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

“性传播感染偶尔会发生在性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，如果与处女发生性交，成年人的淋病就会痊愈。”1958年，世界卫生组织的性病高级顾问罗伯特·威尔科克斯博士在他的医学教科书《亚热带和热带地区的儿童疾病》上写下了这句话，他在书中讨论了儿童和热带地区性病的流行情况。第二次世界大战期间，威尔科克斯是驻扎在西非殖民地的英国陆军性病学家之一。他照顾了来自盟军和非洲军队和海军的那些与16岁以下儿童进行合法性行为的“被误导的人”。“当一个女孩进入青春期，整个部落--无论男女--都会聚集在一起。操作者是一位上了年纪的男人，他用三根手指用负鼠线捆绑在一起，向下撕开阴道口……会阴用石刀切开。之后通常会强制与一些年轻男子发生性关系。”[1]这是罗斯博士对内敛的描述，这是一种‘被认为’的青春期仪式，包括在联合国1995年出版的第23号情况说明书《影响妇女和儿童健康的有害传统做法》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。威尔科克斯的专著一直被复制到1991年，罗斯的专著直到1995年才在世界卫生组织和联合国的正式授权文献中被复制。这是一个跨学科的项目，关于殖民主义、医学、种族和性别之间的交集的产生、发展轨迹和遗产，以及它如何塑造了1859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.