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Violence against children as an area
requiring specific interventions and
services is now well-recognised and is an
integral part of missions and agendas
of various funding and direct practice
organisations.
While the child and abuse within child
sexual abuse are beginning to receive (much
deserved) attention, it is the sexual in the
term that continues to remain blurry and
ignored. Is it because sexuality is an elusive
and slippery concept and therefore we
find it hard to discuss it, or is it because
the word, when used in the context of
children, generates much discomfort?
Alankaar Sharma
A few years ago I found myself sitting in a swanky cabin
of a leading advertising agency, having a discussion with an executive over
developing a presentation on a booklet on child sexual abuse, in order to
seek funding for its bulk production. Since child sexual abuse was the theme
of the booklet, the title contained the term. I thought that was very
elemental, very basic, very simple. The executive, however, had different
ideas. She recommended hiding the term altogether while presenting it to
potential funders. I must admit that the suggestion sounded a bit lame at
that point. However, I began to gradually realise that this was a pattern,
and not simply an isolated incident.
In my work on child sexual abuse in India, I came across a wide variety of
terms that people used as a substitute for child sexual abuse, or offered
those terms to the professionals working against child sexual abuse to use:
ganda kaam (dirty work), bura kaam (bad work), galat kaam (wrong work),
child security, child protection, child victimisation and child abuse. While
some of these terms were colloquial references to sex per se or sex with
children, the rest were professional jargon referring to broad issues of
violence against children.
The thread that binds them all is the obliteration of the word sex or sexual
in all these ‘euphemisms’. These are not
isolated incidents, these form a pattern; and the pattern reflects its
political backdrop of not using the word child and sexual in the same
breath, of finding it bizarre to associate children with sex, and of
asexualising children.
In the last few years, the attention given to the issue of child sexual
abuse has steadily increased on the part of international, national and
local non-government organisations, media and government agencies. This is
heartening because child sexual abuse has been, and in many ways continues
to stay, an under-addressed concern, especially in many Asian countries
where awareness on the subject and interventions aimed at prevention and
response are still in their nascent stages.
The increasing dialogue, largely propelled by the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, has resulted in a better and more general
understanding of children as people and their rights, and in developing a
generic understanding of who a child is. This is not to say that debates
over issues of definitional boundaries (or lack thereof) between terms such
as children, adolescents and young people, and age of consent have been
settled definitively.
At the same time, there has been an evident increase in visibility on issues
of interpersonal violence. Violence against children as an area requiring
specific interventions and services is now well-recognised and is an
integral part of missions and agendas of various funding and direct practice
organisations.
While the child and abuse within child sexual abuse are
beginning to receive (much deserved) attention, it is the sexual in the term
that continues to remain blurry and ignored. Is it because sexuality is an
elusive and slippery concept and therefore we find it hard to discuss it, or
is it because the word, when used in the context of children,
generates much discomfort? I argue that it is the latter.
Often it is argued that child sexual abuse is about power and not sex.
However, it is about power and sex. Is sexuality by itself not a playground
for power? Is it not a contested terrain where hegemony and margins are
constructed, celebrated and challenged? Then why is it that we do not want
to examine the role of sex and sexuality within child sexual abuse? Why are
euphemisms suggested and promoted to conceal the sexual dimension of child
sexual abuse?
After all, child sexual abuse is not merely abuse of children, it is the
sexual abuse of children. Is this because we are scared to recognise
children as sexual people? Some people would even argue that to consider
children as sexual people would amount to an approval of sexual violence
against them and may lead to the same. However, developing an understanding
of children’s sexuality is not detrimental to prevention and responding to
abuse. On the contrary, it is integral to any such effort.
In my work, I was astonished to find how many people found it surprising
that children were capable of feeling pleasure while they were being abused
by the perpetrators. It is understandable that it may be difficult to wrap
our brain around this idea due to the connotative values of the two concepts
involved here: abuse is negative while pleasure is positive, and the twain
seldom meet.
However, child sexual abuse is a complex phenomenon that resists the binary
of black and white. And in order to understand the greyness of the matter,
it is important to recognise children’ sexuality, because the reason why
people do not understand children’s abuse as potentially pleasurable for
children is because the idea of children and sexual pleasure is outlandish
to many of us.
Putting children and sexual pleasure together within the
context of violence becomes even more outlandish. The fact is that children
can, and sometimes do, find a sexual activity pleasurable, even when they
may not like the activity itself. Or they may like some sexual activities
and dislike others. Or they may not like the perpetrator, but like sexual
activities with the perpetrator. Or they may like the perpetrator, but not
sexual activities with him/her. Or they may like both. Or they may dislike
both. It would again
be difficult and futile, perhaps even counter-productive, to identify
pleasure as solely a biological response to physical stimuli.
