ABSTRACT
Childhood is a time of presumed sexual innocence. It is generally perceived as a space where children are untroubled and untouched by the cares of the (adult) sexual world to come. But sexual innocence is both a contested and gendered concept. This chapter aims to interrogate both the gendering and sexualisation of innocence within the generational cultures, ‘boyhood’ and ‘girlhood’.The first third of the chapter is dedicated to mapping out some of the contradictory myths and moral panics that simultaneously deny and acknowledge the sexuality of children/childhood. In particular I explore how such panics are induced by the practices and policies of schools themselves and by the manipulation of dominant rhetoric and images of childhood from the media, government and non-government agencies. I also make visible and problematise the gendering of sexual innocence (particularly the feminisation of erotic innocence) and launch the concept, ‘sexual generationing’ to address the ways in which girls and boys draw upon and are differently positioned and policed by age-appropriate sexualised discourses.
