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The Sexual Curriculum (Oct., 2002) [to Volume
II Index] [to Main
Index Page] [1]
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[IV] Janssen, D. F. (Oct., 2002). Growing
Up Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum: The Manufacture and
Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities. Interim Report. Amsterdam, The
Netherlands 3[previous
chapter] [next
chapter] Developmental to Developing Sexologies. A Sociological Entry to Sexual Socialisation Cultures and Processes Summary: This chapter provides a
theoretical outline of a framework for describing cross-cultural patterns of
sexual behaviour socialisation. Three principles were identified to explore
cross-cultural differences in sexual socialisation processes: pragmatism,
agenda, and stratification. The "pragmatism" framework describes the process of
sexual behaviour and identity socialisation in terms of potentialising
(enabling) rather than permissiveness (gratification). This reformulation
requires the identification of cultural tasks of defining individual curricular
sexual identities (developmental
sexology), and curricular-subcultural countertasks by which children and youth
respond to, assimilate, renegotiate these claims (developing sexology). That is, a specific (sexual) socialisation
curriculum creates a specific (sexological) subculture, as can be described and
studied via its being grounded in self-devised forms of expression and
self-imposed tasks. On this basis, the current literature review was identified
as aiming to facilitate a demonstration of social definitions operationalising
any part and level of the process of socialisation: acts, actors, bodies (and
their biological evolutions), and body parts (and their biological functions).
From an interactionist-performative perspective, the concept of "negative" or
antagonist socialisation is theoretically problematic, since, it was argued,
antagonist pedagogism always originates in a curricularised positive discourse. It
was observed that pedagogical cultures, as a whole, may uniformise and
institutionalise paradigmatic entries to developing sex, or rationalise practices
in a less organised, more individualised fashion. Contents
3.0.1
Frameworking Sexual Ontology 3.0.2 The
Cultural in the Developmental 3.0.3
Pedagogisation, Participating Citizenship and the Praxis of Sexuality: The
Cross-Cultural View 3.0.4
Outlining Pedagogical Cultures: A Principle
Trinity 3.0.5 The Sexual
as the Sexological Interaction: The "Operationalisation" of Sex 3.1 Meaning vs "Operational"
Meaning: The Praxis of Curricular Sexology 3.1.0
Regulating Sexuality-Sexology 3.1.1
Positive Intergenerational Legitimisation 3.1.2
Negation (Negativist Identification) vs De-Legitimisation: Taboo, Avoidance,
and Appropriation 3.1.2.1 Intermezzo: "Antisexualism" and Culture 3.1.3 Covert,
Collateral and "Centrifugal" Negation 3.1.4 Ambivalent and Non-Identification 3.2 Culture, Subculture,
Counterculture, and Co-Culture 3.2.1 The
Peer in the Sex: Subcultural and Subculturalist Sexology 3.3 Sex, Trajectories and Cultural
Agenda 3.4 "Developmental" Sexologies:
Cross-Cultural Appraisal 3.4.0
Cultural Legitimisations and "Developmental" Sexology 3.4.1
Drive-Centered (Biologist)
"Developmental" Sexology 3.4.2
Theonomic-Biologist "Developmental" Sexology 3.4.3
Constructionist / Interactionist-Centered "Developmental" Sexology 3.0 Introduction [up] [Contents]
Many self-identified cultural
survivor movements today face the manifold seductions of ongoing concept
elaborations, such as that of "Inner Child" work. Either at a metaphor level or
part of a more definite realism (consider Price, 1996)[1],
Inner Children must be reclaimed (Wacks, 1994)[2],
healed (Kiefer, 1993)[3],
scripted (Benton, 1990)[4]
and befriended (Esslinger, 1999)[5].
Among various other examples, these exotic artefacts of intellectual capital
are illustrative of an insidious revolution that fosters more ways of "doing
childhood" than could have been imagined even a decade ago. Concurrently, it
has been observed that childhood has become a central fetish of today's
sexological culture. Kincaid (1998:p69-72, 251, 291)[6],
for instance, wonders whether "[w]e return to impossible erotic fantasies,
ardently sexualizing our children and sentencing them to feel the full force of
our childish disappointments". These developments both strain and fuel
postmodern concepts of early erotics, as archaic ones are easily discarded and
alternative ones remain highly contextual. In this last of three introductory
chapters, I here wish to further explore productive alternatives for the
current project. This will necessitate an acknowledgement of productive as well
as non-productive entries to sexual developmentality. 3.0.1 Frameworking Sexual Ontologies [up] [Contents]
Social conventions dictate that a certain maximum (rarely an optimum) of psychological
content (knowledge, preoccupation) or interaction would define age-related sexual
health (age and "phase" "appropriateness"), or would define such chronology
in itself ("psychosexual age"). Money's erotic
age (Money and Walker, 1971:p59; Money and Ehrhardt, [1973] 1996:p200)[7]
or "lovemap age" (Money, 1991:p5)[8]
remained largely hypothetical: "lovemap development" was never studied by Money
beyond the clinical realm. By no means a routine starting point
for discussing "cultural" sexologies is provided by the position that ontology
"inevitably" occupies a central (though perhaps not overtly centralised) position in such
sexologies. John Money (1997 [1999:p14])[9],
first self-declared "child sexologist" / psychoneuroendocrinologist at Johns
Hopkins, Baltimore, states: "No historian of sexology has yet taken on the task
of writing a history of the transformations of the developmental principle in
sexology. Yet, the proposition that sexology must inevitably be a developmental
science has always been indisputable […]"[10].
While one may or may not accept this (rather direct) apology for developmental
agendas, is it clear that various sociological agendas (®§1.2)
do inform pervasively developmentalist perspectives of things sexual, and do
introduce specific biases[11]
on this account. For instance, Herdt[12]
discussed the "Western heterosexist bias in seeing normative development as a
function of the individual biology or subjective desire, rather than as a
function of social regulations and control". Indeed, "[a]re childhood and
sexual maturation the result of biological age, or are they ideas constantly
emerging in the structure of the family, an institution that is itself
historically changeable and culturally diverse?"[13]. It can be argued that social agendas
informing sexology are rationalised, normalised and operationalised by their
pursuit for, and use of, ontology; on the other hand, the research
opportunities are notoriously limited, and met with insubstantially defendable,
institutionalised opposition (Money). A brief discussion of the political
issuing of the developmental being offered in Appendix IV, I here wish to expand
on the preceding chapters as a preliminary to the current project's line of
commitment, as introduced in §s 1.1.3.1 and 1.4. Specifically, I
will outline the choices made to visualise differences in the cultural
imperatives of development, while refraining from discussing "cultures" instead
of individuals, and "development" instead of trajectories. Rather than
delineated at the outset, these principles emerged as data were being
organised, and theoretical orientations were "tried on". This chapter
represents the interim product of this process. 3.0.2 The Cultural in the
Developmental [up] [Contents]
Industrial societies seem to prefer biomedical
approaches to sexual behaviour curricula. It could be argued that regular
visits to a gynaecologist's office have replaced the function of communal rites
of sexual passage in preindustrial societies[14].
