Understanding the Impact of Child Sexual Abuse on Women’s Sexual Lives: A Discourse Analysis

The prevalence rate of child sexual abuse in Australia, as in other countries, varies because it is determined by the way sexual abuse is defined and measured (1-3). For example, narrow definitions require sexual penetration which result in lower prevalence rates whereas broader definitions include non-penetrative acts of abuse. Other factors influencing definitions include restrictions on the age of victims and perpetrators (4). Nonetheless, it is generally accepted that one in three women and one in seven men in Australia have experienced child sexual abuse (5). Female children are at higher risk of child sexual abuse (6) and for both girls and boys the perpetrator is overwhelmingly male (7). This underscores the gendered nature of child sexual abuse.

The body of research focussing on the general effects of child sexual abuse for women is vast and draws on diverse paradigms. Moreover, there is not a definitive benchmark for psychological symptoms specifically linked to child sexual abuse (8-10). Generally, conventional research examining the effects of child sexual abuse is premised on examining the detrimental outcomes. For example, many researchers have reported that women with histories of child sexual abuse experience a range of negative consequences spanning psychological, physiological, behavioural and social domains (6, 7, 11-13). Many of these studies are retrospective (14), with a focus on determining the objective psychopathology caused by child sexual abuse.

Intriguingly, previous studies have paid less attention to women’s perspectives on their sexual lives, which is noteworthy given the known effects of child sexual abuse across women’s lives, including its sexual impact. It is critical to understand the socially constructed nature of women’s experiences, including the common premise that child sexual abuse is inevitably traumatic and damaging (15, 16), and outside of ’normal’ experience, because these constructions have potentially powerful implications for individuals. Along these lines, feminist research has sought to challenge pathologising and individualising constructions of child sexual abuse and brought to the fore alternative understandings about women who have histories of child sexual abuse and the impact on their sexual lives (14, 17-19). This study was primarily concerned with the social dimensions of sexual relationships and as such considered the broader socio-cultural aspects of gender and heterosexuality, their historical dimensions and how these influence contemporary understandings.

The theme of ‘Being Abnormal’ showed that the women and professionals reproduced discourses which suggested that childhood experiences of sexual abuse invariably have far-reaching and damaging implications that are evident in adult life. The professionals reproduced ‘damage talk’, which drew on discourses about child sexual abuse as damaging women’s development, impacting on their behaviour and psychological wellbeing. The women also drew on discourses about themselves as damaged, both sexually and psychologically, with sexual abuse sometimes seen as having made them into different people from who they otherwise might have been. In line with Reavey’s (31) arguments, we suggest that this is an example of how the focus on the behaviour of women with a history of child sexual abuse in research and practice has resulted in insufficient recognition of how women’s experiences take place within a context of unequal gendered power relations and related gender discourses that construct them in disadvantageous ways.

As part of this ‘damage talk’, we show that the professionals, informed by the idea that child sexual abuse is inevitably damaging, reproduced the more specific idea that women are also sexually impaired. The professional participants identified women as having difficulties with trust as not only an effect of child sexual abuse, but also as the reason for their difficulties with sex. For example, comments from the survey respondents included the idea that, because of the child sexual abuse, women experience a ‘lack of trust’, or have ‘no trust’ and that their ‘boundaries’ have been ‘violated by child sexual abuse’. Another example of the use of discourses about damage drawn on by a professional suggested that child sexual abuse results in women having problems with ‘fear, trust, dissociation, distorted boundaries [and] difficulties with meaning making’.

The professionals and women also attached considerable importance to being in a committed sexual relationship, and to the compulsory performance of sex on the part of women as key to this. An example is shown in the following quote from the semi-structured interviews with the professionals:

In their legitimised positions of authority, the professionals therefore drew on normative discourses about the performance of heterosexual sex. The women in the study similarly reproduced these heteronormative discourses about sex, constructing themselves as psychologically and sexually ‘different’ to other women because of the sexual abuse.

The final theme was ‘Agency and Resistance’, which offered a challenge to the exclusive focus on abused women as damaged. A small number of professionals resisted categorising women as damaged. For example, some challenged and resisted the construction of abnormality through drawing on alternative discourses about women’s experiences of sex. These alternative discourses included emphasising external factors that impinge on women’s sexual experiences, including the use of feminist discourses to acknowledge the constraining impact of unequal gender power relations on women and their sexual lives.

This perspective is demonstrated in a number of different survey responses from professionals through acknowledging ‘power imbalances in sexual relationships’, women’s sexual partners as ‘unsafe/coercive/physically abusive/emotionally abusive’. During an interview, one professional also posited that women’s attitudes towards sex with their partners could be influenced by gendered experiences other than the child sexual abuse history, such as feeling tired or being busy, as well as ‘…huge expectations on women, the amount of housework and child raising…’.

The women’s narratives included alternative discourses about agency and resistance through descriptions of the pursuit of sex ‘on their own terms’. For the women in the study, re-claiming their bodies and asserting ownership of their bodies was not an end-point nor did it involve complete freedom from the effects of abuse.

However, the pursuit of sex on their own terms is understood as the pursuit of preferences in the present moment, and thus points to the potential for more satisfying sexual practices for women.