Homebrew and MrVisible:
Da point I was trying to make was that I wasn’t acting gay to act gay: I was acting gay to act annoying. I like being annoying, especially to self-righteous bigots. Also, I harras the one or two female friends I have left the same way, so the smarter people I know have figured out I’m just having fun. Thanks for your concern, though. To reiterate: do Exprix and co. have a problem with this?
Homebrew: I like alliteration, read hard Sci-fi, and wanted to point out that I’m not attracted to men sexually. Not even a little bit. Yes, I’ve checked. The internet is a wealth of resources.
P.S. What discrimination do gay people encounter most often? Physical violence? Name calling? Funny looks? I don’t count my day as complete unless I have gotten two of these, and my reputation as a knee-in-the-groin and teeth-to-the-neck fighter have eliminated the last one.
i want to get in on this action…i am a HUGE homosexual…well, not huge, although i have been working out…let me know, i want to be in the Straight Dope Gay Hall of Fame!!!
Hey, Gay guy, what do you think of this?
http://www.keinschicksal.de/alfie/alfie_en_00.htm ?
Press “next page” to read the whole thing.
sigh
In their never-ending drive to “understand” homosexuality – or to demonize it – the less-tolerant corners of the straight world have come up with every imaginable explanation. This is the ever-popular-but-no-longer-credited-by-the-psychiatric-world “Gay is a form of vampirism that spreads by sexual abuse.”
Well, it’s not true. As a peer counsellor, I talked to a lot of young gays and lesbians, some who’d been abused, others who hadn’t been. And I’ve met plenty of straight people who’ve been sexually abused – strangely, their heterosexuality is never blamed on it.
Gay men who have been sexually abused usually blame their abuser, and it takes them far longer to come to terms with it. In the meantime, they fall easily prey to these charlatan-psychologists, like the one in the cartoon, and ex-gay groups, lose years of their lives trying to fight something that’s an integral part of them.
[ul]
[li]Gay men who’ve been sexually abused by a man often blame it on that – as if homosexuality spread by a disease[/li][li]in the only case I’ve known in which a gay man was sexually abused by a woman, he blamed it on that – on the grounds that a “bad experience” had made him gay[/li][li]gay men with distant fathers tend to rely on the long-discredited theory by Freud that homosexuality is caused by distant fathers[/li][li]gay men who had good relationships with their fathers find other things, anything, unless they can admit to themselves that it’s an integral part of themselves[/li][/ul]
Truth is, ex-gay programs push this kind of stuff on emotionally-vulnerable gays and lesbians just coming out, a sort-of pseudo-psychiatry designed to make them feel like freaks. But these programs don’t work. The two gay male founders of the American ex-gay movement broke away from it and became lovers. Most recently, one of its leaders was caught in a gay bar.
Gloria Steinem once said that the litmus test for sexism was to replace the word “woman” with “man” and see if it sounds stupid.
Well, try applying reversed versions of the usual theories to heterosexuality – heterosexuality is caused by a bad experience with a man, heterosexuality is spread like a virus by sexual abuse – it brings pretty obvious how silly these theories are.
At the risk of getting totally flamed, Hamish and Esprix, I’d like to explore the issues here a little bit more. There are all kinds of cut-and-dried theories around that don’t seem to match the reality, but I feel that there are some possibly valid points that might be explored in this apparent nonsense too.
First, it was my experience, and I’d ask Hamish, andygirl, and anyone else with experience in a counseling role with gay people if it was theirs, that there was a disproportionate ratio of gay, and particularly of bisexual men who reported having been molested. Let me make very clear right now that I am not therefore presuming that the molestation was the cause.
But here’s the logic I’m employing with this:
> Most molestations result in sexual pleasure or release for the molested party. But:
> Most molestations result in a feeling by the molested party of being violated and/or somehow guilty.
My thought is that the molestation might be a potentiating event that, thanks to the pleasure experienced, “opens their eyes” to their own sexuality’s inclusion of a gay component. One young man I dealt with over a long period of time was intensely angry at the protestant minister who had molested him and several of his friends – but eventually felt comfortable enough talking to me that he admitted that he had gotten quite a bit of pleasure bottoming for the man and for a well-endowed age-mate friend that the clergyman had staged a sex act with.
