Regulating Bodies: Children and Sexual Violence

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Gender Studies
• Childhood Studies

Background:

• Interdisciplinary research often overlooks sexual violence, particularly concerning children and youth.
• Children are frequently viewed as flexible cultural signifiers rather than subjects with agency.
• Existing social science frameworks can render child sexual assault a discursive impossibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze how dominant frameworks of childhood silence discussions of child sexual assault.
• To explore the concept of epistemic violence in the context of child sexual abuse research.
• To critique the role of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) as gatekeepers in child-related research.

Main Methods:

• Critical discourse analysis of social science research frameworks.
• Examination of the concept of epistemic violence and silencing.
• Feminist analysis of power dynamics in research representation.

Main Results:

• Dominant conceptualizations of childhood create discursive barriers to understanding child sexual assault.
• The silencing of child sexual violence constitutes a form of epistemic violence.
• Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) can inadvertently perpetuate these erasures, limiting representation and voice.

Conclusions:

• Addressing child sexual assault requires challenging existing frameworks of childhood and challenging epistemic violence.
• Feminist researchers must actively confront the limitations imposed by institutional gatekeepers like IRBs.
• Recognizing the power dynamics in research is crucial for amplifying the voices and experiences of young people regarding sexual violence.