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

This paper reports on a post-structural feminist study that examined how discourses about child sexual abuse frame understandings of the impact of abuse on women’s sexual lives. The study considered the overarching question ‘What discourses associated with the impact of child sexual abuse on women’s sexual lives are reproduced, resisted or invisible in the narratives of women who have been abused and the professionals who work with them?’ Discourse generates the experiences that are possible, including what people think and do and their material circumstances. The research method involved three related studies that included a survey and interviews with professionals who work with women who have experienced child sexual abuse, and interviews with women who have histories of child sexual abuse. Thematic and Foucauldian discursive analysis identified powerful, gendered, heteronormative discourses about female sexuality, child sexual abuse and its impact on women’s sexual lives. This report will briefly overview previous research in the area, the theoretical approach and research methods employed in the study and outline the three overarching thematic representations in the accounts of the women and the professionals.