, television,
etc., it is rather the opposite that is beginning to take place, with new
arguments being used. These new arguments are essentially about childhood, that
is to say, about the exploitation of popular sentiment and its spontaneous
horror of anything that links sex with the child. Thus in an article in the
"Nouvel
Observeateur" begins with a few remarks to the effect that "pornography
involving children is the ultimate American nightmare and no doubt the
most terrible in a country fertile in scandals." When someone says that
child pornography is the most terrible of present scandals, one cannot but be
struck by the disproportion between this - child pornography, which is
not even prostitution - and everything that is happening in the world today-
what the black population has to put up with in the United States, for
instance. This whole campaign about pornography, about prostitution, about all
those social phenomena - which are in any case controversial - only leads to one
fundamental presupposition: 'it's worse when children are consenting and
worse still if it
is neither pornographic nor paid for', etc. In other words, the entire
criminalizing context serves only to bring out the kernel of the
accusation: you want to make love with consenting children. It serves only to
stress the traditional prohibition and to stress in a new way, with new
arguments,
the traditional prohibition against sexual relations without violence, without
money, without any form of prostitution, that may take place between adults
and minors.
JEAN DANET: We already know that some psychiatrists consider that sexual
relations
between children and adults are always traumatizing.
And that if a child doesn't remember them, it is because they remain in his
subconscious, but in any case the child is marked forever, the child
will become emotionally disturbed. So what takes place with the intervention
of psychiatrists in court is a manipulation of the children's consent, a
manipulation of their words. Then there is another use - a fairly recent
one, I think - of repressive legislation, which should be noted because it
may be used by the legal system as a temporary tactic to fill in the gaps.
Indeed in the traditional disciplinary institutions - prisons, schools, and
asylums - the nurses, teachers, and so on, followed a very strict regimen.
Their
superiors kept as close a watch on them as on the inmates. On the other
hand, in the new agencies of social control, control through hierarchy
is much more difficult. Indeed we may well wonder whether we are not
witnessing a use of common-law legislation; incitement of a minor to commit an
immoral act, for example, can be used against social workers and teachers. And
I would point out in passing that Villerot is a teacher, that Gallien was
a doctor even if the acts did not take place at a time when he was
practicing his profession; that in 1976, in Nantes, a teacher was tried for
inciting minors to immoral acts, when in fact what he had done was to supply
contaceptives to the boys and girls in his charge. So the common-law
appears to have been used this time to repress teachers and social workers who
were not carrying out their task of social control as their respective
hierarchies wished. Between 1830 and 1860, there already were laws directed
specifically
at teachers: certain judgements stated this explicitly. Article 334 of
the Penal Code - which applied to certain persons, teachers, for example,
and concerned the incitement of minors to commit immoral acts - was invoked
in a case that did not involve a teacher. So we can see the extent to which
such legislation is ultimately looking for places where 'perverts likely to
corrupt young people' might slip in. The judges were obsessed with this.
They were unable to come up with a definition of the perversions. Medicine
and psychiatry were to do it for them. In the mid-19th century they had one
obsession: if the pervert was everywhere, then they must start tracking him
down in the most dangerous institutions, the institutions at risk,
among the populations at risk, though the term had not yet been invented. If
it has been possible to believe for a time that there was to be a
withdrawal of legislation, it was not because we thought that we were living
in a
liberal period but because we knew that more subtle forms of sexual supervision
would be set up - and perhaps the apparent freedom that camouflaged
these more subtle, more diffuse social controls was going to extend beyond
the field of the juridical and the penal. This is not always necessarily
the case, and it is quite possible to believe that traditional repressive
laws will function side-by-side with much more subtle form of control, a
hitherto
unknown form of sexology that would invade all institutions, including
educational ones.
MICHEL FOUCAULT: Indeed it seem to me that we have reached an important
point. It is true that we are witnessing a real change: it is probably not
true that this change will be favorable to any real alleviation of the
legislation on sexuality. As Jean Danet has shown, a very large body of
legislation was gradually promulgated, though not without difficulty,
throughout the 19th century. But this legislation was characterized by the
odd fact that it was never capable of saying exactly what it was punishing.
Harassments were punished, but were never defined. Outrageous acts
were punished; nobody ever said what an outrage was. The law was intended to
defend decency (pudeur); nobody ever knew what pudeur was. In practice,
whenever a legislative intervention into the sphere of sexuality had to
be justified, the law on pudeur was always invoked. And it may be said
that all the legislation on sexuality introduced since the 19th century in
France is a set of laws on pudeur. It is certainly a fact that this legislative
apparatus, aimed at an undefined object, was never used except in cases
when it was considered to be tactically useful. Indeed, there has been a
whole campaign against teachers. There was a time when it was used against
the clergy. This legislation was used to regulate the phenomenon of child
prostitution, so important throughout the 19th century between 1830 and
1880. We are now aware that this instrument, which possessed the
advantage of flexibility, since its object was undefined, could no longer
survive
when these notions of pudeur, outrage, and harrassment were seen as
belonging to a particular system of value, culture, and discourse; in the
pornographic explosion and the profits that it involves, in this new
atmosphere, it is no
longer possible to use these words and to make the law function on this basis.
But what is emerging - and indeed why I believe it was important
to speak about the problem of children - what is emerging is a new penal
system,
a new legislative system, whose function is not so much to punish
offenses against these general laws concerning decency, as to protect
populations and parts of populations regarded as particularly vulnerable.
In other
words, the legislator will not justify the measures that he is proposing by
saying: the universal decency of mankind must be defended. What he will
say is: there are people for whom others' sexuality may become a permanent
danger. In this catagory, of course, are children, who may find
themselves at the mercy of an adult sexuality that is alien to them and may
well
be harmful to them. Hence there is a legislation that appeals to this
notion of a vulnerable population, a "high-risk population,"as they say,
and to a
whole body of psychiatric and psychological knowledge imbibed from
psychoanalysis - it doesn't really matter whether the psychoanalysis is
good or bad - and this will give the psychiatrists the right to intervene
twice. Firstly, in general terms, to say: yes, of course, children do have a
sexuality, we can't go back to those old notions about children being pure
and not knowing
what sexuality is. But we psychologists or psychoanalysts or psychiatrists,
or teachers, we know perfectly well that
children's sexuality is a specific sexuality, with its own forms, its own
periods of maturation, its own highpoints, its specific
drives, and its own latency periods, too. This sexuality of the child is a
territory with its own geography that
the adult must not enter. It is virgin territory, sexual territory, of
course, but territory that must preserve its virginity.
The adult will therefore intervene as guarantor of that specificity of child
sexuality in order to protect it.
And, on the other hand, in each particular case, he will say:
this is an instance of an adult bringing his own sexuality into the
child's sexuality. It could be that the child, with his own sexuality, may have
desired that adult, he may even have consented, he may even have made
the first moves. We may even agree that it was he who seduced the adult;
but we specialists with our psychological knowledge know perfectly well that
even the seducing child runs a risk, in every case, of being damaged and
traumatized by the fact that he or she has had sexual dealings with an
adult. Consequently, the child must be 'protected from his own desires',
even when his desires turn him towards an adult. The psychiatrist is the one
who will be able to say: I can predict that a trauma of this importance
will occured as a result of this or that type of sexual relation. It is
therefore
within the new legislative framework - basically intended to protect certain
vulnerable sections of the population with the establishment of a new
medical power - that a conception of sexuality and above all of the relations