The plush penis that can be won as a prize at many fairgrounds this year has caused a stir. Two municipalities are calling for a ban.
The ChristenUnie in Alkmaar wants the fair price to disappear. Because we should not expose children to this, says the party.
Expert Belle Barbé does not support the call for a penis ban, which is heard not only in Alkmaar but also in the Gelderland municipality of Berkelland. According to her, there is no need to worry about the consequences for children. Barbé is an educator and author of sex-positive information books for children and founder of an agency that provides training on sex education.
“I can imagine that many people think: should this be at the fair,” says Barbé. “I am also not surprised that there are political parties that advocate a ban on those penises, because their supporters really do not think that is okay. And you also know that there are people who are absolutely not served by this, for example people from the Islamic culture. They walk around the fair unsuspectingly and suddenly see penises everywhere. For them this is super confrontational, maybe even disrespectful.”
‘Not harmful to see naked bodies’
“But my opinion as a specialist in the field of children and sexuality about those penises is: they are not harmful. A penis is just a body part. Half of the children have a penis themselves, the other half grow up with people with a penis. It is not harmful to children to see naked bodies. For a child, a penis is the same as a nose or an arm. Children don’t sexualize the penis, adults do. Children do of course pick up on the fact that adults give it a different meaning. And that’s how they learn that you don’t show it to others and that’s fine of course.”
But what about children who have been victims of sexual abuse, shouldn’t they be protected from the ubiquitous penises at the carnival? Belle Barbé doesn’t think that’s necessary either. “For them too, a penis should be an ordinary body part. How harmful sexual abuse is depends very much on how adults in the child’s environment react. If a child cannot talk about what happened to him or her, it is much more harmful.”