The politics of child sexual abuse - Notes from American history

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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"

source: Article 'The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse: Notes from American History' by Linda Gordon; Quote taken from article 'Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse, and the Erasure of Child Sexuality' by Steven Angelides; www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Angelides/publication/31403920_Feminism_Child_Sexual_Abuse_and_the_Erasure_of_Child_Sexuality/links/566df87508aea0892c528f69/Feminism-Child-Sexual-Abuse-and-the-Erasure-of-Child-Sexuality.pdf; GLQ (A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies), 10/2(2); January 2004; Text Linda Gordon from Feminist Review, 28; 1988