Pornographic Protections? Itineraries of Childhood Innocence

Abstract

Legal and queer theoretic critics charge that the myth of “childhood innocence” perverts and propagates the unwarranted expansion of child pornography law, and mischaracterizes sources of and solutions to sexual violence. This article spells out these criticisms and synthesizes them with recent scholarship on the racialization of innocence. In thinking these literatures together, we are able to survey the complexities of “innocence” as a political idiom for the promotion of social and sexual welfare. I conclude with the reminder that no idiom – whether “innocence,” “harm,” or “agency” – is purified of normative judgment.