To the editors:
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The legal system recognizes that a child is not developmentally capable of giving informed consent to participate in sexual activities with an adult. In addition, there is an inherent power imbalance in any relationship between a child and an adult, with the adult holding the power. Children, particularly little girls, are conditioned in our society to obey and “respect” adults, and to please them. What choice, therefore, and power does a child have when she is forced either by threats or emotional manipulation to participate in sexual acts (or to pose for a sexually exploitive picture) by an adult?
A final point: this photograph not only perpetuates the concept of children as property, to be used by adults, and to satisfy adult needs, but it also presents children as appropriate sexual objects. Men who sexually abuse children use pictures like this not only to legitimize to themselves their acts of exploitation and violence, but also to persuade and coerce children to pose for similar pictures and to be sexually victimized in other ways as well. When we choose to display “art” that exploits children, and celebrates their victimization, we become complicit in the abuse.
W. Fletcher
