Florence Rush
| Florence Rush | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 23, 1918 |
| Died | December 9, 2008 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | social worker |
| Notable work | The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View |
Florence Rush (January 23, 1918 – December 9, 2008) was an American certified social worker (M.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania), feminist theorist and organizer best known for introducing The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View" about childhood sexual abuse and incest at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) Rape Conference. Rush's paper at the time was the first challenge to Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation.
Rush observed the problem of childhood sexual abuse as a psychiatric social worker at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and at a facility for delinquent female adolescents, although at the time—during the 1950s and 1960s—such therapists were instructed to avoid discussing incest with their young patients because of prevailing Freudian theories.
Rush's NYRF Rape Conference presentation about incest and childhood sexual abuse reviewed psychiatric and psychoanalytical literature from Freud to that time that attributed such problems to children's seduction of adults or erotic fantasies. She then linked these prevailing psychiatric theories about the child's instigation of or erotic fantasies about incest and sexual abuse to maintaining a climate for the political and psychological oppression of women. As Rush concluded in her presentation the "sexual abuse of children..is an unspoken but prominent factor in socializing and preparing the female to accept a subordinate role: to feel guilty, ashamed, and to tolerate through fear, the power exercised over her by men."
Rush subsequently authored the 1977 Freud and the Sexual Abuse of Children in the first volume of a feminist theory journal, Chyrsalis, and the 1980 Prentice Hall The Best Kept Secret: The Sexual Abuse of Children that additionally traced the toleration of sexual abuse of children to the beginnings of history. Her continued work to counter sexual abuse of women and children and the media imagery feminists believe propagates such abuse encompassed key roles in many organizations. She served as 1979 co-founder and 1979-1987 lecturer for Women Against Pornography, 1980–1985 chair of the National Organization for Women (NOW)'s New York City Chapter's Media Reform Committee, Board of Directors Member of New York Women Against Rape where she produced and exhibited a slide presentation on the increasing media eroticism of children, and member of the New York State Psychiatric Institute's Advisory Committee on the Treatment of Sexual Aggressors.
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