Eshani Singh

Law, Desire and Popular Culture

The Injustice of the Illegality of Pedophilia
Across various modes of literature and media, depictions of all sorts are widely contested
throughout the society. One that remains as a popularly accepted norm is that any sexual
depictions of minors are unacceptable. There is a huge element of shame attached to liking
anything that is remotely related to the sexuality of children.
When a country is deciding the extent of the illegality of pornography, or prostitution,
children are the first ones to be brought under the ambit of the protection. This was reflected
in Indias decision to remove the ban from all pornography, except child pornography. The
ban of pornography in general was in the beginning met with huge outrage, with many
comedians even making parodies on it; but the decision on child pornography was met with
seriousness al throughout the audiences.
The idea of protectionism then becomes very important here. Because all adults are so
involved in this idea of protecting the childs innocence, they forget that the children may
have some emotions and reactions to these situations. One always discusses the lack of sex
education as contributory to sexual abuse of children, and the first thing that they think of
introducing is the concept of bad touch and good touch. The fact remains that people,
who have no idea about how the touch feels, are teaching children what a good touch is just
like one teaches them how to perform their gender.
Essentially what happens is that one is removing all aspects of agency that exist with the
child that they are so adamant on protecting. The last few scenes of Polisse actually capture
this lack of understanding the childs mind. When the child is concerned about his gymnastic
teachers fate in the prison, and the teacher says that they had a relationship of love, it is quite
reflective of complete ignorance of the existence of such a relationship at all.
There is this huge element of violence attached to the attraction towards children, and this
seems to drive all sentiments towards that of fear. Foucault has very clearly pointed out in
one of his interviews that because children may forget that these events may have occurred in
their lives, and arent affected by it, people are instantly even more terrified. The
understanding then becomes such a trauma, that their brain forgot it to save itself from such
damage.1
Whether the illegality of sexual or romantic relations between adults and children negatively
affects the adults, or the children is unclear to me. One thing that remains clear though, is that
the society is very keen in creating a victim in this case, without actually analysing the reality
of the situation.

1 Foucault, Michel, Guy Hocquenghem, and Jean Danet. "The danger of

child sexuality." Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 19611984 (1996):
264-74, https://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/danger.htm [last accessed
October 15, 2016]