New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse: Sexual Scripts and Dangerous Dialogues

Child sexual abuse is a multifaceted event, interpreted in many different ways, in many different contexts. In New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse, contributors try to untangle some of the complex ways in which stories of child sexual abuse are translated through and into personal, professional and social politics. The first section of the book explores the cultural and political landscape of child sexual abuse in Western and non-Western contexts. It examines the ways in which radical aspects of feminism can be undermined in Western cultures and how Westernised ideologies of childhood, sex and gender have been used to structure discussions about child sexual abuse across the world. The second section traces the effects of these wider cultural and political narratives through the various contexts in which child sexual abuse is theorised and around which interventions in the lives of women are structured. It provides insights into how traditional approaches to understanding harm can be challenged and reworked in practice, using alternative therapeutic models based on feminist post-structuralist agendas. Reworking earlier feminist analyses, New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse asks pertinent questions about how child sexual abuse is produced, rather than merely represented, in the ways we speak about it.