Cinematic Depictions of Boyhood Sexual Victimization

In the outpouring of books and papers on childhood sexual abuse that have appeared since 1980, the emphasis has nearly always been on sexually abused girls and their reactions to the abuse as women. This focus on women misleadingly implies that the occurrence of sexual abuse among boys is rare. But, as Holmes and Slap (1998) conclude, “the sexual abuse of boys is common, underreported, underrecognized, and undertreated” (p. 1860). Approximately one in six boys experiences direct sexual contact with an adult or older child by age 16 (Urquiza and Keating, 1990; Lisak, Hopper, and Song, 1996).

I have elsewhere (Gartner, 1999; see also Gartner, 1994, 1996a, b, 1997a, b, in press, a, b) addressed a number of issues related to the sexual abuse of boys and its aftermath as boys become men. These include the definition of sexually abusive situations for boys; the social isolation and shame that sexually abused men often experience; the effects of masculine gender socialization on processing boyhood sexual abuse; the likelihood that boys will encode their sexual activity (especially with women) as a benign introduction to adult sexuality; the meaning and aftereffects of same-sex molestation for boys; the impact of boyhood sexual abuse on adult sexual and other intimate