"All against pedophilia": ethnographic notes about a contemporary moral crusade

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork carried out within the Brazilian Senate's inquiry committee on Pedophilia and in the Federal Police Department, the aim of this paper is to analyze the strategies and the effects of the conceptualization and the combat of the phenomenon of sexual violence against children as "pedophilia" and with focus on child pornography on the internet. The text consists of a historical approach to the emergence of the problem, an analysis of the political strategies of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Pedophilia and an ethnographic description of the police investigations into child pornography on the internet. The hypothesis is that this "anti-pedophilia crusade" pivoting on the threats of a sexual perversion, is not as effective in the protection of the real child victims of violence as it is in the defense of an ideally innocent childhood.

Young people, online fandom and the perils of child pornography legislation in Australia

“…As Lowenkron (2013), Karaian (2012) and Faulkner (2014), among others, have argued, there is something about how rhetorical invocations of the ‘innocence’ and ‘vulnerability’ of children have been institutionalized via legislation and media discourse in contemporary societies that make it extraordinarily difficult to present perspectives that critique this position without inviting moral condemnation. Indeed, raising concerns about the expanding scope of child pornography laws can result in the ‘framing [of] those who dare to oppose the strictest regulation of child pornography as hopelessly misguided libertarians, pedophiles, or both’ (Danay, 2005: 153), as is increasingly attested to by researchers in the field of contentious images (Galbraith, 2017; Kincaid, 2004; Stapleton, 2013).…”

Violências e afetos: intercâmbios sexuais e econômicos na (recente) produção antropológica realizada no Brasil

“…6 Indefinições legais e confusões conceituais contribuem para que essas três noções (tráfico de pessoas, turismo sexual e exploração sexual) com frequência sejam consideradas como sinônimos. Essas ambiguidades também favorecem que a noção de exploração sexual seja pensada remetendo às novas configurações da sexualidade assinaladas por Carrara (2012), como expressão de violação do consentimento das pessoas que exercem a prostituição, justificando assim sua repressão (Lowenkron, 2013;. Esse movimento se vê favorecido, no Brasil, pela rápida disseminação de posições feministas neoabolicionistas, que atualizam noções presentes nas campanhas realizadas em países europeus, a partir da segunda metade do século XIX, para abolir a regulamentação da prostituição.…”