Producing the Prurient through the Pedagogy of Purity: Childhood Sexuality and the Social Purity Movement

Abstract

Drawing on primary materials from the United States, England and Australia, we explore the complex and contradictory manner in which the sexual child and innocence was constructed and made intelligible within social purity discourses in the mid 19 th to early 20 th century. The sexuality of the child was paradoxically conceptualized as a ubiquitous and boundless erotic force and as a pliable site for pedagogical intervention. We contend that the discursive production of the corrupt sexual companion, within purity literature, was an attempt to disentangle purity reformers' ambivalent construction of childhood sexuality as well as larger cultural anxieties about modern urban living. The sexual child validated social purity narratives because it was the category against which innocence was defined and made possible. 1

On the Iatrogenic Nature of the Child Sexual Abuse Discourse

“…The western world is obsessed with childhood and its sexuality (Aries 1987;Boas 1966;Egan and Hawkes 2007;Elschenbroich 1979;Kincaid 1998;Neuman 1975). The eighteenth century saw the beginning of the masturbatory insanity hypothesis (Hare 1962;Szasz 1970), the nineteenth became disturbed over the guilty, rebellious, or delinquent child, and the twentieth was obsessed with the child victim (Best 1990;Mosher 1991).…”

Sexuality, youth and the perils of endangered innocence: how history can help us get past the panic

“…Sexual innocence is a particular fragile state and thus susceptible to becoming 'slutty' quickly (and inevitably) upon exposure (C. Hamilton 2007; for critiques of this position see Egan and Hawkes 2007Renold and Ringrose 2012;Ringrose 2012). The epistemological construction of the child and its sexuality (as inherently corruptible and, once ignited, unstoppable and thus a threat to self and society) exnominates both the problem and the outcome.…”

Endangered Girls and Incendiary Objects: Unpacking the Discourse on Sexualization

“…Historians have noted the complex nature of purity campaigns in their reform attempts which promoted both extremely progressive and repressive reform agendas. These included: offering women a voice and place within the public sphere; providing women more autonomy in their marriage and the promotion of a moralizing project that pathologized the sexual expression of children (Egan and Hawkes 2007;Hall 2001;Hunt 1999;Mason 1994). A similar tension underpins the current concern about sexualization.…”

“…Much of our recent scholarly work has focused on the social history of childhood sexuality in the Anglophone West and on the rise of reform movements seeking to correct, train or protect children from sexual harm (Egan and Hawkes 2007;Hawkes and Egan 2009). 1 In writing this article, the immediacy of our positionality with the current public discourse offers specific challenges in data interpretation.…”