Jacky KILVINGTON en Ali WOODBeide Engelse auteurs zijn ervaren en deskundig in wat in de UK 'playwork' heet. Dat heeft te maken met (de organisatie en opzet van) speelplaatsen voor kinderen. Ze publiceerden daar al eerder over.
In dit boek willen de auteurs het eenzijdig mannelijke perspectief in het denken over speelplaatsen aanvullen met een vrouwelijk perspectief.
"Play is something that human beings and many other animals simply and instinctively do, as often as they possibly can and especially – but not exclusively – while growing up. We believe with others Smith (2010), Bjorkland (2007), Sutton-Smith (1997), Beckoff and Byers (1998), Hughes (2012), that it is biologically essential and so commands our respect and interest."(6)
De basis van het spelen door kinderen is dus biologisch, maar heeft toch ook te maken met de cultuur en de samenleving waarin kinderen opgroeien. Het is niet alleen maar 'instinctief' en 'van nature'. Integendeel, zoals zal blijken.
Ideeën over wat spel is worden in de UK samengevat in de zogenoemde Playwork Principles.
"The Playwork Principles have been useful though in describing play as being children’s domain and not something that adults should lead, direct or organize – a much needed concept in a society that has become less and less tolerant of children’s play."(8)
"Themes of violence, death, bodily functions, loss and tragedy are common in play, but all those playing know this is ‘not real’ and so they can experiment with ‘possible feelings and possible identities without risking the real biological or social consequences’ (Bailey, 2002: 171)." [mijn nadruk] (10)
Spel moet dus vanuit de kinderen komen en volwassenen horen zich daar zo min mogelijk mee te bemoeien. Kinderen gebruiken de in het hierboven staande citaat genoemde thema's, maar kunnen goed onderscheiden tussen wat spel en wat werkelijkheid is.
Genoemde principes zouden dus ook moeten gelden voor seksuele spelletjes. Ik zelf denk dat de spontaniteit en de eigen keuzes van kinderen dan al snel verstoord zullen raken door de bemoeizucht van volwassenen. De auteurs vinden dat ook.
"Adults can have difficulty with children’s emerging sexuality because they view it through an adult lens rather than seeing that children are playfully exploring bodies and terminology in order to gradually understand what sex and sexuality is. The way that adults impart information and respond to children’s sexual play, can have a profound effect on how comfortable children become with their later sexual behaviour and sexual identity – but we will explore all this and more in Chapter 5." [mijn nadruk] (18)
De auteurs vragen zich in hoofdstuk 2 en 3 af of het uitmaakt als jongens en meisjes spelen op de stereotype manier van jongens en meisjes. Je kunt terecht de vraag stellen:
"Would my play life have been the same if I had not been labelled a ‘girl’? I think not."(xi)
Dat denk ik ook niet. Op p. 38-40 staan de kenmerken die men aan het spel van jongens en meisjes toeschrijft.
"Feminists and people who believe that all gendered behaviour is socialized into children certainly argue that stereotypically male or female play behaviour is harmful. However, others think not; they believe that differences are hard wired and gendered play is just a manifestation of this." [mijn nadruk] (30)
"Studies across the world and over time have consistently noted gender differences in the ways in which children play and parents anecdotally continue to agree: but is this really true and what part does nature or nurture have in this?" [mijn nadruk] (35)
Het is inderdaad maar wat je bewijs noemt. Wat waren de waarden en normen op de achtergrond van de onderzoekers? Wat voor methoden werden gehanteerd in wat voor context en met wat voor populatie? En zo verder.
Maar het probleem is nog veel principiëler. Je onderzoekt en observeert immers kinderen die al door hun ouders en familie, de media en de commercie in een bepaalde richting gesocialiseerd zijn. Wat mensenkinderen van nature doen zul je dus nooit weten, want je kunt dat niet onderzoeken. Je ziet drukke lawaaierige jongetjes en sociale meisjes, maar je kunt nooit de conclusie trekken dat jongetjes van nature agressiever zijn en meisjes rustiger en meegaander en dat dat 'hardwired' vastligt in de hersenen. Dat zijn stellingen die je om die reden meteen moet wantrouwen. Vaak komen die stellingen uit de hoek van de evolutionaire biologie en evolutionaire psychologie en worden ze door conservatieven meteen opgepakt als 'de waarheid'. Conservatieven houden van eeuwige zekerheden en dus ook van 'hardwired'.
