The Sexual Curriculum (Oct., 2002) [to Volume
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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 4 [previous
chapter] [next
chapter] Language, Culture and Developmental Sexology[1]. A Constructionist Identification "Can that be written in letters too?
Kill him, sir, please!"[2] Summary:
This chapter explores constructionist
perspectives on the developmental representation of sexuality in verbal
exchanges. A specifically human trait, language, more than behaviour, is
identified as a structuring agent capable of organising and shaping curricular
hierarchies within gendered subcultures. This was demonstrated for two male
curricular verbal cultures incorporating sexologist narratives: the
Afro-American ritual of "sounding", "homophobic" slander, and the curricular
"sexist" discourse. Ethnographic material expands on this model in suggesting
that restrictions and proscriptions on rapport and exchange shape the totality
of sexual/erotic timescapes, curriularising and compartimentalising both
"exterior", social spaces (gender, age and kinship dimensions) and
"inner"-spaces (bodies). Language, in short, (1) curricularises sexual / body
trajectories, (2) segmentalises sexological societies on the basis of several
social gradients, and (3) organises discursive and situated sexualities.
Poststructural perspectives on sexual/erotic identity are to identify
individuals localising themselves within the order of communicated hypothetical
sex rather than solely within the biographical realm of lived-experiences. It
was emphasised that narratives, albeit locating
sexuality, are further used to shape
sexuality on discursive and situational levels. This was tentatively
potentialised by addressing how sexualities are autobiographically reconstructed,
or fitted within a pedagogical discourse. Contents [up]
Language, Culture and Developmental Sexology. A Constructionist Identification 4.1 Sex,
Language and Developmental Scenarios: Theoretical Frameworks 4.2
Delineating Sex Language: Ethnographic Observations 4.2.1
The Grid of Non-Communication: Social Geographies 4.2.2
The Grid of Non-Communication: Body Geographies 4.3 Erotic Lexicon and
Curricularisation: Cross-Cultural Patterns 4.4 Language
and Segmentalisation of Sex 4.5 Sexual Communications, Power
Dynamics and Shaping of Curricular Masculinities 4.5.2
"Homophobic" Masculinities 4.5.3
The Heterophobic / Heteromysic / Hetero-Erotophobic / Sexist Performance 4.5.5
Sexuality, Subversion and Environment 4.6 Locating Narratives: Mapping
Sites, Media and Technospheres 4.7 Narratives that "Space": Empty,
Ambivalent and Bogus Salient Spaces 4.8 But I Didn't Even Know What it Was About: Reconstructed and
Pedagogic Erotic Biographies 4.0
Introduction [up] [Contents]
Using
a constructionist approach, it is hypothesised that language shapes, and in
fact creates potentiality and probability for all social aspects of "sexuality"
be it gender or genitality. In societies compartimentaling and segmentalising
genital behaviour by means of visual barriers (cf. §10.2.2), language
becomes an important additional vehicle for the establishment of compartimental
and segmental heterosexuality and coitality. In societies with a high degree of
consumerism and distribution of visual as well as verbal representations of
sexual behaviour, control of these modalities governs patterns of "sexual
learning" via the visual confirmation of overheard possibilities and
probabilities, and the verbal consolidation of visual experiences. This
information economy typifies sexological trajectories according to the ethnoscape, mediascape, and technoscape[3]
in which they take place. In the current chapter, a theoretical outline
positioning language within the concept of sexological curricula is followed by
a cursory exploration of ethnographic data. 4.1
Sex, Language and Developmental Scenarios: Theoretical Frameworks [up] [Contents]
It has
not systematically been explored how language operates to represent or interact
with sexuality conceptualisations. However, many theorists have argued for its
centrality. Arango (1989)[4]
traces the psychic origins of dirty words to early infancy and childhood,
suggesting they "awaken passion", and, if not used, one will "not fully
experience our [human] sexual nature". Scripting theory implies sexual identity
to be the interim result of an ongoing scenario building process (e.g.,
Stoller, 1976)[5] including a
pathway of writing, reading, and rewriting subjectivity. According Stoller, the
individual localises the self as a character in a nascent Utopian novel, to be
celebrated by genuine experiences. Plummer[6],
examining the making of "sexual stories" from a symbolic interactionist
perspective, has to assume that children are gradually introduced to a culture
characterised by a "recent exponential multiplication of [sexual] narratives",
including family, emotional, representational, bodily, gender, erotic, and
identity genres. Classic
constructionists have argued that language, restricting the possible or
probable extent of the information sphere and the associated shaping of
cognitive representations of sexuality, provides occasion for
cross-rationalisation ("borrowed sanctions"), non-labelling (vs.
cross-interpretation), and non-suggestion ("information control"), and,
indirectly, opportunity minimalisation ("preventing stimulation") (Sears et
al., 1957:p185-92; Gagnon, 1965; Gagnon, 1989:p508)[7].
Contemporary
constructionist approaches (e.g., Senchea, 1998)[8]
argue that language exchanges constitute the tools for conversation
participants to actualise and distribute sexological discourses[9].
That is, the sexual, the talking, the doing, all converge in a multi-layered
hierarchy that is knowledge (power). This has been examined most closely for
"classroom ethnographies" visualising alleged "homophobic", "heterosexist",
"sexist" and koromisic abuses of
language as instrumentalising curricular power configurations. Talk about being
feminine often regulates subculture, class identity, and power
(Christian-Smith, 1993)[10];
talk about girls does the same thing[11]. These modern interpretations of language challenge
mainstream ideas about sexological narrative merely representing bidirectional
flows of information, "informing", "teaching" and "educating" the recipient.
The speaking child, in turn, does not merely signify or demonstrate his
sexuality / sexology by doing so, (s)he is in the continuous process of
establishing, managing and redirecting a sexological order. As such, the
speaking child is a crucial actor in diagnostic pursuits (e.g., Cheung)[12].
Sexuality being "communicated" within gender specific rhetoric and textual
styles and forms (e.g., Blair)[13],
these styles factually provide negotiable boundaries of sexual/erotic spaces,
phases and identities not, as is claimed, "originally" there.
Gender-compartimentalised talk interaction "constitutes a temporary community
within which norms are cooperatively defined through a painstaking process of
negotiation and consensus"[14].
Thus, children's sex talk should be studied within the concept of folkloric performance,
using an "ethnography of speaking"[15].
Bauman, offering a sketchy account of the American childhood case[16],
argues that "folkloric speech acts show the child's acquisition of ability to
manipulate his communicative environment". In this respect, the child's
introduction to "bad" language can be conceptualised as "a profoundly important
linguistic and psychic experience"[17]. The above perspective has proven its utility for
activist (feminist, gay theorist) entries to language as the hallmark of
power-mediated juxtaposition of social strata. This use has pervasively
politicised discussions of interactions within age-stratified gender
communities. 4.2
Delineating Sex Language: Ethnographic Observations [up] [Contents]
4.2.1 The Grid of
Non-Communication: Social
Geographies
[up] [Contents]
Taboo
terms act as barriers or dividers, separating men from women, adults from
children, or class stratum from class stratum[18];
hence the designation "pas devant"[19].
Variations being noted for all categories, in most cultures there are definite
generational[20], gender[21]
and kinship[22] barriers
for sexological communications. Rulings along these three lines limit and
direct the possibility and probability of acquisitions of sexuality narratives,
and describe the geography of the sexual sphere as a communicative
'socioscape'. Thus, sexual language signals and contributes to stratification
dynamics pertaining to age, gender[23],
and kinship. As
becomes apparent from the Dogon case[24],
societies may try to control sexual maturity applications be means of
redefining its essence via the technique by which it is cultivated (regulated):
language. The Dogon sexual curriculum is a linguistic curriculum, and sexual
maturity equals linguistic maturity[25];
language identifies, structures and curricularises sexuality. African societies
have been noted to include "obscene" chants as a part of ritualised pubescence[26].
Girls, particularly, are instructed with songs of an explicit character[27],
the transmission of data being regarded as a most central part of the rite,
both the identity of the teacher and the curriculum formalised. The use of
songs establishes the social uniformity and historical continuity involved, as
well as providing a vehicle for integrating sexual mores in the (often sudden)
moral/legal transformation of puberty. Beside this formalised recognition of
language, African childhood sexual learning traditionally depended in crucial
ways on the dripping down of data through adult folklore (Lallemand, 1985)[28].
This may particularly be the case where music has a less central place in the
organisation of communal identity and coherence[29]. The
use of "dirty" profanities is predominantly interpreted within a developmental
perspective[30]. Murray[31]
argues that "dirty", nicknames[32] used in Greek and U.S. sororities, "beyond
revealing the usual adolescent preoccupation with sex, serve at least one
important psycho-social function in the Greek socialization process, to bind
together members of a particular secondary group". Stenstrom[33]
argued that (sexual) swearing "serves a social purpose among teenagers",
possibly as a way to "establish group identity". 4.2.2 The Grid of Non-Communication: Body Geographies [up] [Contents]
Of
the limited amount of studies addressing early development of the
erotological/sexological lexicon[34],
most reports deal with North-American and European (Dutch) samples. Language
curricularises awareness of (and thus operationalises) the body as a morally
compartimentalised geography and instrument, as explored elsewhere[35].
Specifically, although hardly researched, children may lack any vocabulary to
discuss sensations, such as orgasm, whether experienced personally or not.
Fisher (1989:p1-38)[36]
discusses at length the specific "genital lag" of the "body image", resulting
from the genital problem in anatomical education. The
limitation of sexual representation through the restriction on linguistic
representation is organised through "word taboos"
and "taboo words"[37].
As such, the genital may be wholly dissociated from the public sphere[38].
Sexual lexicon development in children has been demonstrated to be gender
biased (Gartrell and Mosbacher, 1984)[39]
on retrospective survey. As a probable exponent, females, more than males, have
more stringent limitations on their sexual vocabulary repertoire[40].
Names were found to be derivative, euphemistic and pejorative. The authors
remark that the fact that a child has a unique name for her genitalia renders
sexual communication and exploration with peers difficult, since other children
do not share her vocabulary. Indeed, this sensitises the relevance of
invitations for sexual interactions[41].
Gartrell and Mosbacher concluded that "[t]he long-term ramifications of denying
a child's sexuality on her/his self-image, as well as on her/his subsequent
sexual and emotional development have yet to be determined". Indeed, the
associations between developmental sexual terminology and sexual experience are
not clear (e.g., Waning, 1983)[42].
Jaffe, however, found differences in outcome measures of adult female
sexuality, particularly regarding genital self-concept, sexual anxiety, sexual
openness, and current and preferred frequency of sexual relations. 4.3
Erotic Lexicon and Curricularisation:
Cross-Cultural Patterns [up] [Contents]
Like
any aspect of childhood sexual "sub"cultures, linguistic and rhetoric
competence in sexual matters is in variable degrees subject to
curricularisation and age / phase stratified censorship (Stephens, 1971:p407;
1972:p11-2, column 4[43];
Broude and Greene, 1976)[44].
The establishment of a childhood verbal subculture may not require this degree
of openness. Stephens (1971) found the sexual vocabularies of children being
discussed by ethnographers for six cultures, of which none were described as
practicing sex talk before children. Verbal
competence is a lateral curriculum in most cases[45],
that is, horizontal, or laterally vertical. The acquisition may be stimulated
for stylised purposes[46].
Attitudes toward childhood sexual expression and the provision of 'correct'
terminology are correlated (Wurtele, 1993; Jaffe, 1985), and seem to be part of
a system of information control (see Fraley et al., 1991). This has not been
examined for the cross-cultural record. 4.4
Language and Segmentalisation of Sex [up] [Contents]
Attempts to study
obscene subcultures retrospectively most probably turn out to be "wholly
abortive because adults unconsciously censor such verses and reproduce them in
mutilated form" (Borneman), which compromises the chronology of events. Goldman
(1990)[47]
recognises four types of "sexual languages" in children and early adolescents:
clinical, common usage, family traditional, and erotic. Whether explicit songs are used or consumed by children
with an erotogenetic intent is not clear, though it seems reasonable to
speculate on its universality at least northern of the equator[48].
Folkloristic examples of age-identified or age-stratified scatology/obscenity
were collected and analysed for European (German, Austrian, Swiss, French,
Bulgarian, and Nordic) and Russian samples, reports spreading over the period
of 1906 to the later 1990s. Adult reactions to the phenomenon are varied[49]
and an established element of Western pedagogicized (Foucault) sexualities. Talking sex may embody the predominant mode of erotic
transference in early life. Verbal intercourse takes different forms between,
as well as within, cultures. The use of profanities, for instance, seems to be
a cultural trait (no cross-cultural studies are done in the development of
swearing behaviour). In industrial societies, if anything, it serves as an
important though optional means of sexological study, organised in a verbal
subculture carefully (although perhaps not perfectly) censored from parental
and researchers' ears. Expressions as well as insights are used to demonstrate
rebellion, to organise a vertical order, to reinforce affinity or even
intimacy, to establish a shared "psychobiological" circle, and to exchange
useful tips on a variety of "adult" topics. Indeed, it may, by principle,
include anything that adults choose to define "adult". Postman[50]
suggested that the sexological status of "childhood" was related to the
invention of print media, and reconceptualised by electronic ones. Language
barriers provide the main structuring factor of discourses as segmentalising
the sexological society. The existence of "erotic grouping" in childhood is a
regular feature of Euro-American sexual histories, and was described as early
as 1922 (Hermann)[51].
What goes on may be primarily verbal exchange, where scatology and information
as indistinguishable. This may be true for children's play groups in every
continent. Even "good" boys engage in "dirty" play (Fine, 1986)[52],
and sex talk is a semipublic expression of this (p84-5). "Obscenity", thus,
represents a semi-public format of agonism / antagonism that might address what
cannot be addressed as effectively in another format: aggression, approach,
request, response. Outside a psychoanalytic framework (Borneman), these
possible functions have not been verified, and it is not clear how cultural
factors shape the curricular practice of sexology. This, however, is an
interesting subject regarding the cross-culturally universal importance of peer
education. 4.5 Sexual
Communications, Power Dynamics and Shaping of Curricular Masculinities [up] [Contents]
Langford
(1997)[53]
observes how "adults" incorporate "childish" personae within the private
microculture of dyadic intimacy. Conversely, one may explore how childhood
language represents, or is instrumentalised, to incorporate "grown up" styles
of doing sex. 4.5.1 The Dirty Dozens [up] [Contents]
"Playing the dozens" or
"sounding" (Berdie, 1947; Golightly and Scheffler, 1948; Bruhn and Murray,
1985)[54]
has been identified as typical for African (Igbos of Nigeria, Ghana)
and Afro-American adolescence. A report by Ortony et al. (1985)[55]
concluded that the use of figurative language in sounding did enhance Harlem's
elementary school children's ability to understand the more literary uses of
metaphor and simile encountered in the classroom. In adolescents, it is
suggested that it served as "an outlet for repressed impulses of sex and
aggression in groups lacking recreational outlets" (Golightly and Scheffler,
1948)[56].
According to 1966 data by Stromberg, as adapted by Schulz (1969:p66)[57],
the average age of beginning to play the dozens was 10.8. Chimezie[58]
concludes that "dirty" Dozens involve boys "around the puberty stage" (p416),
and Lefever[59] as well as
Dyck[60]
situates the usual Dozens in adolescence. Lefever details seven functions for
the Dozens, among these educating the participant. States Schulz, "The
Dozens […] functions to inform both sexes of some of the aspects of sexuality
at an early age. These verbal contests acquaint children with many details of
sexuality, often before they are otherwise aware of them. They are a kind of
primer imparting information about the sex act, sexual deviance, sexual
anatomy, and mores which serve as basic guidelines for children who are exposed
to sexuality early and completely without being reared in a home where the
matters of sex are commonly talked about". Competitions
in verbal abuse ("cussing", "blowing") occur in boy subcultures, covering
sexist, sexual, and racist discourses (Kehily and Nayak, 1997:p72-4)[61].
The Dozens demonstrate how sexuality is operationalised to shape and inform
inner-group control and status mechanisms. Language
becoming "the stage for the performance of masculinity" and producing
heterosexual hierarchies, it instrumentalises and rehearses categories
of sexual agency and identity within the curricular subdomains of the
semipublic discourse of sexuality. Specifically, verbal humour was identified as "a regulatory technique, structuring the
performance of masculine [specifically, heterosexual] identities". 4.5.2 "Homophobic" Masculinities[62] [up] [Contents]
From elementary school
on, children's alleged romantic inclinations are the focus of gossip and
teasing, marking social hierargies. The loading is heterosexual, and
predominantly male homophobic (Thorne and Luria, 1986)[63]. In one study[64],
377 14 and 15-year-olds listed the pejoratives they heard at school and
identified the ones they considered most taboo. As some of the most vitriolic
items reported, homophobic pejoratives accounted for 10 per cent of the 6000
items generated. Homophobic terms have a rich developmental history and
play a central role in U.S. adolescent male peer-group dynamics. Starting from
fourth, or third[65], grade a
very powerful use of homophobic terms occurs prior to puberty, which would,
Plummer argues, rarely carry "sexual connotations" [sic][66]: "[f]ar from being explained as indiscriminate use
of homophobic words, the early use of these words is powerful, highly
meaningful and precisely targeted—even when not targeting sexuality".
Sexism, homophobia, and harassment were said to make American schools "a highly
sexualised site" (Epstein, 1997)[67].
Antihomoerotic narrative enters the pervasive "heterosexual" discourse of grade
school together with discourses of imagined futures, traditional rhymes,
sexist/sexual harassment, assays into the world of "going out", and gossip
networks (e.g, Epstein, 1996)[68].
Thus, the (performance of) homophobia both
polices and constructs heterosexual masculinities in schools[69]. The
above observations conceptualise "homophobic" narrative as a structuring device
in the larger design of performed sexualities. Redman[70]
understands boys' antilesbian/-gay talk and behaviour in terms of the "local
and dialogic performance of heterosexual masculinities", but continues with
arguing for "forms of analysis capable of addressing the unconscious and the
social as intersecting and mutually constitutive dynamics". As with the Dozens,
males are typified as construing masculinities on the basis of a contrasting
process using flattened, negativised social counterimages: females and
homosexuals. This explains the dominance of feminist and gay activist
theorising concerning the matter. 4.5.3 The Heterophobic / Heteromysic /
Hetero-Erotophobic / Sexist Performance[71] [up] [Contents]
Anecdotal material
suggests children may go through a phase were they display an opposition to the
mere concept of engaging in "erotic" or heterosexual genital / orificial
activities. Specifically, there seems to be a recurrent theme of dislike for
opposite sex's genitals. The origin of this curricular antagonism, or
curricular hetero-erotophobia is not known[72].
The American girl, at some date, turns "boy crazy"[73]
after a puellomisic period.
"Developmental" crossgender-antagonistic attitudes are predominantly discussed
in the negative terms of "sexism", sexual "prejudice",
sexual "stereotyping", and more positively in terms of sexual preference for
playmates and authority figures[74].
1970 and early 1980 American awareness of "sexism" has raised issues in matters
of education, children's literature, and child rearing (TV, theatre, etc.).
According to some authors, the solution to the basic mistrust between the
sexes, probably more typical of some periods in history and of some cultural
settings, would be to avoid negative conditioning in childhood[75].
One study[76] suggested
that boy-girl antipathy of the intermediate school grades is more a product of
girls changing attitudes toward boys than vice versa. Children's sexist
cultures mimic "historical cultural adaptations, producing minireplicas of both
sexist and egalitarian social systems"(Goodenough, 1990:p228)[77].
Campbell (1939)[78]
found that "[t]here is at first an undifferentiated social relationship with
the opposite sex until about the age of eight years, then a rising preference
for children of the same sex, until puberty, when hetero-sexual feelings begin
gradually to develop". Martinson (1973:p88-9, 121-3; cf. 1981:p90-1) clearly
describes how the curricular relationship between the sexes is subject to
historical developments. Specifically, "[c]ross-sex
antagonism during preadolescence has been explained as partly due to the
efforts of individuals to identify themselves more closely with their own sex
and as a result of parents and others instilling into children the difference
between boys' and girls' roles. These differences are diminishing. In the last
generation the sex roles have become more flexible and now overlap in many
areas. The contents of the two sets of expectations are becoming more similar
as women have achieved many prerogatives previously regarded as exclusively
masculine and men have begun to share many traditionally feminine
responsibilities. As these roles converge and the experiences and values of the
two sexes become more similar, cross-sex hostility becomes less appropriate.
Rejection of the values of the opposite sex loses much of its purpose when
values are similar. Similarly, as the social status of the two sexes approaches
equality, many boys appear to feel less need to defend a shaky claim to
superiority". Sexual
antagonism is related to another problem of "informal"
versus formal curricular separation by gender, as explored in preliminary
reviewing[79]. Sexism
(Francis, 1997)[80] is a
curricular species of gender performance (Epstein, Tobin, Francis, Kehily and
Nayak). Authors have demonstrated the
continual use of sexual innuendo in teasing as an aspect of girl-boy
interaction (Best, 1983:p129; Goodenough, 1987:p433; Clark, 1990:p38-46)[81]. The situation is performed
in a cross-culturally stereotypical fashion: "petty altercations" (Kibbutz), insults
that provoke real quarrels" (Korea), "pulling girls' breasts and then running
away" (Brittish Guiana). As Martinson
illustrates, " "[r]omances" at [preadolescence] often involve rough play,
teasing, hitting, hurting, and at least feigned pain, disgust, and anger"
(1973). In later childhood, "[…] teasing becomes part of a preromantic type of
interaction that reaches a peak among twelve- and thirteen-year-olds,
particularly among girls. Purported romantic liaisons are matters of public
notice and widespread rumor and teasing. Sexual and romantic teasing marks
preadolescent social hierarchies" (1994). Even below the threshold of romantic
affliction, boys' and boy-girl socialising operates on a rough-housing physical
level including throwing, wrestling, pushing, fooling and stage-acted fighting
routines. The main theme advocated here is that issues operate in spite of antagonistic initiatives of
adults: "[…]
although the school appeared to be fairly successful in getting rid of the conception
of gender-appropriate jobs and games, it made very little headway in modifying
the salience of gender in the children's interactions. Although teachers made
valiant efforts to prevent gender dichotomisation, the children determinedly
sorted themselves by sex (Jordan, p72)". The quasi-aggressive format of initial courtship leaves
room for speculation on the ethological or sociological origins, as it mimics
closely the play fighting of boyhood[82]
and at times is minimally separated from the antagonism-based expression of
hostility.
