You know what? just don't even read this one.

I’ve been flipping through a book called Curiouser: on the queerness of children (Bruhm and Hurley, eds.) for the last few days and my writing about it is minimal, just a few sticky notes and book marks. Maybe because it’s the end of the semester but my brain has kind of checked out of this whole school deal weeks ago. Still, I’m aiming for this post to be what I don’t do a lot of, regurgitation of someone’s arguments more than writing about their work. Not a fan of doing this... but it was kind of hinted at in the last meeting I had about this directed study that I should do a little more of that. By which I mean A told me “do more of this” and gave me a reading list. My god I love that she’s not subtle about her expectations of work. I swear some profs speak in code and laugh when you don’t figure it out in time. Like Jigsaw, but worse. It’s not just your life on the line; it’s your university grades. Now that I’ve gone drastically off topic because I’m typing while my mind is in 80 directions at once, I should probably just start.

Richard D Mohr writes an article called “The Pedophilia of Everyday Life”, which is about the representation of drugs and queer children in America. He argues that when they are presented together, they represent a message to the public and to smaller communities. The ad in question was that of a 12-14 year old boy with a very gender neutral appearance, his hair falling close to his eyes, one of which stares at the viewer, the other shadowed and distorted from the audience. He is about to do several lines of cocaine despite his young, almost pure image.  The caption below his face says “It used to be, at 13, little boys became interested in little girls”, implying several things according to our author. He views the ad with a perspective that drugs and queerness are new, distorted practices that children become “involved with”. He also suggests that by having them in the same ad, they are somehow connected in terms of social deviance and unacceptability. I can’t find the actual ad online, so I will put up a picture if it scans well.

It’s no secret that many Canadians generally believe that cocaine is dangerous and perhaps destructive to one’s social, physical, economical, psychological, etc. lives. Ultimately, being on coke, crack-cocaine or whatever this kid is about to do will make one’s life worse after they come down from his unbelievably fantastic high. I would say that this is a fairly reasonable and accepted statement. Perhaps due to our desire to view children as innocent and pure, we assume street drugs should have nothing to do with children. I’m not advocating pre-schoolers to have 17 bags of crack in their shoes, but why cocaine and homosexuality? What do they have to do with each other? We’re given few statements in this ad. This child is probably queer. This child is about to do a few lines of cocaine. Queerness and street drugs are related, because they are not what they used to be. Did the makers of this ad expect us to get sentimental and nostalgic about the good old days when people didn’t do drugs and kids were supposedly always and inherently heterosexual, heteronormative or even just “not queer”? Mohr argues that the representation of sexuality, gender and drug use in this advertisement are used to mutually demonize each other, making us question the practices of children and all gender-queer people. They are no longer just queer, but are a threat to what we see as “normal” and “healthy” as they become involved with drugs.    

I've heard this more than twice today...

When I hear someone say “The Africans” in class, it makes me cringe and I become a little bit scared at what is going to come out of the speaker’s mouth next.

