littleoc
MyPTSD Pro
I have noticed this a lot in the forums lately, but haven't seen a thread dedicated to it yet.
I think it would be nice to have a space where we can talk about sexuality, and how our traumas have confused that or made it harder to accept. It's hard enough to be different -- it's hard enough to go through trauma.
So, I'll start. I am a gay person, although it's more comfortable for me to say that I will love whoever I love. I'll try not to make it labeled if the label is causing trouble or confusion.
I was "kidnapped" (I've had to convince myself of this) at age ten and released at age 11, and the perpetrator was a man. He abused me sexually once he got the confidence to.
I grew up confused, having had weird thoughts about preferring women even while I was in elementary school -- before not-traumatized kids would usually think of it.
Way before it could have possibly mattered or anyone could have known if I was gay or not -- in first grade -- I remember a known bully chasing around a girl (also in my class), H. She was trying to avoid him and get some peace while playing outside, and he kept going up to her repeatedly and saying that he had a crush on her and wanted to marry her. She told him no several times, but he wouldn't listen.
I was always in trouble at this point (usually for things my father was responsible for, not me..) and I was sitting by the teachers not allowed to play with the other kids. I heard them talking to each other about how "cute" and "precious" it was that the boy liked H so much. They weren't doing anything to help H out.
So, the moment I got up to be allowed to play (the last minutes of recess, usually), I went up to H and told her that I liked her. She looked confused, but that was all.
Then the teacher exploded. She placed me in in-school suspension, after telling me and my entire class what I had done. How disgusting and wrong it was. She placed me in a windowless closet-like room and had me doing math all day, math above my level (which I managed eventually). She told me that she was doing me a favor by not telling my mom -- she would only ever tell her that I wasn't doing any work. But she warned me that if I ever got caught doing that, again? She would make sure my mom knew.
My first grade teacher clearly had problems :p
Being kidnapped did not make me straight. In fact, I became SURE that it had scared me away once and for all from being straight. I was afraid of men, definitely sexist against men now, and my kidnapper had ruined me in so many ways.
I got a girlfriend who would never admit we were dating several years later -- she was a complete nightmare but I don't get into that here. Just know she was a bad cookie who dearly needed adult help, and I literally ended up "stuck" with her for ten years out of fear, well into adulthood.
Anyway, my ex, B, insisted that her intuition was always correct, and she knew people's inner truths in a supernatural way. I believed her somehow, even when she started telling me that I'm not gay. Because I was just afraid of men. I was just confused. I had chosen this life in order to feel in control. I'd get over it and have a husband. ...yes, she and I were dating when she said this. I believe she may have been projecting on me, who knows.
I believed it so thoroughly that I found tiny bits of science to back me up. Scientifically this hasnt been researched well enough to answer anything, but there are hypotheses out there. I would take little pieces of them to prove it was true, that I was into women because I was damaged.
A hypothesis states that sexuality is determined partially by the child's genes, partially by the mother's genes (that deal with the environment created in her womb), and therefore partially environmental reasons could determine sexuality to an extent as well. In some kind of distortion, I believed that being exposed to liking women at a young age, and then being scared away from men, had made me gay. I didn't want to think I was confused and scared anymore, so I had made it scientific -- I WAS truly gay now and there was no turning that back. But, I thought, my trauma had caused it.
That changed while I was on this forum. I saw a member (who I'll keep anonymous here for now) who had been sexually abused by females. She felt that because of the abuse by women, they had influenced her to become gay.
I almost thoughts my previous thoughts -- that this was some kind of evidence that my hypothesis was true. But luckily I realized that this was a distortion. It's difficult to determine sexuality when your body has always been yours and nurtured. With trauma? There is confusion, because you have to wonder if something damaged you. Something about being gay... feels like you were damaged.
I'm not sure if straight people feel this way about their sexuality -- although I will welcome any straight people with similar problems with sexuality.
Of course, if trauma did make us gay, then why are there so many untraumatized gay people? It makes more sense to face the fact that we were already who we are, and never should have been defined by a private sexual thing. What happened to us is horrible, and it did affect us, but it didn't change who we are.
The bullying caused by my first grade teacher teaching the class that what I had done was wrong (we were kids -- we didn't even know how relationships work, anyway!) continued for years, causing me plenty of harm until sudden in my very last year of high school, it stopped. Several of my main bullies I had comforted when I saw them cry, and they admitted to me eventually that they were gay themselves. I had already stopped caring about being bullied by high school, and while my ex would cower and lose her wits when a bully approached, I'd play games and accidentally make friends with people who just wanted to be accepted.
My ex was never hit by a bully. I was; but she'd tell me her life sucked much worse since she had chosen to be gay for her ex, J (all while she insisted that she wasn't gay with me. Hard times for everyone I guess, but that may have just been another mind game).
My teachers sometimes didn't care at all, but other times cared a lot. The ones that cared wouldn't help me when I reported some bullying as sexual harassment -- ironically from the same bully in first grade! He did stop bullying. The teacher i reported to, an assistant principal, insisted it was my fault for hugging a female friend or touching her -- had I not done that, then there would've been no rumors about kissing by the lockers (which was, of course, untrue). What a silly assumption! Luckily the bully stopped bothering us. He likely had something going on of his own.
And, interestingly enough, the girl in first grade who I said I liked, H, ended up marrying a woman in 2017!
