I was reading an article recently in the Smithsonian Magazine which pointed out that much of scientific research is predicated on a pre-existing assumption that researchers make -- and want to prove. The scientists often gather evidence that proves their assumption, and ignore evidence that proves the contrary or even proves something else entirely, not related to the focus of the research. As a result, many 'breakthrough' scientific discoveries are ignored for many years, because the outcomes don't match those that the researchers are looking for. In other words "you see what you want to see and ignore anything to the contrary."
All of us have grown up in societies which have cultural expectations that are 'bred' into us. We believe certain 'truths' because our parents say they're true, our friends agree, we read books that buttress our assumptions, and the society around sometimes is in agreement as well. Then, having spent an enormous amount of emotional capital on believing something is 'true', we either ignore evidence that contradicts our belief system, or, even more importantly, fail to ask questions in such a way that will elicit perspectives that might move our perception of reality in a completely different direction.
This is the focus of this week's blog, and a subject I will return to often. In particular, this week I want to talk about our cultural assumptions, and the expectations they lead to, around sexual abuse perpetration and victimization.
Many people in our American culture, including mental health and social service providers, are indoctrinated with two societal 'beliefs': that a certain cohort of men, when they have experienced trauma in their own childhood, will later sexually 'act out' abusive behaviors toward women and children, but that women, generally, given the same set of similar traumatic experiences, are not likely to do so. As a society, we tend to believe men capable of this because they're bigger, generally stronger, and 'lack empathy' (due to not being able to express their emotions), but that women, since they are 'good mothers', 'nurturing people', and 'always have the interests of children and families foremost in their minds', are incapable of this kind of behavior.
The first cultural expectation I want to address is that, in sexual relations between adult males and females, if anyone is going to 'act out' in an abusive manner, it is simply assumed, a priori, to be the males.
Traditionally, in surveys on heterosexual relationships, questionnaires about perpetration are given to males and questionnaires about victimization are given to females. And, given our cultural 'blinders', based upon pre-existing cultural assumptions about male and female behavior, sure enough the 'evidence' 'proves' that the cultural expectation is accurate: males are the perpetrators and females are the victims. However, a number of years ago, a thoughtful group of psychologists asked "What if the outcomes are predicated primarily upon our pre-existing assumptions? And if we ask the questions using quite a different methodology, would we obtain different results?" So this group (as outlined in the study Sexually Aggressive Women by Peter Anderson and Cindy Struckman-Johnson) gave perpetrator questionnaires to females and victimization questionnaires to males. And, lo and behold, it turned out that, in some adult heterosexual relationships, females were the perpetrators of sexual abuse and males the victims, to a statistically significant degree. Given that our society, in the past 30 years, has allowed women a greater degree of 'sexual freedom' and greater economic security in professional employment, it should not be surprising that some women have chosen to 'act out' sexually in the same abusive predatory manner that they have observed men engaging in. Or, maybe, this was occurring long before the era of 'sexual freedom', but nobody ever thought to ask the questions in this manner.
The second cultural expectation I want to address is the assumption that, as a result of women's greater socialized capacity for childcare and the social allowance for being 'more in touch' with their inner emotional life -- partly, as the assumption goes, as a result of having a 'natural maternal instinct' -- such socialization predisposes them to not act out in a sexually abusive manner toward children. However, in contrast to this expectation, as Michelle Elliot points out in Female Sexual Abuse of Children, more in-depth and extensive research has shown that as much as 30% of the sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by females [and this figure may itself be too low, given that children often feel that reporting such behavior will be unsupported by adults or the legal and mental health system].
Now, this is not to 'blame women' nor allow the burden of male perpetration to be less noticeable; far from it. The sexual abuse of children by either sex is a horrible and intensely traumatic event. But, as a result of our pre-existing cultural assumptions and expectations, this statistical percentage often makes people aghast with incredulity. "No, it's only men who sexually abuse children!" Not so.
What is so amazing about that incredulity is that, given the greater number of females who were, themselves, sexually abused as children, objectively it should not really surprise anyone that some females, without sufficient and competent intervention, would 'act out' their sexual trauma on others around them. After all, it is well documented that at least 1 out of 5 girls and 1 out of 7 boys are sexually abused as children. Further, given that women continue to be the primary caregivers of children, it is not surprising that some of those females will perpetrate sexual abuse on defenseless children, much as was done to them when they were children. [It should be noted that 85-90% of female and male victims of sexual child abuse do not become perpetrators; we are focusing here on those that do.]
I stressed last week that the cultural denial of male victimization was serving males poorly; I would note that the denial, by our society, of female perpetration, is also serving females poorly. Most of the social service agencies focus on females as victims, thereby ignoring male victims, and focus on males as perpetrators, thereby ignoring female perpetrators. Hence, funding cycles of health foundations and social service delivery systems concentrate on what they perceive to be true based upon their cultural expectations, and thereby fail to address services to those clientele that don't fit within the boundaries of that belief system. By doing so, they, much like the society in which they exist, deny the full spectrum of perpetration and victimization.
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