Between Lifting the Taboo on Child Sexuality and Removing the Boundaries Around Child and Adult Sexuality On the reconstruction of the interplay between sexual liberalisation, liberalised child education, the paedophile movement and the educational and social sciences from the 1960s-1990s.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Meike Baader
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: from 2014 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 257571150

To what degree were the humanities and social sciences involved in the discourse on legalizing pedophiliac relationships and the social movement surrounding this discourse? These questions, central to our first research phase, can only be answered considering further aspects and within a larger framework. To understand the role of social sciences in this matter one needs to look more closely at the discursive shift from pedophilia to child sexual abuse during the 1990s, a shift that was mirrored in one between scientific disciplines. Also, to fully understand the pedophile movement, a truly transnational perspective is necessary. Therefore we are proposing two sections to be addressed in the second research phase: The first is concerned with the discursive shift from pedophilia to child sexual abuse between 1984 and 1999; the second engages with these discourses and their respective actors as parts of a history of transnational entanglement, 1973–1999. As in the first research phase, a gendered perspective – conspicuously absent from almost all current historical research on sexual violence – will be employed, as will historical discourse analysis as a method. The first research phase produced a series of important results regarding the involvement of the humanities and social sciences, especially sexual sciences. Yet educational sciences were involved prominently as well: an issue of “betrifft: erziehung” on "pedophilia – crime without victims" (4/1973) was both a "discursive Event" and a stepping stone for various transnational connections. Multiple primary sources are hinting at this transnational entanglement, especially in regard to Germany, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom. Besides a thorough reconstruction of this entanglement and of the reasons for a shift from the discourse on pedophilia to one about sexual abuse, we expect results regarding changing concepts of violence and the importance of a narrative of liberation. The project will thus be able to contribute to such fields as the history of education, science, knowledge, gender, and of social movements, with a focus on adult and child sexualities at the end of the 20th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants