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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 174 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 174, April 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
We support complete equality for gay people and demand an end to every form of discrimination including the age of consent. We loathe the hypocrisy of Tories who harp on about traditional morality and ‘family values’, while ‘doing all the things they told us not to.’
None will disagree so far with Regan Kilpin in his TalkBack article (March SR). However, Regan then questions whether any legal age of consent is defensible, and concludes ‘an age of consent ... is of no use today.’ By what steps does he reach such an extraordinary and mistaken conclusion?
Firstly that sexual relations must either be consenting or they are exploitative and secondly that any particular age of consent must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary since young people don’t develop towards the ‘adult’ ability to consent at the same rate.
So, as Regan says, it could be difficult to agree if a 12-year-old girl (or boy?) can ‘fully understand and independently consent to having sex with an adult.’
The answer to such difficult questions for Regan does not lie in ‘a magic age of consent’, but in dealing ‘individually’ with particular cases and circumstances. Who should do this Regan doesn’t say (magistrates? judges? doctors? social workers?). I wouldn’t welcome greater discretion for the judges in cases of alleged rape or sexual abuse – far from it. But that’s not the main problem with his analysis.
He completely misses the inequalities of power between adults and children under capitalism. Children are the only age group in society who can be physically assaulted with the backing of law and custom – even if that ‘right’ has been increasingly confined to parents alone. Earlier, of course, both teachers and coppers were more or less officially entitled to hit children.
Because children are subordinated to their ‘elders and betters’ they do need protection from sexual abuse and exploitation; we have to support laws that regulate sexual access to children. Lest there be any doubt, I know through my job (social work) of sexual relations between an adult man and a girl only 18 months old. The fact that in a society freed from alienation and oppression we can expect all human relations to be utterly transformed doesn’t contradict at all the need for children to be protected now.
Socialism can and will end the specific oppression of children. It is the interests of capitalist exploitation and ‘labour discipline’ which insist – ultimately – that children must learn to respect authority, to have their autonomy curtailed, and to have their natural curiosity and their spirit stifled. Philippe Aries’ fascinating book Centuries of Childhood shows not only how the particular oppression of children is specific to the rise of capitalism, but so also is the idea of a ‘childhood’ itself. It presents us – in short – with one further instance of the necessity of socialism for human emancipation.
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Richard Purdie |
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