Transitional rites in American society are currently informed by commercial
interpretations of the medical-hygienic approach[15],
an approach that tends to inform the negative sides of an ambivalent[16]
sexology culture. Based on a previous historical appraisal of early German
language sexology's dealing with the early sexual curriculum, it is possible to
identify original Euro-American operationalisations of prepubertal sexuality as
medicalising ones, biologising concepts of "libidarche"
or erotic "awakening", and, thus, even today, compromising the sociological
study of sexual behaviour trajectories[17]. Cross-culturally, however, diversion is
noted for attitudes that prescribe or proscribe intervention in sexual
trajectories, or ensuring sexual "development" to take place, be it physically,
morally, and conceptually, to occur at all, or earlier, or within some
preferred curriculum. Cross-cultural methods have generally tended to restrict
themselves to negative attitudes for explananda, or somehow feel justified in
simply reversing original negative to positive scales[18]
(cf. §7.1.1). Such incidental
classifications as offered by Currier (1979/1981)[19]
and Becker (1984)[20]
allow positive and negative operationalisations of sexual development, but do
not specifically address curricular continuity, and evade diverting standards
for gender categories. These authors also leave the issue of historical
consistency unexplored. A review of the literature adds up to
the preliminary observation that most of the cross-cultural literature lacks a perspective and vocabulary that
suits a descriptive account of sexual "socialisation" processes that meets the
cross-cultural variety found in that literature (consider the obviously
problematic and unilateral, yet normalised concepts of "permissiveness",
"control", "education"). This compromises ethnographic accounts, and especially
hampers the ethnological study of pre-institutional sexualities. On the basis
of the current limited review of ethnographic accounts covering preadult sexual
trajectories, it was to be demonstrated how, and why, societies tend to
operationalise (define) sexological concepts of maturity and developmental
sexual competence, and how such definitions are utilised to produce efforts of
fitting individual performative trajectories
into theoretical curricula, or
ideal-typical, developmental
trajectories. 3.0.3 Pedagogisation,
Participating Citizenship and the Praxis of Sexuality [up] [Contents]
Reynolds[21]
visualises how concepts of both youth and sexuality enter the realm of public
space, of participation and of citizenship through such mediating institutions
as family, church, medicine, education,
police, law and judiciary. Although horaiocentric (horaios, Gr., adult), the
author's essay issues the following interesting problem: in the area of
sexuality, how does the possible become performance? In other words: how does
the child move from the potential, the preliminary, and the pedagogical space
of society to the arena of participation, of praxis? In
his History of Sexuality Foucault[22]
argued that children's sexuality was progressively governed (created) by
pedagogical discourses, this "pedagogisation"[23]
being one of four central deployment strategies, or "great strategic unities"
together constituting the "production of sexuality" in the modern period. That
is, the application of nascent concepts of pedagogy effected a reformulation of
behavioural trajectories, sexualising critical sites of cultural transmission
(classrooms, bedrooms, children's bodies) and revisiting, certainly
complicating, expanding and problematising (cf. Van Ussel) existing, agendas,
while relocating others. This process,
however minimally detailed by Foucault, informs a valuable reinterpretation of
the interactions between concepts of participating citizenship, pedagogical
imperative and sexual praxis[24].
In chapter 7, pedagogisation of sexual initiation
is operationalised along a negativist-positivist scale, and along a second
activist-abstinence scale, following Becker. Pedagogisation is interpreted as
the introduction of an agenda identified by a set of motives that promote the
identification (localisation) of roles within a vertical social order. It was
observed that "[w]hereas European pedagogical discourses
have evolved from broadly negativist to positivist orientations over the past
three centuries, there is still a distinctly non-pragmatic or even covertly
anti-activist discourse in sexological teaching. The cover-up is provided by
the decentralisation of "clarifying" sex matters, from coitus to negative (or
anti-negative) contextualisation of coitarche. This circumlocution renders the
early sexual/erotic realm ambiguous and problematic". Pedagogical
discourses of sexuality have issued a number of paradigms, including
risk-danger and a range of 'health' species ("mental", "sexual",
"developmental"). This opens up discussions of the concurrence of diverse
pedagogical curricula, rather than their salience in specific social
compartments. Contemporary species of U.S. pedagogic
curricula include subgenres variably entitled "sexuality enhancement" [25],
awareness and safety education, allegedly "promoting"[26]
"healthy"[27] sexuality
while filtering out corrupting influences. Factually, "sexuality" may be a
"neglected" issue in these programs[28].
In adolescence, individuals are variably exposed to "abstinence" curricula. They
may be exposed to the following opening lines: "Abstinence is giving your body
the respect it deserves, that you deserve. Saying no to sex, alcohol, drugs and
tobacco keeps you healthy and safe. Stated a bit more frankly, it means no
touching from the neck to the knees and keeping all your clothes on, zippers
closed and buttons buttoned"[29].
It suffices to have remarked here that the pedagogical axis in these modern day
curricula is variably positioned, and as for childhood curricula, the long term
effects largely unknown. 3.0.4 Outlining Pedagogical
Cultures: A Principle Trinity [up] [Contents]
In
a preliminary essay, I have proposed a selection of "operational principles"
governing human sexual behaviour trajectories. These principles were to inform
descriptive and comparative accounts of the "cultural process" of sexual
behaviour socialisation. The most salient ones included: (i)
the pragmatism
principle, identifying sexuality as a
negotiation between theory, practice and patterning (®§3.1). The first principle argues that sex be
identified as an accomplishment located on a trajectory from preliminary to
practice to performance to routine performance. In this sense, sexual
socialisation effects sexuality to become (or, as developmentalists might
argue, "evolve" as) progressively practicable and feasible as a social
performance. Thus, one might argue that within certain ethnohistorical
contexts, sex acts represented subversions relative to what is perceived as an
antagonist pedagogical system. (ii) the stratification
principle, localising and positioning
sexuality within cultural, subcultural, and countercultural hierarchies (®§3.2) The second principle argues that the
doing of sex is in its confinement (politicised localisation, positioning)
within social spaces, most saliently in what might be called "curricular
compartments", or spaces stratified on the basis of life "phase" ideologies.
For further elaborations on topographic conceptions of sexuality, see §IV.1. (iii) the agenda
principle,
issuing sexuality as an agent operationalised through concepts of commitment,
frustration and distraction defined by cultural-subcultural agenda within a
teleological framework (®§3.3). The third principle argues that within the
context of sexuality as identified by hegemonic cultural agendas (fostering the
establishment of naturalised, accepted stratification), trajectories are to be
measured by their commitment to these agendas, or their failure to do so.
