In this opus, Joël BROUSTAIL revisits the notion of sexual abuse and its recent extension, drawing on a historical and multidisciplinary approach.
Starting from the sensitive entry point of child sexual abuse, as the archetype of sexual abuse, it attempts to trace the history of the“ gray areas” of sexual abuse, from sexual violence among other primates to the post #MeToo era. Is there a universality of sexual abuse in the history of mankind, with progress in awareness over recent decades, or the categories of sexual abuse, the boundaries of childhood, sexuality, modesty, etc. are they specific to each context and, to some extent, incomparable? Could alternative conceptions of sexuality and abuse have prevailed?
Based on a meticulous account, supported by numerous sources and an abundant statistical apparatus, it thus analyzes the construction of Good and Evil in modern societies.
It notably highlights the dynamics of an ameliorative progressivism: a sexual idealism, of both Protestant and feminist Anglo-Saxon origin, would have taken over from the progressive idealisms of social, ideological or national inspiration which marked the 20th century. Gender consciousness would have partially replaced Marxist class consciousness or nationalist identifications.
But this development would also correspond, in addition to an increased awareness, to an anthropological revolution in the second half of the 20th century, with concomitant major evolutions.
First, society has moved from dominant segregation by sex to segregation by age groups. The generalization of long co-education led to young communities of both sexes and, with the contraceptive revolution, unlike in previous times, favored sex within the same age group for youths.
Secondly, the demographic transition with a relative scarcity of young people and the general aging of the population has led to a fetishization of youth and childhood, as well as to the objective need to protect them from the potentially overwhelming sollicitations of adults, extending sexual vulnerability from childhood to adolescence and youth.
It has led to the stigmatization of transgressions crossing the barriers between age groups, culminating in the monstrous figure of the child molester, whether an adult with a child or a consenting adolescent, assimilated to a child, and therefore incapable of consent.
This has also led to extend to sexual relations between adults the question of the validity of consent in cases of partner asymmetry, e.g. for prostitution: like a child, the prostitute could not actually consent, due to economic asymmetry, thus justifying the penalization of prostitution clients.
Finally, this opus illustrates the shift in modern societies from a religious legitimization of norms to a psychiatrization of Goof and Evil, notably with the paradigm of the post-traumatic victim, at the heart of contemporary conceptions of the disastrous consequences of sexual abuse. These consequences justifies the need to protect potential victims with strict regulations and even preventive screening/confinement of potential predators, leading to a new conception of the Law. Dozens of empirical studies are dissected to analyze the scientific claims of the dominant psychiatric discourse.
Joël BROUSTAIL, professor at Sorbonne University and at SIRICE-CNRS, is the author of numerous publications, from the history of religious minorities to the diffusion of innovations. He has held various responsibilities, notably in Asia and the Middle East, and teaches in several universities.
A former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, of HEC and the Sorbonne, he is both a historian and economist by education.
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