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Five reasons feminism should deal with women who abuse children

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Feminism is failing children by refusing to acknowledge that the majority of perpetrators of child abuse are women, according to one writer at the online magazine Everyday Feminism.

Men’s rights activists have long pointed to numerous examples of international research which show that mothers perpetrate more child abuse than fathers. Rather than acknowledge this inconvenient truth, women’s organisations tend to deny and minimize the child abuse committed by women and seek to place the blame for the majority of child abuse on men’s shoulders.

The sexist belief that “women HAVE problems and men ARE problems” is so pervasive that the last UK government formed a taskforce to address “violence against women and children,” ignoring female perpetrators and male victims in the process.

In his book The Myth of Male Power, Dr Warren Farrell claimed that feminism articulates the shadow side of men and the light side of women, but neglects the shadow side of women and the light side of men. The unwillingness of feminism to acknowledge women’s dark side, as demonstrated by women’s abuse of children, is one of the reasons anti-feminists believe the movement is sexist against men and boys.

Speaking as a feminist herself, the writer Shannon Ridgway suggests five reasons why feminism needs to address the fact that women commit the majority of child abuse. Whatever you think of Ridgway’s “five reasons” (listed below), she deserves credit for daring to wash one of feminism’s dirtiest pieces of laundry in public.

5 Reasons why feminism needs to address child abuse:  

1. Feminism should tackle all “-isms” not just sex-ism against women—and ignoring child abuse is a form of ageism

2. Women are not “natural caretakers” and our unwillingness to admit women abuse children is based on this sexist stereotype

3. Women who sexually abuse children are not “seductresses” they are “sex offenders”

4. Matriarchy is no better than patriarchy

5. Child abuse victims should not be made to feel that feminism has failed them, they should feel that they can embrace feminism

You can see Shannon Ridgway’s full article at Everyday Feminism today.

—Photo credit: NSPCC 

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  • Nigel

    This is a good point. It is worth remembering that Dr. Farrell began his interest as a part of a “wave” of feminism. His work actually takes the “feminist” analysis to its logical conclusion. That roles for men and women, their Gender, are largely a social construction that can be changed. Of course as Dr. Farrell points out this means that gender roles overall would be open to scrutiny and change. However his “break” came over the process within the movement that actually seeks changes for women while still requiring the same roles from men. The men = bad women= good paradigm in what is almost a secular religion of feminism (with “Patriarchy” in the role of evil) effectively recreates the Madonna/saintly pedestal gender role that feminists in his “wave” sought to end (on the grounds that the saintly pedestal limited understanding and options for women). As a many commentators have noted there are often strange alliances between “feminists” and traditionalists (most recently in criminalisation of “punters” in NI) precisely because both operate on the same basic essentialism. Of course feminist theory (theology?) finds itself with fundamental problems in recognising anything other than this essentialism now. Yet in the seventies it would have been perfectly possible to recognise women as agents of good or bad and there was research and work into precisely the instances where women didn’t conform to a “nice” stereotype. Over many years I have come to the conclusion that this shift reflects a desire to maintain privileges/services/rights and to do so falling back on precisely the gender stereotypes of innate caring and goodness that were once challenged. Frankly the 5 things should be at the core of feminist theory for it simply to be coherent. Anything else is intellectually dishonest if one claims to be challenging the social construction of gender.