FEMINISM, CHILD SEXUAL

ABUSE, AND THE ERASURE OF

CHILD SEXUALITY

Steven Angelides

Historians do not usually like to speak of the lessons of history, as
if [it] were some objective, finally definitive schoolteacher. But in
many years of work at the craft, I have never come across a story that
so directly yields a moral. The moral is that the presence or absence
of a strong feminist movement makes the difference between better or
worse solutions to the social problem of child sexual abuse. . . .
Without a feminist analysis, evidence of child sexual abuse means
that danger lies in sex perverts, in public spaces, in unsupervised
girls, in sexually assertive girls. . . . As with adult rape, child sexual
abuse without feminist interpretation supplies evidence and
arguments for constricting and disempowering children.
Linda Gordon, The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse