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

271 Pages·2003·1.01 MB·English

by  Paula Reavey

New Feminist Stories of Child
Sexual Abuse
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, pro-
fessional and social practices.
The first section of the book explores the cultural and political land-
scape of child sexual 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 polit-
ical narratives through the various contexts in which child sexual abuse is
theorised and around which interventions in the lives of women are struc-
tured. It provides insights into how traditional approaches to understand-
ing 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.
Paula Reavey is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at South Bank Univer-
sity. Sam Warner is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Research
Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University.

New Feminist Stories of
Child Sexual Abuse
Sexual scripts and dangerous
dialogues
Edited by Paula Reavey and
Sam Warner
First published 2003
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 2003 Paula Reavey and Sam Warner, selection and editorial
matter; individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-36157-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-37414-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-25943-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-25944-4 (pbk)
To my family, Alex and Oskar (PR)
To my mum and dad, Thelma and Geoff Lidster (SW)

Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 Introduction 1
PAULA REAVEY AND SAM WARNER
PART I
Exploring the cultural and political landscape of child
sexual abuse 13
2 Feminism’s restless undead: the radical/lesbian/victim theorist
andconflicts over sexual violence against children andwomen 15
CHRIS ATMORE
3 Childhood, sexual abuse and contemporary political
subjectivities 34
ERICA BURMAN
4 Problems of cultural imperialism in the study of child sexual
abuse 52
ANN LEVETT
5 Traumatic revisions: remembering abuse and the politics
offorgiveness 77
JANICE HAAKEN
6 Creating discourses of ‘false memory’: media coverage and
production dynamics 94
JENNY KITZINGER
viii Contents
7 The vigilant(e) parent and the paedophile: the News of the
Worldcampaign 2000 and the contemporary
governmentalityofchildsexual abuse 108
VIKKI BELL
PART II
How we theorise and intervene in the lives of women
who have experienced child sexual abuse 129
8 The ‘harm’ story in childhood sexual abuse: contested
understandings,disputed knowledges 131
LINDSAY O’DELL
9 When past meets present to produce a sexual ‘other’:
examiningprofessional and everyday narratives of child
sexualabuseand sexuality 148
PAULA REAVEY
10 Diagnosing distress and reproducing disorder: women, child
sexualabuse and ‘borderline personality disorder’ 167
SAM WARNER AND TRACY WILKINS
11 Writing the effects of sexual abuse: interrogating the
possibilitiesandpitfalls of using clinical psychology expertise
foracritical justice agenda 187
NICOLA GAVEY
12 Working at being survivors: identity, gender and
participationinself-help groups 210
MARCIA WORRELL
13 Disrupting identity through Visible Therapy: a feminist
post-structuralist approach to working with women who have
experienced child sexual abuse 226
SAM WARNER
Index 248
Contributors
Chris Atmorehas been a New Zealand government child abuse researcher
and educator; activist against sexual violence; and Australian feminist,
media and cultural studies academic. She is presently a freelance writer
and researcher in Melbourne. She has contributed to an eclectic range
of journals and books, including Sharon Lamb’s (New York University
Press, 1999) edited book, New Versions of Victims.
Vikki Bellis a senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College, Univer-
sity of London. She is the author of Interrogating Incest: Feminism,
Foucault and the Law (Routledge, 1993), Feminist Imagination:
Genealogies in Feminist Theory(Sage, 1999) and editor of Performativ-
ity and Belonging (Sage, 1999). In addition, she has written many art-
icles on cultural theory and identity, several indebted to the work of
Michel Foucault, and published in journals such as Theory, Culture &
Society, Cultural Values, Feminist Theoryand New Formations.
Erica Burman is Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the
Discourse Unit, Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology, the
Manchester Metropolitan University. Her previous publications
include: Feminists and Psychological Practice (Sage, edited, 1990),
Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (Routledge, 1994a),
Challenging Women: Psychology’s Exclusions, Feminist Possibilities
(Open University, co-authored, 1996), Psychology, Discourse, Practice:
From Regulation to Resistance (Taylor & Francis, co-authored, 1996)
and Deconstructing Feminist Psychology(Sage, co-authored, 1998).
Nicola Gavey is a clinical psychologist and lecturer in psychology at the
University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has authored a wide variety
of texts on sexual violence and child sexual abuse. Her recent publica-
tions include: ‘Women’s desire and sexual violence discourse’, in S.
Wilkinson (ed.) Feminist Social Psychologies (Open University Press,
1995). She was also an author in Sharon Lamb’s (New York University
Press, 1999) edited book New Versions of Victims.