Pregnancy test

*I don't feel the need to justify my desire to be pregnant and give someone a child on this blog, so I'm not posting about that. This is about something else. I may go to that subject later, but who knows?*
I have this thing where heterosexual sex scares and disgusts the bah-jeebus out of me. Like, I know some people like it, but I'm kind of terrified of the whole penis thing. (Or hole-penis thing. Ha.) But I want, at some point, to be pregnant and I'm looking into surrogacy. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, and now that I'm not 17, it's really something I can consider. So tonight I've been looking at surrogate information in Canada and even looked at the "official" application. Wow. Some of the assumptions that are made make me want to write a paper about it... or at least throw down a few point the blog, even though I'm working on another post. Looking at the information was supposed to just be a break, but there's a reason "Marianne has no attention span" has its own label. So, let's go, shall we? You can view the actual application here. 
Would I be willing to be a surrogate for a Jewish couple? A non-Caucasian couple? A same-sex couple? Umm, alright, this is just awkward. Are they assuming I'm white, non-Jewish and straight? Well, they're 2 for 3, but that's not the point. What if I weren't? This is when it gets awkward. Do you approach that in the application? I'm guessing you can't get indignant on their asses if you actually want to be a surrogate. Are we assuming that non-Caucasian and Jewish people are inherently unfit parents? Do people actually check "no" to these questions? Do people wanting to be surrogates think "I'd love to do this for a couple or a person. But not if they're Jewish.". What would the person reviewing the application think? They've probably seen it all, but still. Are they assuming that everyone applying is white, non-Jewish and (probably) straight? Or are these the "desirable" surrogates? Do I really want to know the answer to these?
Also, they keep asking me about my partner or husband, and assume I've already had at least one pregnancy. Which is something they actually look for in an applicant- someone who has had kids before. Not entirely sure why, but I'm not going to deconstruct it or rant about it, in the hopes that there is some actual reason for this. I wonder how much not having a partner or previous pregnancies will impact this process should I decide to attempt it soon. I'm sure the application will change in the next few years, so if I decide to wait a few years, the info they want might change. I'm hoping being young, single, queer and never having experienced a pregnancy won't be strikes against me, but they very well might be.

Pillar-of-the-community pedophilia

Kincaid mentions several times throughout his book what North America is both intrigued and disgusted by: “teacher sex scandals”. They’re all over the news, and frankly I can think of a few stories that never hit the news but occurred while my friends and I fought through high school. Sometimes they become old news fast, but the public is willing to hang onto a few stories now and then to demonstrate its “moral” stance of the situation.

I’m choosing to write about separate chapter of his book Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting than I did with my last Kincaid post. Under the heading “teacher sex scandals”, he presents some thoughts about the labelling of a child molester. He argues that the public is quick to both expect high moral standing from teachers at the same time that we show almost no hesitation when it comes to condemning them in court.  He suggests that perhaps this is because while teachers interacts with children for most of their day and are expected to be kind, they are also expected to maintain a professional, official image. They can be liked by students, but not too much. As a result of these expectations, teachers may be labelled “pillar-of-the-community pedophile or molester”, if they should engage in sexual acts with a student.

 The public is both fascinated and disgusted with these stories; rarely are these sexual interactions presented with the discourse of a relationship. They are presented as an adult manipulating and coercing a child into dirty, sinful acts. We are shocked because these people are supposed to both protect and teach our children at the same time as they are expected to supervise and discipline when things get out of hand.  When teachers don’t fulfill these expectations, they are subject to ridicule, discipline and social judgement by the public and their employers.

Kincaid states that we don’t question our line of thinking when it comes to the above narrative, that because it suits our needs of both fascination and repulsion, we don’t need to change it. News stories both glamorizing and admonishing the student-teacher sexual interaction fit the purpose of the news; to inform, entertain and shock the public with up to date events.  We are expected to feel shock, anger and disgust by these stories, partly because of the way that they are presented. As valuable members of society, teachers who breech codes of conduct become labelled as “professional pedophiles” or as mentioned above “pillar-of-the-community” pedophiles/molesters. But the particular ways in which the sexual interactions are presented to the public have much to do with how they are perceived. Never are the interactions between student-teacher portrayed as an egalitarian relationship, based on sameness of interests and equal attraction. They are most often represented as an exploitive and dangerous relationship, one in which children were lured into, where they were then used and abused by the wicked Pedophile/Child Molester. No one has names at this point, rather they are popularly thought of as “victim” and “predator” in the public’s eyes.

Are these perceptions remotely accurate in some cases? Probably not, much of it is likely plausible fiction in which it was assumed that the teacher had all the power in the world and the student was some helpless lamb in an evil world. Students aren’t dumb or asexual. We’re attracted to people older than us and our teachers sometimes. It happens and usually nothing is said or done about it and it’s no big deal. But the student who acts on it with a teacher is most likely not completely stupid. Despite who initiated what, student-teacher sex will always come back to bite the teacher in the ass, not the kid. It doesn’t matter if the student flaunted, flirted and charmed his/her way into the situation, the reality is that legally and socially, the teacher is in danger of losing their job and social lives. For someone who was supposed to be helpless, this sure places a lot of power in a student’s hand. On days that I feel particularly soulless, I figure a lot of students might try this; sleep with a teacher to get what you want and then manipulate the situation to fit your needs. But I have no soul or heart, so my assumptions that other people think this way are probably overestimated. No matter if they claim to be in love, the minute the student decides they’re unhappy is the minute the teacher better start watching their back for new legal and social recourse.

