Men Against Sexual Violence: Sexually Abused Males

I found an excellent site about raped and sexually abused males that every therapist and male who has raped or been raped should have as a resource.

The site at which I found the following is Men Against Sexual Violence http://www.menagainstsexualviolence.org/myths.html


MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT MALE VICTIMS OF RAPE


Rape happens because of an uncontrollable desire for sex with an irresistible victim.

Rape is an act of violence in which sex becomes the weapon used to control and or harm a victim the rapist perceives as vulnerable.

Men and boys cannot be raped.

One in six men report having been sexually abused by the time they were 18 (Finkelhor et al., 1990).

Anyone from infants to the elderly, regardless of gender, race, religion, socio-economic status, education, physical appearance, marital status, or culture can be raped. Rapists choose their victims carefully, looking for anything that will make the victim vulnerable and give them the advantage. They isolate their victims from bystanders who could help them, and rely upon shock, surprise, weapons, threats, strength, or positions of authority to counter the victim’s ability to resist.

Homosexual males perpetrate most sexual abuse of boys.

Men who sexually abuse males are usually pedophiles or persons who prefer a child as their sexual partner, not homosexual males. Most perpetrators know their victims (Groth et al., 1989) (Roesler et al., 1994).

A man or boy who experiences sexual arousal or orgasm during the abusive act enjoyed it.

Males may respond to stimulation even when it is abusive or violent. A man or boy who experiences sexual arousal may feel shame and guilt, but the arousal does not mean that he was willing or enjoyed it (Gartner, 1999).

Boys abused by males are or will become homosexual.

A boy may question or be confused about his sexual identity and orientation after having been abused by a male, especially if he experienced sexual arousal. But there is no reason to believe that sexual abuse causes homosexuality (Gartner, 1999).

Boys who are sexually abused will grow up to be sexual abusers.

While the majority of sexual abusers were abused themselves, the majority of sexually abused boys never become perpetrators (Lisak et al., 1996).

If the perpetrator is a female, the boy should consider himself lucky, not abused.

Our societal norms encourage a boy to deny any negative or traumatic responses to having been “so lucky,” to having earned a “badge of honor.” But, having been coerced or manipulated into sex by an older girl or woman is always abusive and often damaging (Lisak et al., 1996).

Gay, straight, bi, MSM all valid terms, researchers say

Today in the Washington Blade :

Craig scandal brings issue of sexual identity to light
Gay, straight, bi, MSM all valid terms, researchers say

ELIZABETH PERRY Friday, September 21, 2007

Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-Idaho) arrest last June for allegedly soliciting sex from another man in an airport restroom and his insistence that he is straight has reawakened the debate over sexual behavior, identity and orientation.“I am not gay. I have never been gay,” Craig said at an oft-quoted Aug. 28 news conference. “I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis Airport.”

Kort, a gay therapist who specializes in gay affirmative therapy, said it is possible that Craig might well be homosexual in terms of orientation, but not identity. He said being “gay” is an identity, while being “homosexual” is an orientation.

“I treat many men who are homosexual and do not wish to be gay,” Kort said. “They cannot and do not change their orientation, however. For these men, and Larry Craig may be one of them, being gay is the furthest from how they see themselves. He may be a straight man who enjoys occasional sex with men or he might be a homosexual or bisexual man, but would never identify this way because it is an affirmative identity that does not fit for him.”

That view is controversial among many gays who reject the notion that “gay” is an identity. Some scientists and researchers in fields ranging from psychology, AIDS research, blood donation and more, use the term “men who have sex with men,” or MSM, for their purposes. It’s useful to them because it removes the stigma associated with terms like gay or bi and while questions of the latter terms raise a bounty of identity issues, MSM is more concrete and quantifiable.

The Larry Craig Phenomenon: Homosexual but not gay!

An article today by Rick Leggio in the Dallas Voice
Gay? No. Homosexual? Maybe

He is homosexual, by his own guilty plea after being arrested for public loo trolling on June 11, 2007 (Craig’s Waterloo, this scandal’s basis). But being gay requires, at the barest minimum, self-identification and acceptance of a same-sex orientation.

This is what Straight Guise is all about.

Homosexual is a sexual orientation. Gay is an affirmative identity.

Plenty of men--and women for that matter--understand that their sexual orientation is homosexual. However, how they self-identify can be very different.

The reason this is so controversial is twofold. Gay men--such as myself--would never dream of not fulfilling their core authentic selves and they shouldn't.

However, in my practice I see many men and women who understand that they are homosexual and do not want to live as a gay man or lesbian. Who am I or anyone else to tell them they "should" live that way.

For many their religious beliefs, ethnicity, personal values, family ethics are too strong for them to go against. For these folks, living an out gay or lesbian life would mean depression even though most psychology would predict a life of depression not doing so.

