Governing Sex: Removing the Right to Take Responsibility

Gillian Cowlishaw

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.v3i1.139

Abstract

The exposure in 2006 of horrific cases of sexual violence that allegedly characterised Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, evoked responses dominated by a predictable moral panic. Thus the Commonwealth Intervention of 2007 largely missed its ostensible aim of protecting sexually abused children. This essay moves beyond a moralising analysis to consider relevant social, cultural and historical factors based on specific ethnographic work. First I present a sense of some profound historically established differences and common themes in traditional Aboriginal and mainstream law in relation to the regulation of sexuality. Then I draw on evidence that Aboriginal people embraced the notion of ‘two laws’, even as the new era created profound difficulties in relation to sexual norms. Their ‘right to take responsibility’ (Pearson 2000) was further undermined by ‘Interventions’ that unashamedly diminished the ability of NT Aborigines to govern their own communities. Finally, mainstream institutions that are deeply engaged with Aboriginal communities need to consider the ways they may be perpetuating entrenched difficulties.

Highlights

That crime is a category applied arbitrarily in relation to social configurations expressed in law is illustrated by cross‐cultural examination, and long ago accepted as an important finding among anthropologists. (Nader 2003)
A particular ABC Lateline interview broadcast in May 20061 is widely seen as the spark that ignited a growing concern in Australia about remote community conditions that had been building for some time, and that led to the Little Children are Sacred report (Wild and Anderson 2007) and the Commonwealth Intervention (June 2007)
Lateline interviewed Nanette Rogers, a Crown Prosecutor based in Alice Springs, about a briefing paper she had written for senior police that exposed cases of horrific sexual violence towards little children, even babies, perpetrated by drunken men and petrol‐sniffing youths

Summary

Introduction

That crime is a category applied arbitrarily in relation to social configurations expressed in law is illustrated by cross‐cultural examination, and long ago accepted as an important finding among anthropologists. (Nader 2003). One element of this law – the promising of young girls to mature men as marriages partners – has eroded, creating the opening for new social problems around the regulation of sexuality.

Results

Conclusion