An article from The Times (in the U.K.) blames feminism for older women having sexual relations with underage boys. Well you just gotta put all the blame for women “behaving badly” on feminism, right? As everyone knows that if women just remained passive-submissive doormats, never ones to question the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural disparaging of their sex, then they would never commit disgusting crimes such as pedophilia. Whatever. The author of the article brings up Germaine Greer–personally I don’t know a hell of a whole lot of Greer or this “controversial” book of hers’ called ‘The Boy‘ which is cited by the author. But considering the flippancy of the author’s tone and sentiments towards feminism in general, women, and his attempt to obviously blame feminism for sex-crimes committed by women, this is probably just another one of those poorly done anti-feminist screeds found in some journalism.
IS THERE an element of paedophilia in the new feminism? There does seem to be an awful lot of it about these days. The coffee-table bible which provokes the thought is, of course, Germaine Greer’s 2003 book The Boy, a somewhat iffy collection of pictures of pre-pubescent lovelies from life and art, an illustrated paean of praise for the beauty of the young male presented as a feminist rallying cry for women’s right to ogle under-age male totty.
Really? Would this be Greer’s rallying cry or that of all feminists in general? Or is this even Greer’s rallying cry at all? Because I don’t know about you, but for me there are two groups of males; those that are “legal” and those that “aren’t“. I don’t mess with those that “aren’t,” or even pay them much attention at all (considering the immaturity–especially towards girls and women–of a great many of them, but hell, even much older men can be worse). And if the book, ‘The Boy’ is plastered with images of pre-pubescent, hence very much so underage males, then I be very disturbed by it, and why the hell would anyone publish such a thing in this day in age? I understand the premise of demolishing old social taboos forbidding [hetero] women to look and enjoy the male physique, much as a hetero male would enjoy looking at the female physique. But I doubt and even very much disagree that you would need to demolish a sexual double standard and social taboo against women, using the images of pre-pubescent males as some kind of pseudo-kiddie-porn for women. That’s appalling, they’re kids. But I digress…..
According to the cover line, the book set out to demolish “one of the last great Western taboos” (not the one that says adults should curb any lascivious feelings they have towards the sexually under-age, but the sub-clause which, according to Greer, represents an oppressive restriction on grown-up women). Greer said she was out to “advance women’s reclamation of their capacity for, and right to, visual pleasure.”[…]
The book has been described as “endearingly dotty”. However … packed as it is with the sort of images that, if they were of young girls and discovered on the hard disk of an ageing rock guitarist, would have him in the News of the World and on the sex offenders’ register faster than you could say: “Hope I die before I get old” … “frankly dodgy” might have been a better description.
Ironically, of course, with The Boy, Greer was unwittingly supporting the sexist proposition that a woman’s sexuality is not to be taken seriously; it is too weak to be predatory (not for nothing was “nothing” Elizabethan slang for the vagina) and besides, the Mrs Robinson syndrome is a male fantasy, right? Boys welcome such “seduction” as a rite of passage.
I believe that the idea of underage young males “wanting” to be “seduced” by older women mostly comes from and is even promoted by our male-sexual-fantasy driven culture and entertainment industry–which always arrogantly pressumes to know what we all want when it comes to sex and even what our sexual fantasies should be. The crude phrase ‘MILF’ comes to mind when it comes to this “Mrs. Robinson syndrome” and having a crush on your older female teacher, or best friend’s mother. Crushes are one thing–and normal, everyone has them–but the “object” of the crush using the infatuation of the underage person as an excuse to initiate sexual relations, is quite another…and illegal. And I seriously doubt that all young underage males fantasize about being “seduced” (which in this case dealing with minors, is a pretty word for ” sexual assault” and even “rape”) by an older woman, or even willingly “welcome” such relations. But that’s what our sex-popular culture and even some guys tell us; it’s “hot” for young guys to have sex with their “sexy” female teachers, never mind that they’re underage and the teachers should know better then to commit a crime. But this is hardly the fault of feminism, though the author seems to suggest otherwise, due to a book written by a feminist. Because when social ills arise, blame feminism and the women’s liberation movement for it. Gee, it provides such a nice and convenient scape-goat.
The ghost of the damned phrase “contributory negligence”, idle since it was rightly exorcised from rape-case courtrooms, lurks stage left, and was heard clanking its chains again last week. Now, I know it isn’t done to have a pop at other columnists, but in the case of Minette Marrin in last week’s Sunday Times I am prepared to make an exception. Marrin’s article posed a curious defence (under the headline “A prisoner of sexual double standards”) of a female teacher who had been jailed for seducing a 14-year-old boy with whom she had embarked on a six-month affair. While conceding that what she had done was illegal, Marrin mounted a wondrous apologia for Hannah Grice, the female teacher, and concluded that the law had been a “misogynist prig” in giving her a 15-month prison sentence. The lad, you see, had been “very willing “ and it wasn’t as if his 32-year-old seducer was actually the boy’s teacher, just a teacher at his school. Besides, she didn’t really seduce him … it started because he developed a crush on her. Virtually his fault, then.
Marrin acknowledged: “As an underage person, he could not legally have consented”, but then added: “but it seems that in everyday understanding he did.” Anyway, she wrote, “boys of 14 vary; many of them are sexually mature young men, suffering not from shyness but from sexual longing”.
Well, that’s all right then, case dismissed. Male children, it seems, are not to be given the same level of protection as girls from predatory teachers, so long as the teacher is a woman (despite the fact that the amendment of the Sexual Offences Act in 2003 made it a criminal offence for a teacher to have sex with a pupil under 18, let alone 15). Can you imagine the outcry if I defended some 32-year-old male teacher who’d been convicted for giving some flirty 14-year-old Lolita extra biology practical after class? No matter how much she’d been “asking for it”, Sir would have been in breach of a basic trust.
Yep, feminists don’t give two-shits about boys being raped by their female teachers, and we sure as hell don’t give a damn about sexual double standards–including the one that says all young underage males “welcome” sexual relations with older women no matter how illegal it is. I look at such cases being no different from male teachers raping underage female students. But then again, why do feminists have to spend up all of our time and energy placating to the needs of men and boys? Those mostly in control of what pop-culture and the entertainment industry says about sex and sexual fantasies (and what they should be) are men. They’re the ones saying that all young, vulnerable underage boys would just love it if their best friend’s mother would “seduce” them, and then the courts and law enforcement are stupid enough to buy into it, and so are the women defending themselves with this tripe. The author should be pointing the finger at those people, but no, let’s blame feminism and the women’s liberation movement because it’s so easy to blame them whenever women break the law, and don’t receive equal sentencing as their male counter-parts who commit the same crimes. Never mind those old chivalrous male judges and law enforcement officers, nope-nope.
[…]Women, the poor, harmless creatures. Even when they’ve transgressed, one can’t blame them.
Right, because we’re dumbasses with no moral agency. In conclusion, obviously I call so much bullshit on this “women committing sex-crimes and getting away with it, and sexual double standards are all feminist women’s fault because of a book written by an Aussie feminist woman” article. Just you’re usual screed blaming feminism for crimes committed by women, as if women never committed crimes even sex-crimes long before the word feminism was even coined. Next week, some journalist will blame feminism for puppy-killings.
(sigh) Which is it, mainstream press? Feminists either want to castrate young men or jump their adolescent bones. Can’t be both.
Germaine Greer and I have had our ups and downs, but she’s not a damn pedophile. As I understand it, ‘The Boy’ is a reversal-reversal: an attempt to point out that being objectified has not always been the sole province of women and girls, and that, historically, young men have been presented in much the same way that young women are now. The male body was the site of a different kind of sexuality than the brittle, rapacious Schwarzenegger variety. It’s something that any student of art history takes for granted–Caravaggio, for God’s sake–but something that people afflicted by an ahistorical culture tend to forget.
I’m sure that Greer isn’t attempting to _equate_ male and female objectification, or to assert that women were the ones doing the objectifying, or to applaud this kind of objectification for any gender; the anthology has a more complex rationale than that. It’s definitely not, “Live! Nude! Underage! Boys!” though.
Don’t feminists do this as part of their critical analysis, though? (“This” = assigning blame for crime on social movements or trends, occasionally but not always eclipsing the actual individual perp.)
IE, rape is bad, and [some particular rape] was bad, but we have to look at the “rape culture” and the social constructions that make some males think its OK to act in this fashion, and so on. Political/sexual/moral movements are certainly social constructions. (And, generally, I think there’s a lot of validity to this approach. It DOES matter what the violator learned and was taught and believed.)
In other words, your criticism of this article seems unreflective. You’re critiquing the general phenomenon without reconciling (or acknowledging) that the general phenomenon is one you use. If it’s appropriate to inquire whether masculinism factors in to a man’s rape, it’s certainly appropriate to inquire whether feminism factors into a woman’s pedophilia.
That doesn’t determine the answer, of course; I haven’t looked at Greer’s book and don’t plan to conduct personal follow-up on the question these articles raise; a little too inside-baseball for this crabby empiricist. But you seem to be trying to foreclose a line of inquiry, and you don’t really have standing to do so.
What piny said, also, Germaine Greer’s never been any kind of representativ feminist as you say, Ps-A). She is though of course an important writer; Minette Marin is just another shoot-mouth-off commenter (she wrote an atrocious piece blaming “multiculturalism” for things that hadn’t even happened… ).
I can’t remember what the reviews I read of _The Boy_ said, but here’s one I just found:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2004/01/the_boy
(Sorry, “representative feminist”. )
Robert,
If it’s appropriate to inquire whether masculinism factors in to a man’s rape, it’s certainly appropriate to inquire whether feminism factors into a woman’s pedophilia.
1. “masculinism” and “feminism” seem to me not analogous, 2. ” whether feminism factors into a woman’s pedophilia” is different from whether “feminism” has brought about a rise in paedophilia, assuming that is that there is such a rise, 3. I’d be interested to know how you think you think such an inquiry should be conducted.
1. They don’t need to be analogous.
2. True; I’m speaking pretty broadly, however. Feminists both inquire whether rape culture increases the incidence of rape, and examine how the rape culture factors into a particular rape.
3. Beats me; see the comment about crabby empiricism.
4) What Jayann said. Maintaining a power imbalance will cause the people on top to abuse the people below: power – accountability = abuse. Can that be said of a movement whose purpose is to end hierarchies like this? A movement whose leading thinkers have said many, many times that sexual abuse is evil and that no one is owed sexual gratification?
Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.
Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.
It’s a push poll sentence.
Can that be said of a movement whose purpose is to end hierarchies like this?
Oh, come on. You can have the best ideals in the world, that doesn’t mean that you’re automatically living them. I’m a Christian, albeit a bad one; can I use “but we Christians are opposed to unfair treatment of employees” to defend myself against a charge of mistreating an employee?
Precisely because pedophilia is such a gross violation of power relations, I think the presumption ought to be in favor of openness to explanations and approaches, regardless of whose ox is being gored. If someone suggests that economic conservatism leads to pedophilia, I want to see their ideas.
Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.
True, but so? Both questions are interesting and valid.
>>Oh, come on. You can have the best ideals in the world, that doesn’t mean that you’re automatically living them. I’m a Christian, albeit a bad one; can I use “but we Christians are opposed to unfair treatment of employees” to defend myself against a charge of mistreating an employee? >>
No, but you could use, say, Ourbodiesourselves.com to defend against the charge that feminism wants to disempower women with regard to their bodies. And you could use feminist writings about rape, sexual molestation, and predatory sexuality to counter arguments that feminism lends itself to pedophilia, forgives pedophilia, or encourages pedophilia.
>>Precisely because pedophilia is such a gross violation of power relations, I think the presumption ought to be in favor of openness to explanations and approaches, regardless of whose ox is being gored. If someone suggests that economic conservatism leads to pedophilia, I want to see their ideas.>>
What if they’re arguing that Catherine MacKinnon supports rape?