Socialisation cultures are identified by their activism of transmitting agendas that are unambiguous, feasible,
totalitarian ("centric"), or attractive. Anticipating on the following
paragraphs, a fusion of the above principles was attempted as a motivator for
the volume's presentation of data. The following trinity (3.1-3) of paragraphs
further explores how the application of the principles was effected. 3.0.5 The Sexual as the
Sexological Interaction: The "Operationalisation" of Sex [up] [Contents]
Within the context of adolescent sexual behaviour,
Straver (cf. §1.1.3.0) has identified sexual development
processes as governing the "acquisition of indices for enactment" within the
perspectives and definitions of sexual (e.g., self-) objects that emerge from
peer group interactions. This process includes the formation of "operative
rules", as well as normative rules, which inform an
"operative self-concept", in which "[…] perceived examples are reworked into
self-addressing rules that appear applicable to personal agency" (1985:p71-2,
75-6, 81). Using an analogy with scientific praxis / performance,
for sexual-sexological praxis to become functional, the practitioner is
required to have operationalised his
variables to ensure measurablity, relativity, internal consistency, external
compatibility and later applicability: for sexual cultures to be reproduced,
they need to be reproducable. The symbolic interaction implied in the social
organisation of "sexual" behaviour is effected through the "sexological" process, and as such it is
to be centralised in interactionist analyses of the "sexual". It can be
hypothesised that (macro- and microcultural) differences exist in the effort in
which this elementary conditional process is facilitated within the
intergenerational realm. Being the performance of sexuality, sexology is
potentialised and informed through a continuous process of
"operationalisation", or redefinition of operative regulations. In terms
of "scripts", things sexual are exempt from social utility when not
operationalised, before being made available for social transactions. Thus, it
can be examined how societies tend to "do", "represent", "imagine", in other
words "operationalise" (and thus, regulate, understand, experience) puberty as
a sexological caesura (§5.3). This unifying
term implies to cover the collective of processes conditional to the
performative competence of sexual interaction: labelling, legitimisation, authorisation,
instrumentalisation, etc. Within the framework detailed in §1.1.3.1 , it is proposed that children will
operationalise aspects of their sexual status (as behaviour, as identity
performance) in the interaction with their environment, rather than it being
passively operationalised for them. Elaborating on the previous paragraph, the
operationalisation process is identified by the elements of practicability,
agenda and stratification. In other words, doing sexuality (sexology) is
informed by hints at effectuation (doing, starting, not-doing, not-starting),
mobility and direction (going, developing) and social contextuality or
reflection (moving upward, looking back/down). In still other words, changes in
the sexological process are mediated by the relative application of the dynamic
concepts praxis (practice), telos (goal), and topos (place). Operable sexuality
is the result of imagining the possible and probable, and the claims of agency
attached to it; sexology is not the learning of sexuality, or its
operationalisation per se, it is the total sum of doing "the sexual" as such. Operationalisation
tasks within the sexological realm are distinctly problematic. The outstanding
role for operationalisation lies in the dissociation of discussed sexual
behaviour with private sexual behaviour, that is, the semisocial status of the
sex act. This accounts for the larger part of sexual "socialisation" being a
near-universally problematic concept. Another perspective, which is not
elaborated here, is that certain social organisations of sexuality-as-knowledge
may render the performance of "sexuality" / "sexual behaviour developmentally
and biosocially analogous to the scientific, and epistemological, process,
determining the culturally, historically and personally specific tendency to
"sexologise" "sexual" categories, and to de-essentialise "the sexual". [Conceptualising
sexuality as sexology, as follows from previous choices of perspective,
requires a lexicon reflecting this interpretation. Since the use of particular
expressions by the author raised questions pertaining to the appraisal of
fundamental concepts among the expert board supervising this project, some
definitions were listed at the conclusion of the
work in response to, and to anticipate on, these criticisms. Particularly, the
use of "operationalisation" and "curricularisation" is considered of critical importance
in the conceptualisation of pedagogical principles, and in culture-identifying
practices]. In conclusion, it can be postulated
that the cultural transmission of sex occurs in contextualisation and
rationalisation modules that are to direct or redirect (more or less
unspecific) emotional (neuroendocrinological) processes associated with the
socialised Self. This (cryptobiological) model assumes that the
segmentalisation of sexology on the basis of age and class (e.g., "academic",
"formal"), that is, the variety of its methodological and contextual praxis, is
a cultural artefact. Sexual activities are interesting insofar as they occur,
or not-occur, in the context of previous sexological proceedings, and insofar
as they provide for future elaboration and revision. 3.1 Meaning vs "Operational" Meaning:
The Praxis of Curricular Sexology [up] [Contents]
3.1.0 Regulating
Sexuality-Sexology [up] [Contents]
Sociologists have invested considerable
efforts in identifying sex as praxis, telos, and instrument. Arguing from
hegemonic medical viewpoints, sex-as-praxis is studied relative to the agenda of
control by tracking and tackling processes in which the peripubescent is
"introduced" ("initiated") into medically meaningful (clinically relevant)
practices. By doing so, there is a flow of reinterpretation ("education")
concerning specific behavioural categories "operationalised" as "risk
behaviour". The praxis now connotes "running risks", "being exposed",
"potentially contracting fatal diseases", etc., where elsewhere it has meant
"attracting misfortune to the tribe", "exhibiting degeneration", "exhibiting
commitment to the reproductive cause", "being healthy", "being normal", etc. It can be argued that in studying
cultural entries to sexual behaviour development two fundamental elements can
be distinguished (Becker): the attitudinal
and pragmatic identification of
sexual competence. The current study, however, argues that these issues are
immediate concomitants of a multivariate principle that describes how cultures
either do or do not legitimise, or otherwise, denaturalise, given sexual behaviour agendas in given sections of
the sexual behaviour curriculum. Whereas in legitimising efforts, sexual behaviour principles are (whether or
not unambiguously) offered intergenerationally as immediately utilisable tools
and feasible objectives, in conditional
legitimisation efforts such principles are identified, but not
unambivalently as immediately utilisable tools; in non-legitimising ramifications, no sexological identification is
offered; via "negative" ("antagonistic" definition, illegitimisiation, unauthorisation) efforts, identified
possibilities are actively prevented to become immediate practical objectives,
and, lastly, in ambivalent efforts,
opposing principles are applied concurrently or alternatively. Operational legitimisation occurs within
formalised, ritualised, or via more unstructured, vicarious routes. Rather than
discussing curricular enforcement along separate scales of attitude and
intervention, the composite scale of legitimisation offers a more uniform
measure of cultural perspectives and sexual behaviour development.
Specifically, this project will focus on the differences in meanings implied
in, rather than in efficacy of, processes. Legitimisation pertains first to
self-referring possibilities and agendas: it potentialises the concept of
personal actualisation, and is directly linked to "personification" and
embodiment. Secondly, the entire sexual/erotic environment is gradually given
(or not given, or not-given) some sort of personal social relevance, requiring
position taking, attitude sharing and eventual discussion. Thus, via a
constuctionist approach, one expects meanings
(identifications) to be or become operationalised
meanings facilitating significance to be applied to the (hypothetical)
personal situation, and thus providing a basis (discourse) for actions.
Sexuality is applied in the performance of embodied personhood. American preadolescents, for instance, seem to
be required to adopt an unambiguous, often negative, use of homoerotic
categories. This predominantly vicariously
legitimised agenda requires some form of reflection on the possibility of
same-sex contacts, and a pressing need to reflect on or explore the moral
boundaries of the concept within the
personal setting. Starting from the fourth grade, a "very powerful" use of
homophobic terms occurs, which would, Plummer somehow feels justified to argue,
would rarely carry "sexual connotations" [sic][30].
Verbal homoerotomisic ("homophobic"? antihomoerotic?) cultures, however
ineffective, could be assumed to invalidate (counter-legitimise) personal
actualisation of the suggested practice. That this should hardly prove a
flawless tendency, as data suggest, points to the presence of the overrule of
competing (e.g., contrapragmatic
heteroerotic) principles. An associated process describes the transition
of (pre)adolescents knowing "homosexuality" to applying homosexuality as an
identifier of social identity ("sexual orientation") (cf. Sandfort & Van
Zessen). Summing up, legitimisation of sex as
praxis represents the facilitation of turning conceptual mastery via motivated
personalisation into pragmatic intent. The delay or disruption between these
three imaginary conditions (reductionistically, knowing-wanting-doing) are
arrived at by active and passive tendencies characterising the microsocial
response to anatomical, physiological and behavioural clues[31].
