Thinking outside specious boxes: constructionist and post-structuralist readings of 'child sexual abuse'.

Contemporary western understandings of 'childhood' reflect (adult) cultural projections of children as (sexually) innocent, vulnerable beings. In this paper, I examine how projections of children and their 'sexual culture' are maintained and reproduced through child sexual abuse therapy in North America. I argue that such specious frameworks pose conceptual problems for exploring how children interpret their sexual experiences. Seeing that research involving direct contact with children has been rendered practically impossible, the ability to theoretically 'step outside' narrow conceptual frameworks is critical. In providing avenues to denaturalize age categories, social constructionism and post-structuralism have made breakthroughs in this regard; yet both are limited in their ability to offer solutions to the said conceptual impasse. I focus the remainder of my paper on illustrating the merits and shortcomings of constructionism and post-structuralism as analytical tools. I conclude with some conjectures about the uses of each perspective both in research on children and in therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]