Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:22:06.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The 2010 UK Home Office ‘Sexualisation of Young People’ Review: A Discursive Policy Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2012

ROBBIE DUSCHINSKY
ROBBIE DUSCHINSKY*
Affiliation:
School of Health, Community and Education Studies, Northumbria University, Coach Lane East Campus, Coach Lane, Benton, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE7 7XA email: robert.duschinsky@northumbria.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper offers a discursive policy analysis of the 2010 UK Home Office Sexualisation of Young People Review, authored by Linda Papadopoulos (2010a). It will scrutinise the narrative presented by the text of the danger posed by cultural representations to healthy development, and trace the way that the text links this danger to catastrophic outcomes: child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Examining this narrative, the article will propose that the UK Review deploys spatial metaphors to naturalise a gendered account of childhood, sexuality and danger, evoking the creeping influence of a corrupting culture on a girl's most private self. The article will also demonstrate that this spatial narrative underpins the epistemological structure of the text – its separation of the primary from the secondary, the real from the artificial.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 715 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Psychological Association (APA) (2007), Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, accessed at: http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report-full.pdf.Google Scholar
Ball, S. J. (2008), The Education Debate: Policy and Politics in the 21st Century, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Bloom, A. (2010), ‘Computer games and porn forcing kids to be “too sexy too soon”’, The Times Educational Supplement, 19 Feburary.Google Scholar
Buckingham, D., Willett, R., Bragg, S., Russell, R. and Dorrer, N. (2010), Sexualised Goods Aimed at Children, Report to the Scottish Parliament EO/S3/10/R2, accessed at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/equal/reports-10/eor10-02.htm.Google Scholar
Carroll, J. S., Padilla-Walker, L. M., Nelson, L. J., Olson, C. D., Barry, C. M. and Madsen, S. D. (2008), ‘Generation XXX: pornography acceptance and use among emerging adults’, Journal of Adolescent Research, 23: 1, 6–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cawson, P., Wattam, C., Brooker, S. and Kelly, G. (2000) Child Maltreatment in the United Kingdom: A Study of the Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect, London: NSPCC.Google Scholar
Dill, K. and Thill, K. (2007), ‘Video game characters and the socialization of gender roles: young people's perceptions mirror sexist media depictions’, Sex Roles, 57: 851–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dines, G. (2008), ‘Childified women’, in Olfman, Sharna (ed.), The Sexualization of Childhood, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, pp. 121–42.Google Scholar
Duschinsky, R. (2010), ‘Feminism, sexualisation and social status’, Media International Australia, 135: 94–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duschinsky, R. (2011a), ‘Ideal and unsullied: purity, subjectivity and social power’, Subjectivity, 4: 2, 147–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duschinsky, R. (2011b), ‘Nietzsche: through the lens of purity’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 41: 1, 50–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duschinsky, R. (2012a), ‘The emergence of sexualisation as a social problem’, Social Politics, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Duschinsky, R. (2012b), ‘The new sexual visibility’, Feminist Theory, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Duschinsky, R. and Barker, M. (2012) ‘Doing the Möbius strip’, Sexualities, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Egan, R. D. and Hawkes, G. (2008a), ‘Girls, sexuality and the strange carnalities of advertisements’, Australian Feminist Studies, 23: 57, 307–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Egan, R. D. and Hawkes, G. (2008b), ‘Endangered girls and incendiary objects’, Sexuality and Culture, 12: 291–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Else-Quest, N. M. and Hyde, J. S. (2009), ‘The missing discourse of development: commentary on Lerum and Dworkin’, Journal of Sex Research, 46: 4, 264–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gill, R. (2006), Gender and the Media, Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Grosz, E. (1995), ‘Sexual difference and the problem of essentialism’, in Space, Time and Perversion, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Guardian (2010), ‘Parental guidance: sexualisation of children’, 29 Feburary.Google Scholar
Hattenstone, S. (2009), ‘You couldn't make up a story that was more embarrassing – and it happened to me’, The Guardian, 11 July.Google Scholar
Hill, E. (2009), ‘My body and I: Linda Papadopoulos’, Daily Mail, 18 April.Google Scholar
Jones, L. (2010), ‘How pop become porn’, The Daily Mail, 29 February.Google Scholar
Lerum, K. and Dworkin, S. (2009), ‘“Bad girls rule”: an interdisciplinary feminist commentary on the report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls’, Journal of Sex Research, 46: 4, 250–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lichtenstein, O. (2010), ‘What a sick world when women yearn to look like girls . . . and little girls are dressed to look like women’, Daily Mail, 19 April.Google Scholar
Mottier, V. (2008), ‘Metaphors, mini-narratives and Foucauldian discourse theory’, in Carver, Terrell and Pikalo, Jernej (eds.), Political Language and Metaphor: Interpreting and Changing the World, London: Routledge, pp. 282–94.Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, L. (2005), Mirror, Mirror: Dr Linda's Body Image Revolution, London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, L. (2006), Man Manual: Everything You Wanted to Know About Your Man, London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, L. (2010a), Sexualisation of Young People Review, London: UK Home Office, accessed at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/Sexualisation-young-people.Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, L. (2010b), ‘Why do Rihanna's pop songs have to tell girls they're “sluts”?’, Daily Mail, 20 May.Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, L. (2011), ‘Chair's Remarks’, address to the Politics of Sexualisation – Women, Girls and Activism, Conference at the House of Lords, 15 June.Google Scholar
Pascoe, C. J. (2011), ‘Resource and risk: youth sexuality and new media use’, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 8: 5–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolman, D. (2002), Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Travis, A. (2009), ‘Jacqui Smith to tackle “sexualisation” culture’, The Guardian, 9 March.Google Scholar
Renold, E. and Ringrose, J. (2011), ‘Schizoid subjectivities: re-theorising teen-girls’ sexual cultures in an era of sexualisation’, Journal of Sociology, 47: 4, 389–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stice, E., Spangler, D. and Agras, W. (2001), ‘Exposure to media-portrayed thin-ideal images adversely affects vulnerable girls’, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 20: 270–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walkerdine, V. (2011), ‘Review symposium on Angela McRobbie's The Aftermath of Feminism’, Sociology, 45: 4, 702–3.Google Scholar