Introduction

Female-perpetrated sex abuse (FSA) has become the object of increased interest in the international academic literature. The unfathomable nature of FSA victimhood is particularly significant in a country such as South Africa, where trauma and victim discourses are frequently embedded in almost daily reports of child sex abuse, rape, and sexual violence. The visibility of FSA victimhood is largely contingent on the cultural, social, and historical conditions in which an FSA event takes place. By exploring how power produces a speaking FSA victim subject as a function of particular social and historical conditions, the current critical text attempts to understand the politics of the FSA victim literature. The hybrid theoretical framework is useful for a conversation about the ways that the subjection of the individual to various cultural, material, and historical discourses and conditions produces and/or limits particular possibilities for the FSA victim subject position.