Aldis[83]
observes that "immature sexual behaviour" and agonistic play or play fighting
are sometimes confused by the inexperienced observer, and that they may
alterate, usually in a disruptive fashion. In most human societies, play sexuality is a
"polymorphous" arena where coitus is either absent or eccentric due to
information and (subsequent) attitudinal barriers. This dismisses extensions to
the human case (Aldis,
1975:p147-55, 246-7; Lancy, 1980:p485)[84]
that "play sexuality" is phenomenologically and functionally peripheral because
of the absence for a need to practice such simple behaviour as intromission.
The notion of "sex play" should be extended along the lines of "gender play"
(Thorne), a discourse in which "sexuality" is (progressively) "gendered", and
in which sex does not occur outside gendered playgrounds and curricula.
Sexuality, for instance, follows thoroughly gendered institutions: from quasi-institutionality (pretend
marriage), to pseudo-institutionality
(dating, going steady), and semi-institutionality
(rooming in) and other pre-institutional
configurations (engagement) (cf. chapter 15). 4.5.4 The
Humour Performance [up] [Contents]
The conceptualisation
of "childhood sexuality" as a joking coping mechanism reactive to a barred and
scary future economy can be demonstrated by observing the phenomena of the "sexual"
joke in children (Zumwalt, 1976; Borneman, 1985; Sutton-Smith and Abrams, 1976;
1978; Wolfenstein, 1954)[85],
including sexually violent jokes[86].
Judging from a brief look at the research[87],
humour development is a science not taken seriously. Humour, however, is a
multi-facetted, multidimensional social strategy in which phases can be
recognised, and distinct age dynamics are operative (Bariaud, 1988)[88];
as such, it serves distinct adaptive functions[89].
A sense of humour contributes to Humour Identity, identified by Humour Phases. One might hypothesise that the ambiguous nature of
humour allows children "to explore sensitive issues like sexuality without
having to reveal explicitly the extent of their actual knowledge in this area"
(Sanford and Eder, 1984:p235)[90].
According to some studies, it provides a forum for sexual curiosity[91].
As sexuality, it can be conceptualised as the ability to understand and
reproduce socially significant patterns of communication, and as providing an
arena for antagonism and abreaction. The association of humour and sexuality in
a developmental (phaseological) perspective is a virgin field of research[92]. Kehily
and Nayak (1997)[93] argue that "[…]
humour is a technique utilised for the regulation of masculinities and the
negotiation of gender-sexual hierarchies within pupil cultures. Bodily
practices were prevalent in the interchanges , playing a part in the
contestation and production of differentiated heterosexualities. Humour was an
organising principle, deployed to position pupils within differing dominant and
subordinate peer group sexual cultures". Humour was seen as "a regulatory technique, structuring
the performance of masculine identities", thus victimising those who did not
"circumscribe to the [dominant] hyper-heterosexual practice of masculinity" [94]. In
folklore, sexual "transgressions" involving children can be sold through humour[95]. 4.5.5 Sexuality,
Subversion and Environment [up] [Contents]
Sexual
graffiti has been a subject of study since the early
20th century (Luquet, 1910)[96].
It is known that adolescents in ancient Greece wrote "soliciting" graffiti on
walls of the agora. Whatever its
incidence, even "sexual symbolism" (implicitness) in children's drawings has
not been investigated systematically, although frequently used in child
psychoanalysis. In
a wonderful Dutch video program (Van Heelsbergen, 1985)[97]
boys were demonstrated to provide excellent alternative interpretations of
sexual (or is it?) drawings on a neighbourhood basement wall when questioned
alone, while the pornographic implications were readily enumerated in the
company of friends [penis becomes aeroplane, sword]. Wilhelm
Koch (1979, 1980, 1984, 1986)[98]
since 1972 collected more than hundred "erotic drawings" on neighbourhood
walls, children's playgrounds, etc. Koch argued that such "spontaneous" art
forms and graffiti done by children and adolescents would provide for schools
the opportunity to thematise sexual feelings, and offer an insight to
children's day dreaming. Not referring to Koch, Lucca and Pacheco (1986)[99] collected 672 instances of
graffiti from bathroom walls in 10 elementary schools in Puerto Rico. The
graffiti reflected a wide variety of content related to the children's
immediate life experiences such as concerns with their self-identity, interpersonal
relations, cultural understandings, sexuality, and religious and political
beliefs. Girls produced more graffiti than boys, but boys produced twice as
many graffiti with "sexual" content. 4.6
Locating Narratives: Mapping Sites, Media and Technospheres [up] [Contents]
Eysenck
and Nias (1978)[100]
summed up 24 published experiments since 1956 measuring immediate and
short-term correlates on childhood graphic exposure to violence; to my
knowledge, no equivalent study exists on exposure to visual erotica. Apparently,
American-European clinical pedagogy is more open for what she recognises as "aggression"
than for what she defines as "eroticism". Beside
mere content analysis studies, authors have argued that "doing", and not merely
acquiring, gender/sexuality follows self-construed "styles" as inspired by
peer-shared (colloquial) consumption of media-generated images and narratives:
television[101], music[102],
magazines (vide infra), cartoons, movies[103],
internet[104], etc.[105].
Dynamics of these media are located in the extent of their being available,
authorised, interactive, and indeed peer-shared. Judging from the available
literature, U.S. culture greatly appreciates to locate what sexualities are
found where. In the interesting study by Kelley et al. (1999) it was observed how "children's
talk about sex on television serves as a means of defining identities in terms
of age and gender. […] 'talking dirty' [discussing explicit television] is one
of the strategies that children employ in reproducing and policing gender
identities, and in enforcing a form of compulsory heterosexuality". The
author's recommend that "we need to develop a more nuanced
understanding of the range of identities that television makes available
to children. As well considering what children do with television, we also need
to consider what television does for children". Data
suggest children's erotic and gendered playgrounds are progressively widening,
or rather, organised within a world in which opportunity and fantasy become
separate units of realism, separate spaces, perhaps requiring dual identities.
By altering space, subjectivity as well as communication, "sexual" interactions
take on divergent forms and meanings. An
example delineates the extent of written and "read sexuality" as a formative
discourse: 4.6.1
Magazined Sexualities [up] [Contents]
Magazines provide a tool to monitor society's
tolerance for portraying preadult sexualities[106],
and to monitor material sexual cultures.
"It is in listening to and hearing the voices and experiences of young
women that we can begin to understand how teenage [!] women are shaped as sexual
beings in a culture of patriarchy", Van Roosmalen[107]
argues. These women will tell the researcher that it is magazines that shaped
them. Magazines aimed at an adolescent female market can be seen as a cultural
resource for teaching and learning about sexuality[108].
This medium is a potential educator in for instance the U.S.[109], China[110], Sweden[111], Germany[112], Brazil[113] and most probably the larger part of the literate
world (e.g. Canada, Spain, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Mexico [explicit mags], India,
and (South) Africa). The curricularising aspects are implicitly present in the
(historically variable) ages for which they proclaim to be intended[114],
and the topics covered. Feminists,
particularly, have questioned the way magazines (and other media, such as
movies)[115] shape
femininity, and curricular feminine sexualities. It could be suggested that
"teen magazines limit females' sociality and sexuality within narrowly defined
heterosexual norms and practices"[116].
Clearly, the sources form an alternative to adult interference[117].
Exploring "cross-cultural" differences, coitarche can be made "more appealing
and feasible"[118]. However,
it should be clear, authors argue, that the magazine sexuality discourse is an
active colloquial one[119].
Collateral reading confirms that (dirty) magazine reading is a process of
acquisition, hiding, collecting, discussing, interpreting, etc., and comparable
to children "doing" any school or non-school reading[120]. Apart
from their importance for the performance of enculturation, these works provide
a clue to how sexuality is represented (cf. children's literature)[121],
marketed and translated for curricularised audiences. Children's books, for
instance, currently are being colonised by abuse prevention efforts[122]. 4.7
Narratives that "Space": Empty, Ambivalent and Bogus Salient Spaces [up] [Contents]
By
verbalising discursive material, narratives establish interpersonal "salient
spaces" for sexual behaviour to take place, or to be prevented. In some cases,
however, salient spaces are created without an initial reference to sexual
behaviour. Girls, particularly, are socialised at an abstract level at which
they do not grasp their situation, but nevertheless are rigidly controlled /
situated. An Ovimbundu
mother "[…] will teach her daughter saying, A girl does not play with boys, for
boys are sharp ones[123].
Don't play with them. This advice is because of sex, although the child may not
understand it at the time. But when the boys call her, she will remember the
advice of her mother and may quickly reply, saying, My mother says, Don't play
with boys: they'll hurt you. Thus she has taken to heart what her mother has
told her and may go ahead in the same way". Pauw states that among the urban Xhosa of East London menarchal girls
are told the possibility of pregnancy. "Other mothers only gave a vague warning
not to play or laugh with boys, because they are "dangerous", "mischievous",
"cruel", or "rough". A few girls claimed that they did not realize the
significance of their condition when they became pregnant". In the West Indies, menarchal girls were told,
apart from hygienic instructions, not to "play" or "mess" with boys. Among the Tebu, girls are not instructed in
sexual matters, but are frequently warned against sexual relations.
Contemporary Kikuyu girls are told
the negative consequences of "running around", but "the actual sexual
activities […] are indirectly prohibited are not detailed" (Worthman and
Whiting, 1987:p160). In a study on Spanish-speaking people of San Jose, Clark
(1970:p135) noted: "Parents avoid sexual discussions with preadolescent
children except for giving them general instructions to "stay away from the
boys" or "leave the girls alone". On Jamaica,
Greenfeld (1966) documented that "[r]epeated admonitions about "staying away
from boys", young informants complained, never include a discussion of "what to
stay away from". The
cross-culturally stereotypical technique creates ambivalent spaces: A
Puerto Rican informant for Alvarez
(1988) stated girls are told that "God forbid that some boy should touch you,
because "I'll beat you up". But they wouldn't tell you why; then you don't know
any better". In other cases, mothers employ devious
rationalisations for preventing association with boys. After toddlerhood, Iranese children are explicitly discouraged from playing together
by the warning that they might transform into the opposite sex. An
autobiographical account (Dyk, 1938) reveals that seven or eight-year-old Navaho boys may be told girls will bite
their genitals off, or have vaginae dentatae (p44-5). Kgatla menerchal
girls are told that "if you now play with boys you will get a baby" (Suggs,
108). The
most widely use of bogus salient spaces is effected through medical arguments
(cf. §11.1.2). These have to be
distinguished from cases where such spaces are part of the genuine fabric of
gender space: "Sambia" "boys would be polluted and
their growth blocked by sexual play with girls […] (Herdt, 1993:p199). Globally,
linguistically construed spaces can be characterised by the degree of
definition (empty/full) and the fabric of their content (dualistic,
nosological, …). 4.8 …But I Didn't Even Know What it Was About:
Reconstructed and Pedagogic Erotic Biographies [up] [Contents]
Numeric
accounts of sexual autobiographies (e.g., Kinsey) are not suitable for
constructionist approaches. A limited number of papers and monographs present
the sexual histories of North-Americans at a descriptive level[124],
data not paralleled for the majority of western and non-western cases (e.g.,
Simmons[125] [Hopi],
Sekaquaptewa[126] [Hopi],
Enry [Ruanda[127], Zaire[128]], Bloom[129]
[Zambia], Rotkirch[130] [Russia, Finland], Amin[131] [Egypt], Crapanzano[132] [Morocco], Dyk[133] [Navajo], Barton[134] [Philippines], Villanueva[135]
[Puerto Rico], Shostak[136]
[!Kung], Ellis [Britain][137]). Particularly interesting is the work by Ribal providing
a transatlantic challenge of American and Scandinavian (Swedish and Danish)
narratives. These can be analysed in addition to parental accounts[138]
providing pedagogic constructions of the early "sexual" situation. Most of the
material is fragmentary insofar as it does not generate complete descriptive
autobiographies. These works explore what is
culturally, methodologically or personally demarcated as "the sexual" factor,
or element, as producing "the sexual" space, trajectory and curriculum.
