ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the particular discursive coordinates by which persons involved in female-perpetrated sex abuse are able or unable to occupy a victim subject position. The South African context is characterised by multiple and contesting, diverse identities as well as a current explosion of public and scientific possibilities for sexuality driven by social inequalities, high crime rates and sexual violence, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A key circulated discourse that upholds the invisibility of female-to-male sexual violence is the construction of men being incapable of exercising sexual restraint. Male violence is regarded as so normative that its aetiology is considered irrelevant. The reliance on heteronormatively gendered frameworks results in the interrogation of their masculine identities and the acknowledgement of betrayal by their own masculine bodies. The discourse centred on the absent paternal figure is also representative of broader discourses focused on the child-centred modern family unit that imply that the father is responsible for the protection of his children.
