From: sfjr@wam.umd.edu (Steve Russell)
Subject: Re: sex/power
Summary: This is Sherri, not Steve
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 16:55:20 GMT


Well, Chris, now that you posted a better explanation of what you were
talking about, I think that a meaningful discussion is possible and I'm
not mad about it any more :)  I disagree with a lot of it still, not that
the pedophiles you discuss don't see themselves that way.  Anyway, at this
point I'd rather the discussion kept going if other people feel comfortable
with it being here.

It also helped me see why I had such a problem with your earlier posts:

1) You didn't define your terms well, which allowed everyone to apply your
descriptions to their own abusers.  I particularly had a hard time because
the main abuser I remember may have fit your type 2 pedophile def. even, but
I was clearly manipulated.  In order to go along with things, I often had
to be threatened with additional abuse (i.e. abuse that would be angry and
violent and would occur without the perp there--my abuse occured during
seances with a babysitter.  It was always dark, and the babysitter said, and
I believed, that the abuse was done by the ghosts, not her, so if I tried to
refuse to begin the seance or tried to break it off, I'd be told that the
ghosts would start coming at any time and they'd be angry and she wouldn't
be there to protect me).  Now if you interviewed this woman in your study, she
wouldn't have mentioned the threats, I don't think they were a big part of the
experience for her.  Also, I remembered the abuse long before I remembered
ever being threatened in this way.  I often berated myself for the fact that
I got so totally fucked up psychologically over it...after all, the abuse
was rather minor, physically painful but not really violent.  AT first I also
thought that it had only happened a few times, but I later realized that it
happened very regularly, almost weekly, for a period of about 3 years.  My
biggest fear early in my recovery was that I'd consented to it.  I had very
few friends my own age, and I was really proud that this older girl seemed to take
such an interest in me.  Your initial posts really brought back these fears
for me in a powerful, disturbing way.  I suppose I didn't really deal honestly
with you or myself, I pretended that my concern was more for other people
instead of dealing with the fear I was feeling.  I have an easier time with
that.

2)  By not defining your terms it made it unfairly difficult to argue with
you :)  I mean, one could read your post, get all worked up, post a reply,
only to have you respond, "well, see, that's not what 'Paedophile' means".
It can be really frustrating.

3)  I always suspected that you were basing your analysis of the child's 
reactions on the paedophiles' testimony, but you never made it clear where
you were getting your information.  I'm quite willing to talk about children
or paedophiles, I just want to keep clear lines between whether we're talking
about what survivors say about pedophiles (and I think this is the default
assumption here since it is asar), what paedophiles say about paedophiles
(gee, now you've even got me spelling it in this British fashion :)), etc.

4)  Although you've lately made it clear that you were never advocating that
adults have sex with children, it sounded like you were claiming that sex
with adults is a normal part of life for many children.  This could be upsetting
to anyone who even suspects that they may have sort of consented just once!
(anyone=me!).  If the only way I could get a certain quality of attention
was by allowing someone to fondle and penetrate me, it doesn't mean that I
wanted the fondling and penetration.  I don't know how wrong I thought it 
was at the time, but I sure as hell got enough messages about how wrong
such things were as I got older.

Anyway, I'm going to stop now because I'm crying too much to write anymore.
I'm glad I finally admitted how I really felt, rather than clouding it in
generalities or talking around my _real_ issues like I always tend to do.  I
think you just recently gave enough information for the dialogue to become
meaningful, so perhaps you'll want to re-think your decision not to respond
any further on the thread...

sherri

ehugs to all who want them...I know I could use a few...



Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery