“It seems as though a dark view of children and sexuality has arisen since the political changes of the 1980s. Our own contemporary worries about the omnipresent paedophile limits the case for sexual citizenship for children because it refutes the political space and agency that needs to be created for this to happen.”
Image: Illustration from Children’s Sexuality – A Guide booklet. Mikael Sjömilla, © RFSU/SRHR 2015.
The notion of the child, just like childhood itself, is in constant flux. Depending on the topics, morals, and values with which the idea of the child is combined, tensions transform and substitute across time. For example, in contrast to most other Western countries, in 1972 Sweden legalized child pornography, only to criminalize it eight years later (1980) due to the rising political awareness of sexual abuse. A liberal view on child sexuality was replaced by a child protection discourse which, in our contemporary time, has become entangled with the paedophilication of children’s everyday lives. This is a process that Sweden shares with other Western countries. As an outcome of this, two parallel discourses on the sexual child are competing. In Sweden this competition, or battle, can be articulated through two different NGO booklets produced for adults on child sexuality: Respect! My Body! by Save the Children Sweden (2013) and Barns sexualitet – en vägledning (Translation: Children’s sexuality – a guide)by the organisation Swedish Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) (2015). My concern is with how the layout and outcomes of these two booklets enact opposing views on child sexuality and children.
Both booklets are published by adults for adults. The front covers depict children. Save the Children Sweden depicts a child holding a sign reading “private area” and SRHR has chosen two children giggling in a bathtub. Already, a difference between the approaches to the child, child’s body, sexuality, and adult relations to child sexuality can be identified. These are variances that generate different political outcomes for the position of child sexuality in our own contemporary time.
Save the Children Sweden
Thirteen illustrations depicting: the child on the front cover, flowers and bees, embarrassed adults, a small child covered in food holding a spoon, small children sitting on the back of an adult, a suspicious-looking man dressed in black kneeling in front of a child, a small child, a single child in a bathtub, a child with a sign reading “private area”, an adult and a teenager, a worried parent, a worried teenager. When you open the booklet, the inside covers are grey.
Headings: Introduction, Talking with children, The smallest children, School-age children, A no is always a no, Teenagers, Children and the Internet, For those of you who are worried, If you are worried turn to these places, Good links
Image: English version of Stopp! Min kropp! /Respect! My Body! booklet cover. Illustrations Moa Hoff/Söderberg Agentur, © Rädda Barnen/Save the Children 2013. 30 pages.
As stated above, Save the Children Sweden has put a sign reading “private area” into the hand of a somewhat gloomy-looking, half-dressed, lonely child on the front cover of its booklet. The sign, although transparent, covers the genitals and breasts, and the child’s mouth is closed. This is no coincidence because private areas are defined as: penis, vagina, bottom, and mouth. In this way, the child’s body is divided into more or less extra-sensitive areas worthy of extra protection and respect.
The booklet focuses on communicating how to talk about children and the risks associated with sexuality to concerned adults. The booklet covers an age span from the youngest children to teenagers. Here, I am mainly focusing on the information related to adults concerned about the youngest children. Primarily, the booklet states that children should be told that closeness is good and valuable. The underlying central theme, though, is to give adults the tools to explain to children about wrongdoing and prohibitions related to sexuality. One such tool is to tell children: “If someone does this or that to you, you should know that you can always tell me.” The booklet also distinguishes between good and bad secrets. Good secrets, it argues, are things that makes you happy – birthday and Christmas presents that you do not tell anyone about are good secrets. Bad secrets, on the other hand, create sadness and stomach pain and these secrets can be told even if someone has said that you are not allowed to. This argument is accompanied with illustrations of an embarrassed adult and child, toddlers playing with an adult, flowers and bees, a small child covered in food, small children sitting on the back of an adult, a suspicious-looking man dressed in black kneeling in front of a child, a child looking suspiciously at the man , a single child sitting with closed eyes in a bathtub, and a child holding the sign that reads “private area”. The outcome of this information is to explain how adults can teach children to say no to unwanted touches, primarily by adults.
Thus, sexual violation and abuse are the principal core of the booklet and child sexuality is continually understood in and through its relation to adult sexuality. Specifically, an adult sexuality that is a threat to children. This is visually expressed through an illustration of a man in a long black coat kneeling with an outstretched arm in front of a child. The threat is not only made to be adult, but specifically to be male and related to long black coats. The threat seems to be neither female nor connected to an everyday look.
Save the Children Sweden gives no explicit definition of the concept of sexuality but mentions that talking with children about sexuality means talking about private bodily areas and what is allowed and prohibited in relation to other people’s bodies. The booklet ends with information about where to turn if things get out of hand.
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR/RFSU)
Seven illustrations depicting: small child investigating her/his body, two boys hugging surrounded with hearts, a child looking straight at another child’s naked bottom, a man with two children on his lap reading a story, two children in a bathtub, a girl wearing only socks, a boy in his underwear looking down at his penis. Age span: pre-schoolers
Headings: Children’s sexuality, Sexuality in childhood (Exploring the body, Small children’s masturbation, Play and collaboration), Safety, self-esteem and lust (Confirm interest and curiosity, Everyday talk, Body integrity, The same possibilities for everyone), When something creates worries (Reach out for support)
Image: Children’s Sexuality – A Guide booklet cover. Illustrations Mikael Sjömilla, © RFSU/SRHR 2015.
