I honestly struggled with this. Mosurinjohn’s article about asexual teens is saying that the images children get about normative sexuality are inconsistent with the current reality of human sexuality. She asserts that this is a problem because on the one hand there is no active narrative that addresses childhood sexuality, while on the other, children are exposed to no shortage of images that provide this narrative for them. Unfortunately these images are overwhelmingly skewed, oversexualized, and myopic in their representation of the current reality–these images impose a type of gender role stereotype based on their romantic relations with one another.
I also thought the article contended that there is a pervasive idea that “adult sexuality and ‘childhood innocence’ need to be categorically separated.” As an extension of the argument that we treat children as if they are asexual, because we try to keep the childhood asexual narrative wholly separate from its very-clearly-sexual adult counterpart, we are lacking a transitional space in which children’s sexuality can evolve and grow into mature sexuality. There is no methodology for actively bringing about or nurturing our development on that front. In its absence are media images that themselves do inherently communicate (and therefore perpetuate) negative yet hegemonic ideologies. Within this inconsistency lies the space where narrow interpretations of sexuality can flourish.
If children must be subjected to sexual ideologies anyway, I really don’t see the problem with giving children heteronormative images that aren’t based on skewed heteronormative beliefs. First, they’re children. While they need to be socialized into the realities of human sexuality, I don’t think children’s programming should be the primary means by which this occurs. And to the degree that it occurs at all on children’s programming, it needs to be ambiguous. Why? Because they are children, and children don’t always have the maturity or capacity for understanding matters of a sexual nature. This is not to say they are asexual or should be treated as such, but I think they should be given what they can digest, for all the same reasons we don’t give medium rare prime rib to newborns.
Second, I don’t have a problem with the images that children are exposed to being heteronormative because I think that children need a starting point for learning and understanding. When taught in conjunction with the notion of inclusivity, I don’t think that heteronormative love is a flawed starting point for this type of understanding. Children learn first that we all have two legs, then when they see an amputee with none, it becomes a teachable moment, an opportunity for their own two-leggedness to find its context. I think the value judgment of two-legged superiority is where the problem comes in, but I don’t think that value judgment is inherent to the lesson.
The issue becomes a matter of how unskewed any normative belief system can be. History has shown that they cannot. Because when it comes down girls’ ability to hold their own and attain the positions to take care of themselves, there is no Prince Charming, no pretty hair flip, no magic beauty spell that will make them qualified for that spot. None of the images shown in the schema of Disney characters portray girls in the context of personal achievement and success. They are all subjects. Even Princess Jasmine, who had her own mind about whom she would marry, was STILL being married off and pressured to find a husband who can run her kingdom.
There seems to be a type of value judgment inherent to normativity, where everything that falls outside of it is seen as less than, rather than just different. Perhaps what is needed is a new context for seeing difference, where it is something to be progressed because of rather than in spite of.