Judith Levine: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex

By ALISON JONES*

Even before this book appeared in the United States in May it was denounced as evil. The publishers were overwhelmed by demands for its withdrawal, and their chat shows were alive with hysteria.

Judith Levine, a New York journalist, had written a book which said that children are sexual, that minors engage in sex (sometimes consensually with adults), and that excellent sex education is better than panicked denial of children's sexuality. The reaction to her book is precisely the hysteria she writes about.

Levine pointedly juxtaposes the active commercial sexualisation of children (through the marketing to children of adult clothing, girls' makeup, music videos saturated with sex, child beauty pageants, young models) with the panic-stricken denial that some young adolescents might actively seek sexual relationships, even with adults.

In mounting an argument against the current beliefs that young people are necessarily abused in consensual sex with older partners, and that children are constantly at risk of sexual abuse, Levine locates ideas about child vulnerability in the North American social economy.

Intensified fears about children's safety have escalated in the past 20-odd years, travelling inside larger worries. Pollution, food contamination, disease, terrorism, stock market shocks and company collapses are out of the control of even the wealthy.

There is a loss of faith in traditional moral experts such as the church. Risk and danger have become key social motifs; even common sense has been overwhelmed by risk information.

Inevitably, children's sexuality is the locus of the most passionate anxiety. It alone has come to symbolise our historical innocence - which we are afraid of having lost. According to Levine, exaggerated anxiety about children's sexuality has become a dangerous moral panic, infecting children and adults alike with irrational and fantastic fears. It has also led to laws and policies creating an atmosphere of puritanical surveillance over all American citizens.

Levine does make some controversial claims that will challenge even her liberal supporters. Much has been made of her inferred admiration of the Netherlands' conditional age of consent being 12, and her statistics indicating that active paedophiles are more curable than other criminals.

More shocking are the stories Levine has amassed to illustrate a moral panic: the accusation of sexual harassment against a six-year-old boy who kissed a female classmate; the police investigation of ordinary parents for taking photos of their naked children; the massive resources put into finding child porn rings; the countless false allegations of bizarre abuse by childcare workers, teachers and parents; and the disturbing no-touch rules in education settings.

Levine has made a rational, well-argued and brave contribution to a complex topic which so often eludes calm and critical consideration.

University of Minnesota Press

$75.95

* Alison Jones teaches in the School of Education at the University of Auckland.