On my blog entry entitled Masturbation as a Form of Self-Injury after Sexual Child Abuse, a reader posted the following comment:
I seek out pornography with depictions of things similar to what I suffered, and no one has ever had the bravery to open up a thread where others could admit they do the same. So thank you. Though I’ve had one instance of talking to someone about how we tend to seek what was first done to us, I’ve always felt like I must be sick or f@#ked up for that.
It’s difficult, when you’re aroused by rape or nonconsent pornography or think of your own youth as a sexual thing. For me, it makes me feel like I must have wanted it, if I like to think about those sorts of things now. It makes me feel like maybe I shouldn’t be angry about the abuse, because maybe I invited it – maybe I wanted it if I get aroused by it now.
Your post helps to break the chicken-egg cycle a little bit. It’s nice to hear someone else say that the abuse has caused the dysfunction, rather than some innate perversion inviting the abuse. ~ Oniongirl13
I am brave enough to open up a thread to talk about this subject. :0)
I have never used pornography, but I have had the experience of a movie triggering memories of the child abuse turning me on. I watched a movie one time (that was not pornography) of a man casually reading the newspaper while lying on his back while a woman (I think it was the maid) was “riding him” with no emotion – like she was just doing her job. That scene (which was intended to be comical) caused my body to respond, which I thought was really strange. I had spent my life (particularly in church) hearing about how “making love” was supposed to be this amazingly intimate experience between married people, but I found that fantasies during sex of me being nothing more than an object (like that woman in the movie) turned me on more than anything. However, I would feel dirty and ashamed afterward.
I spent years playing out scenarios in my head that mirrored my abuse to get my body to respond to sex. (I suspect that this fantasizing is similar to what people who use pornography to mirror their child abuse experience.) For many years, my body would not respond to sexual stimulation when my husband and I were having sex. Then, one day during sex, a thought popped into my head of a bunch of people watching. All of the sudden, my body responded, and I was able to climax. However, I felt dirty and gross afterward. I played out all sorts of sick situations in my head, and this was before I started having flashbacks. I just thought I was a really sick and perverted person to fantasize about scenarios that I would never choose for myself in real life.
Considering that my body started being sexually stimulated when I was just a kid, it makes sense that my body would make a connection between the perversion and sexual stimulation. It’s frustrating when all that I have been told that is good about sex does not stimulate my body at all, but if I think about being treated like an object being put on display, my body responds. I recognize that this is just one more aftereffect of the child abuse that I must work through.
If you use (or have used) pornography mirroring your child abuse, is your experience similar to what I have described?
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 