Bovendien: ook al zouden we precies de feiten kennen hoe jongens en meisjes qua spelgedrag zijn, dat zou helemaal niks zeggen over hoe dat spelgedrag zou moeten zijn. Normatief kun je altijd tegen bestaand spelgedrag ingaan. Wat conservatieven dan ook meteen doen als het om seksspel gaat: ineens is dat gedrag dan niet meer 'hardwired' en moeten we daar van af.
Hoofdstuk 5 komt uitgebreid terug op de kwestie van spel in relatie tot seksualiteit.
"Children and sexuality remains a contentious topic in Western society and continues to provoke a range of responses that are often highly subjective, as other authors over the years have also found (see Jackson [1982], Jenkins [1998], Levine [2002], Luker [2007]). Do read this chapter with an open mind and be aware of your own intellectual and emotional responses as you think over the questions and issues we raise! (...)
We begin by asking whether a prepubescent child has a sexuality. This is a difficult topic to discuss rationally not just in the light of current concerns about paedophilia and child sexual exploitation (CSE), but also because sexuality has a number of contexts and may mean different things to different people and we will need to reinterpret this query by asking further practical questions to get us thinking." [mijn nadruk] (83-85)
"-- Are children able to experience sexual pleasure?
-- Do (all) children masturbate and, if so, from what age?
-- If children can physically experience sexual pleasure, do they need sexual knowledge in order to understand or make sense of their experience?
-- Does having such knowledge – at any age – help or hinder their understanding?
-- If a child does not have sexual knowledge, does that mean that any physical pleasure they may experience is non-sexual?
-- If children behave in apparently sexual ways, are they motivated by the same needs and wants as adults?
-- Are there ‘milestones’ of sexual development that children pass through? And are these the same for all children?
-- Can children be ‘corrupted’?
-- Should children remain innocent of sexual matters for as long as possible? And would that be their preference?
-- Are children who experience any form of sexual abuse automatically traumatized?
-- Do/can children know their sexual preferences in terms of gender?
-- Do children engage in sexual play? And, if so, do all children do this? Is it ‘normal’?
-- Is sexual play healthy or can it be harmful?
-- How can we tell the difference between sexual play, sexual experience and sexual abuse?"(83-85)
[De antwoorden van de auteurs staan op p. 97-99, maar neem ik hier niet over, omdat dat wat lang is. Zie het uittreksel.]
De vragen die hierboven gesteld worden, worden door veel mensen ervaren als 'not done'. Onderzoek ernaar wordt afgewezen of tegengewerkt. Lees maar verder:
"Very little research on childhood sexuality has been undertaken, which perhaps is ethically understandable in the present day – most research in the last few decades has focused on childhood sexual abuse. For the few who have undertaken research into ‘normative’ childhood sexuality and published their findings, the response in the West, in some cases has been extremely negative and some have even attempted to damage the reputations of the researchers (see Rind et al. [1998], Levine [2002]). In our case, too, when we undertook workshops exploring some of the questions raised in the preceding section, we, certainly, received our own share of highly charged complaints (interestingly, always from people who had heard about the workshops, but did not attend them).