On the front cover of the SRHR, we can see an image of two children smiling and giggling together in a bathtub overflowing with bubbles. We can see how the children’s arms are moving between the two child bodies. It seems as though some kind of mutual shared bodily exploration is going on. The age group for the SRHR booklet is pre-school. SRHR have chosen to mainly communicate children’s own sexuality through text and illustrations aimed towards the adult reader. It concentrates on children’s curiosity and how, together or by themselves, children explore their bodies, what the body looks like, how it feels and how it feels to touch oneself and look at other children’s bodies. Child sexuality is thus understood as something occurring between children themselves. SRHR informs adults about how they can create affirmations for children to feel proud and safe around their bodies. A proud and confident child, SRHR argues, will develop a positive and responsible sexuality.
SRHR is a sexually liberal organisation in the sense that it sees sexuality as an integrated part of life. The first page of the booklet presents a definition of sexuality that draws on a definition from the World Health Organisation (WHO):
Sexuality is not synonymous with intercourse, it is not about whether we can orgasm or not, and nor is it the sum of our erotic lives. These can be, but do not need to be, part of our sexuality. Sexuality is much more: there is an energy that drives us to seek love, contact, warmth, and closeness; it is expressed through our ways of feeling and arousing feelings and how we touch one another.
Sexuality affects thoughts, feelings, actions, and responses and thus our psychological and physical health.
Swedish Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Children’s Sexuality – A Guide booklet (2015), my translation.
The WHO’s definition characterises sexuality as integrated into every human’s personality, no matter what age. It belongs to the set of basic needs and is not to be separated from other aspects of life. It is thus a positive general force of being a human being.
SRHR does not avoid the possibility that sexuality can be used in hurtful and exploitative ways. However, this is done through a critical questioning of norms. At the end of the booklet, it suggests that, if adults are worried about negative changes in small children, it is important to investigate a more general understanding of the child’s situation. If children feel bad it does not have to be primarily connected to sexuality. It is suggested that adults try to think about how they would have addressed a problematic situation beyond sexuality. SRHR asks: “How would you have reacted if the pea was poked into the nose” instead of the anus? Their argument is that certain bodily practices are looked upon as natural, while others create worries. The question is: how can these tensions be handled? When it comes to children, SRHR argues, even unproblematic sexuality has a tendency to be seen as problematic and unhealthy, just because we are talking about children.
It is therefore important to talk with children about boundaries around what is possible and what is not. This should be done, emphasises the SRHR, without shame. At the end of the booklet, SRHR provides information about where to turn if things are becoming out of control.
Sexual citizenship for children?
The tension created by placing these booklets next to one another can be expressed through how and what child sexuality is positioned against: adult or child sexuality. While Save the Children Sweden divides the child’s body into extra-sensitive areas in need of protection, SRHR promotes an exploratory, curious child who wants to know more about their own body. This in turn creates two distinct versions of the child: the inept child at risk and the able, empowered child. Both booklets are thus political documents that expect different actions from children and adults. While SHRH enacts children as both producers and consumers of sexuality, Save the Children Sweden’s point of departure turns child sexuality into a commodity, for adults. Two political versions of child sexuality are thus upheld by different ontologies of the child, adult, and sexuality and how they relate to one another. The question here, though, is: can children in any sense legitimately be regarded as sexual citizens?
If we go along with SRHR’s and the WHO’s definition of sexuality as incorporated into life and being a human being, sexuality turns out to be both a private wonder and a way to belong in society. In this way, sexuality blurs the boundaries between the private and the social. The problem with children is: how do we give and protect both their individual and collective rights? The individual right not to be abused and to explore their sexuality, and their collective rights – to physical closeness, warmth, a sexual language, pleasurable looking, a positive sex education, and pride in one’s own body? What I am asking is: how can children be given both negative rights (protection from) and positive rights (access to) when it comes to sexuality? What needs to change?
It seems as though a dark view of children and sexuality has arisen since the political changes of the 1980s. Our own contemporary worries about the omnipresent paedophile limits the case for sexual citizenship for children because it refutes the political space and agency that needs to be created for this to happen. To move on, we need, for example, to avoid a rhetoric in which we allow the notion of the child carrying the responsibility for resolving abusive adult sexuality. Children will always need both protection and emancipatory freedom, and this is why there is no easy solution to the Save the Children/SHRH gap. In spite of this, we need to place our trust in a shared and common humanity, just as was the case historically when women’s and gays’ sexual citizenships became accepted and established.
Read more on children’s sexual citizenship
Steven Angelides. The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex, and Agency. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2019.
Richard Bellamy. Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
David T.Evans. “Embryonic sexual citizenship: Children as sexual objects and subjects,” in D.T. Evans, Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities, pp. 209–297. London, New York: Routledge, 1993.
Annemarie Mol. “The ontological politics: A word and some questions,” in John Law and John Hassard (eds.) Actor Network Theory and After, pp. 74–89. Blackwell: Oxford, 2004.
Jeffrey Weeks. “The sexual citizen.” Theory, Culture & Society 15(3–4): 35–52, 1998.
About the Author
Dr Anna Sparrman is a Professor at The Department of Thematic Studies – Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. Sparrman works at the intersection between visual culture, child consumption, child culture, and child sexuality. She has a special interest in materiality and how norms and values are enacted in children’s everyday lives. Sparrman works within the theoretical framework of what she calls Child Studies Multiple, with a special interest in the productivity of research methods.
Cite this article as: Anna Sparrman, “Children’s sexual citizenship: Changing notions of the sexual child” in Changing Childhoods, 22 September 2020, https://changingchildhoods.com/childrens-sexual-citizenship