Autobiographical narratives clarify how activities/experiences are
retrospectively temporalised (curricularised), theorised, reassessed, and
situated within this "sexual" sphere / trajectory / curriculum. Such narratives
(Martinson, 1973; Ribal, 1973; etc.) suggest that in autobiographies people
predominantly reconstruct their "sexual" ontogenesis as an active process
(contemplation, acquisition and application), whereas in pedagogical accounts
there is more representation of passive "sexualisation" ideologies (cf.
Straver). Reading adult recalls of
childhood erotogenetic events one is stunned by the vigour by which some defend
their ignorance or impotence regarding the nature of phenomena. A case of
Martinson (1973) relates: "All
I really noticed about them [erections when seven or eight years old] was that
they occurred when I thought about a young girl I felt romantically inclined
toward. Also, they made it very difficult to roll over in bed. I never knew the
purpose of the arousal, but I was aroused". Early
sexuality becomes conceptualised within the negatively formulated realm of
not-knowing, not-realising, not-associating, etc.: "I could have performed sexual intercourse that day [early childhood]
with a total lack of knowledge, desire, or instinct for reproduction" (M.,
1973:p37). The following account includes rationalisation and
biologisation of transitions, negotiation of "sexual" content and motivation,
and theorising of the sexual situation:
"[Until
eleven] I was so busy getting into trouble in other ways that I probably did
not have much time to think about sex […]. From the ages of eleven to fourteen,
I began to have something happen in my sexual ego […] Perhaps they [Boyscout
"sexual games"] were only half-sexual games […] I do not remember feeling that
it was more than a game that we were playing […] We told these stories
[fucking, girls] to each other as substitutes for our own powerless experience
[…]" (Ribal, p82-3).
The following accounts demonstrate how the early
"sexual" situation is retrospectively contextualised within diverse spaces, including
knowlegability, biophysiology, the allosexual realm, and essentialistic
categories (Ribal):
"Our
own attempt to do this [parental coitus] was very simple and even innocent"
(p36); "There was something exciting to me about having another's hands on my
body (p48)"; "It [masturbation] was a joy like many other joys. I did not
connect this stimulation with the other sex. I did not connect it with sexual
living in any way. That came later" (p62); "I probably regarded it
[masturbation] as a natural thing to do because I enjoyed it" (p66). Narratives
provide curricularised interpretations of whether "sexual" activities arise
from a personal social ("sexual") orientation, situated opportunities, such
"protoerotic" drives as curiosity, seduction, or discursive contextualisations
such as peer-pressure, or love commitment. 4.9
Preliminary Conclusions [up] [Contents]
Children's
social-sexual curricula, bodies and agenda are shaped, operationalised and
redirected through language, and conversely, utilise language to shape, expand
on and regulate social-sexual interactions. Language is used to represent,
facilitate, prevent, order and categorise sexual behaviour. Language acts as
the structural substance, or "grid", of "social" and "personal" spaces, which
are "provided" through the socialisation curriculum but also maintained and
elaborated upon. Sexual "development" can thus be conceptualised by the ways in
which sexual meanings are progressively embedded in sustainable uses of
space-structuring and space-structured communications. Notes [up] [Contents]
[last updated] [1] For a more comprehensive treatise and
referencing, see preparatory material collected in Children's Dirt Talk and Obscene Arts: Childhood Erotic Folklore.
[2]
Pavlovic, J. M. (1973) Folk Life and
Customs in the Kragujevac Region of the Jasenica in Sumdaija. New Haven,
Conn.: HRAF, p245 [3]
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press. As cited by Gatter, Ph. (Febr., 2001) Global Theories and Sexuality. Online
paper. [4]
Arango, A. C. (1989) Dirty Words:
Psychoanalytic Insights. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc. [5] Stoller, R. J. (1976) Sexual
excitement, Arch Gen Psychia
33,8:899-909. Stoller writes: "Sexual excitement depends on a scenario the
person to be aroused has been writing since childhood. The story is an
adventure, an autobiography disguised as fiction, in which the hero/heroine
hides crucial intrapsychic conflicts, mysteries, screen memories of actual
traumatic events and the resolution of these elements into a happy ending, best
celebrated by orgasm". [6]
Plummer, K. (1991) Seksuelle historier: Fra moderne fortaellinger til
senmoderne fortaellinger [Telling sexual stories: From modern to late modern
narratives], Nordisk Sexologi
9,3:135-62; Plummer, K. (1994) Telling
Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. London: Routledge;
Plummer, K. (1995) Telling Sexual Stories in a Late Modern World, Stud Symbolic Interaction 18:101-20;
Plummer, K. (1997) Telling Sexual Stories, Zeitschr
f Sexualforsch 10,1:69-81 [7]
Sears, R. R., Maccoby, E. E. & Levin,
H. (1957) Patterns of Child Rearing. Evanston, Illinois: Row,
Peterson; Gagnon, J. H. (1965) Sexuality and sexual learning in the child, Psychiatry 28:212-28; Gagnon, H. G.
(1989) Sexuality across the life course in the United States, in Turner, Ch.
F., Miller, H. G. & Moses, L. E. (Eds.) AIDS,
Sexual Behavior and Intravenous Drug Use. Washington, DC: National Academic
Press, p500-36 [8]
Senchea, J. A. (1998) Gendered Constructions of Sexuality in Adolescent Girls'
Talk, DAI-A 59,5, Nov, 1399-A /University of Iowa. Cf. Senchea, J. (Febr.,
1999) Gendered Constructions of Sexuality
in Adolescent Girls' Talk. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Western Speech Communication Association, Vancouver, Canada [9]
E.g., [?] (1998) Bodytalk: Discourses of Sexuality among Adolescent African
American Girls, in Hoyle, S. M., & Adger, C. T. (Eds.) Kids Talk: Strategic Language Use in Later Childhood. Oxford
Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press Inc. [10]
Christian-Smith, L. K. (1993) Texts of Desire: Essays on Fiction,
Femininity and Schooling. London: Falmer Press [11]
E.g., Walker, B. M. (1997) 'You learn it from your mates, don't you?': Young
people's conversations about sex as a basis for peer education, Youth & Policy 57:44-55 [12]
Cit. infra [13] Blair, H. A. (2000) Genderlects: Girl
Talk and Boy Talk in a Middle-years Classroom, Language Arts 77,4:315-23; Blair,
H. (1998) They left their genderprints: The voice of girls in text, Language Arts 75,1:11–8 [14]
Eckert, P. (1990) Cooperative Competition in Adolescent "Girl Talk", Discourse Processes 13,1:91-122 [15] Bauman, R. (1977) Linguistics, Anthropology,
and Verbal Art: Toward a Unified Perspective, with a Special Discussion of
Children's Folklore, Georgetown Univ
Round Table on Languages & Linguistics 1:13-36. See also Roemer, D.
(1983) Children's Verbal Folklore, Volta
Rev 85,5:55-71 [16] As excerpted: "In white American
children, peer group folklore is first encountered & learned from ages five
to eight in the form of riddles, "knock-knocks", and other verbal routines
called 'solicitational' routines. When the five year old first begins to interact
with peers, he adopts the descriptive routine, mimicking the syntactic form of
riddles; however, the content is neither traditional nor learned, but invented.
The question is purely descriptive, not meant to represent covert or tricky
information. At the next stage, the child begins to use the power and control
aspects in potent elicitations, where he understands that riddles are puzzling,
but can't yet comprehend their ambiguity. He gives them arbitrary answers, not
allowing the listener to guess correctly. Next, the child constructs riddles in
order to entertain on the same arbitrary format, often using taboo terms. The
ensuing shift is to more extended descriptions which may be guessed, and this
is followed by introduction of the first note of ambiguity. At age seven, the
child learns that riddles are traditional and readymade routines and, finally,
they are correctly performed". [17]
Gray, P. (1993) Oaths and Laughter and Indecent Speech, Language & Communication 13,4:311-25 [18]
Haller, J. M. (1976) Like a Very Drab, Am
Speech 51,1-2:25-34; Foote, R. & Woodward, J. (1973) A preliminary
investigation of obscene language, J
Psychol 83,2:263-75. See also Holzknecht, S. (1988) Word Taboo and Its
Implications for Language Change in the Markham Family of Languages, PNG, Language & Linguistics in Melanesia
18,1-2:43-69 [19]
Nash, W. (1995) Fair Words and Foul, in Svartvik, J. (Ed.) Words: Proceedings of an International Symposium, Lund, 25-26 August
1995. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie & Antikvitets Akademien,
p23-38 [20]
African sexual educations were traditionally provided by grandparents (Kamba,
Bemba, Shona, Makonde, Hambukushu, Hehe, Nambyans, Gusii, Meru, Luguru and
Zaramo). The generational gap often represents a moral obligation (Xhosa, Hehe,
Gusii, Zulu, Luguru, Bena, Gogo; provisionally for Mongo, Baluba and Bahungana;
also Majuro [Marshall Islands]). In a study by Lallemand (1975) it was noted
that insults addressed to children as opposed to those addressed to adults made
no reference to sexual organs, but concentrate exclusively on the head,
including its part and secretions, the belly, the foot, and the derrière. Russians were known for their use of
obscenity, states Krupyanskaya (Benet, 1970). This is significant since in Russia obscene actions between adults in
the presence of youth and children [were] punishable" (Brupbacher,
1949). [21]
Obscene language is freely permitted in most Kurdish households, except in the presence of the older males. One,
for example, heard a mother call her daughter a "prostitute", and a little
girl, who could scarcely appreciate the meaning of the word, addressed her
sister in the same fashion" (Hansen, 1961:p261-3) [22]
Peters (1990:p249-50) sketches how sexual education among the Northern Libian Bedouin is a problematic item in
parent-child socialization: "The subject of marriage between proximate
generations is disallowed. Between father and son, avoidance of anything
relating to sex or marriage is strictly observed. Only one male, the mother's
brother, is free to discuss these matters and present a case for marriage to a
father on behalf of a son. Men also have access to their fathers through their
sisters, who are free to discuss any matters relating to male-female
relationships with their mothers, and the latter, in turn, press fathers to
marry off their sons". [23]
Sharp (1934:p430) marks for the North-Eastern Yir-Yoront that "[t]he sex dichotomy begins early in life [as seen
in] obscene and abusive language […]". [24]
Calame-Griaule 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". [25]
However, "[t]he sexual importance of the initiation is lessened by the fact
that boys and girls are circumcised a few years before sexual maturity, that
even before, children already play sexually with one another, and that sexual
activity is taken seriously only when it can lead to propagation" (Parin et
al.). [26] Akan, Nupe, Bovale, Venda, Thonga,
Makonde [27] Kikuyu, Zulu, Matabele, Makonde, Hehe,
Kaguru, Bena, Subiya [28] Lallemand, S. (1985) L'Apprentissage
de la Sexualité dans les Contes d'Afrique de l'Ouest. Paris:
Editions L'Harmattan [29] Lapps have a liking for sexual jokes
which function as sexual education for the young (Delaporte and Roue, 1973). [30] Murray, Th. E. (1990-5) Swearing as a
Function of Gender in the Language of Midwestern American College Students: Who
Does It More, What Do They Say, When and Where Do They Do It, and Why Do They
Do It? Maledicta 11:139-52 [31]
Murray, Th. E. (1998) The Other Nicknames of American Greek-Letter
Organizations, Names 46,2:113-32 [32] 5% of U.S. adult recollections of
nicknaming within the school setting carried a "sexual connotation. Crozier, W.