"Pornography store. I was buying pornography"

  The title of this has nothing to do with anything. So when I'm at a loss, I usually just quote the Simpsons.

Well shit, dude.  How dare people tell Califia they are acting out....infantalization is hurtful and rarely helps to solidify the opposing sides’ argument. “I believed that if adults would listen, children were capable of telling us what kind of attention they wanted or when something harmful had happened to them” (page 55 of Public Sex).

Califia knows how to do statistics effectively, I can already tell. He gives a year, and the facts and his own reflections on it instead of merely listing stats that are really not helping their argument (sorry again, Levine). Mass produced and purchased child pornography was not as common as the moral panic would suggest. The panic brought the public’s eye away from possibly the most commonly harmful institution- the nuclear family. No need to go over specific numbers, but it’s well known now that children are/were much more likely to be sexually abused by someone they know/knew than to be involved with a child pornographer.

People between the ages of 12 and 18 are most likely not asexual. Having the age of consent laws set at 18, Califia argues we make adolescents vulnerable to exploitation, but at the same time, deny them their sexuality. Abstinence only sex education continues to be rampant in America, despite the rate at which teens are sexually active. More teens are sexually active than know about proper forms of birth control and contraceptives. Ill informed youth are obviously not benefitting from their lack of education. Abstinence only sex education is especially harmful when it is commonly known that the group of teens being educated is already sexually active. Not to make light of the situation, but too little too late, much? What concerns me is that abstinence only sex education is most often based on a set of morals, not health or (forgive me for saying this), science and biology. Abstinence education is most often preached, not taught, and when kids lack fundamental understanding of their own biology, unintended pregnancies occur at staggering rates.  

When they don’t understand “the parts” and their functions, how the hell can we expect them to make decisions about sex? They can and have to make conscience choices about sex, regardless of the form of sex education. Why not be honest about it, treat teens as adults and sexual beings? It’s already been proved over and over that pretending sex doesn’t exist or telling youth “just don’t do it. Wait until marriage, until God approves” way of educating youth does not work. Pregnancies, STDs, abortion and everything else the self-righteous right-wing-nuts fear happen regardless of the message sent to youth. And as I implied above, the abstinence only message most often comes from some sort of Christian point of view. This wouldn’t bother me if it were in their church; church is kind of one of those more optional things. If you don’t like the one you’re in, find another one or decide it’s not for you. You can’t do that with public schools with ease; there’s no school hopping if you don’t like the teachers or some stupid rule the administration has put in place, and social services tends to frown upon parents allowing kids to just opt out of school altogether. (Up to a certain age, then the youth is on his/her own. Which makes sense, but that’s another entry.) Christianity or God have no place in a public school that claims to treat everyone the same. If students or their parents don’t want youth knowing the facts of biology, they should be given the opportunity to opt of the classes, but schools should have no right to push a set of religious values on its students.  Youth shouldn’t have to change where they go to school (which isn’t easy for multiple reasons) because they aren’t getting taught the facts about sex.

That’s right, Peter, I said it. The facts, the truth, the real and actual biological function of what happens within the body should be heard by the students who are willing to listen. Telling them how eggs and sperm move, or how sperm are produced and the function of the fallopian tubes will not make kids have sex or encourage them to do so. Biology class or even “sex education” isn’t an instruction manual teaching kids how to have sex.  (Can you imagine? “So that’s where that goes?! And just how do you think it’s going to... oh. I see now.” Or “You’re doing it wrong! Refer to figure 4.23 in the book and try again. Never mind, I’ll do it myself. ”)  

This is what happens when you cross a Catholic raised girl with women's studies

Forgive me, Women’s Studies, for I have sinned. I never thought the day would come when I began to sympathize with the kid from Jesus Camp. Rachel is this little girl who is simultaneously cute and creepy as fuck as she tries to convert strangers to Christianity in the bowling alley (forward to around 8:00 to see the part I’m talking about). I fear I have become to think like her, Women’s Studies, and this scares me greatly. Not because I’ve suddenly found the evangelical lord that Rachel loves, but because some of my thinking habits are not unlike to hers.

