Posts Tagged ‘don’t be an asshole’

prince-atom:

gunsandfireandshit:

tilthat:

TIL: The majority of child abuse perpetrators are women.

via reddit.com

By “majority” they mean “53.5%” which is an interesting number because more than 80% of abuse is carried out by a parent and if you check the proportions of families where women are involved v. families where men are involved it’s apparent that men are disproportionately likely to inflict abuse despite technically making up a smaller percentage of total abusers. Households with both a man and woman make up 69% of total parent arrangements, then 23% are single mother households, while single father households make up just 4%. So despite women being present in 92% of parenting arrangements while men are present in just 73% men still manage to commit almost half of child abuse, plus the data doesn’t analyse gender v. type of abuse and the figures cover everything from neglect to physical and sexual abuse and I think we can agree that these are not in any way equivalent forms of abuse (not that neglect is excusable but sexual abuse is clearly a worse offense). Yeah tho, this is why statistics matters, these numbers are meaningless without context.

And that’s how you lie with numbers, kids.

This is a kink blog but I’m going to take a little time out here to put on my social-theorist and parenting hats.  Folks looking for a giggle in their pants can scroll up or down but won’t find them here.

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MRAs and incels, as usual, can all go  fuck themselves  to therapy.  So be careful around “statistics” of any kind if they’re waiving it around.

However, it doesn’t seem that controversial that human beings in power-imbalance situations would manifest both positive and negative behaviors in roughly equal proportions.  

If you really want to bring the gender social construct into discussions of human behavior you should be sure to factor in that it’s… well… a social construct.  But if it’s the case that abuse is typically a punching-down phenomenon, and if it’s the case that gendered adult women are more likely to be subject to abuse, and if it’s the case that children are more likely to be attended to by women, then it shouldn’t be surprising that slightly more women would be observed abusing children than men.

But oppressor olympics is about as unproductive as oppression olympics.  A gendered man reading “perpetrators are women” will feel as unjustly absolve as a gendered woman reading “nuh uh, perpetrators are men.”  But really, since abuse is typically a punching-down phenomenon, the common factor is that abuse is perpetrated on children. 

Children, I’m let to understand, come in all sexes, genders, identities, orientations.  Also in roughly equal proportions.  40+ years of serious research into physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of children (and others in power-imbalance contexts) reveal virtually no preference for victims by designated sex.

Children grow up.

When they grow up children tend to reflect the behavior that was modeled for them.

Children for whom abusive behavior was modeled will have greater difficulty recognizing and overcoming impulses to perform the same behaviors.

Look.  Playing the oppressor olympic is an asshole, gaslighting game because…

What if we made the fucking MRAs happy and announced that not roughly half but 90 percent of abuse against children was perpetrated by women.  Or conversely what if we made the shit-assed Quiverful trad-fems happy and declared that not roughly half but ninety percent of abuse against children was instead perpetuated by men.

Either way that would still leave a neglected reservoir of 10% of overlooked and therefore unchecked abusers modeling behavior to the next generation of… future potential perpetrators!

But it’s not a 90/10 ratio, is it?  No, it’s a rounding error away from 50/50.  Only an absolute floating turd would crow that a 3% difference on one side vindicates the other.  And only a festering rectal tear would fluff around confounding factors to conversely try to explain a 3% difference.

Human beings are profoundly capable of punching down.  If you think it’s important to dwell on whether more men or more women perpetrate then congratulations, you’ve internalized gender stereotypes!  Pick up your participation trophy at nearest Patriarchy will-call window.

Now I don’t mean to say that gender has nothing to do with abuse.  It’s got plenty!  Case in point?  Progressive educators and school administrators only began acknowledging and addressing “emotional bullying” in the 1990s… as a “female” form of abuse.  That’s certainly better than ignoring it altogether, and it’s certainly the case that once people started looking it was hard not to recognize that “mean girl” bullying was pervasive.  That’s certainly a start!  But, um, kind of gonna put it out there that, you know, boys commit emotional abuse too.  Failing to recognize and take that seriously is kind of like failing to recognize and take seriously girls beating the shit out of other girls in the back of school busses.

And where do all these  boys and girls  children learn emotional, physical, and sexual-assault behaviors in power-imbalance situations?  Oh, well, it couldn’t be from their custodial adults could it?  Not from men.  Not from women.  From adults.  Don’t be one of those adults.  Raise your children so that instead of becoming “men” or “women they become adults.  The kind that doesn’t model punching down to their children.

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