Dr Em The Trojan Unicorn, Queer Theory and Paedophilia

An idea i'm still solidifying is that it may be no-coincidence that as the CSA Inquiry has kicked off and historic sexual abuse is being talked about and given pages in the press an ideology has come to dominate which changes the terms of abuse and challenges the age of informed consent.

Thanks Always, i try to filter the jargon into understandable language.
Brilliant point Womb (an aside, I love your name).

I think the reason QT has triumphed in academia and institutions is it is always hard to go up against men's sexual entitlement. As feminists did, queer theory emerged as a backlash. Since then with its ever increasing inroads into academia, if academics didn't bow they risked not getting funding, not getting contracts renewed. Now, younger scholars coming up risk not getting passed if they don't support queer theory and mention certain authors.

In my opinion, the academy created an image that once women were admitted and allowed to be awarded degrees and take academic positions that sexism in HE was solved. This has hidden the fact that those higher up have been male and set the terms of correct thinking, the external funders have also been male and set the terms of research and what questions shall be asked. For example, as soon as feminist thought got a foot hold and was being listened to (women's studies) it was kneecapped and replaced with 'gender studies'.

So if sexual abuse is having children do things with their bodies that frighten them or make them uncomfortable, does that mean any adult trying to tell a child to use the bathroom next to a trans individual of the opposite sex is sexually abusing them if the child feels uncomfortable?

This is an amazing series of articles. Anyone who hasn’t read them please do so.

Don’t be put off if you think there will be too much jargon; there really isn’t. Everything is spelt out in easy to follow terms.

Somer Brodribb, Nothing Matters: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism, is also brilliant. Available here: www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Somer-Brodribb-Nothing-Matters.-A-Feminist-Critique-of-Postmodernism.pdf

Always, if you can, please request these books into your local library to get them on the shelves.

Thanks for that link dr em! The Sheila Jefferys book is very illuminating!

What a brilliant discussion going on. Thank you for all the kind comments. RuffleCrow and HumberElla that is a good idea - also sending the letters to newspapers might be helpful?

If anyone has any evidence of the NSPCC change can you post it in please? I don't have it and can't find it.

lokithor thank you for sharing your personal story, like others I'm so sad and angry that this happened to you.

DJLippy your threads cracking! Yes Sister!

Shelia Jeffrey's 'Unpacking Queer Politics' is very good and looks at how queer theory became a political movement. It is available here:radfem.org/unpacking-queer-politics/
If you have a local library it is worth requesting it to get it on the shelves there.

I think there have been MNers in the past who have contacted them and received no response.
No reason not to keep raising it though.

Should we contact the NSPCC and ask them to change their definition so that it is in line with the law?

When you see the 'theories' of these 'great men' laid out like this, you realise that all their intellectual bullshitting had a purpose after all: to enable them to intellectualise and therefore in their twisted view 'excuse' the abuse of children. You could have said it in under 50 words, Foucunt! Would have saved a lot of Philosophy students a lot of headaches.

Ironically, Gill was very left wing. I'm glad the BBC don't use his typeface as their logo anymore.

My very limited understanding of queer theory was that it was mostly originally linked to the arts which is obviously basically 'pretend.'

Something somewhere at some point has gone very crooked.

However the arts haven't got the greatest of track records for safeguarding. Eg Eric Gill, child actors etc.

lokithor

I am confused by why the establishment has so enthusiastically embraced queer theory. It should be the antithesis of everything they believe in.

Is it because they know that, from their position of power, they are unlikely to be adversely affected - and will, in fact, get more power as the rest of us fight for survival? Do they see Brave New World as a desirable utopia? Are they hoping to benefit from the removal of boundaries and sexualisation of children?

I still feel sick. But also angry. I will fight to protect children with every fibre of my being.

Sorry for the multiple posts. One last thing.

Regarding being frightened. Flight or fight seems to be the expected norm when someone feels under attack. I certainly felt under attack when this first happened to me. My response was to 'freeze'. I gave no emotion, nothing. I couldn't actually believe this was happening to me. Therefore the person doing this to me would have thought that I was compliant in what they were doing.

It should be Fight, Flight or Freeze. And in cases of child sexual abuse I can only think that the last would be the best option when an adult much stronger and taller than you is doing this to you as a child.

Off now to walk and enjoy the sunshine.

The problem is who gets to frame and define 'consensual'?

sorry posting in haste as late and multi-tasking

can you post more about your concerns about the definition of the word "consensual"?

I'm not sure I understand your question

The problem is who gets to frame and define 'consensual'?

