Patricia Casey, writing about Nancy Garrido for The Independent, on Mind & Meaning: Dugard kidnap highlights one of last taboos:
Because it is not spoken about, there is little information on how commonly sexual abuse by females occurs or on the profile of those involved. One study, now over 20 years old, suggests that about 15pc of male victims and five per cent of female victims were abused by women, while another study reports that among the totality of sexual predators, 25pc are said to be women.
However other studies, that are based on self-report rather than on documented legal information, put the proportion abused by females as much higher and on a par with the figure for males. There is conflicting information on the proportion involving a co-perpetrator.
I have been pleased to see more of these articles appearing lately as it indicates that at least some people take the issue seriously. My own rapist was a woman and I cannot tell you how many times I've been basically told to shut up and get out of the way so the real conversation – how all men are potential rapists and all women are potential victims can continue unhindered by inconvienent facts, like umm – the existence of female sexual predators.
So often when the subject of female predators is brought up, the inclination by many is to condescendingly acknowledge it happens and then brush it away as if it were a distraction or statistical blip that is irrelevant to their own doctrine that predator = man and victim = woman. My favorite is the numbers game which treats statistics gathered through inconsistent definitions and often arbitrary distinctions as somehow infallible indicators of reality.
In short, this works only because the numbers are padded by ignoring certain predators, playing fast and loose with definitions of rape and sexual abuse from one gender to another, and downplaying the experiences of certain victims. We all know that a large number of women never report that they've been raped, but somehow we are supposed to believe the tiny numbers of men reporting that they've been raped is more accurate and not subject to the same issues of non-reporting. This does not even take into account the gender expectations that prevent many men from even admitting to themselves that a certain event was rape.
I am grateful to finally see some adult reporting on the topic of female sexual predators for once.
Relevant Links: