Sociology Research Seminar
Inter/subjectivity, power, and teacher-student sex crime
27 May 2009, 3-5pm Menzies Building W10.10 Monash Clayton Campus (PSI Library)
Steven Angelides
Monash University
Abstract
This paper considers sexual offence legislation that automatically criminalises sexual relationships between teachers and students where the latter are over the general age of consent. Examining an Australian criminal case, it critiques the model of sovereign power informing such legislation, suggesting that it forecloses critical questions of subjectivity and intersubjective dynamics. Far from innocuous, the paper argues that this model of power and its foreclosures misrecognise the teacher-student relationships under scrutiny and often create far greater harm than do the sexual relationships themselves. An alternative model of multi-dimensional inter/subjective power relations is proposed as a way of analysing interpersonal relationships, giving due weight to adolescent agency, encouraging responsible sexual citizenship, and preventing unnecessary prosecutions and collateral damage.
Steven Angelides
Steven has a PhD in Gender Studies from University of Melbourne and has held research fellowships at Australian National University, Adelaide University, and University of Melbourne. Currently Monash fellow in Sociology and Gender Studies, he is author of A History of Bisexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) and recipient of the MLA Crompton-Noll Award in 2004 for his work published in GLQ on child sexuality. His recent publications on teacher-pupil sex cases appear in the Journal of Men’s Studies and Australian Feminist Studies, and the essay from which this paper is drawn is forthcoming in the British journal Subjectivity (formerly International Journal of Critical Psychology). He is completing a book on moral panics over child sexuality.