Title: Thinking outside specious boxes: constructionist and post-structuralist readings of ‘child sexual abuse’
Abstract: Abstract Contemporary western understandings of 'childhood' reflect (adult) cultural projections of children as (sexually) innocent, vulnerable beings. In this paper, I examine how projections of children and their 'sexual culture' are maintained and reproduced through child sexual abuse therapy in North America. I argue that such specious frameworks pose conceptual problems for exploring how children interpret their sexual experiences. Seeing that research involving direct contact with children has been rendered practically impossible, the ability to theoretically 'step outside' narrow conceptual frameworks is critical. In providing avenues to denaturalize age categories, social constructionism and post-structuralism have made breakthroughs in this regard; yet both are limited in their ability to offer solutions to the said conceptual impasse. I focus the remainder of my paper on illustrating the merits and shortcomings of constructionism and post-structuralism as analytical tools. I conclude with some conjectures about the uses of each perspective both in research on children and in therapy. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Dr Clarissa Smith and Dr Feona Attwood for their insightful feedback, as well as to Samah Sabra, Julie Gregory, and Dr Scott Uzelman for their generous donation of time and suggestions. The author is also indebted to Dr Vincent Sacco, Dr Laureen Snider and the Queen's Sociology Feminist Discussion Group for their input and support. Notes 1. There exists no universal standard to define 'children'. In this paper, I focus on prepubescent children, as CSA experiences are often read in conjunction with cultural projections of children's purported 'asexuality' – or 'presexuality' – and the corruption of their sexual 'innocence' via sexual knowledge (Angelides 2004 Angelides, S. 2004. Feminism, child sexual abuse, and the erasure of child sexuality. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 10(2): 141–77. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 148–149). 2. While a comprehensive discussion of the implications this shift has had for non-clinical professionals extends beyond the scope of this paper, it is nonetheless important to note that, in North America, both culpable and victimized parties must be identified for legal cases to move forward. As such, social, criminal justice, and legal workers also have a vested interest as well as a statutory obligation to obtain children's admission that they were, indeed, sexually victimized. They, too, must adopt a singular framework for understanding what transpired and consequently dismiss alternative interpretations. As such, dominant understandings of CSA are further buttressed at every step of the criminal justice process. 3. As Angelides (2004 Backhouse, C. 2008. Carnal crimes: Sexual assault law in Canada, 1900–1975, Toronto: Irwin Law. [Google Scholar], 143) notes, Freudian psychiatrists, leaders in child sexuality for most of the twentieth century, celebrated child sexual agency. However, as of the mid-1970s, feminists reinterpreted 'child sexuality' as a problem of power, arguing that adult–child sex is necessarily coercive (Angelides 2004 Angelides, S. 2004. Feminism, child sexual abuse, and the erasure of child sexuality. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 10(2): 141–77. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 148). This severance of child and adult sexualities relies on the idea that children are biologically 'less than' adults, an idea much better matched to more modern developmental psychologies, which inform much of the clinical CSA literatures today.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-08-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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