But we are talking about two different things--being in the closet and being out. The homosexual men and women I treat who do not want to be self-identified as gay or lesbian are not in the closet. They recognize and accept that they have homosexual urges, feelings and desires and that if they choose to do so they would be gay or lesbian but they choose not to do so.

This is different than reparative therapies or any other program which tells its members they can change from gay to straight--turn their homosexuality into heterosexuality. This is hogwash!

Organizations such as the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers have all denounced these reparative attempts.

These reparative therapies only lead to a life of depression not because they are suppressing their core selves but because they are being taught to hate and reject who they are at their core and lied to that change is possible.

Living heterosexually and being homosexual is possible as long as shame and self-hate are not part of the equation.

Those reading this would say, "Well, isn't that living in shame if you are homosexual but choose not to live that way?"

Try telling that to the man who is 62, married and loves his wife and does not wish to live a lifestyle of gayness. Or tell that to a women who was raped repeatedly and sexually molested by men throughout her childhood who decides to self-identify as a lesbian even though she knows she is straight.

These folks may, through therapy or other means, come out and work through their issues. But perhaps they won't, don't, or do not wish to?

Historically I would have said yes to this but have treated too many men and women who would suffer living out as gay men and lesbians. They would lose their families, marriages, children, religious groups, jobs, and other factors which for them the stakes are too high and would ruin their lives.

I am not condoning secret lives or living on the downlow.

The answer is not to shame these folks so that like Larry Craig they go to bathrooms or get on the internet and have anonymous sex. The answer is to understand them and help them understand themselves and to make the best decision they can for themselves and for their loved ones.

Politics, personal agendas, religious beliefs, reparative therapy camps aside, people should have the right to self-identify as they wish without putting other sexual and romantic orientations down as a result.

Hazing and Straight Guise

These are only a few articles of the hundreds of reports wherein hazing has a homoerotic and homosexual theme running through it.
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Teen Gets Jail For Hazing Incident
By CHRISTINE DEMPSEY The Hartford Courant
August 23, 2007

MANCHESTER - A former upperclassman in a Glastonbury program for out-of-state, gifted minority teens was sentenced to nine months in prison today for brutalizing freshmen during an ongoing hazing ritual...four upperclassmen at the program arrested last year on charges that they abused freshmen as part of an ongoing hazing ritual that included slapping, kicking and beatings with ping pong paddles. Some of the abuse was sexual...
___________________________________________________________________
Teen boys charged in Grant hazing incident
NIU official says no counselors were near vicinity of attack
Published on: Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Article by: Jami Knowles Web Reporter

Four male teenagers are facing charges stemming from an alleged hazing incident at Grant Towers Residence Hall.
Shortly before dinner on the night of July 8, two 14-year-old boys were attacked outside a laundry room during a summer wrestling camp.
The first boy had his hands bound by a belt and athletic cream rubbed on his chest. The second boy was held down and the cream was rubbed on his chest and genitals.
___________________________________________________________________
Coopersville teen gets probation for hazing baseball teammate
Created: 8/3/2007

Investigators say the boy and four other members of Coopersville High School's junior varsity team slapped a teammate, rubbed his private areas, and put their body parts in his face.
___________________________________________________________________

These are ways straight men have sex with other men. Using violence, humiliation and sado-masochistic means to have sexualized contact with each other.

Some of the reasons men engage in this behavior is having been abused physically and sexually themselves, latent homosexual and bisexual feelings, homoerotic interest using "acceptable ways" to express those interests and anger at males in general.

Though only a partial list for this blog at this time, humiliation through sex, violence and feminizing are sadly societal acceptable ways for men to have sexual contact with another male without being labeled gay.

Is my man checking out other men? Homosexual fantasies aren't always a red flag

I was interview by Brian Alexander of MSNBC about Straight Guise.

Brian Alexander, an MSNBC contributor answered the following question:

What should a wife do if she suspects her husband is thinking of another — and that other is a man?

Q. My husband doesn’t want sex more than once or twice a week. Recently, I accidentally found some material on his computer that indicates he enjoys homosexual and transsexual/transvestite porn. Is it possible he’s gay or is this a normal thing for some men to be into?

A. I help Brian answer this woman's question at MSNBC.com

When Sexual Abuse Masquerades as gay

Homosexual behavior doesn’t mean a man is gay or even bi, he can simply be left with an imprint to re-enact his abuse and find “pleasure” in what was inflicted on him as a child. This really isn’t pleasure at all, but trauma turned into orgasm.

In their book, Male Victims of Same-Sex Abuse: Addressing Their Sexual Response by John M. Preble and A. Nicholas Groth say it best:

. . . this may actually reflect an effort at mastery of the traumatic event . . . when he was being sexually victimized, someone else was in control of him sexually. During masturbation he is literally in control of himself sexually, and this may be a way in which he attempts to reclaim mastery over his own sexuality. Likewise, his participation in consensual sex reflects his choice and decision.