Socially and culturally, differences are noted in issues covering, for
instance, extent, timing, and curricular continuity of authority claims.
Identification and legitimisation, thus, encompass the techniques employed to
communicate principles as more or less personally salient (pragmatic) concepts,
not the conceptualisation of how such concepts would 'naturally' be present, or
'naturally' be utilised. 3.1.1 Positive
and Positivist Intergenerational Legitimisation [up] [Contents]
Unambiguous examples of
intergenerational legitimisation of sexual behaviour curricula instances of explicit
and direct transmission of sexual techniques: coitus demonstrations,
institutional intructrices, semi-formal age-stratified coital introductions,
active shaping of heterosexual identity/role, anatomical and physiological
prosexual preparations, public recognition / announcements (menarche,
defloration) and behavioural encouragements (chapter 7). Within this setting fits
a biomedical sexology that selectively associates curricular sexual behaviour
categories with promotive physiological qualities ("poetic sexology"),
beneficial preventative qualities, or therapeutic qualities (cf. Whiting and
Child). Thus, these sexosophies (Money) rationalise and legitimise given
curricular choices. The child is supplied with the idea that "Sexual behaviour
can [should] currently be practised by me". The dividing line between positive
and forced positive modes ("I have got to do/undergo this now, whether I might
want to or not") may be hard to draw. 3.1.2 Negation
(Negativist Identification) vs De-Legitimisation: Taboo, Avoidance, and
Appropriation [up] [Contents]
Money (1980:p45-9)[32]
lists three major taboos in children's sexual socialisation, which Money allows
to partially "overlap" the others: age-avoidancy[33]
(cf. Murdock[34]; Bryant,
1977:p304-5)[35],
intimacy-avoidancy, and allosex-avoidancy. Age-avoidancy is connected to age stratification in sexual
behaviour and communication. Intimacy-avoidancy is described in terms of (particularly
parent-child) kinship taboos in discussing and observing sexual behaviour,
hampering "direct" intrafamilial forms of education. The foregoing two are
judged to be "not sex disparate, but […] applied equally to boys and girls in
the course of their development", as far as sources demonstrate far from an
obvious point. Allosex-avoidancy is discussed in terms of gender segregation
in situations of bodily exposure and "erotic communication". Negative legitimisation of sexual
behaviour categories include the identification of avoidance and abstinence
curricula. These include specific kinship avoidance rules, gender avoidance
rules/ seclusion, age avoidance rules, residential change,
sleeping/bathing/dressing arrangements, active prevention of instruction,
deliberate misinformation, sexual behaviour proscriptions, contrasexual
morphological/ physiological interventions /medicine, and virginity examinations
/ requirements. Within this setting fits a biomedical
sexology that selectively associates sexual behaviour categories with a
"contrapoetic" processes (prevention of somatic / pubertal development,
nosology, thanatology, theology, demonology). Negation creates the idea, "This
is a possibility, but not for me" or "a rather conditional one".
De-legitimisation, by contrast, implies the presentation of principles as if not applicable to the current
stage of personal trajectories. This puts off its immediate utility: "This is a
possibility for me, but not now". The
analysis of control methods by Sears et al. (1957:p185-92)[36]
seems modest, unilateral and does not address, for instance, the issue of
internalised standards. Mothers would employ the following tools: opportunity
minimalisation ("preventing stimulation"), distraction by substitution
("changing stimulation"), cross-rationalisation ("borrowed sanctions"),
non-labelling (vs. cross-interpretation), and non-suggestion ("information
control"). The ethnographic record suggests additional options, including
nosological narrative, various behaviour modification techniques, deliberate
mislabelling, and harsh ad hoc or post hoc punishment. The position taken here is that the
(curricular) species of not-doing and not doing of sex represent variable
active processes. U.S. revivalist mantras of abstinence sufficiently illustrate
and denormalise not-doing as a culturally artifact, produced by an industry of
recruitment technology. 3.1.2.1 Intermezzo:
"Global Antisexualism" and Culture [up] [Contents]
Largely an American party, selected
authors have argued that "child" sexual "abuse" prevention agendas illustrate sex-opposing principles[37],
or at least run the risk of transgressing
to curricular "sexuality prevention" agendas[38].
These allegations are hard to substantiate, and impossible to verify. An
(alleged idiosyncratic) "antisexualist" orientation is always categorical, always
curricular, and always integrated within larger oppositional frameworks, which
are always positively legitimised. The addressing of such "cultural", "endemic"
positionings, thus, escape nonactivist reflection and empirical
cross-examination. In anything, the authors try to reflect on mutually
incompatible developmental principles. 3.1.3 Covert,
Collateral and "Centrifugal" Negation [up] [Contents]
Girls,
particularly, are socialised at an abstract level at which they do not grasp
their situation, but nevertheless are rigidly controlled. Specifically, mothers
employ devious rationalisations for preventing association with boys. This
"don't run around with boys", or socialising sex without the sex, is an
established schema for ensuring control while avoiding identifying the
behaviours or identifying the moral dilemma/choice (cf. §4.7). This means of
laterally approaching and addressing avoidance may be titled "centrifugal"
considering its tendency to shy away from identification of matters considered
"central" issues. Avoidance is accomplished via 'detours", or alternative
meanings and contextualities: "I will not do B (running around with boys), for
it leads to C (roughness)"; where the consequences for "A" (sexual behaviour)
do not enter the script (until later). 3.1.4 Ambivalent and Non-Identification [up] [Contents]
It
can be suggested that most, but particularly industrial, societies utilise a
globally ambivalent (Becker) sexology that causes selective categories to be
positively identified and de- or negatively legitimised synchronically, at least in adolescence. Ambivalence, mostly
described for white middle-class U.S. sexual culture, creates the idea, "I
can/want to engage in sexual behaviour, but then again I can not/do not want
to" or "I should engage in sexual behaviour, but actually I shouldn't". This
situation is fully analogous to the construction of the ambiguous sexual body[39]
that is associated with this policy. Inherent to the requirements of a complex
adult role goes a dissociation
between reproductive and productive age, and a subordination of the former to the latter in terms of preparation
(Schlegel). Ameliorating this dual situation is the technique of anticipatory
avoidance of direct addressing of enabling interpretations. An example is that
of the avoidance of "operationalising" (enabling, empowering) knowledge
(orgasm, coitus), particularly through an emphasis on age stratification. It
suggests an evasion of communications that are thought to operationalise
(identify as practicable), and thereby promote, specific behaviours, by providing a deceiving alternative.
Purposeful misleading arguments on the ontogenetic question are noted in many
societies (§10.2.5). Further,
pseudo-identification is noted when
the addressing of concepts occurs after they have been identified or even made
practicable, for instance through informal curricula. Sexual education books
have commonly provided curricula that were to represent "complete courses",
while none of such courses approaches casuistic traditional African completeness. Ambivalence
at times produces ambivalent forms of sexual behaviour as exemplified by the
so-called partial (interfemoral) intercourse practised to prevent defloration[40]
(§6.2.11).