So, what's your story?
I think it would be nice to have a space where we can talk about sexuality, and how our traumas have confused that or made it harder to accept. It's hard enough to be different -- it's hard enough to go through trauma.
So, I'll start. I am a gay person, although it's more comfortable for me to say that I will love whoever I love. I'll try not to make it labeled if the label is causing trouble or confusion.
I was "kidnapped" (I've had to convince myself of this) at age ten and released at age 11, and the perpetrator was a man. He abused me sexually once he got the confidence to.
I grew up confused, having had weird thoughts about preferring women even while I was in elementary school -- before not-traumatized kids would usually think of it.
Way before it could have possibly mattered or anyone could have known if I was gay or not -- in first grade -- I remember a known bully chasing around a girl (also in my class), H. She was trying to avoid him and get some peace while playing outside, and he kept going up to her repeatedly and saying that he had a crush on her and wanted to marry her. She told him no several times, but he wouldn't listen.
I was always in trouble at this point (usually for things my father was responsible for, not me..) and I was sitting by the teachers not allowed to play with the other kids. I heard them talking to each other about how "cute" and "precious" it was that the boy liked H so much. They weren't doing anything to help H out.
So, the moment I got up to be allowed to play (the last minutes of recess, usually), I went up to H and told her that I liked her. She looked confused, but that was all.
Then the teacher exploded. She placed me in in-school suspension, after telling me and my entire class what I had done. How disgusting and wrong it was. She placed me in a windowless closet-like room and had me doing math all day, math above my level (which I managed eventually). She told me that she was doing me a favor by not telling my mom -- she would only ever tell her that I wasn't doing any work. But she warned me that if I ever got caught doing that, again? She would make sure my mom knew.
My first grade teacher clearly had problems :p
Being kidnapped did not make me straight. In fact, I became SURE that it had scared me away once and for all from being straight. I was afraid of men, definitely sexist against men now, and my kidnapper had ruined me in so many ways.
I got a girlfriend who would never admit we were dating several years later -- she was a complete nightmare but I don't get into that here. Just know she was a bad cookie who dearly needed adult help, and I literally ended up "stuck" with her for ten years out of fear, well into adulthood.
Anyway, my ex, B, insisted that her intuition was always correct, and she knew people's inner truths in a supernatural way. I believed her somehow, even when she started telling me that I'm not gay. Because I was just afraid of men. I was just confused. I had chosen this life in order to feel in control. I'd get over it and have a husband. ...yes, she and I were dating when she said this. I believe she may have been projecting on me, who knows.
I believed it so thoroughly that I found tiny bits of science to back me up. Scientifically this hasnt been researched well enough to answer anything, but there are hypotheses out there. I would take little pieces of them to prove it was true, that I was into women because I was damaged.
A hypothesis states that sexuality is determined partially by the child's genes, partially by the mother's genes (that deal with the environment created in her womb), and therefore partially environmental reasons could determine sexuality to an extent as well. In some kind of distortion, I believed that being exposed to liking women at a young age, and then being scared away from men, had made me gay. I didn't want to think I was confused and scared anymore, so I had made it scientific -- I WAS truly gay now and there was no turning that back. But, I thought, my trauma had caused it.
That changed while I was on this forum. I saw a member (who I'll keep anonymous here for now) who had been sexually abused by females. She felt that because of the abuse by women, they had influenced her to become gay.
I almost thoughts my previous thoughts -- that this was some kind of evidence that my hypothesis was true. But luckily I realized that this was a distortion. It's difficult to determine sexuality when your body has always been yours and nurtured. With trauma? There is confusion, because you have to wonder if something damaged you. Something about being gay... feels like you were damaged.
I'm not sure if straight people feel this way about their sexuality -- although I will welcome any straight people with similar problems with sexuality.
Of course, if trauma did make us gay, then why are there so many untraumatized gay people? It makes more sense to face the fact that we were already who we are, and never should have been defined by a private sexual thing. What happened to us is horrible, and it did affect us, but it didn't change who we are.
The bullying caused by my first grade teacher teaching the class that what I had done was wrong (we were kids -- we didn't even know how relationships work, anyway!) continued for years, causing me plenty of harm until sudden in my very last year of high school, it stopped. Several of my main bullies I had comforted when I saw them cry, and they admitted to me eventually that they were gay themselves. I had already stopped caring about being bullied by high school, and while my ex would cower and lose her wits when a bully approached, I'd play games and accidentally make friends with people who just wanted to be accepted.
My ex was never hit by a bully. I was; but she'd tell me her life sucked much worse since she had chosen to be gay for her ex, J (all while she insisted that she wasn't gay with me. Hard times for everyone I guess, but that may have just been another mind game).
My teachers sometimes didn't care at all, but other times cared a lot. The ones that cared wouldn't help me when I reported some bullying as sexual harassment -- ironically from the same bully in first grade! He did stop bullying. The teacher i reported to, an assistant principal, insisted it was my fault for hugging a female friend or touching her -- had I not done that, then there would've been no rumors about kissing by the lockers (which was, of course, untrue). What a silly assumption! Luckily the bully stopped bothering us. He likely had something going on of his own.
And, interestingly enough, the girl in first grade who I said I liked, H, ended up marrying a woman in 2017!
So, what's your story?