The authors go on to say that “the fantasy thoughts are prompted by fear more than desire, by anxiety more than pleasure.” In other words, they become a way of managing fear and anxiety. Larry is a good example.

Larry was a 47-year-old school teacher whose wife of 7 years threatened to divorce him. She had caught him in gay chat rooms and emailing other men about possibly hooking up. Might he be gay? He told me, “I don’t care if I am gay. I just need to know. I’ve worried about this since I was a teenager.

Larry told me that his male-male interests were about big erect penises that he could fellate. His searched the Internet to find men who wanted oral service and would show their erections on webcams. While Larry seldom ever met these men, he had done so a handful of times since he was 23 years old.

Larry also told me he’d never enjoyed any of these encounters. He would meet them, and orally please them, but feel sick and emotionally shamed.

At age 19, Larry had assumed his fantasies of fellating other men meant he was gay. He never felt romantic or sexual interest in other males while growing up, but told his father that he was convinced that this sexual fantasy was the start of his being “a homosexual.” Angry and upset, his father insisted that Larry was not gay and told him to never bring it up again. To Larry, this meant that he was on his own with these “deviant” fantasies.

While doing a thorough history on Larry, I asked about sexual abuse. He said, “None.” After asking this initial question, however, I always educate the client further by explaining that sexual abuse can be covert too; “It can feel right and good to you as a young boy. but really be abusive, based on the who the perpetrator is.”

Larry then recalled a memory that haunts him to this day.

When he was 10 years old, he and his older brother and cousin—both age 15—were at the cousin’s house. Larry looked up to these two and felt privileged to hang out with them doing “older boy” things. His brother and cousin were chewing some bubble gum and Larry asked if he could have a piece. The cousin said, “You can, as long as you give us a blow job.” Larry’s brother agreed, to which Larry said no. They continued chewing the gum. But A few minutes later, Larry’s desire for acceptance and belonging made him agree. His cousin pulled out his erection, and as soon as Larry began fellating him, both he and Larry’s brother made fun of him.
Afterward they threw a piece of gum at him and made him pick it up off the floor. That was then end of the episode—and the one and only time it happened.

How to help Larry:

I asked about the men Larry talked to on the internet. What did they look like? How old were they? Did he pursue them or was he pursued? Looking for clues into his interest in being with these men, I asked what they looked like—particularly if he looked up at them while fellating them.

Larry reported that he didn’t look up, nor did he care what the men looked like. All he focused on was the erection, and the bigger it was, the more arousing.

Now I understood the link. Larry was not closeted and in the process of coming out, but a heterosexual who was reenacting his sexual abuse—being and humiliated and shamed at age 10. When he told his father, “I think I might be gay,” he was really looking for comfort, admitting that he’d been sexually abused. Had his father questioned him further and let the conversation continue, that would have become obvious.

Was Larry’s compulsive searching the Internet for erections to fellate was his psyche’s way of seeking resolution from that sexual abuse? When I verbally presented this possibility to Larry, he began to sob uncontrollably. He finally connected to his childhood sexual abuse and what was driving his sexual-acting out.

Larry’s treatment now was to work on his childhood sexual abuse, and doing so reduced his urges to connect with men. He still had fantasies—which were normal from homosexual imprinting—but no longer felt compelled to act on them.

In learning this he could explain to his wife what his behaviors were about and she developed compassion around his past abuse and suffering rather than feeling violated that he was cheating on her or that it was about the marriage.

It's Not Gay: The lies of Reparative Therapy

I know I’m walking on thin ice in talking about straight men who have sex with men who are not gay because it resembles the type of work psychotherapists did in the past with gays and lesbians, as well as “conversion” or “reparative therapy” pushed today by conservative religious groups.

However the truth is that there are men who act out or enjoy sexual activity with other men who are not gay. I am not talking about changing orientation nor do I believe that a homosexual orientation is learned. I believe--and studies are pointing more and more--to research that people are born gay. I am also not talking about gay men who are in the early stages of coming out.

What I am talking about are those who are born straight, self-identify as such and have sex with men from time to time.

Reparative Therapy or Sexual Conversion

According to these now widely discredited forms of therapy, geared to “curing” homosexuals, men who acted out homosexually did so because they weren’t fathered or mothered well; their hunger for same-gendered parenting caused their homosexuality. Once this hunger was satisfied, homosexuality would disappear and clients’ innate heterosexuality would surface. It’s my judgment that these men who have sex with men aren’t gay to begin with, but are using homosexual sex to resolve past issues.

Men and women drift into the “ex-gay” movement and decide to suppress their homosexual urges because of self-hate. Dr. Partick Carnes’s book, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred explains why someone would go to great lengths to fight their natural sexual urges. I believe this explains why gay men and lesbians turn to trying to change their innate same sex attractions.

Many religious homes are very judgmental about homosexuality. Ex-gays go through exaggerated attempts to repress, control and avoid their sexuality—in a way that parallels the dynamics of sexual anorexia.
Ex-gays have come to see me talk about believing their homosexual urges were sick and wrong. They believe their homosexuality is a sexual addiction and try to use Patrick Carnes’s model to set boundaries around their “sexual acting out” behavior. They speak of hating themselves for having these homoerotic urges and would never consider acting them out. Instead, they work hard at repressing them. Preoccupied with any feelings toward the same gender, they’re extremely judgmental toward those who do live out their homosexual orientation, sexually and romantically. They tell me they don’t believe me when as I say I’m happy in my life as a gay man.

Ex-gays go to extremes to avoid sexual contact with the same gender, even if it means behaving in hateful ways—such as trying to pass legislation against gays. I strongly believe that those in the forefront of the ex-gay movement suffer from sexual anorexia and self-hatred about homosexuality, which was taught to them as children. So many come from families, cultures, and communities that disdain homosexuality, and have incorporated this to such an extreme that they can never fully actualize themselves as the gays and lesbians they were meant to be and truly are. Along with their true sexual orientation, they have shut down their capacity to be loving and accepting, particular toward other gays and lesbians.

Since I published my book, 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives and my being a part of http://www.exgaywatch.com/, I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received from ex-gays and “those who love them,” telling me about other ex-gay websites, books, and organizations, and criticizing me for not promoting the “other side” of being gay—that is, the ex-gay side.

Some do it nicely, sending me emails like, “Have you seen [a certain] site on changing one’s sexuality? Check it out.” Some are cowards, not leaving a return address, and telling me I am “going to hell” —even though being Jewish, I don’t believe in hell! The fact is, these folks simply cannot live their lives as ex-gays without being judgmental of those who live their lives as openly happy gays and lesbians. Ex-gays make a lifestyle of promoting themselves as the “healthy” alternative, as though gays and lesbians are pitted against them! It doesn’t, and shouldn’t have to be this way. If they were truly happy and aligned with how they choose to live, they would just live that way with very little fuss. They would maintain their own organizations, but not try to impose their thoughts and beliefs on others.

I’m not against those of a homosexual orientation who choose not to live as gay or lesbian. I do quarrel with their constant attempts to pass laws against me and send me emails me telling me I’m bad and wrong for living the life I do. Based on everything I’ve read and observed, I believe that ex-gays can be correctly diagnosed as sexual anorexics.

If a man has sex with another man then he is not straight!

This myth exists and is used by reparative therapies and religious programs to reduce homosexuality to a sexual behavior. There are homophobic and heterosexist individuals who are misinformed about what it means to be a gay man and believe if you commit the sexual act, than that is what you are. There are many gay men who believe the same and argue that if a man is sexual with another man he is gay. They fall into the same category of prejudice and confusion over sexual preferences and sexual orientation.

SEXUAL PREFERENCE:

One’s sexual preference takes into account the desired sexual actions and fantasies with a partner; while sexual orientation encompasses a sexual identity with all the thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and emotions that cause us to become sexually excited. Thus, there is a distinct difference between a gay man and a “straight male seeking male,” or “SMSM.”

SEXUAL ORIENTATION:

A gay man’s sexual orientation is characterized by lasting aesthetic attraction to, romantic love of, and sexual attraction exclusively for others of the same gender. A gay man’s sexual thoughts, fantasies, and behavior are aligned. It is an identity based on affectional, emotional, spiritual, psychological and sexual feelings exclusively or mostly toward men. While some gay men can include and enjoy women as part of their sexual fantasies and behaviors (for instance, being sexual with a woman while with another man and his wife), the gay man is mostly if not totally attracted to men. I often explain it to my clients this way: If a gay man were walking on the beach, he would be sexually drawn only to men; he wouldn’t notice women in such a way.


On the other hand, SMSM's might be sexual with men from time to time, but on the beach, they’re staring at women. These are heterosexual men who engage in sexual behavior with other men for a number of reasons. They are not gay nor are they bisexual. Their same-gender sex acts are about physical release and sex, not about attraction to or desire for another man.

SMSM's are often turned off and left cold by naked images of men. Instead, they are sexually aroused by and attracted to women. These men typically want to bond with and need affection from other men. Their behavior may also reflect a desire to experiment, or an expression of problems and conflicts with their sexual feelings and desires—which have nothing to do with being gay. More often than not, these are the men whom I counsel or whose wives come to me in such frantic states.