Drawing on data from a larger
research study, this paper explores intersecting and competing social relations
that influenced the romantic desires of women who became intimately involved
with men who molested children. Through a feminist poststructuralist lens,
women's narratives were analysed with the use of feminist interpretations of
Foucauldian discourse theory. Analysis informed of a discursive power over
participants that made the attainment of romantic desires an imperative for
ensuring social respect, worth and credibility as women. When all was not
ideal, these same romantic desires compelled women to fix and hold onto their
relationships - even when with men that attract damning societal responses
towards them. Even upon acknowledgement of their partners' sexual
transgressions, the fear of relationship breakdown meant that romantic desires
again featured as imperatives for the women. The imagined pleasure of achieving
romantic desires is discursive; so powerful that it outweighed women's fears
and dangers of precarious intimate life with men who commit abhorrent acts.
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- 1 School of Social and Policy Studies , Flinders University , Adelaide , Australia.
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