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Available
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Publication
Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c1997.
Description
"In this study, Mary Louise Adams explores discourses about youth and their place in the production and reproduction of heterosexual norms. She examines debates over juvenile delinquency, indecent literature, and sex education to show not why heterosexuality became a peculiar obsession in English Canada after the Second World War, as much as how it came to hold such sway. Drawing on feminist theory, cultural studies, and lesbian/gay studies, The Trouble with Normal is the first Canadian study of 'youth' as a sexual and moral category. Adams looks not only at sexual material aimed at teenagers but also at sexual discourses generally, for what they had to say about young people and for the ways in which 'youth, ' as a concept, made those discourses work. She argues that postwar insecurities about young people narrowed the sexual possibilities for both young people and adults."--Jacket.… (more)
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LibraryThing member DarthDeverell
In The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality, Mary Louise Adams argues, “Social conditions particular to the postwar period combined to put notions about youth and adolescence at the centre of sexual discourses. Moreover, notions about youth and adolescence helped
Beginning in the early Cold War, Adams writes, “In magazines, school board curricula, and instructional films, an idealized image of the nuclear family was promoted as the first line of defence against the perceived insecurity of the cold-war years” (pg. 21). In terms of the metaphorical value of youth, Adams writes, “The symbolic positioning of teenagers as ‘the future,’ as those who would carry the 1950s forward, made them a likely target of interventions meant to maximize normality and therefore maximize stability and social order against the uncertainties of modern life” (pg. 87).
Of youth and delinquency, Adams argues, “Middle-class adolescents – by their scholastic achievements, the clothes they wore, and the entertainment they pursued – were taken as symbols of the prosperity and potential of their families and their society. On the other hand, potentially delinquent or unruly youth made obvious the limitations of postwar society” (pg. 42). Further, “It seems that delinquency was less a concrete social problem than a conceptual tool that helped to justify and organize adult surveillance of teenage lives, especially of teenage sexuality” (pg. 50). Continuing to discuss delinquency, Adams writes, “It almost goes without saying that commentary on juvenile delinquency was produced and circulated within the middle class, while the majority (though certainly not all) of those so labelled were the children of working-class parents” (pg. 56). To this end, “The relationship between discourses about sexuality and discourses about adolescence helped to establish the boundaries between what was seen as delinquent in the postwar period and what was not, what was ‘normal,’ approved sexuality for young people and what was not” (pg. 82).
Discussing the regulation of popular culture, Adams writes, “The public debate over comic books and the special senate committee were key to the constitution of more popular English-Canadian discourses. They provided a focal point for public consideration of what was constructed in many media reports as a national problem” (pg. 138). She continues, “Adult commentators tended to take the view that young readers (blank slates that they were assumed to be) passively absorbed whatever the comics put before them and that, once exposed to crime, sex, and violence on the page, children and teens would develop a taste for it and be moved to re-enact it in daily life” (pg. 147). Discussing Fredric Wetham in the U.S., Adams writes, “Wertham was not the only one to believe that comics had a negative effect on children’s sexuality, but he was the only one to state his concerns so explicitly” (pg. 152). Furthermore, “While campaigns against the perceived immorality in other types of reading material also drew on discourses about young people’s vulnerability to corruption, the frame of the discussion was not the same as it had been in the fight against comics” (pg. 155).
Adams concludes, “Heterosexuality is a discursively constituted social category that organizes relations not only between women and men, but also between those who fit definitions of heterosexuality and those who do not, and between adults and youth. Heterosexuality also helped to constitute relations of class, ethnicity, and race” (pg. 166). Further, “The desire to ‘protect’ youth and the future they were assumed to represent helped to motivate broad-ranging initiatives of moral and sexual regulation that took adults and young people as their objects” (pg. 167).
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to shape the general meanings ascribed to sexuality in the period” (pg. 3). Is shaping her argument, Adams draws extensively upon the work of Michel Foucault, George Chauncey, Kathy Peiss, Joanne Meyerowitz, Elaine Tyler May, and more. She further argues “for the importance of analysing heterosexual dominance as it is constantly being reproduced, negotiated, and subverted” (pg. 12).Beginning in the early Cold War, Adams writes, “In magazines, school board curricula, and instructional films, an idealized image of the nuclear family was promoted as the first line of defence against the perceived insecurity of the cold-war years” (pg. 21). In terms of the metaphorical value of youth, Adams writes, “The symbolic positioning of teenagers as ‘the future,’ as those who would carry the 1950s forward, made them a likely target of interventions meant to maximize normality and therefore maximize stability and social order against the uncertainties of modern life” (pg. 87).
Of youth and delinquency, Adams argues, “Middle-class adolescents – by their scholastic achievements, the clothes they wore, and the entertainment they pursued – were taken as symbols of the prosperity and potential of their families and their society. On the other hand, potentially delinquent or unruly youth made obvious the limitations of postwar society” (pg. 42). Further, “It seems that delinquency was less a concrete social problem than a conceptual tool that helped to justify and organize adult surveillance of teenage lives, especially of teenage sexuality” (pg. 50). Continuing to discuss delinquency, Adams writes, “It almost goes without saying that commentary on juvenile delinquency was produced and circulated within the middle class, while the majority (though certainly not all) of those so labelled were the children of working-class parents” (pg. 56). To this end, “The relationship between discourses about sexuality and discourses about adolescence helped to establish the boundaries between what was seen as delinquent in the postwar period and what was not, what was ‘normal,’ approved sexuality for young people and what was not” (pg. 82).
Discussing the regulation of popular culture, Adams writes, “The public debate over comic books and the special senate committee were key to the constitution of more popular English-Canadian discourses. They provided a focal point for public consideration of what was constructed in many media reports as a national problem” (pg. 138). She continues, “Adult commentators tended to take the view that young readers (blank slates that they were assumed to be) passively absorbed whatever the comics put before them and that, once exposed to crime, sex, and violence on the page, children and teens would develop a taste for it and be moved to re-enact it in daily life” (pg. 147). Discussing Fredric Wetham in the U.S., Adams writes, “Wertham was not the only one to believe that comics had a negative effect on children’s sexuality, but he was the only one to state his concerns so explicitly” (pg. 152). Furthermore, “While campaigns against the perceived immorality in other types of reading material also drew on discourses about young people’s vulnerability to corruption, the frame of the discussion was not the same as it had been in the fight against comics” (pg. 155).
Adams concludes, “Heterosexuality is a discursively constituted social category that organizes relations not only between women and men, but also between those who fit definitions of heterosexuality and those who do not, and between adults and youth. Heterosexuality also helped to constitute relations of class, ethnicity, and race” (pg. 166). Further, “The desire to ‘protect’ youth and the future they were assumed to represent helped to motivate broad-ranging initiatives of moral and sexual regulation that took adults and young people as their objects” (pg. 167).
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Language
Physical description
viii, 224 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
9780802080578
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