Female Sexual Abusers are “Rare”

Because we don’t record them accurately.

I had a heated discussion with a fellow member recently who insisted that female sexual abusers of male children (or children generally) are “rare”. This is a myth perpetuated as part of the cycle of toxic masculinity and rape culture. It comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem with male sexual abuse disclosure.

We have growing evidence that men and boys experience all kinds of abuse at higher rates than previously recognized. We know that women are often the perpetrators of these crimes. We know that people generally view male children as less vulnerable than female children. We know that males are less likely to disclose abuse than females.

When it comes to male sexuality, we know that men are thought to consistently desire sex. We know that men are seen as the initiators of sex and to assume the more active/dominant role in the bedroom. We know that toxic masculinity casts men who fail to live up to this stereotype with homophobic or misogynistic slurs.

Side note: I was/am (haven’t decided yet) on an adult social media site where the progressive liberal crowd (“feminists”) would speak about men having “big/small dick energy” and generally try to sexually humiliate problematic men. This was the same people who would write about the harm of toxic masculinity. It took a think tank of members to realize this was probably self-defeating.

All these things we currently know about both male sexual abuse victims (of all ages) and the intersection of male sexuality, toxic masculinity and rape culture amalgamate to influence both acknowledgement and disclosure by male victims.

Before you can be counted among such statistics, you have to acknowledge that what you went through was abusive. We know the tropes about young men being lucky if older women are willing to be intimate with them. If you ask men about sexual encounters with older people, and speak about about without using words that related to a lack of consent, you’ll see a difference in the rate of disclosure.

This can include sexual abuse by an older child (like a preteen or teenager) on a much younger boy. And yes, to be clear, I’m speaking about girls perpetrating these acts. Of course boys do it too. But I’m pointing out that it isn’t ‘rare” that girls do this. It’s just unacknowledged by victims as well as everyone else.

The “ horny babysitter” trope isn’t just a male fantasy. It comes from early sexual experiences with older girls and women who transgressed boundaries with physical and some forms of emotional intimacy (like verbal exchange about your body/feelings etc or telling you about sex). This has been documented for over 30 years:

The effects upon the boy and his later adult sex life were generally reported as not traumatic, although coercion by the woman tended to be associated with a bad feeling about the experience at the time and a negative effect upon adult sex life. The majority of women were friends, neighbors, baby sitters, and strangers to the boy. Intercourse and genital touching were the predominant forms of sexual activity.

I don’t think all these people intended to sexually abuse their victim. Or to groom them. But when you’re a person who has experienced sexual abuse, sometimes you wonder what left you particularly vulnerable. Especially when your history is complex; when there were sexual situations where you feel or felt that it was consensual despite a power imbalance of some description. Many of us start to realize that we were indeed molded as abuse victims by one or more older people as well as society at large in numerous ways.

You realize that interactions and conversations that you had that were poignant in the development of your mindset were precursors to whatever occurred. You see those people in a new light. Sometimes you work out that they were indeed predatory and actively pursuing transgression in their interactions with you. Others, you realize, are probably as psychologically damaged by their harmful views on sexual development and relationships as yourself.

For me, it was as I aged and started to think very poorly of men who sought out much younger partners. Legal partners, but with a big age gap. I bought into the idea that male privilege meant that it only mattered when it involved an older man, or two women with a large age gap.

To be fair, I thought an age gap between an older woman and a younger man might even help to even out any gender-based power imbalance in many ways. It took, probably a decade of therapy talking about what occurred for me to accept that there was no way for my experiences to be consensual and I still flip flop on that all the time.