This is what I'd like to try and say - the supposed 'stereotype to end all stereotypes' (paradox maximally intended there) - I speak here of the term 'paedophile' - gives the lie I think to this whole 'NAXALT' derision. Firstly, the p-term is one that needs no real-world, concrete figure whatsoever to fulfill its commission in the term's user's mind, it needs but the panicked notion of some definitively disproportionate phallus invading the sacrally-conceived space of something definitively lesser and weaker than it, generating thereby a pain to end all pains and putting everybody back, by and by, right there at Pain One (where we belong). I am seeing, in my investigation of the NAXALT territory, any amount of stereotype-positive fever generated with the "easy examples' of a) misogynists b) rapists c) paedophiles given to convince us that we shall always find therein exactly those traits of which we have already conceived, evident in spades wherever we might care to look for fruities
You seem to be questioning whether there is any definitive meaning to the category of "pedophile," which amy then be related to the question of either stereotyping thus-designated "pedophiles" (as what?) or stereotyping a particular group (however delimited) as disproportionately pedophilic. Perhaps the stereotyping of pedo-types creates the false category; or the false category leads to equally false stereotyping. I'm guessing, perhaps wrongly, that you are objecting to the cutting off of certain desires from the broader continuum of desires so that they can be marked as both irremediable and deviant. So, if a 30 year old man desires a 23 year old woman, we would all agree that's perfectly normal; 22 year old, still normal; 21, still ok... but we will get to a threshold at which that 30 year old man needs to be conceptually and physically removed from the human community. And that threshold will be culturally and therefore political defined, but presented as if it derives from a natural and universally shared moral sense. The establishment of the category of pedophilia, I think, ultimately depends on some form of elder-younger sex that would universally be condemned. I think there are such practices--is there any individual or culture that would allow a 30 year old man to vaginally penetrate a 5 year old girl or anally penetrate a 5 year old boy? In that case, the word "pedophile" has such an image affixed to it--it rings that bell whenever it is used. And once the bell can be rung, it will be rung by whoever can gain something, like discrediting a political opponent, or an ex-spouse, by doing so. And who will be found to argue for lowering the age of consent or adulthood for sexual purposes--once there is a digital lynch mob out for Roy Moore for dating a 17 year old as a 32 year old, who is going to come along and say, 'that's perfectly fine, I think 32 year olds should be able to date 16 year olds--for that matter, I'm willing to discuss 15..." That fact that very few (there are some, I've seen them) are willing to essay such a defense of "dating teenagers" marks this as sacrificial territory. So, the way to get out of this sacrificial territory (and I'm still not sure how or if we are really talking about stereotypes here, unless it's the "once a pedophile, always a pedophile--and only a pedophile" mark that seems to attain to anyone so accused) we'd have to think about all this very differently. I think these moral panics result from a crisis in the "consent" model of sexuality which has replaced the hitherto universal model of close adult and communal supervision of sexuality, with sexuality confined as much as possible within marriages approved and often arranged by familial authority. Those more "archaic" cultures had no problem marrying off a 12 year to her cousin because consent wasn't an issue, an open sexual "market" was never considered and sex could not be separated from all the family, communal and sacred ties constituting individuals in relation to each other. Once "consent" becomes the sole criteria for determining the "legitimacy" of sexual relations, everyone goes mad because the absolutely separate and equal individual who could consent in some "confirmable" way doesn't exist--it's unequal power relations, dependencies, illusion, mimetic contagion all the way down. And people can only legitimate the world of consent by singling out the most obviously "unconsentable" relationships, and focusing all moral opprobrium on those. It's like knowing that you're good, or at least not evil, by knowing how different you are from Hitler.