R. & Skliopidou, E. (2002) Adult recollections of name-calling at school, Educ Psychol 22,1:113-24, at p120 [33]
Stenstrom, A. B. (1995) Taboos in Teenage Talk, in Melchers, G. & Warren,
B. (Eds.) Studies in Anglistics.
Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, p71-9 [34] Conn, J. H. & Kanner,. L.
(1947) Children's awareness of sex differences, J Child Psychia 1:3-57; Kreitler, H. & Kreitler, S. (1966)
Children's concept of sexuality and birth, Child
Developm 37,2:363-78; Roiphe, H. & Galenson, E. (1972) Early genital
activity and the castration complex, Psychoanal
Quart 41,3:334-47; Lerner, H. E. (1976)
Parental mislabeling of female genitals as a determinant of penis envy and
learning inhibitions in women, J Am
Psychoanal Assoc 24,5, Suppl.:269-83. See also Lerner, H. G. (1988) Women in Therapy. New York: Aronson;
Ash, M. (1980) The misnamed female sexual organ, in Samson, J.-M. (Ed.) Sexualité et Enfance. Montreal: Éditions Études Vivantes, p386-91; Van den
Ende-de Monchy, C. (1980) Exploratief
Onderzoek naar de Lichaamsbeleving bij Kinderen van Vier tot Zes Jaar.
Dissertation, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands; Jaffe, J. J. (1985) "Down There": The Relationship Between
Childhood Home Environment, Childhood Genital Labels, and Adult Sexuality in a
Middle-Class Female Sample. University of Southern California; Schor, D.
& Sivan, S. (1989) Interpreting children's labels for sex-related
body-parts of anatomically explicit dolls, Child
Abuse & Negl 13:523-31; Fraley, M. C., Nelson, E. C., Wolf, A.W. &
Lozoff, B. (1991) Early genital naming, Developm
& Behav Pediatr 12:301-4; Wurtele, S. et al. (1992) Preschoolers
knowledge of and ability to learn genital terminology, J Sex Educ & Ther 18:115-22; Wurtele, S. (1993) Enhancing
children's sexual development through sexual abuse prevention programs, J Sex Educ & Ther 19,1:37-46;
Butson, S. L. (1996) Responses of young children to questions concerning
sexuality: An exploratory study, DAI-B 57(1-B):719; De Marneffe, D. (1997)
Bodies and words: A study of young children's genital and gender knowledge, Gender & Psychoanal 2,1:3-33;
Cheung, M. (1999) Children's language of sexuality in child sexual abuse
investigantions, J Child Sexual Abuse
8,3:65-84 [36] Fisher, S. (1989) Sexual Images of the Self. Hillsdale, JJ [etc.]: L. Erlbaum, p1-38 [37] Keller, R. (1987) Worttabu und
Tabuwörter, Sprache & Lit in
Wissensch & Unterricht 18,2(60):2-9 [38]
Among the Amhara (Ethiopia) , "[i]t
is impolite even to mention the names of genitals and reproductive organs, such
as k'ula for penis, and […] for vulva, so they are merely whispered about". In Nigeria, children would not be allowed
to mention the names of sex organs (Uka). Euphemisms and phase-specific terms
were widely used in Ghana, as
detailed by Kaye (1960:p384-5; 1962:p122), but here this turned out to be
variable. [39]
Gartrell, N. & Mosbacher, D. (1984) Sex differences in the naming of
children's genitalia, Sex Roles
10,11/12:869-76. Cf. Langfeldt, Th. (1981a) Sexual development in children, in
Cook, M. & Howells, K. (Eds.) Adult
Sexual Interest in Children. New York: Academic Press, p99-120, at p108-10 [40]
Simkins, L. & Rinck, Ch. (1982) Male and female sexual vocabulary in
different interpersonal contexts, J Sex
Res 18,2:160-72; Sanders, J. S. & Robinson, W. L. (1979) Talking and
not talking about sex: Male and female vocabularies, J Communication 29,2:22-30 [41]
In Russian Reindeer Chukchee's
children's games, "a class of […] songs represents the act of copulation, with
a rather queer dance and even with imitative sounds. The dance often ends in
two girls lying on the ground imitating sexual intercourse. Frequently young
boys also take part in the performance" (Bogoraz-Tan, p269). Unwin (1934:p153),
on the Amazulu, stated that "a special term existed, u(lu)ngqoyingqoyi (lit., "delicious food") which small girls, when
out alone and seeing a boy, called out to him, the words being intended as an
enticement to him to come to them for sexual purposes". [42]
Waning, A. van (1983) Seksuele terminologie en beleving, Tijdschr Psychia [Dutch] 25,1:40-55 [43] Stephens, W. N. (1971) A cross-cultural
study of modesty and obscenity, in Technical
report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Washington, US :
Government printing office. Vol. 9, p405-51; Stephens, W. N. (1972) A
cross-cultural study of modesty, Behav
Sci Notes 7,1:1-28. The author stated that for sixteen (1972: N=13) cases in the sample (N=91), it is reported that adults talk
and joke about sex freely and openly in the presence of children. [44]
Broude, G.J. & Greene, S.J. (1976) Cross-cultural codes on twenty sexual
attitudes and practices, Ethnology
5,4:409-29. The authors found that in a sample of 186 societies (SCCS), sex
talk habits were described for 67. In 19 of these (28.4%), there is no
inhibition whatsoever to talk in front of children; in another 3 (4.5%), it is
free except in front of children. [45]
Of Kogi six to twelve-year-olds it
is said that they "still do not know anything concrete about the sexual life of
the adults. At times they may have heard an obscene word or seen a suggestive
gesture, but their imagination in this regard is based principally on the fragments
of songs and myths which they have heard in the ceremonial house"
(Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1951). [46] Hopi
children learned by observation, and "jokes which we would consider obscene were
taught to small boys to be used when they performed as ceremonial clowns
(Oswalt, [1973:p425]) [47]
Goldman, J. (1990) The importance of an adequate sexual vocabulary for
children, Austral J Marr & Fam 11,3:136-48 [48] For comments on the phenomenon, see Berges
E. T. et al. (1983) Children & Sex:
The Parents Speak. N.Y.: Facts on File, p161-91; Harrison (1968) When
children use obscene language, Med Asp
Hum Sex 2,12:6-11; Lieberman, J. (1967) On obscenity in childhood and
youth, Sexology 34,3:156-7 / Obscenity
in childhood and youth, in Rubin, I. & Kirkendall, L. (Eds., 1970) Sex in the Childhood Years. New York:
Association Press, p107-8 [49]
Sherman and Weisskopf's (1995) Greasy
Grimy Gopher Guts, a collection of traditional children's rhymes from
Canada and the United States, caused outrage among Ontario parents who wanted
the book removed from the public library. Stating they are racist, homophobic
and sexually explicit: "We don't feel that it's suitable for general reading in
the children's section. My feeling is that the children are reading this book
and just skipping over the commentary which is quite adult in nature. And they
may think the verses are OK to repeat". To these people, the selection by
Goldings (1974) would prove a more placid digest. Goldings observes "easy
regression to pregenital themes and issues", while only some rhyhmes "give
"practice" to the girl's fantasy of her future fortune and heterosexuality (as
older folklorists would have predicted)". See Sherman, J. & Weisskopf, T.
K. F. (1995) Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood.
Little Rock, AR: August House; Goldings, H. J. (1974) Jump-rope rhymes and the
rhythm of latency development in girls,
Psychoanal Study Child 29:431-50 [50]
Postman, N. (1987) The Blurring of Childhood and the Media, Religious Educ
82,2:293-5 [51] Hermann, I. (1922) Geheime
Gesellschaften der Kinder und die Sexualität, Archiv f Frauenk [etc.] 8:175-7. See also Nagy, L. (1926) A
sexualitas hatasa az ifjak tarsas eletenek kialakulasara [The influence of
sexuality upon the development of social life in youth], A Gyermek [The Child] 19:65-76 [52]
Fine, G. A. (1986) The dirty play of little boys, Society, Nov/Dec:63-7 [53]
Langford, W. (1997) "Bunnikins, I Love You Snugly in Your Warren": Voices from
Subterranean Cultures of Love, in Harvey, K. & Shalom, C. (Eds.) Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance
and Intimacy. London: Routledge, p170-85 [54] Berdie, R. F. (1947) "Playing the
Dozens", J Abnorm Soc Psychol 42:120-1; Golightly, C. & Scheffler, I.
(1948) "Playing the dozens": a note, J
Abnorm Soc Psychol 43:104-5; Johnson, C. S. (1941) Growing Up in the Black Belt. Washington: American Council on
Education, p184-5, 228; Schulz, D. A. (1969) Coming Up Black: Patterns of Ghetto Socialization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
p67-9; Abrahams, R. D. (1962) Playing the Dozens, J Am Folkl 75:207-20 [55]
Ortony, A. et al. (1985) Cultural and Instructional Influences on Figurative
Language Comprehension by Inner City Children, Res Teach English 19,1:25-36 [56]
Golightly, C. & Scheffler, I. (1948) "Playing the dozens": a note, J Abnorm Soc Psychol 43:104-5 [57]
Schulz, D. A. (1969) Coming Up Black:
Patterns of Ghetto Socialization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall [58] Chimezie, A. (1976) The Dozens: An
African-Heritage Theory, J Black Stud
6,4:401-20 [59]
Lefever, H. G. (1981) "Playing the Dozens": A Mechanism for Social Control, Phylon 42,1:73-85, at p73 [60] Dyck, G. (1969) "Talking the dozens". A
game of insults played in a group of adolescent boys, Bull Menninger Clinic 33, 2:108-116 [61] Kehily, M. J. & Nayak, A. (1997)
Lads and laughter: humour and the production of heterosexual hierarchies, Gender & Educ 9,1:69-87 [62] Cf. Appendix,
III.4. [63]
Thorne, B. & Luria, Z. (1986) Sexuality and gender in children's every
daily worlds, Social Problems 33,3:176-90 [64] Thurlow, C. (2001) Naming the "outsider
within": homophobic pejoratives and the verbal abuse of lesbian, gay and
bisexual high-school pupils, J Adolesc
24,1:25-38 [65]
Voss, L. S. (1997) Teasing, Disputing, and Playing: Cross-Gender Interactions
and Space Utilization among First and Third Graders, Gender & Society 11,2:238-56, at p245; Mac an Ghaill, M. (1994). The making of men: masculinities, sexualities
and schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press, p94, 165; Thorne, B.
