Sexualistation of Young People

Introduction (cont.)
Attitudes thought to have been
eradicated by the gender equality
movement have somehow become
acceptable again. Suddenly, it seems, it’s
OK to call a woman a ‘bird’ or to have
her posing semi-naked on the cover of a
mainstream magazine, suddenly it’s cute
and funny for little girls to sing along to
misogynistic lyrics of songs, as long as
long as it’s done for the sake of a bit of
simple harmless fun.
However, many researchers, clinicians and
educators agree that the ramifications
of this kind of ‘fun’ are far from harmless.
The evidence collected in this report
suggests these developments are having
a profound impact, particularly on
girls and young women. Children and
What is sexualisation?
“...in the current environment, teen girls
are encouraged to look sexy, yet they
know little about what it means to be
sexual, to have sexual desires and to
make rational and responsible decisions
about pleasure and risk within intimate
relationships that acknowledge their
own desires.” 71
Healthy sexuality is an important
component of both physical and mental
health. When based on mutual respect
between consenting partners, sex fosters
intimacy, bonding and shared pleasure. 72
Sexualisation, by contrast, is the imposition
of adult sexuality on to children and young
people before they are capable of dealing
with it, mentally, emotionally or physically.
It does not apply to self-motivated
sexual play, nor to the dissemination of
age-appropriate material about sexuality.
We should be careful that we do not
71 Tolman (2002)
72 Satcher (2001)
adolescents are highly susceptible to the
images and messages they see and hear
around them particularly when, as is
increasingly the case, they are accessing
those images and messages alone.
The following chapter examines the
various ways in which sexualisation
can be defined and how it differs from
healthy sexual development. It then goes
on to examine how children and young
people develop, providing an overview
of some of the key theories of learning
and development. Finally, it looks at how
those theories operate in practice; that
is, at how and why sexualisation may
be having an impact on children and
young people.
indiscriminately apply the notion of
sexualisation so that any expression of
sexuality by children is seen as wrong or
problematic.
The idea that sexualisation is increasingly
prevalent throughout our culture has
been gaining momentum since the late
1990s and is now regularly discussed
by academics and researchers. The
consensus seems to be that the most
obvious manifestation, the dissemination
of sexualised visual imagery, while
important in its own right, is part of a
wider phenomenon: the emergence in
the UK of a ‘pornified’ culture 73 and the
encroaching of pornography into many
spheres of everyday life. 74 Although
some 75 interpret this as a sign of cultural
maturity and of the democratisation of
the visual field, a more widely held view 76
73 Paul (2005)
74 McNair (2002)
75 McNair (2002)
76 McNair (2002); Paul (2005)
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