Point Park University Presents: The Eighth Annual Childhood and Society Symposium The Sexualization of Childhood, June 13 – 14, Pittsburgh Co-Sponsored by A Home Within Up to 8 Continuing Education Units for Psychologists Featuring Nationally Renowned Childhood Experts: Sharon Cooper Gail Dines Matt Ezzell Melissa Farley Diane Levin Susan Linn Sharna Olfman Sandra Steingraber Carolyn West This symposium will address: • How boys' & girls' gender & sexual development is impacted by our sexualized culture • Sexual exploitation of children through internet crimes and prostitution • The dramatic rise in the production and consumption of child pornography • The exploitation of black adolescent girls through rap music and hip hop culture • The falling age of puberty in girls as a result of toxic chemical exposures • What professionals, policy makers and parents can do to make a difference
Filed under: Academia, Conferences, Farley, Feminism, Research, Sexual Assault Tagged: | Child Pornography, Psychology
Here’s a link to the flyer for the conference:
http://www.pointpark.edu/files/8thcsflyeraddrates.pdf
And, like the Wheelock conferences, its worth academic credit.
Thanks!
I have questions for Melissa Farley. I read the schedule and noticed that your presentation will address how trafficking is on the rise. If this is true, then doesn’t this show how conflating all prostitution with trafficking is not an effective way to stop human trafficking? I mean, the TVPRA conflates all prostitution with trafficking, but if this is actually stopping human trafficking, then why is your presentation going to address how human trafficking is on the rise? It is so ironic that the same people who support these policies that conflate all prostitution with human trafficking are also saying that human trafficking is on the rise. If the conflation is justified, why aren’t these policies decreasing human trafficking?
I have to say, as a young person (16 years old), how this is laid out is, honestly, making me a little uncomfortable.
People my age have sexualities. They aren’t mature enough to do certain things (i.e. sex work – points about trafficking of young people are certainly legitimate), but almost all of them have sexual thoughts and urges, and a good number of them do sexual things.
I’m somewhat sick of people saying what a victim I am if I choose to express any form of sexuality. Being sexual is not always a result of being sexualized. Teenagers are sexual beings, and they were long before the internet/barbies/reality TV/rap music/whatever. The sexual part of me is legitimate, not a result of media brainwashing or exploitation, and is part of who I am. I’m sick of people trying to erase that part of me.
That is all. *steps off soapbox*
Thank you, SWA and missnomered. Thank you.
XX
Will this event be broadcast? I’ve had difficulty sleeping as of late and a Farley/Dines ticket would be a sedative of astronomical proportion.
I totally agree with you, missnomered. I knew the same thing when I was 13, and I remember being entirely appalled when I learned in my social studies class that according to California law, it was actually illegal for me to have sex with another person under any circumstances.
I guess I’m supposed to have changed my mind now that I’m much older and ostensibly wiser, but, no, I still have pretty much the same perspective now.
In later years, when I saw feminist/therapeutic language about “sexualization” in reference to teenagers, it too rubbed me the wrong way. So teenagers, or at least teenage girls, are somehow “naturally” not sexual until the big bad media makes them so? You would think anybody who was ever a teenager would call bullshit on that, but its amazing the number of people who buy into it.
Many (not all) teenagers are sexual but they also tend to be inexperienced and easier for older people to coerce and control and take advantage of.