By Mike Buchanan, J4MB: In our 2015 general election manifesto one of the 20 topics we covered was sexual abuse. It was the longest section in the entire 80-page-long manifesto. The start of the Background in this section:
It will come as a surprise to many, but women are responsible for a substantial proportion of sexual offences, including sexual abuses of children. A website [ref. 116] concerned with female sex offenders has a bibliography [ref. 117] of over 900 academic studies, articles, and books on the subject, dating back to 1857.
People struggle to recognize women as perpetrators of sexual and non-sexual violence, in spite of the weight of evidence showing them to be frequent perpetrators of both. This is because we live in a culture which regards men as ‘actors’ and women as ‘acted upon’. The public has become conditioned to viewing men as perpetrators, and women as victims. Alison Tieman, a Canadian men’s human rights advocate, produced an insightful short video on this matter. [ref.118]
This culture leads to inequalities. Few women are held accountable for sex offences, including those women who sexually abuse children.