sexuality and health

Uncovering women paedophiles

The past experience has been, too often, that their reports of abuse have been not just disbelieved but scorned, and female paedophiles have been left with unfettered access to future victims. The article is a sober and balanced piece, and the selected comments from survivors of abuse from women perpetrators are heartbreaking.

A large part of this societal disbelief regarding sexual abuse by women is of course gendered stereotypes about the passive nature of female sexuality and the supposedly innate caring capacity of women that is meant to make women incapable of such behaviour.

Word of the Day – Hyperbole

Hyperbole (pronounced /ha??p??b?li/ hye-PER-buh-lee; “HYE-per-bowl” is a common mispronunciation) comes from ancient Greek “????????” (meaning excess or exaggeration) and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create… Read More ›

Rape myths, rape myth acceptance, and community perceptions of victims of sexual violence

Elsewhere, grave doubt was expressed that attitudes of holding women responsible for sexual violence directed towards them was in fact a popular community view, to the extent that a position paper from an academic conference was mercilessly mocked for this sentence:

Women who are raped or who suffer domestic violence are somehow thought of in the popular imagination as a stereotype. According to this, the women are asking for it, dressed inappropriately, provoking it – responsible for it.