>>Also, “Is there an element of pedophilia in today’s feminism?” is not the same as examining how feminism might contribute to sexual abuse of young men.>>
The analogy you made would be valid if the article were asking the latter. The former is, as QrazyQat said, a “push-poll” sentence. And speaking of openness to explanations and ideas, it’s not a question designed to start a deep analysis of feminist thought and its effect on male and female sexuality. It’s designed to make readers scared of those nasty older viragos and their unnatural appetites–that’s why the writer made it sound as though Germaine Greer were stalking the Uffizi with one hand groping for the marble flanks of Greek heroes and the other fumbling under her skirt.
A lawyer’s defense of her client hardly constitutes feminist thought, and it is unfair for the author of the piece to imply that it does. If anything, feminism and the resultant awareness of rape and unethical sex has led to prosecutions of female offenders, not the proliferation of them. I confess I used to think girls were more vulnerable and needed more protection until the famous case of that woman who went to prison for having sex and children with her student when he was 13 (forgot her name). They ended up married when she left prison, but not before she made him a father at a very young age and not before he was (reportedly) into substance abuse. I really believe she stole his youth away from him.
And as an aside, why can’t feminists be concerned with the needs of boys who need protection, or men for that matter? That’s as grating as a black man dismissing a white woman’s mistreatment because he can’t be concerned with the needs of whites.
Robert:
No, but no feminist I know accepts rape culture as an excuse from the rapist, either.
Now, if you’re asking me, can you defend Christianity on the grounds that Christianity opposes unfair treatment of workers, the answer is, “maybe, it depends on the substance.” Then we’re in a discussion of the various kinds of Christianity and Christians and how they operate in the world.
Your point seems the be the procedural meta-point about whether one ought to inquire about how a social movement or structure influences a particular kind of crime or abuse. I agree that such an inquiry is generally appropriate.
However, I say the substantive answer is a ground ball. Is there a stripe of pedophilia in feminism? No. This journalist seems to be trying mightily to invent a trend by selecting one work, misinterpreting it, and generalizing it to feminism.
Now, unless you disagree with the conclusion that there is no good argument that feminism has a strain of pedophilia, it’s awfully technical of you to go out of your way to make what is, essentially, a point of procedure.
If you think that feminism has a strain of pedophilia, don’t beat around the bush. Make your point and get it out on the table.
If you’re just making a technical point, then I agree, but I don’t think it’s all that fertile an area for discussion.
They won the debate, we’re discussing this on their terms.
It strikes me as trivially obvious that as any group (however defined) gains more power, more members of that group will abuse that power. A perfectly equal society will have perfectly equal distribution of criminality. The fact that when men and women and equal, there will be just as many female as male rapists, doesn’t mean that anyone is encouraging rape, anymore than wanting more women in the boardroom implicitly encourages insider trading by females — which would surely follow.
When Cedric the Entertainer called the D.C. Sniper “the Jackie Robinson of serial killers”, the joke was exactly that — when the races are truly equal, there should be an equal percentage of crazy black serial killers. In that sense, the D.C. Sniper was a hallmark of advancing race relations.
But it was a joke (rather than a racialist manifesto) precisely because he doesn’t REALLY cheer “bad advancements” the way he does “good advancements.” The truth underlying the joke is that they really are in many ways inseparable. An increase in female paedophilia is a sign (albeit a very small one) of female advancement just as much as a black serial killer is.
Assumedly, in a perfectly equal society, rapes by men will drop much more than rapes by women increase, and there will be many fewer disguntled serial killers of any race. But the evening out does imply an increase of underrepresented criminals.
The author of the Times pieces seems to toss out bombs as bon mots. “Is there an element of paedophilia in today’s feminism?”
“But I was _just_ asking a question?!,” he shrieks as feminists respond, “hmm no dirty-dishwater-for-brains…”
The asking of the very question suggests, as PsA points out, the author’s lacking of understanding regarding feminism and his smug disregard for feminists {and maybe even all women except the waitresses at hooters.}
I am struck by the regressive nature of privleged. Yet again, a man attempts to debase and dimish feminism to make up for the pedophilia amongst our man-loving, masculinist masculinism loving culture. “See feminists do it too.”
“See black people are racist, too.”
Unable to take responsibility for male privilege combined with a need to silence “those harpies” our boorish author makes him look like a fool.