What I’m seeing in this is that the sort of bisexual person who would otherwise repress any gay tendencies as sinful or condemned by his peers and instead focus on his heterosexual desires may actually be “opened” to his full sexuality by having been molested. (Which of course is not to suggest that it was a good thing, just that something beneficial came out of it.)
The influence of the violation and guilt feelings tends to complicate matters a lot – but the personal guilt feeling might tend to isolate him from his peers, again opening the door to identification with gay people “like the guy who molested him” (not, of course, in actuality but in his subconscious identification).
I also worked with a heterosexual girl whose story amplifies this whole schema. She was the oldest of three children, with two younger brothers, not the daughter of the man who married her mother and fathered the boys, and he flagrantly favored the boys over her as his stepdaughter – ridiculing her and giving her no affection but a lot of discipline. She hit puberty early and was at age 12 fully developed, looking 17 at first glance. And she engaged in sex early and often, promiscuously. It seemed evident to me and to her aunt who was a close friend that what she was doing was trying with her body to buy the love of a man that she had been denied by her stepfather.
I trust you might see the parallel to a boy in similar circumstances and his desire for affection from a father figure – and how this might influence his sexuality.
I make no conclusions that “this turned X gay” – just wondering if, in the complexities of the human psyche, these might have been influencing factors for some gay or bisexual people.
Just curious - have you ever worked with kids with a single parent or from an orphanage?
Polycarp - it may be that more gay and bisexual men report having been abused because, having made the step of coming out as gay or bi, it is easier to make the further step of coming out as an abuse victim. Or vice versa.
There’s also the issue that flaming gay men are a target for abuse of all sorts and get abused because they are gay.
Also, Poly, I was “picked out” as being a lesbian in elementary school and high school, and was picked on for that exact reason.
Because of a meditation I went through last Saturday, I realized that in part I was more accepting of myself as a bisexual because I had to consider the possibility in myself because of the abuse I endured at that time.
I’m not sure if this has been asked, and there is far too much for me to read through and track it down, but I was wondering what the likelihood is of contracting HIV through unprotected anal sex. I know that that is very risky behavior for the receiver, but I can’t seem to find much information on risks to the top.
So far, everything has a very “be extra cautious, everything is dangerous” feel to it. No actual details on the risk. Of course I know transmission is possible, but how likely is it compared to other methods of transmission? Any sort of comparative stats would be much appreciated.
Ooner, the Master speaks.
I wouldn’t flame you Polycarp. Sexual abuse does a lot of damage – it sexualizes children before they’re ready to deal with things, at the atmosphere of guilt and shame tends to make a mess of their lives. One thing it doesn’t seem to do is have an effect on their sexual orientation.
Here’s a sampler of people I know who’ve been through this:
[ul]
[li]TC, gay male, was sexually assaulted by two different men. He spent a long period of his life trying to go straight, believing that homosexuality was wrong – his Catholic father was convinced all gay people went to hell – and that he was only gay because he’d been sexually abused. He had several girlfriends, tried to feel anything for them. He was only able to admit, as an adult, that he was gay, by which time he’d lost his teenage years to this myth.[/li][li]HC, gay male, was sexually abused by a woman over a period of three years. He spent five years trying to generate the slightest sexual interest in a woman, and failed. For a long time, he blamed his sexual orientation on this bad experience. He had also hoped it was a phase, another myth that can do a lot of damage.[/li][li]NM, heterosexual female, sexually abused by a woman, her babysitter. Never questioned her sexual orientation, but she did develop a seriously dysfunctional and abusive relationship with a man.[/li][li]C., heterosexual male, sexually abused by a man. Said that the experience taught him he wasn’t gay. Completely comfortable in his sexual orientation.[/li][li]MP, gay male, abused by a man. He was unable to see his sexual orientation as healthy, and unable to change it, he swore himself to celibacy and joined a fundamentalist Christian group.[/li][li]CB, heterosexual male, abused by a woman when he was six. When he was a teenager, he used to brag about it, though he admits now it messed him up a bit. Last I talked to him, he and his girlfriend were getting married.[/ul][/li]
I could go on. I know many, many, many more. Certain themes emerge, though. The children are all sexualized early. All of them have trouble adjusting to adult relationships, most of them became either promiscuous or came to hate sex. But for the heterosexuals, that’s where it ended. Gay people also came to blame their sexual abuse for their sexual orientation, and often lost years of their lives trying to change.