Or rather, sexual expression reflects the compromises
that follow from given sexological traditions, traditions based on wider social
regulations.
3.2 Culture, Subculture, Counterculture, and Co-Culture [up] [Contents]
3.2.1 The Peer in the Sex:
Subcultural and Subculturalist Sexology [up] [Contents]
Many researchers have interpreted
sexual societies as segmental, allowing for an analysis of curricular sexual
"subcultures"[41] (cf. §s 8.4;
15.4.3;
III.0)
rather than adolescents' preliminary (problematic or marginal) integration in
"adult" sexual cultures. Time and again, and cross-"culturally" so, the
importance of peer cultures in sexual acculturation trajectories is regarded
uncontested. At times, the subculture is formulated as a "counterculture"[42],
children "using"[43] sexuality
as a tool in an antagonistic or subversive curriculum. Mostly, the use of terms such as
"subculture" do not connote a reference to classical subculture theory (Cohen) which argues that (dissident)
subcultures develop in response to "dominant meaning systems", as identified by
"rituals of resistance". Contemporary studies of age-identified sexual subculturing
as occurring within school systems[44],
in settings such as polyethnic[45]
and marginal[46] youth
environments, do identify antagonist principles, but generally reject much of the
totalising, normalising and dichotomising tendencies of its original format
(e.g., Redman). The existence of "curricular" (or life phase-identified,
age-stratified) "sexual subcultures", for instance, need not presuppose that
some unitarian, "normal" hegemonic sexual culture is rejected by preadult
groups that unite under this credo in some uniformised antithetical curriculum.
It might imply, however, that age groups experience coherence, identity and
collective personality based on specific uses of sexual categories, uses that
may be (but not essentially are) in opposition or oppositional to those of
authority (or: rivalling, adjacent) age classes. In the Raffaelli study on
Brazilian street youth, it was argued that "sex is used as a means of ensuring
survival, seeking comfort, finding pleasure, and dealing with psychological
issues that arise during adolescence". Now this is hardly to be called
antihegemonic. These insights are crucial footnotes to
medical and pedagogical pursuits. As Renold[47]
argues, "[…] only a curriculum and policy
framework that is sensitive to and reflects pupils' own sexual cultures can support children's experience of their
developing sexual and gendered identities" [ital.in.orig.]. 3.2.2 Hypothesis [up] [Contents]
Depending on the type of
legitimisation/operationalisation (which may be specific for phase, gender and
behavioural category), peer networks seem to represent the countercultures that
assume sexological tasks (curricular
discourses) in response to the central techniques used by the preceding
generation (theoretical categories identified in Table
1 below). In this sense, sexual socialisation cultures tend to
promote the emergence of peer subcultures that can be specified on their
sexological agenda, or active
(collaborative, dissident, etc.) shaping of their sexual behaviour curricula. Table 1 Sexual Behaviour: Operationalisation Modes and Sub-/Countercultural
Tasks
Examples of each system generally
indicative of the identified operationalisation principle are provided below.
When discussing peer cultures, this can only be maintained for homosocial subcultures.
Further, such generalisations disregard life phase and categorical dimensions.
The examples infra are specific for male
and/or female adolescent heterosexual sexual behaviour categories. n Enforced Positive.
Examples mostly include dual gender standard systems as seen in traditional
Islamic societies. Enforced positive socialisation includes forced age
asymmetric early intercourse with a betrothed or husband (e.g., Aranda;
Yanomama; Amhara, Hausa, !Kung), and more generally parent-organised betrothals.
In these cases, frustrated opposition on the part of the girl is the rule,
while males assume the enforcing role, though perhaps with some degree of
consideration for the girl. Another option for age egalitarian subcultures is
semi-or pseudo-clandestine courtship outside the established tradition. n Positive.
Examples include a range of African, Oceanic and Latin American societies
(e.g., Bemba, Mangaia, Puerto Rico). Peer cultures thus (a) are to make use of
offered principles (e.g., age asymmetric coital instruction); (b) allow
positive adhortations and appeals to reinforce sexual behaviour seeking
(Mexican adolescent prostitute visiting); (c) elaborate on the provided
stimulations; and generally provide a complementation to socialisation cultures
rather than to the opposite sex n Ambivalent/Polyvalent/Conditional Modes. Examples include the
U.S. and the large part of European, contemporary Asian, and more generally
technologically developed societies. Adolescent peer subcultures here are well-defined
and variably assume initiatory, critical, revolutionist and creative identities
in pursuit of conceptualising and organising dyadic affiliations not
unambiguously operationalised or organised by the parental generation. Such
pursuits are organised and to some degree monitored within established
age-graded institutions (schools, clubs) defining the boundaries of these
formative processes, and shedding scholastic (public institutional) from
extrascholastic (extra-institutional) social/gender interactions. As opposed to
nonambivalent modes, the creation of a sexual behaviour identity is variably,
and relatively, one e vacua
(nonoperationalisation), one that rebels against some partial, negative
principle, or one that claims some partial, positive principle. From a
structuralist perspective, the e vacua
possibility is most theoretically intriguing, requiring an assimilation de novo from lateral concepts and
principles. In practice, however, the vacuum left by the parental generation is
readily filled with a (still considerably age graded) learning hierarchy within
school curricula and through commercial communications. n Negative / Enforced
Negative. The response to negative
operationalisation cultures, when consistently effected, one of erotic underdevelopment
or retardation, however culturally relative. Subcultural tasks will include
elements of those encountered under the enforced and ambivalent modes. Within
this general orientation, as in the ambivalent mode, phase dynamics are most
salient. In some (mature) phase or another, and on some basis or another, a
negative attitude acquires definitely positive principles (though perhaps
within ambivalent terms) and ensures reproduction. The negative category, thus,
is a spurious one, or at least a subcategory of positive socialisation
characterised by censoring unwanted products to arrive at the wanted product.
Similar to the situation in the enforced positive mode, the creation of a
sexual behaviour identity that deviates from established norms is not one e vacua, as theoretically in
nonoperational situations. 3.3
Sex, Trajectories and Cultural Agenda [up] [Contents]
In a literature review of structuralist
studies on sexual socialisation (Appendix I), a range of factors was found to be
associated with measures of socialisation "severity". However arguable the
scale and theoretical underpinnings of these measures, one is to conclude that
societies do generate curricula on the basis of a commune telos, hence the
concept of "cultural agenda" informing the shaping and politicising of imminent
trajectories. A discussion of the control strategies in the context of paternal
interests in reproduction was offered by Paige and Paige (1981)[48].
