Oprah, Please Get This Right or Just Don’t Bother

Apparently, Oprah will be covering the topic of female sexual predators on an upcoming show.  While I am heartened to see this topic getting more coverage lately, I have serious reservations.

I hope she and her staff do a decent job with this topic and that it is done without any deference or excuse-making for the female offenders by trying to paint them as victims too, as is often the case when this topic comes up in the media and blogoshpere. Given the very sorry, sympathetic portrayal of female offenders a related topic presented in her magazine in 2008, I'll be viewing this episode with a skeptical eye.

I've seen this issue botched over and over too many times in the past in multiple forms to be hopeful that Oprah and staff will get it right. I sincerely wish that my skepticism is proven baseless.

What I fear (whenever this topic is covered, not specifically from Oprah) is a rehashing of the following myths by some "expert" who presents such garbage mostly unchallenged:

• Sexual abuse by women is not as damaging as that by committed men (minimization)
• Males sexually abused by women do not suffer long-term trauma (minimization)
• Women only abuse because they've been abused themselves (blame-shifting)
• Women only abuse in tandem with a male abuser who is really the alpha abuser (blame-shifting)
• Going to great lengths to keep reinforcing that the sketchy statistics on female abusers show that group as much smaller than that of male abusers (which is a form of blatant minimization that occurs often when this topic is discussed)

Oprah, please get this right or don't even bother.  Those of us who have been hurt at the hands of a woman deserve better than a re-wounding for the sake of ratings.