No. 78 The Sociology of Sexual Criminality
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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Several of our good colleagues on the Crit-l crim list have made comment on sex
offense and its location within critical criminology. There are several points to be made
which may be helpful to the task of critical criminology.
1. For most of human history, human sexuality has been confined within social
relationships...any variance from acceptable social use of sexuality has been defined as
evil, corrupt, sinful and in the last 400 years, violations of state law. State law on
sexuality usually follows prohibitions of major religions but not always.
2. A great many sexual patterns prohibited in one society are accepted in another; sexual
congress with young persons, homosexual relations, institutionalized prostitution as well
as cross-dressing has been widely accepted across societies and history.
3. The sexuality of young persons varies greatly with the mode of production; in primitive
communal societies where families lived at the edge of hunger and disease, the sexuality
of young men and women began at an early age as political ties and economic need dictated.
4. The sexuality of women become much more tightly restrained in agrarian societies--some
4000 years ago or more--as a solution to the problem of land transfer within
family...birth children to outside males challenged title to land...virginity and fidelity
for women began to be tightly restricted.
5. Pedophilia became proscribed by law as a new age category emerged out of industrial
capitalism...the short version is that reading, writing and math became ever more central
to the production of goods and services; adolescence, as a age category, emerged. Persons
over 14, then 16, then 18 and now 21 are confined to childhood until they finish
preparation for the labor market...and their sexuality was and is discouraged.
6. In mass, de-gendered societies, sexuality of children become of interest to males with
status problems...unable to embody the masculinity/machismo of early
societies...especially in relationships with competant adult women, males find children
satisfying sexual partners...in terms of status, power and control issues...in ways not
possible with independent adult women.
7. As children become net energy sinks (they use more goods than they produce), children
become economic liabilities. Social norms demanding high birth rates and fecund females
become archaic...female sexuality, especially, becomes less confined to the production of
children...and moral codes about female sexuality change dramatically...in short, women
are able to act on their own sexuality in ways not permitted in agrarian societies.
In the USA, in 1999, the average female kissed 79 males before marriage; in fundamental
Christian, Muslim or Jewish society as well as in many Asian relgions, she would not have
kissed any. The same is true of both pre-marital sex and extra-marital sex...not on in
agrarian society with so much concern with land use and land transfer across generations.
8. And, in a mass society with de-gendered production and distribution, the family and/or
heterosexual relationships become irrelevant to mode of production; male and female
homosexuality do not threaten the interests of class elites or power elites. The
de-gendering of production follows both high tech production and high
distribution...machines don't care who run them; markets don't care who buys.
9. Children remain an age category needing special protection from adult
predators...parents, teachers, guardians and clergy occupy a trust position; they require
authority and social power over children in order to help them become competent adults;
use of authority and social power to extract/extort sexual favors from children despoils
the socialization process...and is reprehensible to all except those who would solve their
own status panic at the expense of children they are supposed to protect. Critical
criminologists continue to be concerned with protection of children from sexual predation.
10. Most societies have made ad hoc distinction between erotic and pornographic materials
which follow the uses of social and moral power; erotic materials help celebrate sexuality
within adult relationships; pornographic materials are known by their emphasis on parts,
power, and perversion; that is to say, pornography reduce persons to body parts; reduce
human beings to objects of another's will; subvert cherished social relationships to mere
sexuality.
The restriction on pornography continues to be a concern for critical criminology even if
other sexual practices are not.\
11. Rape has been tolerated and even encouraged among a wide variety of societies...In predatory warfare, young men were given the right to rape women and children while the older men took possession of plunder and returned home with it to share it out among families in the clan, tribe or band. In modern warfare and in slavery, all women defined as non-persons could be raped without social onus or personal guilt. In all societies, sexual norms are strictly enforced in respect to women defined as daughters, wives, mothers, nuns, and other females within given degrees of kinship. This contrasts to reductionist theories which explain rape as biologically driven, as personal pathology or as by faulty socialization.
The feminist theory of rape is relevant within most patriarchal societies: that it a power device by which male hegemony is embodied; in more general terms rape is a semi-public control tactic by which women are forced back into the home or, alternatively, allowed to venture into public only under the protection of a male with status.
TR Young