When we think of sexual abuse of children, most of us think of girl children as the victim about nine out of fen times. In reality, it is one boy to 1.7 girls.18 We usually think of the sexual abuser as a man. In reality, girls’ abusers are usually men, boys’ abusers are usually women — mothers, older sisters, female babysitters, and older female relatives.19 We cannot discover this by polling child-abuse centers. Polling child-abuse centers will always uncover more girls because, when girls are abused, we offer them help. It is only when we poll both sexes equally as adults and ask them parallel questions about their childhood that the abuse against both sexes becomes visible.
Why do we overlook men who need help — be they the victims of sexual abuse, spouse abuse. PTSD, or prostate cancer, or the 85 percent male homeless? Historically, woman-as-victim attracts men; man-as*victim repulses women. Even today, when a woman’s tire goes flat, she will suddenly allow a strange man off the highway an opportunity to help her. If his tire goes flat, she rarely stops to help a man, despite the opportunity she’s had to look him over first.
Men will make progress to the degree society understands that the attraction to woman-as-victim is a reflection of male low self-concept: a feeling that man is worthy of a woman only if he can do. something for her — that he is conditionally visible