Disrupting accounts of 'normal' : survivors and non-abused women's experiences of sexual subjectivity and sexual agency

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 22 young women, this thesis investigates the ways that psychological and popular constructions of child sexual abuse impact adult survivors' sexual lives. By underlining the complexity of sexual subjectivity for both survivors and non-abused women, the findings point to the need to broaden current theory and practice to incorporate survivor adult experiences in the context of both pleasure and danger. Exploring the importance of addressing a more embodied, sex-positive model of survivor sexuality, this thesis complicates existing understandings by focusing more broadly on the ways that survivors and non-abused women position accounts of sexual pleasure and sexual danger in their adult sexual lives.

Date of Award	2010
Original language	English