Pleasure is a terribly complex and multi-dimensional concept that refuses to
fit so neatly into boxes. Denial of children’s ability to feel pleasure
during abuse not only
takes away from the reality and complexity of the issue for adults, it adds
layers of silence and oppression for the survivors too. In the absence of a
constructive dialogue that recognises and affirms their experiences, they
may not even recognise abuse as abuse or may feel responsible and guilty for
it. I liked it, I had an orgasm, I ejaculated, so I must have wanted it, so
I must have asked for it, so I must have participated, so I must have been
the seducer: these are some concerns that haunt many survivors and influence
their sense of self as well as their interpersonal relationships.
Children often do not have the language to talk about their experiences of
abuse. In an environment where sexuality is shrouded in silence, children
are typically kept away,
almost in an ‘antiseptic isolation’, from age-appropriate information on
sexuality to the extent that they often do not know the names of their
private body parts. One of
the reasons why most abused children never disclose is because they do not
have the vocabulary or the context to discuss such matters. The use of
vernacular terminology or the ‘code words’ that they may know are not
considered appropriate outside of certain spaces such as peer group
discussions. Such silencing of children again emerges
partially, if not completely, out of adults’ resistance to discussing
matters of sexuality with children, because of the perception that children
do not need it and have no use for that information. Sexuality, after all,
is exclusively ‘adults’ property’, isn’t it?
The non-recognition of children’s sexuality also leads to
misrecognition of children’s age-appropriate sexual
behaviours as either abusive or consequences of abuse.
As much as it is important for professionals who work
with children and children’s caregivers to learn about
behavioural indicators and signs of possible sexual abuse,
it is even more important to learn about children’s ageappropriate
sexual behaviours and expressions of sexuality.
This, of course, cannot happen in the absence of recognising
children as sexual beings.
Since sexuality is not about the acts of sex alone, it also
affects the meanings survivors make of their abuse. Many
male survivors blame themselves for initiating the sexual
relationship with their abuser and/or for not being able
to stop it, especially if the perpetrator was a woman. This
is influenced by how sexual relationships are constructed
within society and the norms that inform them.
Men are constructed as initiators of sexual activity, they are
supposed to always want and like sex, they are supposed to
be in control during sex, they are the doers. In an abusive
situation, children are not in control, they are not the doers.
This conflict between their actual experiences and societal
notions of masculine sexuality is often hard to resolve for
survivors in a social landscape where discourses of sexuality
typically exclude plurality of experiences, and are premised
upon the gender binary of the ideal masculine and feminine
subject. In the context of homophobia, they may think
they have been ‘made gay’ through their experiences if the
perpetrators were males.
Experiences of women are also informed by the social
construction of feminine sexuality where they are denied
both vocabulary and voice to articulate their experiences.
In a society characterised by patriarchy, girls and women
do not have the space to say no, especially when most
perpetrators of sexual abuse are men. In any case, their no
to sexual activity does not mean much: If she says no, she’s
just acting pricey; If she says no, it means she wants it but she’s
shy.
These instances illustrate how sexuality is an integral
part of child sexual abuse, and influences it strongly in
ways more than one. Understanding it will help affirm
survivors’ experiences and extend the kind of help they
want and need.
However, adult society often resists focusing on the sexual
dimension of the issue. Adults, including professionals in
human services that form the frontline of interventions for
survivors, many times do not want to listen to children’s
stories of sexual abuse because they find them ‘too
graphic’, they do not want to talk to children about sexual
abuse because they think children are ‘too young’ to learn
about it, they do not want to nurture the development of
a healthy and affirmative sexuality in children because they
think children are ‘asexual’. And, while adult society is
busy cocooning itself against the realities of children’s lives,
children are getting abused, blamed and silenced.
Sexuality is an integral part of people’s identity, and children
are people too. Their understanding and subjective realities
regarding sexuality are not the same as adults’. They have
different ways of being sexual and of articulating their
sexuality. As adults, as much as it is crucial not to sexualise
children in adult ways, it is critical to not asexualise them
either.
Understanding children’s sexualities and affirming them in
age-appropriate, caring and healthy ways will help prevent
and address child sexual abuse, not fuel it.
Alankaar Sharma is a doctoral student at the
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, U.S.A., and has worked in the areas
of child sexual abuse and gender-based violence in India. His professional
interests lie at different points of intersection between masculinities,
sexualities, childhoods and violence. He can be reached at
alankaar@aol.com.
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