Father Rite/Right/Write : Lesbians, the Media and the Child Sexual Abuse Controversy.

Abstract

The paper was taken from my Ph.D work in progress on print media constructions of lesbians in Aotearoa, from 1980 onwards. A post-structuralist reading was combined with lesbian feminist analysis in order to draw out the connections between the three homonyms: rite, right and write, and constructions of lesbians as they appear in dominant media discourses on child sexual abuse. I focussed particularly on two media topics: the use of child sexual abuse statistics in the 1988 Telethon campaign, and the Spence case, as constructed by North and South, and the NZ Listener.