(1993) Gender Play: Girls and Boys in
School. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, p154; O'Conor, A. (1995) Who gets called queer in
school?, in Unks, G. (Ed.) The Gay Teen:
Educational Practice and Theory for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth. New
York: Routledge / High School J
77,1-2:7-12; Rofes, E. (1995) Making our schools safe for sissies, in Unks, G.
(Ed.) The Gay Teen: Educational Practice
and Theory for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth. New York: Routledge,
p79-84, at p82 / High School J
77,1/2, 1994, 37-40 [66]
Plummer, D. C. (2000) The quest for modern manhood: masculine stereotypes, peer
culture and the social significance of homophobia, J Adolesc 24,1:15-23. Cf. Plummer, D. (1999) One of the Boys: Masculinity, Homophobia and Modern Manhood. New
York: Haworth Press; Plummer, D. (2001) Policing manhood: new theories about
the social significance of homophobia, in Wood, C. (Ed.) Sexual Positions: An Australian View. Collins, Melbourne: Hill of
Content; Plummer, D. (March, 2000) Girls
Germs: Sexuality, Gender, Health and Metaphors of Contagion. Paper, NSW
Chapter Scientific Meeting. From http://www.acshp.org.au/sexual_health/transcripts/girls_germs.htm [67]
Epstein,
D. (1997) Boyz' own stories: masculinities and sexualities in schools, Gender & Educ 9,1:105-15 [68]
Epstein, D. (1996) Cultures of Schooling,
Cultures of Sexuality. Paper presented at the 77th Annual Conference of the
American Educational Research Association. New York, April 8-12 [69]
Nayak, A. & Kehily, M. (1997)
Masculinities and schooling: why are young men so homophobic?, in Steinberg, D.
L., Epstein, D. & Johnson, R. (Eds.) Border
Patrols: Policing the Boundaries of Heterosexuality. London: Cassell,
p138-61 [70]
Redman, P. (2000) "Tarred with the Same Brush": "Homophobia" and the Role of
the Unconscious in School-Based Cultures of Masculinity, Sexualities 3,4:483-99 [71] Cf. Appendix, III.5 [72]
An
informant told Herdt that "Sambia"
boys are feared for sexual intercourse with women by men (Intimate Communications, p108-9). [73] Greydanus, D. E. (1985) The teenage
girl who is "boy crazy", Med Asp Hum Sex
19,8:120-4 [74] It turns out that few if any of these
studies addresses the important relationship between developmental social
preference and developmental erotic preference. [75] Horney, K. (1930) Des Misstrauen
zwischen den Geschlechtern, Psychoanal
Bewegung 2:521-37; Maccoby, E. E. (1998) The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together: Cambridge, MA:
Belknap [76]
Harris, D. B. & Sing, Ch. T. (1957) Children's attitudes toward peers and
parents as revealed by sentence completions, Child Developm 28:401-11 [77] Goodenough, R. G. (1990) Situational stress
and sexist behaviour among young children, in Sanday, P. R. & Goodenough,
R. G. (Eds.) Beyond the Second Sex.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, p227-51 [78]
Campbell, E. H. (1939) The social-sex development of children, Genet Psychol Monogr 21:461-552 [79] Opportunity,
Sexuality and the Life Span:
Segregation, Antagonism and Mobility. [80] Francis, B. (1997) Discussing
Discrimination: Children's Construction of Sexism between Pupils in Primary
School, British J Sociol Educ 18,4:519-32 [81]
Best, R. (1983) We've All Got Scars.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press;
Clarck, M. (1990) The Great Divide :
Gender in the Primary School. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporat ion;
Goodenough, R. G. (1987 ) Small group culture and the emergence of sexist
behaviour: a comparative study of four children' s groups, in Spindler, G.
& Spindler, L. (Eds.) Interpretive
Ethnography of Education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum [82]
Jordan, E. (1995) Fighting boys and fantasy
play: the construction of masculinity in the early years of school, Gender & Educ 7,1:69-86 [83]
Aldis, O. (1975) Play Fighting. New
York: Academic Press [84] Lancy, D. F. (1980) Play in Species Adaptation, Ann
Rev Anthropol 9:471-95 [85]
Zumwalt (1976) Plain and fancy: a content analysis of children's jokes dealing
with adult sexuality, Western Folklore 35:258-67;
Sutton-Smith, B. & Abrams, D. M. (1976) Psychosexual material in the
stories told by children, in Gemme, R. & Wheeler, C. C. (Eds.) Progress in Sexology. NY: Plenum Press,
p491-504; Sutton-Smith, B. & Abrams, D.M. (1978) Psychosexual material in
the stories told by children: The Fucker, Arch
Sex Behav 7,6:521-43; Wolfenstein, M. (1954) Children's Humor. Glencoe: Free Press, p63-91 [86]
McCosh, S. (1977) Aggression in Children's Jokes, Maledicta 1,2:125-32 [87]
See Reference List, Childhood Humour
Development. Available from the author. [88]
Bariaud, F. (1988) Age differences in children's humor, J Children in Contemp Society 20,1-2:15-45 [89]
Weisfeld, G. E. (1993)The Adaptive Value of Humor and Laughter, Ethology & Sociobiol 14,2:141-69 [90]
Sanford, S. & Eder, D. (1984) Adolescent
Humor During Peer Interaction, Social
Psychol Quart 47,3:235-43 [91] Fine, G. A. (1977) Humor in situ: the
role of humor in small group culture, in Chapman, A. J. & Foot, H. C.
(Eds.) It's a Funny Thing, Humour.
Oxford: Pergamon Press, p315-8; Ransohoff, R. (1975) Some observations on humor
and laughter in young adolescent girls, J
Youth & Adol 4:155-70; Sacks, H. (1978) Some technical considerations
of a dirty joke, in Schenkein, J. (Ed.) Studies
in the Organization of Conversational Interaction. New York: Academic
Press, p249-69 [92]
E.g., Fry, W. F. (1974) Psychodynamics of sexual humour: sexual views of children,
Med Asp Hum Sex 8,9:77-80 [93]
Kehily, M. J. & Nayak, A. (1997) Lads and laughter: humour and the
production of heterosexual hierarchies, Gender
& Educ 9,1:69-87 [94] This stress on
hierarchical dimensions, and the apparent normalisation of "adult" heterosexual
discourse as a measure for hypermascilinising adolescent discourses is
illustrative of the concern for female and minority participation
("subordination") in male positioning. [95]
Mulhern, Sh. (1990) Incest: A Laughing Matter, Child Abuse & Neglect
14,2:265-71; Mathews, F. (1994) What's So Funny about the Abuse of Boys and
Young Men? J Emotional & Behav Problems 3,1:15-9; Gartner, R. B. (1999)
Cinematic depictions of boyhood sexual victimization, Gender & Psychoanal 4,3:253-89 [96]
Luquet, G. H. (1910) Sur la survivance des charactères du dessin enfantin dans
das grafitti à indications sexuelles, Anthropophyteia
7:196-210+ill. [97]
Heelsbergen, ¨
van (1985) Vieze Kindertjes?
Rijksuniversiteit van Limburg. At Trimbos Institute [98]
Koch, W. (1979) Die erotische Kinderzeichnung, Kunst & Unterricht 55:52-5; Koch, W. (1980) Die "heimliche"
Kinderzeichnung; Die erotische Kinderzeignung im Unterrricht, Sexualpäd 8,3:6-8;8,4:6-7; Koch, W.
(1984) Erotische Zeichnungen von Kinderen und Jugendlichen, BDK [Bund Deutscher Kunsterzicher] Mitteilungen 2; Koch, W. (1986) Erotische Zeichnungen von Kindern und
Jugendlichen.Erzeihungswissenschaften 15. Münster Lit. [99]
Lucca, N. & Pacheco, A. M. (1986) Children's graffiti: Visual communication
from a developmental perspective, J Genet Psychol 147,4:465-79 [100]
Eysenck, H. & Nias, D. (1978) Sex,
Violece, and the Media.¨ [101]
Kelley, P., Buckingham, D. & Davies, H. (1999) Talking dirty: children,
sexual knowledge and television, Childhood
6,2:221-42 [102] Emerson, R. (2002) Hot Girlz, Shorties and Divas: Exploring the Responses of Teenage
African-American Girls to Representations of Black Female Sexuality in Music
Video. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Cf. Emerson, R. (2002)
"Where my girls at?" Negotiating Black womanhood in music videos, Gender & Society 16,1:115-35; Janus,
S. S. & Janus, C. L. (1985) Children, sex, peers, culture: 1973-1983, J Psychohist 12,3:363-9; Fisher, G. A.
(1997) Kids, Culture, and Courtship: The
Acculturating Effects of Popular Music. Paper for the American Sociological
Association [103]
Strover, Sh. (1991) Popular Media and the
Teenage Sexual Agenda. Paper presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the
International Communication Association. Chicago, IL, May 23-27 [104] Stern, S. (2002) Sexual selves on the
World Wide Web: Adolescent girls' home pages as sites for sexual
self-expression, in Brown, J. D. & Steele, J. R. et al. (Eds.) Sexual Teens, Sexual Media. LEA's
Communication Series. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, p265-85; Loftus, J.
(1999) "Let's Talk about Sex, Baby": Discourses
of Female Adolescent Sexuality in Cyberspace. Paper for the American
Sociological Association; Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2001) SexEd.com: Values and norms
in web-based sexuality education, J Sex
Res 38,3:241-51 [105]
E.g., Durham, M. G. (1999) Girls,
media, and the negotiation of sexuality: A study of race, class, and gender in
adolescent peer groups, Journalism & Mass Communication Quart 76,2:193-216 [106]
O'Donohue, W., Gold, S. R. & McKay, J. S. (1997) Children as sexual
objects: Historical and gender trends in magazines, Sexual Abuse 9,4:291-301 [52]
Fine, G. A. (1986) The dirty play of little boys, Society, Nov/Dec:63-7 [53]
Langford, W. (1997) "Bunnikins, I Love You Snugly in Your Warren": Voices from
Subterranean Cultures of Love, in Harvey, K. & Shalom, C. (Eds.) Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance
and Intimacy. London: Routledge, p170-85 [54] Berdie, R. F. (1947) "Playing the
Dozens", J Abnorm Soc Psychol 42:120-1; Golightly, C. & Scheffler, I.
