GENDER AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONSENT IN CHILD-ADULT SEXUAL CONTACT - BEYOND GENDER NEUTRALITY AND MALE MONOPOLY

Neither legalistic gender-neutral categories nor prior feminist theori es adequately capture all of the gender dynamics of child sexual abuse . Surveys of 923 young adults, 88 of whom reported sexual contact with adults before they were 16, complemented by intensive follow-up inter views with 18 reporting contact, reveal that gendered constructions of sexuality and dominance make the experience of abuse significantly di fferent far boys and girls. Girls nearly always had contact,vith men a nd tended to experience it as harmful abuse. Boys were more likely to have contact with women than with men; they generally interpreted cont act with women as consensual, but their contact with men as abusive. E xtensions of feminist gender analysis are required to explain these pa tterns.