Different day. Same Old Stuff.
Thanks PsA for another great post.
Heh. Jay beat me to it.
I’ll apologize for Greer the day that the patriarchs apologize for Plato and the rest of the holy canon they’re always shouting about. :p
The irony here is that feminism’s probably more responsible than any other social movement for the fact that we now consider it a serious crime for an adult woman to have sex with an underage boy.
The book is at Amazon.com. Load this page:
First page.
Click to advance to the second page. See the pedophilic art! Click again. More horrifying art!
Admittedly, we can’t make a full diagnosis from 2 pages. Did The Times (UK) provide page number for the actual porn?
I’m almost certain that these high profile cases wouldn’t have been prosecuted pre-feminism/ rape awareness days. And I know that rape counselors take sexual abuse of boys and men very seriously- perhaps more so than the rest of us, since they are on the front lines and don’t see it as a dirty joke. One aspect of feminism that can contribute to the confusion is that I think femism acknowledges that women are sexual, and that we don’t all lust after aging rich men because we “find power sexy”. Literature has acknowedged forever that very young teenage girls are appealing to some men, and now the shameful secret is that some women find very young teenage boys appealing too. They get off on the same erotic power trip the men do. I’m sure there have always been women who do this. At least they’re not starting a religion about it.
Disgusting crime of pedophilia? Don’t you watch Oprah,PsA? It’s not pedophilia when women do it; then, it’s “forbidden love.” It’s only a crime when men do it.
As for Germaine Greer, I agree with piny. It’s inconceivable to me that she’s some sort of pedophile. About the only thing one can hold against her is the fact she’s a Chicago Cubs fan.
The ghost of the damned phrase “contributory negligence”, idle since it was rightly exorcised from rape-case courtrooms
Uh, unless UK law is substantially wackier than in the US, the writer is an ignorant twit.
“Contributory negligence” is an old principle of Anglo-American tort law. There has never been a “contributory negligence” defense in criminal law. I assume what the writer was fumbling around for was the idea of blaming the victim. That idea comes from other sources–namely, old laws that required a victim to defend herself against rape ‘to the utmost’, and from social views that had nothing at all to do with the law. (Kind of the way that “he’s an asshole” is not a defense to murder, but many defense lawyers take the tack of persuading a jury that the victim needed killing and the defendant was the man for the job.)
“Contributory negligence” has, virtually everywhere in the US, been replaced by varying levels of “comparative negligence.”
You know, I’m thinking here of the way some men pop up during discussions of sexual harassment to boast about how they harassed their wives into dating them and now they’ve been married thirty years! That just proves sexual harassment is stupid and an over-reaction. Same thing happens with age-of-consent laws: some dipshit always pops up and says his sweetie was fifteen when they met, they’ve been married for thirty years, what is he, a sex offender? And also with teacher/student relationships—-but only if the teacher’s male and the student’s female. Having power over women is always appropriate, even if you have to stack the deck by preying on women who are barely women.
I’ve yet to see a woman do this. If we were talking about a teacher/student pairing here that involves the genders switched, and if the girl were just shy of the age of consent, I bet you’d see that phenominon. Women just aren’t allowed to have power over male adolescents the way men are encouraged to takepower young women. Male power to exploit is A-okay but when women do it, it’s awful and disgusting.
Whtvrkthx. This is along the same lines as the folks who blame feminism for a supposed increase in husband-battering by women. Of course, nothing to do with our contribution to a climate where everyone – male or female – is more able to be open about what is happening to them, and where problems like sexual abuse and domestic violence are actually acknowledged rather than swept under the carpet and ignored. Now if only the mainstream press could get as het up about these things happening to women and girls as they are about men and boys…
PS this preview thingy is really weirding me out. blame it for any typos above.
Picky, picky, Nella. Next I suppose you’ll be wanting the media to pay tons of attention to how the Catholic church has covered up widespread abuse of women by priests, too.
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories4/122702_women.htm
Etc, etc…
What ginmar said. I find it both amusing and repulsive that the mainstream media, which is constantly offering up underage young girls in the most leering, prurient way (the Olsen twins, Britney, Charlotte Church et al. were all shown & discussed in a highly sexualised light well before reaching the age of consent–and don’t even get me started on Brooke Shields), as if grown men whacking off to 14 year olds were the healthiest thing on earth, is suddenly up in arms when it’s older women and young boys.
Not that I want to excuse any woman who fucks an underage boy. It’s just the damn double standard, and everyone’s absolute refusal to acknowledge it. Plus the fact that the whole woman/boy thing happens with so much less frequency than the man/girl thing.
We had a case up here with, I think a twenty-four-year old woman and a seventeen-year-old boy. When the roles were reversed, it was a fifteen-year-old girl with a thirty-year-old teacher who,as it turned out, wasn’t really a teacher. Guess which two people got slammed and slammed hard by the court? The paper felt it was acceptible to report what the defense attorney quoted from the girl’s diary, and the female teacher was treated like the Whore of Babylon and The Wicked Witch of the West. If it had been 24-year-old male and 17-year-old female, people would just shrug.
I think we all a have to acknowledge that the idea of old men with adolescent girls is widely accepted as wrong. It does no good to pretend that these old attitudes still prevail, because they don’t, except for perhaps in Colorado City. And if it’s more common for older men to take advantage of girls, older women with boys is probably way more common than we realize.
I also think part of the problem is that we treat young people as adults in sexual matters (age of consent, age to marry, etc.) at different ages than we do for other things (voting, drinking alcohol, car insurance). Even driving a car, which is a pretty mature and responsible thing to be doing, is set at 16 in most states. It would be a lot easier for many people to understand April-September hanky-panky (regardless of the gender of the older perpetrator) as wrong if the “coming of age” age was the same one for everything – either you’re a legal adult or you’re not, basta.
Anyone remember “Hot For Teacher”?
Actually, there is an element of very real sexuality that is rarely discussed in secondary ed. I may address this in a post of my own.
Yes Alsis, that would be nice. Dangerous idea, hmm? :-/
Dangerous, indeed. I’m old enough to remember all the people that wanted Sinead O’Connor burnt alive for the “crime” of ripping up the Pope’s picture on TV. Ho hum.
CrysT wrote:
Yup. That’s definitely been true in the fine art world, too. Just look at the fuss over the iffy talents of a painter like Balthus. If a guy painted that many fruit bowls or landscapes that dully, nobody outside his hometown would ever have heard of him, I’ll wager. Also, I wonder who painted or commissioned all those supposedly sexy paintings of adolescent boys that lucia linked to ? I’m pretty sure that those weren’t –by and large– woman painters, nor woman patrons;Though we can always count on misogynists and their rah-rah girls to zero in on one exception and use it to debunk– not prove– the rule.
I think we all a have to acknowledge that the idea of old men with adolescent girls is widely accepted as wrong.
“Old men” with younger women is treated with eye-rolling, perhaps, but not as “wrong.” It’s certainly not widely accepted that grown men with teenage girls is “wrong.”
Elana writes:
i would have to disagree with you on this. most of them turn abused boys and men away, citing that the women there would feel uncomfortable with the presence of men. many rape centers have little to no information on male victims, and usually can’t even direct them as to where they could go for services. i deal with male survivors often, and i am one, and this is something even professionals often take issue with. certainly there are some rape centers that do reach to males, but most do not.
Lauren, I was thinking about “Hot for teacher” and also that silly pop hit from last year, “I’m in love with Stacey’s Mom” – isn’t it pretty normal for kids to have crushes on their teachers, it is just not quite so normal for the crushes to be acted on. Also, no one brought up that LeTorneau woman, and I think you guys are Oregonians, for shame! As for the Germaine Greer thing, I do not get what art has to do with teachers and kids having sex. Next they will say that Michelangelo was a pervert for painting naked cherubs.
The really salient point in all of this is what Lilith upthread said – if you RESPOND to this sort of silly argument and waste time over it, haven’t the anti-feminists already won? It’s so stupid it doesn’t deserve your time. However, there were some very funny and great comments about it, particularly the ones from ChrysT, Ginmar and Jay.