Pedagogical agendas, as conveying political / economic / aesthetic mottoes,
embody the performance of interest relations, relations that are modified
through the changing of subsistence levels, and respond to religious doctrines. 3.4
"Developmental" Sexologies:
Cross-Cultural Appraisal [up] [Contents]
The
following paragraphs identifies theoretical disciplines governing sexological
principles for different cultures. Exploring along two dimensions, it is
observed that pedagogical cultures, as a whole, may uniformise and
institutionalise paradigmatic entries to developing sex, or rationalise
practices in a less organised, more individualised fashion (§3.3). 3.4.0 Cultural Legitimisations
and "Developmental" Sexology [up] [Contents]
Only in selected cases it was noted that
parents do not have a clear definition of their socialising efforts; as a
consequence, lay theories on sexual development may be indefinite. It was
observed that "[t]he majority of the Guajiro seem to act as passive carriers of
their tradition and do not question, to any appreciable degree, the reasons why
they socialize sex the way they do" (Watson). Sears et al.[49] observed that
mothers apply curricular arguments, but remark: "As far as we could tell, […]
most of the mothers had not rationalized their antipathy for masturbation. They
simply said it was something they did not like to see; they felt it was not
"nice"; and they were embarrassed when their child did it, especially in the
presence of others". This raises the hypothesis that the formation of (lay)
theories of sexual development is subject to cultural determination. 3.4.1 Drive-Centered (Biologist) "Developmental" Sexology [up] [Contents]
In both negative and positive
structural-functionalist terms, sexuality is commonly seen as an idiosyncratic
agent to be contained by a larger cause and agenda. The Nubia, for instance, argue that the only way to blunt the "inherent
sexual wildness of girls" and to preserve their chastity is through
clitoridectomy and infibulation (Kennedy). In liberal settings, too, the
parental generation downplays its role in shaping sexuality: "Sometimes we say,
"Why do it now? Wait a little". But the children grow excited, so what should
they do?" (Baiga). Thus,
negotiations are given up in the perspective of biological determinism. A
reliable indicator for this fatalism commonly is illustrated by the idea of
pubertal libidarche. Thus, Pakistan
villagers were convinced that puberty was synonymous with "maturity" and a
mature girl had to have her sex urge satisfied. It was "folly to ignore this".
This may be associated with traditional patterns of age asymmetric marriages
with consummation with a "very young" bride (Lindholm). Similarly, "[a Kwoma] girl's menarche in itself removes her from the status of
child and puts her into a class of "sexy" persons, children of either sex being
considered both uninterested in sex and uninteresting sexually" (Williamson; ital.add.). The Kwoma traditionally married
at pubescence (Bowden). The narrator of Rennewart stated that "[w]hen a maiden
is about to come of age and her small breasts
begin to form, she is overcome by a nascent desire that slips into her
heart and that, on account of the pain
of the desire, upsets her spirits and teaches her the ways of her mother".
Discussing the Indian case for child
marriage legislation, Mayo, as cited by DeMause, reported numerous testimonies
that "blamed the little girls for their rape", claiming that early marriage was
an absolute necessity, since "Cupid overtakes the hearts of girls [...] at an
early age [...]. A girl's desire for sexual intercourse is eight times greater
than that of males […] When there is appetite, it is the best time for giving
food". The downplaying of social factors is generally noted for
nonoperationalising societies, as a legitimisation for nonintervention. In
Western settings, maturation is seen as an idiosyncratic, biological process
indirectly to be shaped by noninterference, rather than having it fit into a
productive framework, and used for productive purposes. 3.4.2
Theonomic-Biologist "Developmental" Sexology [up] [Contents]
An alternative to biologist theories on
sexual development is the attribution of sexological control to a divine
institute. This institute would provide for, promote, redirect or revenge given
developments. A Baganda boy, raised
in a fairly "liberal" setting[50]
conceptualises his libidinal nature at the interface of Devine mediation and
the naturalised body: "If you look at it critically, this
thing is in the blood. God created it in us. For example you might watch a
young kid that only crawls touching funny areas and covering them shyly. That
thing is in the blood". Equally,
it was argued that Santal "[c]hildren
are equipped with a complete phallic knowledge by Cando Bo[.]nga (Supreme
Deity)". A specific agenda seems to be in play: "It is ordained by him as to whether
a man will have progeny or not; so we find some men are denied children,
although they mate like others", said an old Santal to us. They want children;
they like children. Overpopulation, a dismal apprehension to the educated
middle-class, does not act as a nightmare to their primitive minds"
(Mukherjea). Devine mediation of the sexual process provides
occasion for culturally established morals to be judged, facilitated or
revenged. The most richly documented examples are located within the history of
Christianity (see also Francoeur, 1990). Among the Anlo Ewe (Ghana) prepubertal sexuality is "an affront to the
spiritual powers" (Dovlo), and among the Tshi-speaking people (Gold Coast), family tutelary
deities appoint a spirit to walk behind each girl to safeguard her chastity; at
puberty its duties end (Ellis). Among
the Cewa, it was believed that full
intercourse with an uninitiated girl led to sickness "of a supernatural
origin". 3.4.3 Constructionist /
Interactionist-Centered "Developmental" Sexology [up] [Contents]
The
Xhosa boy is rather a "bull"
(unsocialised) than an "ox" (socialised sexuality) (Mayer and Mayer, 1990:p37)[51].
The bull/ox analogy pervaded Xhosa concepts of the life span. As becomes
apparent from the Dogon case[52],
societies may try to control sexual maturity be means of redefining its essence
via the means by which it is cultivated (and regulated): language. The Dogon
sexual curriculum is a linguistic curriculum, and sexual maturity equals
linguistic maturity. As in many African societies, the emphasis in sexual
developmental issues is directed to actively shaping bodies, attitudes and
motives, thereby locating meaning and significance in objects and activities. 3.5 Highlights and Summary [up] [Contents]
Concluding,
it was hypothesised that when specified for gender, phase and categorical specificity,
sexual behaviour socialisation cultures, characterised by (a) their orientation
to intervention and (b) when intervening, their inclination to focus on
stimulating positive principles (rather than stressing the prevention or
punishment of negative principles), create distinct, curricularised subcultural
orientations to sexual behaviour as measured in assumed forms, tasks (agendas),
and identities, and as governed by distinct theoretical baselines (sexologies).
The concept of ambivalent orientation
was identified as the most illustrative for an interactionist perspective. The
absolutist concept of negative socialisation cultures was rejected and replaced
by a positivist curricular perspective. Notes [up] [Contents]
[1]
Price, D. A. (1996)
Inner child work: What is really happening?, Dissociation 9,1:68-73. Discussed p74-9 [2]
Wacks, V. Q. (1994)
Realizing our inner elder-child: Toward the possible human, J Humanistic Psychol 34,4:78-100 [3]
Kiefer, K. S. (1993)
Healing the wounded inner child, Med
Hypnoanalysis J 8,4:125-38 [4]
Benton, C. L. (1990) "Scripting" the Inner Child in
Adult Children of Alcoholics: An Approach for Rehearsing Recovery. Paper
presented at the 76th Annual Conference of the Speech Communication
Association, Chicago, IL, November 1-4 [5]
Esslinger, K. (1999)
[Making peace with the inner child], Krankenpfl
J 37,6:228-33 [6]
Kincaid, J. (1998) Erotic innocence: the culture of child
molesting. London: Duke University Press [7]
Money, J. & Walker
(1971) Psychosexual development, maternalism, promiscuity and body image in 15
females with precocious puberty, Arch Sex
Behav 1,1:45-60 [8]
Money, J. (1991)
[Interview], Paidika 2,3:2-13 [9]
Money, J. (1997) Principles of
Developmental Sexology. New York: Continuum. 1999 ed. [10]
For a discussion of Money's developmental views, see Gijs, L. (2001) De Illusie van Eenheid: Een Kuhniaanse
Analyse van de Seksuologie van John Money. PhD Dissertation, University of
Utrecht, The Netherlands, p221-52 [11]
E.g., Carr, C. L. (1999) Cognitive scripting and sexual identification:
essentialism, anarchism, and constructionism, Symbolic Interaction 22,1:1-24 [12]
Herdt, G. (1991) Commentary on status of sex research: Cross-cultural implications
of sexual development, J Psychol &
Hum Sex 4,1:5-12. Cf. Herdt, G. (1990) Cross-cultural issues in the
development of bisexuality and homosexuality, in Money, J. & Musaph, H.