Your concluding line unfailingly recalled to me the following declaration from AH himself. You don't want to miss the accompanying image! (The mustachioed Austrian of course has long been included in the paedosexual hall-of-fame). But take it away Adolf.... "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation". - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf https://imgur.com/IsAWydK let me see now... some of your comments did tend for my purposes towards a sort of digression, although I am extremely pleased that you were able to make any at all! It is no small thrill you know when any correspondent (one cares to name) on the present face of this earth steers unflinchingly AWAY from the irrational (by which almost all are instantly enveloped the millisecond one speaks of the concepts of 'children' and '
I've been reading the anthropologist C.R. Hallpike's "How We Got Here," and in his opening discussion of the most primitive hunter-gather societies he points out that these people don't count past 2 or 3 and so if you ask them how many rivers are on their territory they don't even understand the question because each river is itself, with its own features, its own mythology, its own memories, etc.; the same with "how many knives" you have, as each knife is incomparable to the others, etc. This resistance to all categorization is a high form of morality and thinking, even as it has come to depend upon high level abstractions: each and every soul as a sacred entity is a highly abstract concept. I think the interruption of accusations of pedophilia relies on the accusation being made--that is, if you just say "no one should ever be called a pedophile in such and such a tone and "someone's age" should never be a means of "marking" them as inviolate," etc., then a wide range of resentments are stripped of their name but will not cease to exist because each and every person also has those who are responsible for him or her. The better approach is the patient deconstruction of accusations as they are made--and if the accusations are valid, accounting more precisely for their validity.
Yes, Gans has instructed us that the "market society" was "always already" prefigured on the originary scene, but I disagree with this. Gans has never shown any interest in power, and it mars much of his analysis of modernity. Feudalism has not been replaced by unregulated egalitarian atoms in market motion--it has left a vacuum into which power has rushed, power which benefits from not being named as such. That 24/7 supervision is a large part of it, and every society, I would be willing to bet, has had it's equivalent to our antiseptic "age of consent," with various initiatory rituals marking the different stages of maturity. In every community, it means something to "violate" "children," even if what counts as "violation," who is considered the real "victim" of the violation, and what counts as "children" will differ very widely.
addendum: ..so my thought would be something like (i'll try to truncate this) ..the Innocent Child archetype primarily protects the (nuclear) family, not the child. That which must know its *place* long before it can ever know anything like a community. And in this protectorate it is then realized one has only one basket in which to put all one's 'emotional eggs'. Now no-one can opt out of the relationship, least of all the child. In paying endless lip-service to the existence, or loss thereov, of a 'child', we promote the pure idea or simulacrum of something that has quite possibly never fully existed as an authentic, spiritual entity in its own right.. If, as my former colleague RH has proposed, emotion itself must play all manner of role within the dynamics of an originary scene, how does one aspiring to anything like truly anthropological perspectives start to think of this disjunct between 'family' - invention of capitalism (von Mises) or maternal enclaves (Engels) - and 'commu
You beg the question of whether the nuclear family should be protected. I'd say it depends upon "from what," and against which alternatives. From the current movement, still tiny but such things can grow very rapidly these days, to eliminate the family in the name of direct care taking by the state of all children, I would defend the the nuclear family. If it becomes possible to recreate more sane overlaps between immediate family, extended family, community, nation and state, then I would be in favor of transitioning the nuclear family into this more complex web.
But the ideology of "consent" will always be incoherent under any set of relations.
Summing up - or really leaping right over - all I have said thus far, I think it never less than an appallingly despicable situation that a so-called "sex offender" can never, ever pay his 'debt to society'. That would clearly seem to be the entire point of such a branding, and I believe it to be inhuman. But your assertion here that Gans' work is "marred" by its lack of reference to power, has somewhat overtaken (for now) my intention to present you with a careful analysis of the idea of consent (not written by me) that I believe can challenge - or at the very least mix it up irresistibly with - your apparent insistence that what is at work here in the current propagation of said term can only be first & foremost an ideology. An "incoherent" one at that. Under "ANY set of relations". (Might I send that here, or better via email? I think I must advise that I sent same some weeks back to the "always worth listening to" (hear hear) JG of Vancouver, and he refused to even read it, assu
Send it here--it won't get buried,like in my email.
I think I'm accounting for desire through what I am calling the "imperative exchange," for which I am also very dependent upon that same E of C. Desire is both socially constructive and socially constructed--we can't treat it as "natural" and "spontaneous" any more than we can treat it as epiphenomenal or mere symptom. The way to take this into account is to situate it within language, especially the imperative, the most transparent linguistic expression of desire. Through the imperative exchange, we can see any particular desire in a chain of desire (our imperatives are extensions of those issued to us), along with the demystification of desire (but also its enshrinement) in the declarative.