Pernicious Philanthropy: the legal and medical fetishization of black female childhood

“性传播感染偶尔会发生在早熟的年轻女孩身上……在某些（热带）地区，被误导的人可能会认为，如果与处女发生性关系，成年人的淋病就会被治愈。1958年，世界卫生组织的高级性病专家顾问罗伯特·威尔考克斯博士在他的医学教科书《亚热带和热带地区儿童疾病》的专著中写下了上述引文，他在书中讨论了“热带”地区儿童和儿童的性病流行情况。二战期间，威尔科克斯是驻扎在西非殖民地的英军性病专家之一。他照顾那些来自盟军和非洲军队和海军的“误入歧途的人”，他们与16岁以下的儿童进行合法的性活动。“当一个女孩到了青春期，整个部落——无论男女——都会聚集在一起。操作人员是一位上了年纪的男子，他用三根手指用负鼠绳绑住，向下撕裂阴道口，扩大了阴道口。会阴用石刀切开。之后通常是与一些年轻男子发生强制性的性行为。[1]这是Roth博士对割礼的描述，割礼是一种“被认为”的青春期仪式，收录在联合国1995年《影响妇女和儿童健康的有害传统习俗》第23号概况介绍中。罗斯声称在19世纪90年代在一个偏远的澳大利亚黑人“部落”中“发现”了它。威尔科克斯的专著直到1991年才被复制，罗斯的专著直到1995年才在世界卫生组织和联合国的官方认可文献中被复制。这是一个跨学科项目，关于殖民主义、医学科学、种族和性别之间交集的创造、轨迹和遗产，以及它如何影响1859年至1960年间的国际同意年龄立法和儿童性伤害。

'Venereally acquired infections are occasionally encountered in precocious young girls...In certain (tropical) areas, misguided individuals may consider that an adult is cured of his gonorrhoea if intercourse is obtained with a virgin'.In 1958 Dr Robert Willcox, the Senior Consultant Venereologist to The World Health Organisation, wrote the quote above in his monograph in the medical textbook Diseases of Children in The Subtropics and Tropics, where he discussed the prevalence of venereal diseases in children and the in the 'tropics'. During World War Two, Willcox was one of the British Army venereologists in colonial West African. He attended to those 'misguided individuals' from the allied and African Military and Navy who engaged in legal sexual activity with children under sixteen. "When a girl reaches puberty, the whole tribe-both sexes-assembles. The operator, an elderly man, enlarges the vaginal orifice by tearing it downward with three fingers bound with opossum string... the perineum is split with a stone knife. This is usually followed by compulsory sexual intercourse with a number of young men."[1] This is Dr Roth's account of introcision, a 'perceived' puberty rite included in, Fact Sheet No. 23, Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, 1995, from The United Nations. Roth's claimed to have 'discovered' it amongst a remote black Australian 'tribe' in the 1890s.Willcox's monograph was reproduced until 1991 and Roth's until 1995 within officially endorsed literature of the World Health organisation and the United Nations. This is an interdisciplinary project about the creation, trajectory and legacy of the intersection between colonialism, medical science, race and gender and how it shaped international age of consent legislation and childhood sexual harm between 1859 and 1960.