(Eds.) Handbook of Sexology, Vol VII.
Amsterdam [etc.]: Elsevier, p51-63 [8]
Money, J. (1991)
[Interview], Paidika 2,3:2-13 [9]
Money, J. (1997) Principles of
Developmental Sexology. New York: Continuum. 1999 ed. [10]
For a discussion of Money's developmental views, see Gijs, L. (2001) De Illusie van Eenheid: Een Kuhniaanse
Analyse van de Seksuologie van John Money. PhD Dissertation, University of
Utrecht, The Netherlands, p221-52 [11]
E.g., Carr, C. L. (1999) Cognitive scripting and sexual identification:
essentialism, anarchism, and constructionism, Symbolic Interaction 22,1:1-24 [12]
Herdt, G. (1991) Commentary on status of sex research: Cross-cultural implications
of sexual development, J Psychol &
Hum Sex 4,1:5-12. Cf. Herdt, G. (1990) Cross-cultural issues in the
development of bisexuality and homosexuality, in Money, J. & Musaph, H.
(Eds.) Handbook of Sexology, Vol VII.
Amsterdam [etc.]: Elsevier, p51-63 [13] Mohammed, P. (1997) The idea of
childhood and age of sexual maturity among Indians in Trinidad: A
sociohistorical scrutiny, in Roopnarine, J. L. & Brown, J. (Eds.) Caribbean Families: Diversity Among Ethnic
Groups. Advances in Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 14. Greenwich:
Ablex Publishing Corporation, p115-46 [14] Schindele, E. (1997) Übergange im
Frauenleben- Medikalisierung und Stigmatisierung durch die westliche Medizin, Curare 11:263-8 [15]
Hufnagel, G. (1999) A cultural analysis of the evolution of menarche and
menstruation: Implications for education, DAI-A 60(6-A):2256. [16]
Becker, G. (1984) The Social Regulation of Sexuality: A Cross-Cultural
Perspective, Curr Perpect Soc Theory
5:45-69 [17]
Janssen, D. F. (July, 2001) Paradoxia
Sexualis. Bio-Othering and Psychopathia Sexualis of the Child. Unpublished
literature study. University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Dept. of Medical
History, Philosophy and Ethics [18]
Barry, H. III & Schlegel, A. (1984) Measurements of adolescent sexual
behavior in the standard sample of societies, Ethnology 23,4:315-29 [19] Currier, R. L. (1981) Juvenile
sexuality in a global perspective, in Constantine, L. L. & Martinson, F. M.
(Eds.) Children and Sex: New Findings,
New Perspectives. Boston: Little, Brown, p9-19. Reprinted in McDermott, L. J. (Ed., 1996) Culture and Sexuality. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Chapter 1. An
earlier version was published as Currier, R. L. (1979) The forbidden game:
juvenile sexuality in cross-cultural perspective, Forum 8,5:62-5 [20]
Becker, G. (1984) The Social Regulation of Sexuality: A Cross-Cultural
Perspective, Curr Perpect Soc Theory
5:45-69 [21]
Reynolds, P. (2000) Citizenship, sexuality
and youth: some conceptual considerations, in Crawford, K. & Straker, K.
(Eds.) Citizenship, Young People and
Participation: Conference Proceedings. Leicestershire: JPC publishing,
p16-29. See also Evans (1993), as cited in §1.2.10.1. See further Treacher, A. (Febr.,
2000) Children, Agency and Responsbility:
Whose Responsbility? Paper presented at the 'Responsibility' seminar
in the Affect Ethics Citizenship series, University of East London [22] Foucault, M.
(1976) Histoire de la Sexualité. Vol. 1. 1980 English ed., New York: Vintage Books. Cf. Karmanoila, A., Knecht, C. & Parrat-Dayan, S.
(1992/3) Le discours sur la sexualité infantile. Évolution du XIXe siècle à nos
jours, Bull Psychol 46(409):121-9 [23] For an application, see Jose. J. (1998) Sex Education,
The Family and the State in Early Twentieth Century South Australia, Hist Educ Rev 27,1:33-52 [24] DeMause has classified Foucault's "pedagogical" child
rearing mode as "socialising" replacing its "intrusive" antecedent. DeMause's
negativist bias, which renders it of appeal to a limited academic circle, his
historical account of sexuality to one being either oppressed, abused, denied
or "aided". This is in conflict with ethnographic and historical accounts, and
based on generalisations and essentialisations not supported by basic
scientific codes. [25] Wurtele, S. (1993) Enhancing children's sexual
development through child sexual abuse prevention programs, J Sex Educ & Ther 19,1:37-46;
Krivacska, J. J. (1990) Designing Child
Sexual Abuse Prevention Programs: Current Approaches and a Proposal for the
Prevention, Reduction and Identification of Sexual Misuse. Springfield,
Illinois: Charles C Thomas [26] Besharov, D. (1990) Designing Child Sexual Abuse Programs, p213-7 [27] Finan (1997) Promoting healthy sexuality: guidelines
for infancy through preschool, Nurse
Pract 22,10:79-80,83-6,88,passim; Rew (1989) Promoting healthy sexuality,
in Foster et al. (Eds.) Family-Centered Nursing Care of Childhood, p687-99;
Smith (1993) Pediatric sexuality: promoting healthy sexual development in
children, Nurse Practitioner
18,8:37-8; 41-4 [28] Whitlock, K. & Gillman, R. (1989) Sexuality: a
neglected component of child sexual abuse education and training, Child Welfare 68:317-29 [29] http://www.wvdhhr.org/mcfh/icah/Abstinence/ [30]
Plummer, D. C. (2001) The quest for modern manhood: masculine stereotypes, peer
culture and the social significance of homophobia, J Adolesc 24,1:15-23 [31] On the basis of careful hormonal
assays, Udry et al. claim an independent role for biology in the chronology of
behavioural milestones. It could, however, be argued that this biosocial
pathway is a rather general effect instead of a peculiarly psychosexual
condition. Cf. Paradoxia Sexualis. [32]
Money, J. (1980) Love and Love Sickness.
Baltimore [etc.]: Johns Hopkins University Press [33]
Transgenerational proceptivity is said to be counteracted by "age-avoidancy", a
"socially dictated constraint on personal disclosure to people of a different
age group than oneself affecting erotic/sexual behavior and communication".
Parents would be protected from incestuous arousal and proceptivity by the Coolidge effect,
and indirectly by the Westermarck effect in their offspring (Eibl-Eibesfeldt,
1990:p163; Wolf, 1970, 1995). Parental attraction to their own offspring is
sometimes referred to as the Inverse
Oedipus Complex, or counter-Oedipus (Fine, 1993). Named
after King Lear's pathological attachment to his daughters, especially to
Cordelia, a reverse "erotic fixation" is called the Lear Complex or "adult libido" or reversed Oedipus complex
(Pauncz, 1933, 1951, 1952; Patricolo, 1994). The Lear-complex is an incestuous
fixation of fathers upon their daughters. While the Oedipus complex depends
exclusively upon the unconscious, the Lear-complex involves rather the
conscious (Pauncz). The concept was never elaborated upon, either clinically or
theoretically. A comparable syndrome is named after Oedipus' father, Laius (see Atlas, Greek Love). By the Laius Complex, named after Oedipus's
father, Ross (1982,1985/6; Ross and Herzog, 1985) means the "pederastic and filicidal inclinations that
I [Ross] believe to be universal among fathers". This complex, too, is not
generally recognised among psychoanalysts. [34]
Murdock, G. P. (1949) Social Structure.
New York: Macmillan, p318-9. spoke of the "positive gradient of appropriate
age". A positive or attractive gradient [also including propinguity and
kinship] was defined as to "exert steady pressure against the […] negative or repelling gradients"
[including ethnocentrism, exogamy, adultery, and homosexuality]. Murdock deals
with age-disparate eroticism only in the (Freudian) context of "incest"
(p291-5), while his concept of "appropriate age" seems applicable only to
marital selection. [35]
Bryant, C. D. (1977) Sexual Deviancy and
Social Proscription. New York: Human Sciences Press. Thus, "inappropriate
age is an important consideration in the social control of sexual behavior and
merits detailed examination". [36]
Sears, R. R., Maccoby, E. E. & Levin,
H. (1957) Patterns of Child Rearing. Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson [37]
Francoeur, R. T. & Francoeur, A. K. (1976) The Pleasure Bond: Reversing the
Antisex Ethic, Futurist 10, 4:176-80;
Money, J. (1991) Epidemic Antisexualism: From Onanism to Satanism. Paper presented
at the 10th World Congress of Sexology, Amsterdam, June. Cf. Money, J.
(1992) Epidemic antisexualism: from onanism to satanism, in Bezemer, W. et al.
(Eds.) Sex Matters. Amsterdam [etc.]
: Excerpta Medica, p201-9 [38]
Krivacska, J. J. (1991) Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Programs: The
Prevention of Childhood Sexuality? Paper presented at the 7th Midcontinent
Annual Conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, June 9. Cf. Krivacska,
J. J. (1992) Child sexual abuse in programs: the prevention of childhood
sexuality? J Child Sexual Abuse
1,4:83-112; and Krivacska, J. J. (1993) Antisexualism in child sexual abuse
prevention programs, Issues Child Abuse
Accus 5,2; Underwager, R. &
Wakefield, H. (1993) Antisexuality and Child Sexual Abuse, Iss Child abuse Accus 5,2:[72-7] [39]
E.g. Carpenter, L. M. (2001) The Ambiguity of "Having Sex": The Subjective
Experience of Virginity Loss in the United States, J Sex Res 38,2:127-39. "Male and female teenagers receive different
and often conflicting messages about sexuality from diverse sources; their
parents' lack of frankness about sexual intercourse contrasts sharply with the
media's emphasis on sex and with highly rationalistic discussions about
sexuality in schools, complicating adolescents' decisions about entering and
continuing sexual relationships". Brooks-Gunn, J. & Furstenberg, F. F., Jr.
(1990) Coming of age in the era of AIDS: puberty, sexuality, and contraception,
Milbank Quart 68, Suppl. 1:59-84. " "Ambivalence" is a good word to describe the
feelings that women reported. While at least half of the women who talked about
this issue were pleased that their bodies were developing, that they were
transitioning from child to adult status, these positive feelings tended to be
accompanied by strong negative feelings of self-consciousness and
embarrassment. This ambivalence seemed to center on the fact that menarche
represented emerging sexuality". Lee, J. & Sasser-Coen, J. R. (1996)
Memories of Menarche: Older Women Remember Their First Period, J Aging Stud 10,2:83-101. Condom use is
affected by "deep ambivalence regarding sexuality in general, women's sexuality
in particular, and adolescent girls' sexuality in specific"; Rostosky, Sh. S.,
Galliher, R. V. & Welsh, D. P. (1998) Gender-Roles,
Power, and Condom Use in Adolescent Dating Relationships. Paper presented
at the 106th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, San
Francisco, CA, August 14-18. "In modern industrial societies the dominant
frameworks of meaning have fractured and hence the menarche is experienced in
complex and ambiguous terms. The transition is ambiguous as it relies on
cultural representations of being a child and an adult at the same time".
Britton, C. J. (1996) Learning about
"the curse": An Anthropological Perspective on Experiences of Menstruation, Women's Stud Int Forum 19,6,12:645-53. Cf.
Moore, S. M. (1995) Girls' understanding and social constructions of menarche, J Adolesc 18,1:87-104 [40]
Africa: Chaga, Kikuyu, Hausa, Dakarkaki, Nyakyusa, Xhosa, Tebu, Swazi, N'Jemp,
Amazulu, Kipsigis, Venda, Pedi (debated), Bemba; U.S. (humping) [41]
See for instance a sketch by Martinson, F. M. (1974) The Quality of Adolescent Sexual Experiences. St. Peter, MN: The
Book Mark, p10-22. Also Fine, G. A.(1987) With
the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, esp. chapter "Sexual and aggressive themes of
preadolescent boys". [42]
E.g., Mitchell, W. E. (1966) The baby
disturbers: Sexual behaviour in a childhood counterculture, Psychiatry 29,4:367-77. Reprinted in Bryant, C. D. (Ed.) Sexual Deviance in Social Context. London: New Viewpoints, p65-81 [43]
Cf. for instance, Plummer, K. (1984) The
social uses of sexuality: Symbolic interaction, power and rape, in Hopkins, J.
(Ed.) Perspectives on Rape and Sexual
Assault. London: Harper & Row [44]
E.g., Mac an Ghaill, M. (1996) Deconstructing heterosexualities within school
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Dietrich, L. C. (1998) Chicana
Adolescents: Bitches, 'Ho's, and Schoolgirls. Westport, CT: Praeger, esp.
chapter "Sex and Love"; Hillman, Ph. L. (2000) Negotiating the Dominant Sexual
Script: Middle-Class Black Girls Tell Their Story, DAI-A 60, 7, Jan,2698-A [46] Raffaelli, M, Campos, R, Merritt, A. P. et al. (1993)
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an interview based study of Baganda adolescent sexual socialisation. In rural
Masaka, parental coitus is observed by children due to the narrow living
confinements. Weddings, commonly
identified as sexarchic events, provide another opportunity; apart from
hide-and-seek and "mother and father", weddings games are played where the
children "smooch or fondle each other". [51]
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The author points out that "[t]he Dogon express the idea of sexual maturity in
two ways: [...] "he who knows speech" and [...] "he who knows shame". Mastery
of speech and decent behaviour are prerequisites to marriage according to Dogon
rules. This is why the child's acquisition of language, particularly that of
the little girl, is supervised so carefully". This also relates to verbal
sexual instructions. A puberty, the girl receives her "hidden speech" or
"speech of the bedroom". Later, when she goes to the "house of the old woman",
the girl receives another education called "outside speech". |