Co-constructing women’s stories about the sexual effects of child sexual abuse: A relational constructionist approach.

Abstract

In Mexico 9.4% (4.4 million) of women have reported child sexual abuse (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 2017). Despite these figures, women are questioned when they do not appear to be "sufficiently damaged", what others have labeled as "the good victim" (Sanyal, 2019;Woodiwiss, 2018). This situation has contributed to a "harm story" (O'Dell, 2003) of child sexual abuse that usually ignores local contexts around sexual abuse and women's agency to respond to its consequences (Small, 2019;Wijaya, 2018), especially the sexual effects (Guyon et al., 2021). Here, we address this issue by conducting narrative research from a relational constructionist approach (McNamee & Hosking, 2012). From this point of view, narratives are constructed through dialog, and they are historically and culturally situated (Gergen & Gergen, 2011). The aim of this study is to explore narratives around the experiences and sexual effects of child sexual abuse with four adult women living in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. We used a semistructured interview (Rivas, 2010), and we performed a dialogical narrative analysis (A. Frank, 2012). As a result, we re-construct four narratives from which we can see different perspectives that make meaning of the sexual "effects" of child sexual abuse: Losing and recovering sexual desire; Fighting off sex fear; Harm trying to prevail; Going out alive after a nightmare. We expose different sexual effects and the significant relationships that help women respond to sexual abuse. We also discuss how research interviews, reflective questions, and a position favoring co-research can invite women to re-define meaning in narratives.