I was sexually abused starting when I was 11, and I am full of rage now about it as an adult. This is my blog to let off steam.



Studies have shown that the effects of sexual abuse can be long-lasting and can include poor self-esteem, sleep disturbances, anxiety disorders, intense shame and loathing about sexuality, depression, self-harming behavior, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts and behavior. I’ve struggled with the first three all my life, and only in mid-adulthood resolved the fourth one. I still deal with hopelessness and lack of motivation (I don’t think it’s clinical depression) and sometimes think suicide could be a rational course of action, but I guess my desire for a better life prevents me from seriously considering it.



People never talk about how sexual abuse causes these effects. They can’t even rationally talk about what sexual abuse really is, instead sticking to simplistic moralistic condemnations. When they do that, how can they expect to understand sexual abuse, ways of preventing it, or ways to help victims? One has to decide which is more important: protecting children from harm, or enforcing a moralistic agenda. These two things are NOT always the same!



Everyone can agree that an adult coercing or manipulating a child into sexual behavior is harmful and therefore reprehensible. It’s especially harmful when an authority figure does it, when it involves humiliation or shaming, and/or when it happens repeatedly–that’s why my abuse was so harmful.



It began when I was 11, when I admitted to myself that I was gay. I was a defective, disgusting, shameful “queer”, “faggot,” “pervert,” and “deviant.” Or so I was told by everyone around me–authority figures as well as peers–by the way they talked about gay people. This occured day after day, month after month, year after year, into my adulthood. I knew that I was a “freak” and would always be alone, never experiencing intimacy, romantic love, or sex.



That was the abuse. No, no one ever coerced or manipulated me into sex. But before you tell me that isn’t “real” abuse, think about the fact that I experienced the same effects that “conventionally” abused children experienced. And I know plenty of people who were also shamed and humiliated for their sexuality like I was, and have gone on to abuse alcohol or drugs, engage in cutting, or attempt suicide in their teen or young adult years.



I blame society’s moralism for this, but I have special loathing for the psychiatric and psychological profession. Yes, they now advocate for LGBT people, but they only changed their tune begrudgingly 40 years ago, after long-running protests from gay activists. Before that, the psych profession gave society ammunition for its hatred toward LGBT people by publishing sensationalistic documents and “studies” about the evils of homosexuality.



This wasn’t due to benign neglect–it was self-imposed ignorance; they simply didn’t want to do any decent research because their moralistic beliefs made such research irrelevant and they didn’t think LGBT people were worth it. They were happy to repudiate the hippocratic oath and support society’s call for the suppression and control of “sexual deviants” through all kinds of hellish sexual aversion therapies. The psych profession was responsible for the abuse of countless LGBT people, including me, in the twentieth century.

Left two pictures: Electric shock therapy device and device connected to penis to measure erection and determine arousal to male and female stimuli. Both were used on gay men in the 1950s. Right picture: Similar device used in the 1990s and 2000s on men and boys as young as 12 thought to be attracted to children. All devices are manufactured by Farrall Instruments.

The problem is, they’re still doing the same thing now, just do a different group of people. When I was 17, I noticed I wasn’t attracted to boys my age or men anymore. Eventually I figured out I was attracted mainly to boys 11-15 years old. Just like when I was gay, I internalized all the negative stereotypes coming from society, led by the psych profession. Intense shame and self-loathing. But I was puzzled: I was a very gentle person, yet the psychs told me (via the media) that I was a vicious animal–a predator–and that I would eventually abuse hundreds of children. How could this be?



Once I got on the internet, I was able to find real research, in reputable books and journals, that defied the horrific stereotypes and proved that popular and professional beliefs were false and destructive. This was the stuff that the psych profession ignores or even attacks as “obfuscating the moral issues involved.”



I also met or communicated with several teens and young adults who were hopeless, dealing with depression or anxiety disorders, turning to drugs or alcohol, cutting themselves, or considering or attempting suicide because of their attraction to children. Some of them had been forced into these medieval “sexual aversion treatments.” I even read about these treatments being inflicted on juvenile sex offenders and “children who molest”, often for willing sexual experimentation, leading them to psychiatric disorders and violent or suicidal behavior. Abusing “deviant” children to protect the “normal” ones?!! Teaching these kids that their sexuality is destructive and monstrous?! This isn’t child protection. It’s child abuse. Sexual abuse.



That’s when I became angry and realized that the instutions of society, especially the psych profession, are blinded to facts about sexuality and the well-being of children and youth by their moralistic condemnation of people with the wrong sexual feelings or behavior, including those who are attracted to children. They’re blinded to facts that could help young teenagers who are struggling to understand their attraction to children, and could even help those children who have had sexual contact with adolesents or adults. Instead, the profession would rather condemn, control, and abuse, using the same aversion therapies, chemical castration, and containment of “sexual psychopaths” (now called “civil commitment”) that they used in the 1950s against LGBT people. Will they ever learn?