(1948) "Playing the dozens": a note, J
Abnorm Soc Psychol 43:104-5; Johnson, C. S. (1941) Growing Up in the Black Belt. Washington: American Council on
Education, p184-5, 228; Schulz, D. A. (1969) Coming Up Black: Patterns of Ghetto Socialization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
p67-9; Abrahams, R. D. (1962) Playing the Dozens, J Am Folkl 75:207-20 [55]
Ortony, A. et al. (1985) Cultural and Instructional Influences on Figurative
Language Comprehension by Inner City Children, Res Teach English 19,1:25-36 [56]
Golightly, C. & Scheffler, I. (1948) "Playing the dozens": a note, J Abnorm Soc Psychol 43:104-5 [57]
Schulz, D. A. (1969) Coming Up Black:
Patterns of Ghetto Socialization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall [58] Chimezie, A. (1976) The Dozens: An
African-Heritage Theory, J Black Stud
6,4:401-20 [59]
Lefever, H. G. (1981) "Playing the Dozens": A Mechanism for Social Control, Phylon 42,1:73-85, at p73 [60] Dyck, G. (1969) "Talking the dozens". A
game of insults played in a group of adolescent boys, Bull Menninger Clinic 33, 2:108-116 [61] Kehily, M. J. & Nayak, A. (1997)
Lads and laughter: humour and the production of heterosexual hierarchies, Gender & Educ 9,1:69-87 [62] Cf. Appendix,
III.4. [63]
Thorne, B. & Luria, Z. (1986) Sexuality and gender in children's every
daily worlds, Social Problems 33,3:176-90 [64] Thurlow, C. (2001) Naming the "outsider
within": homophobic pejoratives and the verbal abuse of lesbian, gay and
bisexual high-school pupils, J Adolesc
24,1:25-38 [65]
Voss, L. S. (1997) Teasing, Disputing, and Playing: Cross-Gender Interactions
and Space Utilization among First and Third Graders, Gender & Society 11,2:238-56, at p245; Mac an Ghaill, M. (1994). The making of men: masculinities, sexualities
and schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press, p94, 165; Thorne, B.
(1993) Gender Play: Girls and Boys in
School. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, p154; O'Conor, A. (1995) Who gets called queer in
school?, in Unks, G. (Ed.) The Gay Teen:
Educational Practice and Theory for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth. New
York: Routledge / High School J
77,1-2:7-12; Rofes, E. (1995) Making our schools safe for sissies, in Unks, G.
(Ed.) The Gay Teen: Educational Practice
and Theory for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth. New York: Routledge,
p79-84, at p82 / High School J
77,1/2, 1994, 37-40 [66]
Plummer, D. C. (2000) The quest for modern manhood: masculine stereotypes, peer
culture and the social significance of homophobia, J Adolesc 24,1:15-23. Cf. Plummer, D. (1999) One of the Boys: Masculinity, Homophobia and Modern Manhood. New
York: Haworth Press; Plummer, D. (2001) Policing manhood: new theories about
the social significance of homophobia, in Wood, C. (Ed.) Sexual Positions: An Australian View. Collins, Melbourne: Hill of
Content; Plummer, D. (March, 2000) Girls
Germs: Sexuality, Gender, Health and Metaphors of Contagion. Paper, NSW
Chapter Scientific Meeting. From http://www.acshp.org.au/sexual_health/transcripts/girls_germs.htm [67]
Epstein,
D. (1997) Boyz' own stories: masculinities and sexualities in schools, Gender & Educ 9,1:105-15 [68]
Epstein, D. (1996) Cultures of Schooling,
Cultures of Sexuality. Paper presented at the 77th Annual Conference of the
American Educational Research Association. New York, April 8-12 [69]
Nayak, A. & Kehily, M. (1997)
Masculinities and schooling: why are young men so homophobic?, in Steinberg, D.
L., Epstein, D. & Johnson, R. (Eds.) Border
Patrols: Policing the Boundaries of Heterosexuality. London: Cassell,
p138-61 [70]
Redman, P. (2000) "Tarred with the Same Brush": "Homophobia" and the Role of
the Unconscious in School-Based Cultures of Masculinity, Sexualities 3,4:483-99 [71] Cf. Appendix, III.5 [72]
An
informant told Herdt that "Sambia"
boys are feared for sexual intercourse with women by men (Intimate Communications, p108-9). [73] Greydanus, D. E. (1985) The teenage
girl who is "boy crazy", Med Asp Hum Sex
19,8:120-4 [74] It turns out that few if any of these
studies addresses the important relationship between developmental social
preference and developmental erotic preference. [75] Horney, K. (1930) Des Misstrauen
zwischen den Geschlechtern, Psychoanal
Bewegung 2:521-37; Maccoby, E. E. (1998) The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together: Cambridge, MA:
Belknap [76]
Harris, D. B. & Sing, Ch. T. (1957) Children's attitudes toward peers and
parents as revealed by sentence completions, Child Developm 28:401-11 [77] Goodenough, R. G. (1990) Situational stress
and sexist behaviour among young children, in Sanday, P. R. & Goodenough,
R. G. (Eds.) Beyond the Second Sex.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, p227-51 [78]
Campbell, E. H. (1939) The social-sex development of children, Genet Psychol Monogr 21:461-552 [79] Opportunity,
Sexuality and the Life Span:
Segregation, Antagonism and Mobility. [80] Francis, B. (1997) Discussing
Discrimination: Children's Construction of Sexism between Pupils in Primary
School, British J Sociol Educ 18,4:519-32 [81]
Best, R. (1983) We've All Got Scars.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press;
Clarck, M. (1990) The Great Divide :
Gender in the Primary School. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporat ion;
Goodenough, R. G. (1987 ) Small group culture and the emergence of sexist
behaviour: a comparative study of four children' s groups, in Spindler, G.
& Spindler, L. (Eds.) Interpretive
Ethnography of Education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum [82]
Jordan, E. (1995) Fighting boys and fantasy
play: the construction of masculinity in the early years of school, Gender & Educ 7,1:69-86 [83]
Aldis, O. (1975) Play Fighting. New
York: Academic Press [84] Lancy, D. F. (1980) Play in Species Adaptation, Ann
Rev Anthropol 9:471-95 [85]
Zumwalt (1976) Plain and fancy: a content analysis of children's jokes dealing
with adult sexuality, Western Folklore 35:258-67;
Sutton-Smith, B. & Abrams, D. M. (1976) Psychosexual material in the
stories told by children, in Gemme, R. & Wheeler, C. C. (Eds.) Progress in Sexology. NY: Plenum Press,
p491-504; Sutton-Smith, B. & Abrams, D.M. (1978) Psychosexual material in
the stories told by children: The Fucker, Arch
Sex Behav 7,6:521-43; Wolfenstein, M. (1954) Children's Humor. Glencoe: Free Press, p63-91 [86]
McCosh, S. (1977) Aggression in Children's Jokes, Maledicta 1,2:125-32 [87]
See Reference List, Childhood Humour
Development. Available from the author. [88]
Bariaud, F. (1988) Age differences in children's humor, J Children in Contemp Society 20,1-2:15-45 [89]
Weisfeld, G. E. (1993)The Adaptive Value of Humor and Laughter, Ethology & Sociobiol 14,2:141-69 [90]
Sanford, S. & Eder, D. (1984) Adolescent
Humor During Peer Interaction, Social
Psychol Quart 47,3:235-43 [91] Fine, G. A. (1977) Humor in situ: the
role of humor in small group culture, in Chapman, A. J. & Foot, H. C.
(Eds.) It's a Funny Thing, Humour.
Oxford: Pergamon Press, p315-8; Ransohoff, R. (1975) Some observations on humor
and laughter in young adolescent girls, J
Youth & Adol 4:155-70; Sacks, H. (1978) Some technical considerations
of a dirty joke, in Schenkein, J. (Ed.) Studies
in the Organization of Conversational Interaction. New York: Academic
Press, p249-69 [92]
E.g., Fry, W. F. (1974) Psychodynamics of sexual humour: sexual views of children,
Med Asp Hum Sex 8,9:77-80 [93]
Kehily, M. J. & Nayak, A. (1997) Lads and laughter: humour and the
production of heterosexual hierarchies, Gender
& Educ 9,1:69-87 [94] This stress on
hierarchical dimensions, and the apparent normalisation of "adult" heterosexual
discourse as a measure for hypermascilinising adolescent discourses is
illustrative of the concern for female and minority participation
("subordination") in male positioning. [95]
Mulhern, Sh. (1990) Incest: A Laughing Matter, Child Abuse & Neglect
14,2:265-71; Mathews, F. (1994) What's So Funny about the Abuse of Boys and
Young Men? J Emotional & Behav Problems 3,1:15-9; Gartner, R. B. (1999)
Cinematic depictions of boyhood sexual victimization, Gender & Psychoanal 4,3:253-89 [96]
Luquet, G. H. (1910) Sur la survivance des charactères du dessin enfantin dans
das grafitti à indications sexuelles, Anthropophyteia
7:196-210+ill. [97]
Heelsbergen, ¨
van (1985) Vieze Kindertjes?
Rijksuniversiteit van Limburg. At Trimbos Institute [98]
Koch, W. (1979) Die erotische Kinderzeichnung, Kunst & Unterricht 55:52-5; Koch, W. (1980) Die "heimliche"
Kinderzeichnung; Die erotische Kinderzeignung im Unterrricht, Sexualpäd 8,3:6-8;8,4:6-7; Koch, W.
(1984) Erotische Zeichnungen von Kinderen und Jugendlichen, BDK [Bund Deutscher Kunsterzicher] Mitteilungen 2; Koch, W. (1986) Erotische Zeichnungen von Kindern und
Jugendlichen.Erzeihungswissenschaften 15. Münster Lit. [99]
Lucca, N. & Pacheco, A. M. (1986) Children's graffiti: Visual communication
from a developmental perspective, J Genet Psychol 147,4:465-79 [100]
Eysenck, H. & Nias, D. (1978) Sex,
Violece, and the Media.¨ [101]
Kelley, P., Buckingham, D. & Davies, H. (1999) Talking dirty: children,
sexual knowledge and television, Childhood
6,2:221-42 [102] Emerson, R. (2002) Hot Girlz, Shorties and Divas: Exploring the Responses of Teenage
African-American Girls to Representations of Black Female Sexuality in Music
Video. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Cf. Emerson, R. (2002)
"Where my girls at?" Negotiating Black womanhood in music videos, Gender & Society 16,1:115-35; Janus,
S. S. & Janus, C. L. (1985) Children, sex, peers, culture: 1973-1983, J Psychohist 12,3:363-9; Fisher, G. A.
(1997) Kids, Culture, and Courtship: The
Acculturating Effects of Popular Music. Paper for the American Sociological
Association [103]
Strover, Sh. (1991) Popular Media and the
Teenage Sexual Agenda. Paper presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the
International Communication Association. Chicago, IL, May 23-27 [104] Stern, S. (2002) Sexual selves on the
World Wide Web: Adolescent girls' home pages as sites for sexual
self-expression, in Brown, J. D. & Steele, J. R. et al. (Eds.) Sexual Teens, Sexual Media. LEA's
Communication Series. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, p265-85; Loftus, J.
