Can We Approach the Subject of Child Sexual Abuse Ethically in Academia? Towards a Queer Ethics of CSA Analysis

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the question of ethics. It addresses the ethical issues that arise when making the painful subject of CSA the central focus of an academic inquiry. The first section considers the failures of certain subsections of twentieth-century American and Western European critical theory in approaching the study of CSA with ethical integrity. The disciplines of queer theory, feminist theory and sex-radical literature are focused on in particular in order to question and contextualize why academic endorsement of CSA acts has occurred. The article both considers and questions the rigid concepts of sexual normativity that both demonizes queer sex and leaves queer children vulnerable to abuse. In the second section, the pressure for personal confession of trauma when writing and researching on this issue is considered, and the fixed character of the survivor is examined.