The adults having sex. Obviously

I appreciate that there are nuanced issues regarding consent. Anyone who has studied cults in even the most rudimentary way will appreciate this

Re the term "sex positive", I am supportive of adults feeling free to express themselves sexually, to feel able to experiment and play with partners to discover what their bodies like, without judgement, providing it is consensual of course.

The problem is who gets to frame and define 'consensual'?

I agree with you Placemats and to take it one step further, it is setting the bar at a level where abusers could legitimately say what they are doing is not abuse. That it is not recognised by leading child protection agencies and charities as abuse. That what they are doing does not meet the criteria, as written.

And of course they would be dead right, because now if it’s not observably frightening the child then it doesn’t meet the criteria.

And I’m sorry to hear that happened to you.

Children need boundaries about sexual behaviour and without that it's very easy for there to be a re enactment of what goes on around them, just as children pick up other habits and norms from within the family!

I totally agree with this.

to you and everyone affected by this, including me!

Meant to also add that this advice seems to be directed towards adults and seems to me to be a directive as to what an adult can and cannot get away with in terms of sexual abuse. It's a disgrace.

NSPCC Speak Out, Stay Safe programme, with the definition of sexual abuse is ‘when a child is being made, asked, or rewarded for doing anything with their body that frightens or worries them

As a young pubescent girl, I was sexually abused, not raped, by a male. This statement is victim blaming and is highly irresponsible advice to give to children. Plus, I wouldn't have understood it.

Thank-you Dr Em for writing a simpler explanation of queer theory. I find queer theory confusing but starting to realise that might be because I expect logic and internal consistency

Not sure this is the most positive start to my Monday morning, but what an enlightening read

It used to boggle me that these theoreticians, these priests of queer theory, couldn’t fathom that when they had created their queered, anything-goes, no-such-thing-as-objective-reality world, that what would happen is that the existing power differentials (male/female, adult/child, powerful/powerless) would seamlessly reproduce in that space, because they not only hadn’t been addressed, they’d been disappeared in a linguistic sleight of hand.

Now I think they did know, and that was the whole fucking point.

I was right when I was forced to read Butler and Foucault at uni and told my tutor “it’s just a load of wordy bollocks, I can’t get through it and every time I finish a sentence I think, so what?”. I may also have said I found Foucault creepy. Tutor was Not Impressed.

lokithor

I am so very sorry that you grew up in such an unsafe and violating environment.

I am now highly suspicious of the "sex positive" movement, basically for all the same reasons you describe.

I am very liberal around sex and sexuality when it comes to adults, but I believe very strongly that children should be protected from adult sexual behaviour.

I cannot say too much for reasons of confidentiality but the situation you describe is sadly familiar to me from other people whose lives have been harmed by inappropriate exposure to adult sexual activity.

I also had an experience of sleeping overnight in a relatives bedroom when i was maybe 8 years old, along with my siblings, during a party where the adults all got very drunk. At some point a drunken couple crashed into our bedroom and started having sex against the wall. I found it deeply distressing and it only happened once and was not a swingers party or anything like that.

I can only imagine how alone and frightened you must have felt if this kind of thing happened in your home. To be abused by your brother as well, that is so awful.

Obviously your brother will have been damaged by this also, not that it excuses his behaviour, but I can imagine that the whole experience must have left you burdened with all kinds of complicated feelings and feeling very alone and unsupported as a child.

I am personally not concerned with what consenting adults get up to in the bedroom, but whatever kind of sex lives adults enjoy should be kept well away from children.

Any counsellor or psychotherapist will have dealt with the common trauma that children experience when they enter their parents bedroom unexpectedly and discover their parents having sex. Psychotherapists call this the "primal scene" and it is a common source of trauma and complicated feelings in children.

Young children do not understand adult sex and often mistake the sounds and sights of the rival scene as an act of violence.

Re the term "sex positive", I am supportive of adults feeling free to express themselves sexually, to feel able to experiment and play with partners to discover what their bodies like, without judgement, providing it is consensual of course.

I could be supportive of the "sex positive" movement if it was not so infiltrated by cults and predators.

lokithor sorry you had that happen to you, thank you for sharing it's useful background to help us understand the impact of lack of boundaries

AgileLass I'd never heard of them but a bit of poking around and reading their main directors tweets has me very uncomfortable.. Their contribution to child protection seems to be to argue that any restrictions anyone else puts in place or proposes won't work so shouldn't be used. A lot of promotion of sex positive.

They are creepy, hiding in plain sight again