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Hearing 'silent voices' : examining mother-daughter sexual abuse
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Peter, Tracey |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | As a society, tremendous strides have been made in addressing violence against women and children. Yet, when most acknowledgements of abuse are made, they tend to be within a specific or isolated context one that recognizes men as abusers and women as victims. There is lìttle recognition that women especially mothers have the capacity to sexually abuse children. Although there is some research that examines female-perpetrated sexual abuse, existing approaches tend to rest upon conceptions ofthe female offender as rnad, bad, or victirn. However, such constructions ignore the complexity of the issue and leave victims with no language to speak about their experiences. The aim ofthis work is to develop a more reflexive theoretical approach in order to move beyond rigid explanations. Such a perspective will be informed by survivors' narratives, specifically, multiple un-structured interviews with eight women who were sexually abused by their mother or female caregiver. Working within a poststructur alist framework (which locates matemal sexual abuse within a discourse analysis), survivor accounts are critically analysed iu order to explore how social constructions based on femininity, heterosexuality, and motherhood influence survivors' perceptions oftheir mother or female caregiver. Fìndings suggest the impact of mother-daughter sexual abuse on suwivors is particularly profound especially in tenns ofthe nature ofthe abuse as well as the complex ways survivors have coped wìth, resisted, and suruived the sexual violence, Furlher, while survivors certainly draw on (and actively use) mad, bad, and victim explanations when attempting to make sense of the violence, they also recognize that their lnothers hold agency and had the capacity to make different choices. Finally, matemal sexual abuse tends to have an enorrnous impact on surwivors' identities (speciñcally, gender, sexuality, and mother identities), which I argue are influenced by dominant discursive understandings of motherhood, femininity, and |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1993/20397/Peter_Hearing_silent.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
