When a boy is abused, his identity is changed from his essence to that of a victim. He can see himself as something wrong with himself, as an object, or a target of others' aggression. He will compare himself with others and begin to make assessments that he needs to be tougher, more macho, more of a man than the next guy in order to avoid being hurt.

Boys learn what it is to be a man from their fathers. A young boy looks up to his dad as a man who knows everything, a role model which does no wrong. Some boys believe their dads can walk on water. Other boys like myself wonder and wait for their "real" dad to show up. Some boys like myself wonder how come their dads have so much hatred towards their sons, maybe towards the world. We don't get the chance of viewing our parents as perfect because there is so much violence and destructiveness in the home that we know something is wrong.

At age three, I witnessed my father rape my mother and attempt to kill her and myself. He had been previously arrested for negligence homicide. My father had attempted to use his car to push my mother's car home. My mother's car had crashed into a third car where a man had died. Both my parents were charged with negligence homicide, which meant that my parents had lost their driving privileges. This created a tremendous amount of rage in my father. One particular night, he walked into the house with such rage that instilled terror in everyone. Both my sisters hid under their beds in their bedroom. My brother hid in our bedroom. I couldn't stay in my room knowing my mother was in grave danger. I thought my father was going to kill my mother and I was not willing to live with my father. I always felt the tremendous hatred my father had towards me. If my mother was going to die, then I would die with her. As my father beat my mother where she eventually fell onto the floor, she screamed. I thought she hit her head on the concrete step. As my father began to rip her clothes off, she told him not in front of the kid. "Let's go into the bedroom and we'll have a good time." I knew he was raping my mother because he had raped me and my mother had sexually abused me. I wanted to try to stop him. I knew I couldn't fight him because he was so much bigger than I. So I decided to get in his way to die in my mother's place. My father had picked me up and thrown me across the room. The third or fourth time, I hit my head on the cast iron base radiator and fell asleep. I was asleep for a long time, hours. When I woke up, the house was dark and everyone was gone. I went to my bedroom where I shared a bed with my brother. I felt his absence and went out to the kitchen where I found my brother calling the police with my mother standing next to him. I will never know whether my mother called the police to release him from jail or if she was calling because he disappeared and was looking for him.

With all the fear that was instilled in me as a child, I had grave difficulty expressing myself and feeling something other than fear. I carried this fear in my body everywhere I went. When I went to school kids made fun of me because of the way I moved my body. My body was extremely stiff and I was very hypervigilant. The main goal in life seemed to be to get through to the next day. Life was about survival.

My philosophy of life being about survival combined with growing up in severe abuse and violence created a lifestyle of self-destruction. My definition of masculinity became equated with self-destructiveness and fearlessness. Since my father had instilled such tremendous fear in me that it became extremely difficult to view myself as a man. I always associated as something being wrong with me, that I was not normal. I associated myself with never being accepted or respected. I had learned that the only difference between animals and people were that people were far more dangerous because they will attack for no reason at all while animals only attack because there is reason to do so.

The problem with these beliefs is that they were founded upon false information. My life became a lie. I learned to hide the soft, gentle, sensitive person that I truly am and hid it with an exterior of toughness, uncaring, and being cool. I was often scared of someone finding the gentle, sensitive part of myself. I learned to be tough on the outside, wear black leather jackets, dark glasses (so no one can see my eyes, the windows to my soul) boots, talk tough and cool and walk tough and cool. The more I acted tough and cool the more my belief changed of myself. However, this is when I became really lost. For I had acted tough and cool for so long including committing crimes and getting into fights, that the essence of who I truly am got buried under a lot of layers of muck. Most people wear a mask, presenting themselves as better than what they actually are. Than there are those like myself who wear an ugly mask in order to keep people away. Whether there is a societal definition of masculinity or not; the fact remains that the root of masculinity has to do with a man being comfortable being a man and being himself with nothing to prove and no one to perform for.

There is a lost sense of masculinity in society today. In the healthiest of relationships, men are confused of how to behave with women and with other men. The healthiest of men are struggling with their identity as a man. When there has been a history of abuse this struggle for identity becomes a far more difficult struggle. Men who were abused as boys need to understand that what was done to them is not their identity.

Men and women also need to understand that often times behavior is more about who a person is not rather than who a person actually is. Behavior is how one feels about him or herself at that given moment and his perception of the world. Men who struggle with their masculinity may act out in ways to prove their manhood (fights, work, sexual conquests).

Boys who grow up without a father figure may be attracted to gangs in order to feel like a man. In the streets, the traits that identify manhood are power, money, and sex. A man who was abused by his father lacks a positive father figure and although may not join a gang can still form the same equation that masculinity deals with power, money, and sex.

The way to identifying and accepting one's own masculinity is recognizing that masculinity is an internal characteristic trait not something external. Masculinity is an individual man being able to express his emotions, his dreams, passions, and his deepest darkest secrets.

When society can accept the fact that boys do get abused, that boys do have emotions and that there is not as much difference between men and women as some would like to believe and take advantage of; then men and women can learn to express who they truly are rather than wear a mask to make others more comfortable. When parents can treat their sons and daughters more equally and when teachers can treat boys and girls more equally, there will be healthier individuals and healthier relationships. When men and women can realize that masculinity and femininity are internal traits rather than external behaviors than there will be hope for masculinity and femininity rather than a loss of both.