ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how particular gender and sexuality constructions are contingent on material, political, and historical conditions by applying the framework to the specific example of female-perpetrated sex abuse (FSA) victimhood. It focuses on psychological, legal, and media discourse to demonstrate the ways that gender and sexuality constructions are mobilised to limit and constrain possibilities for FSA victimhood. 'Subject positions' exist within discourse as a system of concepts that are historically and culturally supported by various authoritative institutions. In line with Michel Foucault's understanding of the discursive constitution of subjectivity, the text treats subjects as constituted in discourse through power and configured through technologies of the self. The chapter concludes by showing how the use of a theoretical framework that understands FSA victimhood as contingent on particular conditions provides an impetus to disrupt normative categories of gender and sexuality through the critical exploration of discursive coordinates employed by self-identified FSA victims.
