Eating Disorders and Child Sexual Abuse

This book takes up the challenge of examining women's understandings of eating disorders and child sexual abuse away from a framework focused on pathology. The central argument is that women's distress is an enactment of their engagement with certain discourses and practices, rather than a reaction triggered by child sexual abuse. Guided by a contemporary feminist framework and Mikhail Bakhtin's sociological linguistics, to substantiate the argument, women's own poetry and drawings are used as evidence to develop, support and supplement research findings. The book establishes that an eating disorder is 'an understandable response' to sexual trauma and shifts the focus away from 'a damaged personality'. Even more importantly, it demonstrates that women with eating disorders are using their bodies as a form of resistance to express silenced traumas that remain in the silenced female body. This is an active way of making sense of experiences of child sexual abuse.

Situated in social work, complemented by gender studies, cultural studies, psychology and sociology, this multidisciplinary text draws on a bedrock of theory, ranging from sociology of the body, socio-cultural theory, and humanities, and is situated under the banners of post-structuralism and feminism Poems, as examples of creative writing, and visual images in the form of drawings, comprise a unique and powerful core of the data presented Challenges common explanations for eating disorders as a reaction to dominant explanations of beauty

Autorentext

Lisa Hodge PhD, is a research fellow in the Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University, Australia

Klappentext

This book takes up the challenge of examining women s understandings of eating disorders and child sexual abuse away from a framework focused on pathology. The central argument is that women s distress is an enactment of their engagement with certain discourses and practices, rather than a reaction triggered by child sexual abuse. Guided by a contemporary feminist framework and Mikhail Bakhtin s sociological linguistics, to substantiate the argument, women s own poetry and drawings are used as evidence to develop, support and supplement research findings. The book establishes that an eating disorder is an understandable response to sexual trauma and shifts the focus away from a damaged personality . Even more importantly, it demonstrates that women with eating disorders are using their bodies as a form of resistance to express silenced traumas that remain in the silenced female body. This is an active way of making sense of experiences of child sexual abuse.

Inhalt
Part I. Examining Child Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders.- 1. Capturing the Research Journey: An Introduction.- 2. A Story of Language, Meaning and Power.- Part II. The Women's Stories.- 3. The Female Body as a Site of Opposition.- 4. Masking the Self.- 5. Cleanliness and Purification.- 6. Beauty Politics in Eating Disorders.- 7. Situating Silence in Child Sexual Abuse.- 8. Conclusion: Beyond Illness and Pathology.