Nightmare in girl world

Bray’s “Gaze that Dare Not Speak Its Name: Bill Henson and Child Sexual Abuse Moral Panic” analyses the language and tactics used in the recent controversy surrounding photographer Bill Henson’s recruitment and exposure of naked girls.

She writes: “We need to unmask the political ‘innocence’ of artists such as Henson and, more broadly, of a culture that trades on the sexual commodification and humiliation of girls. Far from offering girls new forms of social power, the sexualisation of girls is imposing a new tyranny of compulsive and desperate sexual participation.”

Betty McLellan’s contribution links political silencing to the personal acquiescence of girls in their own sexual mis-use, countering the disingenuous liberal cry that all that is needed is that parents “turn the channel” or avert their gaze.

She and many of the other writers argue that the rhetoric of the sexual revolution has hijacked the feminist revolution.

Noni Hazlehurst writes with considerable poignancy that the widespread super-sexualisation of girls is evidence of the compliance and confusion within today’s would-be feminists: “It saddens me that many young women who call themselves feminists, and who hold positions of public influence, are acting as apologists for the very agents of iniquity that have fuelled my anger.”

Betty McLellan adds: “We suggest that the increasing focus on sex and sexiness is not so much a matter of personal preference but pressure coming from people and institutions in society with the power to shape the way others think and feel.”

Getting Real argues that pornography is built on and primes deception and self-deception. Writes McLellan again: “In a sexualised society, women and girls are required to live out a pornographic idea of the female ...” and this provides the personal and cultural construction of false sexual expectations in men, women and children, abusive relationships, destructive self-worth, degrading sexual experimentation. “It makes equality impossible.”

Toxic porn and boys

Tankard Reist comments: “This denial of the real humanity of women has seeped down into the cultural world of girls as young as six or younger. This grooming for sexual consumption - the Lolita Effect - has been further powered by advances in technology.”

“We see the toll in ever younger boys. I feel especially for boys, for whom pornography, via the PC and phone, is so instantly available and which becomes their hand-book for personal sexual attitudes and behaviour.

Renate Klein writes that pornography is only “a click away”:

Research shows that in some communities 70 per cent of boys have viewed violent and deviant pornography by the ages of 12-13; nearly 100 per cent by the age of 18.

Studies are also showing that the formative male brain is seriously imprinted by such degrading pornography, and it alters the boys’ sense of reality and feeds their acting out of aggressive behaviour towards girls.

One horrifying web-site we discovered, encourages young men to carry out coercive sexual attacks on women, by first doping them or making them drunk.  The site then invites these same young men to post photos of their deeds with bragging comments.

How are these sites acceptable in our society? They provide evidence of crime scenes not of sexual freedom.

Many girls felt ripped off in their sexual encounters, finding out early that sex has become the primary currency of personal interaction. “Set amidst the toxic culture all around them, girls simply become sexual crash dummies for boys rather than true intimates and equals. They are led to believe that providing oral sex at parties is the way to be wanted by boys,” Tankard Reist says.