As Bancroft (2003: xii) says, ‘rational debate and scientific inquiry into _normal_ childhood sexual development are currently very difficult’ (the italics are ours). Why is this? Jenkins (1998), a historian, describes ‘cycles of moral panic’ about child sexual abuse that have recurred three times over the last 120 years that significantly affect the way we perceive children and sexuality. We are currently in one of these cycles in the West and so any manifestations of sexualized behaviour by children tend to ring our safeguarding alarm bells. Renold (2005: 21), however, laments that, ‘such is the denial of children’s sexual awareness, that any child’s early interest in sex can be interpreted as warning sign that the child has been sexually abused’." [mijn nadruk] (85)
Met andere woorden: onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik van kinderen mag wel, onderzoek naar de normale seksuele ontwikkeling van kinderen mag niet, waarmee je kinderlijke seksualiteit dus altijd benaderd vanuit een negatieve sfeer, als iets wat niet hoort. En als er ook maar iets van seks blijkt bij een kind, moet het wel misbruikt zijn, nietwaar? Terwijl seksueel misbruik weinig te maken heeft met seks en alles met machtsuitoefening en geweld. Genoemde morele paniek heeft dan ook weinig met seksueel misbruik te maken, denk ik, en vooral met conservatieve waarden en normen die seks- en vrouwvijandig zijn. Het is daarnaast een Westerse insteek.
"Our concerns about our children’s innocence and protection are not necessarily replicated across the world in other societies, who perceive children as more able and/or having the right to know about sex and sexuality." [mijn nadruk] (86)
"Concerns about the effects of sexual abuse are also dissimilar elsewhere – Montgomery’s (2010) research into child prostitution in Thailand describes a concern there with the children’s physical welfare, but no such belief that they are irreparably psychologically damaged and the children in the study did not consider themselves as victims, but rather felt able to positively contribute to the family income. Jackson (1982: 62) postulates that in Western culture ‘most of the ‘trauma’ is probably caused by ‘adult reaction’, a thought also echoed by Meyer-Bahlburg (2003: 373) when she describes seeing ‘marked exacerbation of the effects of child sexual abuse by what happens as a consequence of agency interventions’.
Let us clarify – we are not saying that sexual abuse of children is of no real consequence. We believe it is deplorable – as is all other abuse of children – but that it is so, due to the imbalance of power it comprises. After a great deal of reading, listening and questioning, we also believe that children are not asexual and that our strong desire to keep them safe and ‘innocent’ often erodes their own defences, undermines their growing confidence, denies them knowledge and understanding and fails to recognize their own experiences and queries. To explain this perspective, we will need to explore further a number of threads and ask you to bear with us as we do so." [mijn nadruk] (87)
Een duidelijk standpunt, realistisch en relativerend. Dapper. In de UK kan dat nog, in de USA al lang niet meer, vrees ik, ook al wordt dat standpunt door veel onderzoeken onderbouwt.
"All these studies and our own collected stories, do propose that sexual play is a common phenomenon among many children, primarily motivated by curiosity and they challenge recent prevailing views that: a) children are asexual in their thinking and their behaviour; and b) that children in middle childhood do not – and should not – engage in sexual behaviour. Many of the stories we heard also included tellings off and punishments meted out by adults who discovered or overheard them and the guilt or confusion that followed.
Such prevailing views do tend to drive children’s experiences underground – they learn quite early on that most adults are embarrassed by their questions and disapprove of them behaving in certain ways. It does seem to be the case that the ‘abuse rhetoric has also expanded medicalized and deviant labels over juvenile sexual behaviours that until very recently were commonly regarded as harmless play’ (Jenkins 2003: 13)." [mijn nadruk] (91)
Goed geformuleerd. Ik ben onder de indruk. Die therapeutisering en criminalisering is onder invloed van Amerikaans conservatisme ook in Nederland gaande.
"... there is an underlying powerful thread of adult responsibility that rarely acknowledges children’s own agency and ability to make sense of things, or attempts to see children’s responses to all things sexual through their eyes. It does seem that we adults career on with our debates and arguments on morals and on values and don’t take sufficient time to sit outside ourselves and listen to and evaluate what is really going on in ourselves, our children and our society – and other societies who deal with all this rather differently." [mijn nadruk] (93-94)
Eindelijk eens een boek met goede en realistische inzichten in kinderen. Kinderen kunnen en snappen meer dan veel volwassenen denken. Ook andere auteurs schrijven over de 'agency' (de handelingsbekwaamheid) van kinderen. Het is een interessant onderwerp, vind ik.