children

A few thoughts.

1. Pedophilia functions as a fantasy of absolute good and evil. What I mean is that when it's discussed, its discussed as an example of something that everyone can believe is absolutely and self-evidently evil. In this sense children function as the object of fantasy for both pedophile and anti-pedophile.

2. The concentration on pedophilia and child molestation disguises the way in which children are more comprehensively exploited. This is not just in a general or ideal sense but in a very physical sense. The infant body is used to sell a variety of products, some of them having nothing to do with children. But of course in these cases what is noticed is how cute the babies are, and somehow that's separated from how the children are simultaneously being used/sold/exploited. Children similarly function as a fetish in pedophilia and advertisements.

3. There is a paradoxical discourse about sex and the body, first that the exploitation is traumatic and real because it involves sexuality, second that the exploitation is bad because it involves sexuality. More specifically, the horror is when children's bodies are the product, but there is no horror when children's bodies are used to sell the product.

4. In a more general sense I've been intrigued for a long time about how quick people are to talk about prostitution as exploitation (because it involves the body) but ignore the ways in which all jobs of any kind involve selling the self and permitting control over one's own body by the employer (if not always the customer). Another irony is how the alienation of the laborer from the product is condemned, but prostitution breaks down that alienation (then again, I'm not convinced that the product sold in prostitution is the prostitute's body.