I’ve heard about people describing how they sort-of liked it – or how it did open their eyes at the same time it hurt them. But we have to be careful not to put the cart before the horse here. The heterosexuals who were abused by members of the same sex, and the gay man who was abused by a member of the opposite sex, did not like it.
The vast majority of gay men I’ve met do not seem to have been sexually abused. You’re more likely to hear about it, because coming to terms with sexual abuse – and realizing that it is not a factor in determining one’s sexual orientation – is one of the things you have to do in order to lead a fulfilling life.
Sexual abuse of girls by men is extremely common. In fact, from what I’ve heard it’s the most common category of sexual abuse. No one suggests that widespread heterosexuality among women is the result of this. People would find the idea silly.
Yet those gay men who’ve been sexually abused do have to deal with this myth – they have to deal with people playing pop-psychologist on them constantly, assuming they don’t understand their own emotions. I’ve heard stories of gay men spending 20 or 30 years of their life trying to change because they bought into the gay-as-vampirism-theory, and finally realizing that all those years have been wasted, and they are still gay. Ex-gay programs thrive on this myth.
Ack – in my haste to respond, I forgot to reset the cookies. The above post is Hamish, not matt_mcl.
Thank you for the reasoned response. I think what I was trying to say in all that is that one effect of molestation might have been to foster awareness and acceptance, rather than repression, of any tendency to self-sex attraction in the person molested – certainly not that it “made them gay.”
Ooops. I should have known better than to suspect Polycarp of homophobia :o
I suppose I simply misinterpreted the word “influenced” at the end of the post. This is one of my particular hot-button issues because I’ve had to hear about it far too often.
Heavens! I’ll be able to respond better in a few days. Thanks for keeping the dream alive. 
Esprix
I was molested when I was very young by my mother’s marine boy friend. He terrorized me and terrified me for a few months when I was three(I always that it was when I was five, but was recently corrected by my Grandmother who remembered disticntly when it happened).
The minute she figured things out, she attempted to defend me(which failed, but she did try).
We had to move and hide from psycho man for over a year.
He has been a frightening spectre my entire life.
Because of him, I’ve always had an inherent distrust of men which has manifested in misandry. Men really have to work to earn my trust… I don’t like being touched unless it is at my request and desire.
This made my coming out process very difficult and fraught with a great deal of self-loathing and guilt.
To be attracted to what you are alternately frightened of and furious with is very hard. It also led me to be very cruel to any man I dated that turned out to be a former member of the marines or a current marine.
The psycho marine’s attentions didn’t lead me to be gay, but they did affect how my sexuality expresses itself, and they caused me for quite awhile to be avoidant of that which I wanted because of fear.
Esprix -
Since we’ve seen an awful lot of threads kind of mimicking the sex=death mindset, would you be so kind as to provide recent statistics for AIDS (in modernized countries, not in third world countries? Although that’s a horrible thing, that’s not what this thread is about.)
Mayhap our dear Jillgat would be more appropos for such statistics, n’est-ce pas?
Esprix
You are, of course, correct, sir. :smack:
:Trundles off to email Jill, mumbling about failing memories:
Polycarp, I think you raise an interesting question, but I wonder if a better question than “either/or” is “how much of each” because of something Hastur wrote:
I had a friend/boyfriend who as a child was sexually abused by his older brother’s male friend. From the onset of puberty, he said he was aware of his attraction to men, though he dated women and had several lengthy relationships with them. He then began his coming out process (to himself, to his family, to his friends and colleagues) in his late 20s. He often wondered, and wanted to believe, that the sexual abuse had made him gay, even though on an intellectual level he knew it didn’t work that way. What I saw in him was an intense struggle between the kind of long-held but unacknowledged awareness which leads finally to self-acceptance, and the fear and self-loathing which leads to repression. Part of him wanted to come out and embrace who he was; another part, almost as strong, believed that his sexuality wasn’t who he was but rather what he had been made by someone else’s abuse, and therefore something to be denied or expunged.
What I see in this is not so much a difference in kind as degree, a difference between the coming out issues faced by those who have been victims of childhood sexual abuse and those who have not. In the coming-out process I think many gay men struggle to some degree with both self-acceptance and self-denial; I was one of them, certainly. Perhaps in victims of childhood sexual abuse, both aspects of the struggle are heightened and intensified as a result of the abuse.
This is merely a speculation I thought I’d share. Any thoughts from the Teemings?