I find myself screaming in my head or on paper about social constructionism. I get so frustrated in psychology classes, having to regurgitate this stuff about pathways, neurobiology and metabolisms, when it’s all just social construction. These ideas are not solid facts, they’re stories we tell ourselves as scientists. They’ve created, constructed and moulded this particular line of thinking into facts of the human mind and behaviour. If someone else had gotten there first, it could have been a completely different discourse; another understanding of biology entirely. Nothing is a fact, nothing is natural. Grass might be green, but that’s only because someone decided what grass is and how green looks.

How is this like Rachel? Because we’re both naive, but also determined and stubborn in our own point of view.  She’s convinced of her lord, god and saviour, and just wishes people could think the way she does, and find their love for god. I don’t think we have the same desire to convert others even though I’ve labelled everything around me a social construction; unreal objects with pointless definition and meaning. I know and acknowledge that there are millions of other points of view, some of which should be considered, but secretly, I think I’m right.

Maybe I'm wrong- You do the math.

    When I started this blog, I thought I would write a lot about “pedophilia” and/or intergenerational sex, but as time creeps on, it occurs to me that I’ve barely addressed it.  I’ve continuously shied away from it, pretending that I didn’t know how many definitions of pedophilia were out there, deliberately trying to ignore statistics that Levine and other authors insist on establishing in every chapter. And I just can’t deal with stats for a few reasons:

    I don’t think they represent enough information. Numbers are someone else’s area, not for this women’s studies student. I can’t hop on board with quantitative research and without feeling like something is missing; I want to learn and question the definitions given, not plot them on a graph. That’s just not a part of what I think women’s studies is.

   Whose statistics can I (we?) trust? Unless we have universal terms and understandings of each category, no one’s math is going to match. If we rely on math to tell the story of human behaviour, we need to decide on the “right equation” before we present the findings as some sort of fact. But we’re far from there, and that’s ok. It’s alright to have fluid, changing and interacting definitions of categories and identities. 

I don’t like math.

   The constant use of statistics when debating a social issue seems cowardly and childish. Everyone knows there are numbers; our society values math and science more than they ever will the humanities and arts, but would it kill people to come up with an argument that didn’t rely solely on statistics, demographics, graphs and numbers?  Do they fear the real world? Do they fear that when they creep out from underneath their calculators and computer screens, there will be this shocking real 3-Dimensial universe? One filled with inequalities, social problems and things that can’t be solved with a mathematical formula? When it comes to the issue of child abuse, molestation and pedophilia, what will the statistics do for anyone? Telling a parent, or anyone, that there’s really not as high of a percentage of child molesters as they might have thought isn’t that comforting. In fact, it kind of makes you look like a jerk. Presenting stat after stat in a book in an attempt to convince people we’re being too hyperbolic about protecting kids from sex fails to make the impact the author wanted to make. Levine, I’m looking at you.  

   When they present the “facts and stats” as some kind of reassurance for parents, it’s most likely ineffective. Are you trying to make us less afraid of the “pedophile”, “the abuser” or other monstrous characters we have constructed? Numbers don’t do that, fool.

“I’m hesitant to give my kids more freedom, even though they’re responsible and we’ve known this area for years” says parent.

“Yeah, and statistically speaking, your kids are much more likely to be abused by your partner, or your parents. 7405 out of 210593 sexual assaults of children take place by someone the child knows[1]” says the not so helpful statistician to the concerned parent and public.

I’m not saying there’s no use for math in social debates, but using it as your primary source is weak. Numbers prove very little, if anything at all within certain contexts. The answer to “how has contemporary society constructed, both legally and socially, the pedophile?” is not 7.

This wasn’t supposed to turn into a rant, and I fear I broke that promise about 3 paragraphs back. This was supposed to be a logical argument, but somehow my mind ran out of steam and basically decided to yell at Judith Levine for making her awesome-sounding book boring and better fit for a person who cares more about numbers. I just wanted to tell her that numbers are great, but they do nothing for someone who is trying to deconstruct the profile we have given to pedophiles in contemporary North America.  Stats even hinder the process by creating panic, because number's seem to be something people can hang onto, that they will believe. Math doesn't lie, but if we don't know the equations, we have to question the answers statistics provides for us.

[1] Note: This is not a “factual” statistic.

---

Hardly bedtime stories: what we tell kids about sex

Somehow I don’t think lists and Billy Joel lyrics constitute an academic post (someone correct me if I’m wrong). So I thought I would just post a little about what I have been reading lately. Mainly I’ve been into these two books (that I constantly mix up in my head). One is called Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine and the other is James Kincaid’s Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting.

I thought I would really like Levine’s book, but it’s hard to get through, because she presents a lot of stats through the entire thing. Yeah, I think math is important (okay, maybe I don’t), but for some reason I think she’s hiding behind her numbers. She will tell the reader that one “well known” statistic is wrong, and presents another. No offense to Levine, but I’m hardly going to find her stats more convincing because they’re under the title of her book than the ones that are presented by anyone else. I’m just going to kind of leave her hanging for this post. For some reason, I feel compelled to tell the world that I am doing more work on this thing than it appears.

I can handle Kincaid and his arguments a little easier. His chapter called “Myths of Protection, Acts of Exposure” is a good read. He throws some stats around, but there’s something about his arguments that seems to have more substance than numbers do. Plus I think he likes lists. I LOVE lists (when I was younger I started my journal at both ends. Front to back was where I wrote and stuff, back to front was lists. That was trivia you didn’t need to know.) One of the lists he composes is titled the same as the chapter “Myths of Protection”.

In this chapter he explores how the protection of children from the ubiquitous monstrous child molester is every bit as hyperbolic as the notion of the monster itself that we present to children and parents. (If he does a list, so I’m allowed to, too. )

1.  Censorship, whether it is blocking sites on the internet, through book banning, rating movies and TV shows, or only putting the R rated media on late at night, we censor it all. He states this as fact, which, to his credit, it is. The enforcement of these rules is hardly consistent, and who eventually gets the final word on what kids see or hear?

It depends on the kids and how “supervised” they are. Are we really protecting kids from anything by telling them they can’t watch certain movies or play particular games? Once again, I have no idea, but the censorship thing isn’t working so well. Kids still see things “meant for adults”, and the results are yet to be seen because they’re still kids. But I doubt it will mould them into psychopaths. I’m not saying you should pop in a porn video for your 6 and 11 year old kids to watch, but hearing and seeing the censored things might make them less exciting. If people actually took the time to explain why they aren’t allowed to see or hear something, kids might not be so persistent on seeing it. (There’s a story about an Ouija board in here. And the Exorcist. Those are the only two things I can remember that Ma was insistent on censoring. Now I know why.)

The only way to really effectively censor something is to make it nonexistent for everyone. That is just not going to happen; adults want their porn; teens want their slasher-flicks; and I want to watch documentaries containing real medical procedures that may be considered graphic to some viewers.

I guess I’m no farther ahead than Kincaid was at the end of his first point on the list, but at least I tried, questioning the point of censoring media from kids. Censorship #*%!ing sucks.

2.  His second point is about a program for teens called “Sex Respect”, which was an abstinence only sex-education program in America. It made little impact on teen’s behaviour. This is still true in America where abstinence only is promoted as the only sex-education tool; kids/teens still have sex, but they no longer have the resources or accurate information to make their own choices. It’s these kind of programs that tell kids they can get AIDS from kissing (no, I’m not joking), that pure, good, non-hell-bound people wait until they are married into heteronormative bliss to have sex.  