(1999) "Let's Talk about Sex, Baby": Discourses
of Female Adolescent Sexuality in Cyberspace. Paper for the American
Sociological Association; Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2001) SexEd.com: Values and norms
in web-based sexuality education, J Sex
Res 38,3:241-51 [105]
E.g., Durham, M. G. (1999) Girls,
media, and the negotiation of sexuality: A study of race, class, and gender in
adolescent peer groups, Journalism & Mass Communication Quart 76,2:193-216 [106]
O'Donohue, W., Gold, S. R. & McKay, J. S. (1997) Children as sexual
objects: Historical and gender trends in magazines, Sexual Abuse 9,4:291-301 [107] Van Roosmalen, E. (2000) Forces of
patriarchy: Adolescent experiences of sexuality and conceptions of
relationships, Youth & Soc
32,2:202-27 [108]
Kehily, M. J. (1999) More Sugar?: Teenage Magazines, Gender Displays and Sexual
Learning, Eur J Cult Stud 2,1:65-89.
Cf. McRobbie, A. (1996) More! New sexualities in girls and women's magazines,
in Curran, J., Morley, D. & Walkerdine, V. (Eds.) Cultural Studies and Communications. London: Arnold, p172-194.
Reprinted in McRobbie, A. (1997) Back to
Reality? Social Experiences and Cultural Studies. Manchester: Manchester
University Press; Walsh, Ch. K. et al. (2002) From "just the facts" to
"downright salacious": Teens' and women's magazine coverage of sex and sexual
health, in Brown, J. D. et al. (Eds.) Sexual
Teens, Sexual Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.,
Publishers, p153-71; Treise, D. & Gotthoffer, A. (2002) Stuff you couldn't
ask your parents: Teens talking about using magazines for sex information, in
Brown, J. D. et al. (Eds.) Sexual Teens,
Sexual Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers,
p173-89; Wray, J. & Steele, J. R. (2002) Girls in print: Figuring out what
it means to be a girl, in Brown, J. D. et al. (Eds.) Sexual Teens, Sexual Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Inc., Publishers, p191-208; Carpenter, L. M. (1998) From girls into
women: Scripts for sexuality and romance in Seventeen magazine, 1974-1994, J Sex Res 35,2:158-68; Durham, M. G.
(1998) Dilemmas of desire: Representations of adolescent sexuality in two teen
magazines, Youth & Society
29,3:369-89; Tinkler, P. (1995) Constructing
Girlhood: Popular Magazines for Girls Growing Up in England, 1920-1950.
Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis. Based on a 1988 unpublished PhD thesis, University of Lancaster. [109] Downes, L. M. (2000) Lessons for Life: Adolescent Culture and
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Guang-Ren, L. (1997) An investigation of adolescent health from China, J Adolesc Health 20,4:306-8 [111]
Rosenqvist, L. & Lundberg, P. O. (1992) Sex- oct samlevnadsfragor som de
avspeglar sig i en tonarstidnings fragespalt 1988-1990 [Questions on sexuality
from a column in a teenagers' magazine 1988-1990], Nordisk Sexol 10,3:129-38 [112]
Lohr, H. & Rathgeber, R. (1995) Mädchen und Sexualität, Diskurs 5,1:54-60; [113]
Jablonski, B. (1998) Crencas e crendices sobre sexualidade humana [Beliefs and
misbeliefs about human sexuality], Psicol:
Theor & Pesq 14,3:209-18; Osterman, A. C. & Keller-Cohen, D. (1998)
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Mitchell, C. & Reid-Walsh, J. (1999) Nine
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script: Identifying the romantic agenda in top-grossing movies, in Brown, J. D.
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Carpenter, L. M. (2001) The first time/das erstes mal: Approaches to virginity
loss in U. S. and German teen magazines, Youth
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E.g., Epstein, D. (2000) Reading Gender, Reading Sexualities: Children and
the Negotiation of Meaning in 'Alternative' Texts, in Spurlin, W. (Ed) Lesbian and
Gay Studies and the Teaching of English. Washington, DC: National Council
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For Dutch impressions: Depeuter, F. (1965) Erotische kinderlektuur? Van het
poppenspel naar de roman, Heibel [Dutch] 1,3:23-40; Ros, B. (1997)
Jeugdboek is de kindersites en tienerbladen erotisch de baas: 'Hij kuste haar,
diep, nat, lang, hartstochtelijk', Leesgoed Den Haag [Dutch] 24,2:66-70;
Coillie, J. van (1997) Open en bloot: in poëzie voor kinderen en jongeren, Leesgoed
Den Haag 24,2:72-5; Lierop- Debrauwer, H. van (1997) Meisjesboekenmeisjes:
van braaf naar seksueel actief, Savante Amst 5(20):24-6; Dokumentatie
Jeugdliteratuur in Thema's 6,3: Seksualiteit in de Jeugdliteratuur
1984; RoSA (April, 1994) Copieënbundel artikels 'homoseksualiteit en
lesbische aspecten in kinder- en jeugdliteratuur'. Brussel: ROSA, Studie-,
Informatie, en Dokumentatiecentrum omtrent Sekserollen, Feminisme en
Vrouwenzaken; Hemmes (1982) Homoseksualiteit in kinderboeken, Orlando
1,1:20-3; Seksboeken voor kinderen: fictie en non-fictie, Boekblad
[Amsterdam] 167(2000),18:10-1; Vaerenbergh, J. van & Devos, A. (1983) Homofilie
en Eerste Seksualiteit in de Jeugdliteratuur; http://www.ping.be/~demayer/boekbesp/frameset.htm;
http://www.dvh-net.com/Gay/Hoofdstuk_3/Hoofdstuk_3-4/hoofdstuk_3-4.htm;
Campen, van (1976) Voorlichting voorbehouden; seksualiteit in het kinderboek, Verkenningen
op het Gebied v/d Jeugdlit [Dutch] 7,5/6:96-101. Further Krugovoy, A.
(2000) Silver's "A Caught Dream": John Ruskin, Kate Greenaway, and the Erotic
Innocent Girl, Children's Lit Assoc Quart 25,1:37-44; Slavin, H. (1994)
Images of sex and sexuality in books for children, parents and young people, Sexual
& Marit Ther 9,2:201-7; Wersba, B. & Frank, J. (1973) Sexuality in
books for children: an exchange, School Libr J 19,6:44; Selected
international bibliography on sexuality in books for children, Bookbird
32(1994),2:37-9; Bürger, Th. & Schiller, U. (1992) Kinder- und
Jugendbücher zum Thema Liebe: Eine Kommentierte Auswahl-Bibliographie mit
Didaktischen Anmerkungen. Arbeitsstelle für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur an
der PH Ludwigsburg; Dahrendorf, M. (1982) Die Entdeckung der Sexualität in der
modernen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, Sexualpäd 10,2:1-6[cf. Info-Jugendlit
& Medien 34(1983),2:34-8;
Griffiths, J. M. (1987) The Treatment of Four Social Issues in Contemporary
Children's Literature: Violence, Breakdown
of the Family Unit, Human Sexuality, and Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
[Microform] National Library of Canada, 1988. M. Ed. Thesis, Memorial
University; Clyde, L. A. & Lobban, M. (2000) Out of the Closet and Into
the Classroom: Homosexuality in Books for Young People. Port Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia; Kidd, K. (1999) Sexuality and children's literature.
Editor's introduction, Lion & The Unicorn 23,3:v-viii; Nelson, C. B.
(1989) Sex and the single boy: ideals of manliness and sexuality in Victorian
literature for boys, Victorian Studies 32,4:525-50; Fuchs, L. (1984) The
Hidden Messages in Children's Books. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual
Meeting of the Florida Reading Association, Jacksonville, FL, October 18-21;
Klein, N. (1977) Growing Up Human: The Case for Sexuality in Children's Books, Children's
Lit in Educ 8,2:80-4 [122]
Hollander, Sh. K. (1989) Coping with child sexual abuse through children's
books, Elementary School Guidance & Counseling 23,3:183-93; Günin,
J. & Niedermann, A. (1993) Sexueller Missbrauch--Prävention durch das
Kinderbuch? Vierteljahresschr f Heilpäd & Nachbargebiete 62,3:327-48 [123]
Imel˜el˜e, lit. sharpened stakes such
as those used at the bottom of a pit-fall to trap game. [orig. footnote] [124]
Schaefer, L. C. (1964) Sexual Experiences
and Reactions of a Group of Thirty Women as Told to a Female Psychotherapist.
Report of an Ed. D. doctoral project. Columbia University. Data were later
incorporated into Schaefer, L. (1974 [1973]) Women and Sex. New York: Pantheon; Ribal, J. E. (1973) Learning Sex Roles: American and
Scandinavian Contrasts. San Francisco, Calif.: Canfield; Martinson, F. M. (1973) Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective. St. Peter,
MN: The Book Mark; Martinson, F. M. (1974) The Quality of Adolescent Sexual Experiences. St. Peter, MN: The
Book Mark; Halloran, J. (1995) The Sexual
Education of Ten Men. Diss., Temple University (DAI-A 56/04(1995):1249);
Leroy, M. (1993) Pleasure: The Truth
about Female Sexuality. London: HarperCollins, p16-38; Morrison, E. S. et al. (1980)
Growing Up Sexual. New
York [etc.]: D. Van Nostrand, p1-60; Kronhausen, Ph. & Kronhausen, E.
(1960) Sex Histories of American College
Men. New York: Ballantine, p26-96, 250-3; Lamb, Sh. (2001) The Secret Lives of Girls. New York:
Free Press. Clinical samples: Lukianowicz, N. (1960) Imaginary sexual partner, Arch Gen Psychia 3, Oct.:121-41; Caprio,
F. S. (1955) Variations in Sexual
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Reiss, H. M. (1990) An End to Shame:
Shaping our Next Sexual Revolution. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, p49-60.
Some accounts are available on homosexual trajectories (§8.2.1). Some insights may be gained
through secondary reading: Thorne, E. (1971) Your Erotic Fantasies. New York: Ballantine, p9-31; Friday, N.
(1975) Forbidden Flowers: More Women's
Sexual Fantasies. 1976 [1978] Dutch transl., Verboden Vruchten. Utrecht/Antwerpen: Bruna & Zn., esp. p20-55;
Friday, N. (1980) Men in Love. New
York: Doubleday. 1981 Dutch transl., Mannen
en Liefde. Utrecht/Antwerpen: Bruna & Zn.; Hite, Sh. (1981) The Hite
Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Knopf; Hite, Sh. (1994) The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up
under Patriarchy. London: Bloomsbury; Haavio-Mannila, E. & Roos, J. P.
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adolescents and adolescent mothers, Child
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et l'adolescent Zairois, Probl Soc Cong
94/5:89-118; Erny, P. (1977) Sur les
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Societies", 13-17 November, St. Petersburg; Rotkirch, A.
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Dyk, W. (1938) Son of Old Man Hat.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Relevant pages include p10, 44, 46, 97, 119, 137, 208 [134] Barton, R. F. (1938) Philippine
Pagans. The
Autobiographies of Three Ifugaros. London: George
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Villanueva, M. I. M. (1997) The Social
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and Females' Sexuality in Puerto Rico. Dissertation submitted to the
Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [136]
Shostak, M. (1981) Nisa: Life and Words
of a !Kung Woman. New York: Vintage Books [137]
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Parents Speak. New York: Facts on File |