These tactics don’t work! That’s been proven time and time again each time a different state tries to give it a go. A lot of the arguments have to do with G/god, which will hardly make a different to the large groups of teens who have predominantly secular attitudes. If they don’t believe in G/god(s), how is preaching going to help make the point that “sex is bad unless you’re married”?

Also, they made buttons and shirts with hilarious sayings such as “Do the right thing and wait for the ring!” and “Don’t be a louse, wait for your spouse!” I imagine these are in neon colours and oversized, to be worn with acid washed jeans.

3.  He looks at a number of things children are taught as a protection such as “good-touch” versus “bad touch”, and what secrets are harmful, or what to do if someone touches them in a way that “makes them feel bad or upset”. Kincaid is critical of these lessons, stating that children are most likely to be confused by the ambiguity of the statements. They probably will be, but I really disagree with him if he is suggesting that children shouldn’t know about abuse and abusers. He questions censorship, but doesn’t want children to be informed about what abuse might consist of, what abuse might make them feel like. That is more than contradictory.

Kids should know that they have someone to tell if they’re being treated in ways that don’t make them feel safe, and that no one should make them feel that way. “That way” meaning unsafe, upset, hurt or dirty. Explaining this to a four year old is easier said than done, and like censorship, it’s up to supposed to be parents to decide how/if they want their young kids to know about mature topics.

Kincaid has five more points on this list, but a few of them are somewhat irrelevant (outdated, and very locally specific ideas) so I won’t go over them. Some of them are ideas that deserve posts of their own, because they strongly relate to other books and articles I’ve read recently. I’m not done with Kincaid’s book yet so there will be more posts about his work.

Real life moments: You said that in public?! (part 2)

So when I said that this was going to be a two part post, I meant I would post some more about space and sexuality. It occurred to me this morning that the last post was pretty much all I understand/ “get” about the whole sexuality and space thing.  Public and private spaces are fluid; constantly changing.  That what goes on “spaces” is often performance. And now I’m pretty much just drawing a blank, making this two part post really unnecessary. So I leave you with a list

Things that can transform from “private” to “public” in an instant:

Adopting a lot of cats.... hoarding animals.

Rolling a cigarette... meth lab explosion.

Taking drugs... ending up in rehab.

Being grounded by your parents... going to jail.

Sex in your home... arrested for prostitution.

Drawing in your notebook... having your work in a gallery.

Writing a journal... having it read...and/or published.  

Also, here are some relevant Billy Joel for your reading pleasure:

Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on

-The Stranger

Real life moments: You said that in public?! (part 1)

This week in sex and culture, we're talking about sex, sexuality and space. In some of the readings, the value of privacy came up. The authors (and the class) attempted to dissect public and private spaces, coming to the general conclusion that if it is in your home, it tends to be private. But if you start doing something illegal or "immoral" all of this can quickly change, where certain, if not all, aspects of your life are suddenly manufactured for public use; subject to scrutiny by anyone and everyone. What/where qualifies as public or private? I'll be honest and say I actually don't know... this is pretty much the first day that my mind didn't go "WTF" when we talked about sexuality, gender (and other identities) and space.

This is all to say that if incredibly stupid things are said in public and I hear them (ok fine, I'm more likely to be saying them), they're pretty much fair game for the blog. But I don't/won't post private conversations unless I have permission. No need to make any more enemies.
So I will have a post tomorrow about fucked up statement(s) said publicly. For now I need to be studying for this test that might, in all honesty, give me a heart attack before I even get around to posting it.*


 *In the event that this happens, I have most of the post written in my developmental psych notebook, you can read it there. The rest are on CSI Sidle's hard drive and in my sex and culture notebook. After death a lot of that stuff becomes public space...hey, that might be a good post in itself. How did I even come to talk about this? It's fairly cocky of myself to assume someone would give a shit about the thoughts that come out of my mind and onto paper or screen in the event that psychology kills me.